WordPress 6.6 Roadmap + demos, what's next for Meta boxes, Pattern tutorials - Weekend Edition 293

Howdy,

Well, this week there has been plenty of information about what WordPress 6.6 might bring. It’s scheduled to be released in mid-July and will be fully packed with awesome features. The designer tools set for nocode site builders gets massively bigger with Pattern overrides, Grid Layout. Section Styles and Block Style variations.

There are four more weeks left before Beta 1 is released, and most features will be settled by then. There will be parts that might not make it into the version after all. The last Gutenberg version will be 18.5 for features and three or four more with bug fixes.

Brace yourself, I felt overwhelmed putting the lists together and might have overused the list block in this newsletter. I am trying to come up with a better way to curate the information for you and if you have ideas how to better keep you updated, please let me know.

Wishing you an wonderful weekend!

Yours, 💕
Birgit

Table of Contents

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

The recording of last week’s Hallway Hangout on what’s next in Gutenberg is now available. In their summary post, Anne McCarthy also included shorter videos for each feature demonstrated so you wouldn’t have to watch all of 80 minutes of video to learn about the various new features. The covered:

Theme style presets
Section Styles with an example theme.json
Zoomed out view
Advancing data views
Overrides in synced patterns
Block connections
Grid Layout

These demos go hand in hand with Anne McCarthy’s WordPress 6.6 Roadmap post on the Make Blog. The post covers all the features slated for the next WordPress release, scheduled for July 16, 2024.

In the post, McCarthy shared the links to “Iteration” or tracking issues on GitHub for each main feature. I bookmarked those, so I can keep track on the progress throughout the release cycle. The List below is incomplete, and your interests might be different from mine, so use at your own risk, missing out. Here is my list:

Screenshot: Advancing the new Data Views in the Site Editor, shared in Roadmap to 6.6

Making plans to be at WordCamp Europe in Torino? I would love to meet you and chat! Please share Your calendar link via X (formerly known as Twitter) DM or private message on WP Slack . My calendar is public. Just grab a day/time slot if that works better for you.

Joen Asmussen shared in his Design Share #54 (Apr 8-Apr 26) the work of the WordPress Design team. Some of it is the design equivalent work on the WordPress 6.6 Roadmap items. Here is the full list the post covers:

Style Book updates
Synced pattern overrides
Grid layout Interface
Site editor responsiveness
Block connections
Style inheritance visualization
Shadows – UI to design your own via the site editor
List view density
Filter chips in narrow containers
WordPress.org site
- Visited Links on
- Learn section lessons
- Search, filter, and sort
Openverse site
- Site theme switcher
- Feature introduction ⋅ aka “What’s new”

screenshot of Stylebook changes — Screenshot of Stylebook updates, shared on Make/Design blog

First-time Gutenberg plugin release lead, Damon Cook published What’s new in Gutenberg 18.2? (24 April) and highlighted the following enhancements:

Sarah Norris and I discussed WordPress 6.6 and 6.5.3, Gutenberg 18.1 + 18.2 and Create Block Theme Updates this week’s Gutenberg changelog episode. Listen in and learn all about the latest features with the Create Block Theme updates and Gutenberg plugin updates.

Sarah Norris and Birgit Pauli-Haack recording Gutenberg Changelog episode 99. — Recording the Gutenberg Changelog 99

🎙️ Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog #99 – WordPress 6.6 + 6.5.3, Gutenberg 18.1 + 18.2, and Create Block Theme Updates with special guest Sarah Norris

Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners

Exploring the latest version of the Create Block Theme plugin

The Create Block Theme plugin was created to streamline block theme development by adding to the power of the Site Editor with theme-specific goodies and workflows. The plugin aims…

Exploring the latest version of the Create Block Theme plugin

The Create Block Theme plugin was created to streamline block theme development by adding to the power of the Site Editor with theme-specific goodies and workflows. The plugin aims…

Jamie Marsland shows off the synced Pattern overrides and renamed them “Components”

If you are not at all familiar with WordPress patterns are and how to use them, Wes Theron, instructional designer on the Learn.WordPress team, created a three-part tutorial for you:

Using block patterns – you learn the various methods on where to find patterns and how to add them to your pages, posts, and templates
Building a page with only patterns covers how to use various patterns to create a Services Page.
Creating your own custom synced and non-synced patterns, you’ll learn how to create synced or non-synced patterns interface and user cases.

More tutorials from the Learn.WordPress team are available via the YouTube playlist

Kyra Pieterse announced Pattern and Icons updates for MaxiBlocks: 14,000 free WordPress icons and 20 new story mix block patterns. “The additions range from minimalist layouts to dynamic text and image combinations, providing professional designs for diverse website requirements.” she wrote.

In the the 49th episode of the WPMinute podcast, The WordPress Theme Market is Heating Up, Matt Medeiros interviewed Rafal Tomal, co-creator of the new Rockbase WordPress theme. Tomal, a renowned designer in the WordPress community, discusses his journey from working at Copyblogger and StudioPress to founding his agency and eventually creating Rockbase with his partner, Chris Hufnagel.

Ryan Welcher announced the release of a new version of this Advanced Query Loop Block 2.2.3 that adds the ability to manually curate a list of posts to display. With the plugin’s Query Loop block variation a user can create complicated queries, such number of posts to display and post meta, combine multiple post types, filter for items before a date, after a date or between two dates or expand the sort order by more criteria.

In his tutorial Bringing some structure into the theme: The Sidebar, Bernhard Kau walks you through the steps, he used to add a sidebar to his theme all in the site editor and without code. It’s part of a series on working with Block themes. Previous posts are available by following the FSE tag.

Wes Theron takes you on a step-by-step tutorial Designing with row and stack blocks. Using the Group block is one of the cornerstones of mastering the WordPress block editor. When you select a Group block, you have variations, the standard group, rows, stacks, and grids.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

The WordPress Theme handbook received a whole new chapter about Patterns. You learn all you need to know about how to register pattern, using PHP, create Starter Patterns and how to lock patterns. Here are the subchapters in detail:

“Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2024”
A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.

In the latest Developer Hours, Justin Tadlock and Nick Diego discussed how the Block Bindings API fits into the bigger picture of the block system and how you can combine it with existing features, laying the groundwork for much more advanced and dynamic site builds.

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