Phew! That was a long break! And a lot happened. It might take two editions to get us up to speed again.
And it doesn’t stop, the preliminary schedule for WordPress releases in 2025 came out and the call for volunteers is open for WordPress 6.8 release cycle.
With Thanksgiving ante portas (= at the gate. Yes, I was in Rome) I hope you have a calmer week ahead of you, be it because many contacts take time off and the noise level is reduced, or you connect with family and friends on Turkey day, off-screen.
I am always grateful to you, dear subscriber. Your support and keen curiosity keeps me sharing the news around the block editor and beyond with you. It also makes me a listener beyond the noise.
Have a splendid weekend ahead!
Yours, 💕
Birgit
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
WordPress 6.7.1 was released to quickly fix bugs that appeared late in the release cycle. Check the release post for details. If you just now consider upgrading to WordPress 6.7, you can consult the Field Guide and the Source of Truth to find out about all the new features and APIs.
Rich Tabor recorded the The Official WordPress 6.7 release video. Adam Preiser commented: “This is the best “official” WordPress release video you guys have ever uploaded. Great job!.”
Joen Asmussen posted an update on the Design teams work in his Design Share #68 (Nov 4-Nov 15). You can get a glimpse at the following projects or tasks:
- WordPress 6.7 release site
- Menu navigation editing
- Page preview in global styles browsing
Earlier this month, Asmussen published Design Share #67 (Oct 21-Nov 1) and highlighted these projects, some were already implemented in the latest Gutenberg release.
- “Show template” option
- A dedicated Styles screen
- Editor Comments
- Ambiguating Write/Design tools
- Photo Directory
- Make’s homepage
- DataViews: Density preference
- Advancing the Pages data view
- Global styles iA exploration
- Updating active menu item styling in the site editor
- Badge component
- Updated Figma Library
Nick Diego published this month’s roundup post on What’s new for developers? (November 2024). Catch up on last-minute additions in WordPress 6.7 and see what’s coming next for Core, Gutenberg, and WordPress Playground.
Gutenberg plugin releases
Gutenberg 19.6 was released on November 6th. It entailed 194 Pull Requests (PRs) by 57 contributors, eight were first time contributors.
37 enhancements and 65 Bug fixes. The rest are documentation, tooling, and code quality updates. Release lead Carlos Bravo highlighted in his post What’s new in Gutenberg 19.6? (6 Nov) the experimental inline comments, and improvements to the overall site editing experience.
This week, Hector Prieto pushed Gutenberg 19.7 release over the finish line. It included 148 PRs by 46 contributors, 6 of them first timers. The release contains 26 Enhancements and 49 bug fixes. Prieto emphasized in his post What’s new in Gutenberg 19.7? (20 November)
- Global Styles available on the main site editor sidebar
- Swifter hiding & showing the template
- Set image blocks as featured image
For the 111th Gutenberg Changelog, I invited the brilliant Anne McCarthy to go over these two Gutenberg plugin releases and also discuss in more depth the inline commenting and the updates in general.
🎙️ The latest episode is Gutenberg Changelog #125 – WordPress 6.9, Gutenberg 22.1 and Gutenberg 22.2 with JC Palmes, WebDev Studios
Anne McCarthy published Update on Phase 3: Collaboration efforts which discusses improvements in WordPress’s collaboration tools, including Dataviews, real-time collaboration, and inline commenting. The goal is to make teamwork easier during content creation. The post highlights important updates and invites the community to provide feedback for a better user experience.
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Jeremy Holcombe found for you the 12 best WordPress block themes and most of them are free!. He also explains briefly what block themes are and how they differ from classic themes.
In his latest video on WordPressTV, Wes Theron answers the question: Why design in the Site Editor and use it for prototyping? You’ll learn how to use the Site Editor to design and prototype websites with blocks, customize layouts, and apply basic design principles.
Devin Walker, co-founder of GiveWP, published a new plugin in the repo: Blocks for GitHub. Once installed, it enables a site owner to share a specific repo or the GitHub profile with their readers.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
Stephanie Pi from WooCommerce Developer Experience team invites you to talk about Themes with Ellen Bauer on December 2, 2024, from 16:00 UTC. Pi wrote “You don’t have to be an expert on themes to join. This event will serve as an informal opportunity for you to share your initial thoughts, feedback, and questions about Woo Block Themes. It’s our way of starting the conversation early and getting input directly from the community as we shape the future of this space.” Ellen Bauer is a long-standing community member, theme builder, and now Product Lead at Woo, and occasional co-host on the Gutenberg Changelog.
Bud Kraus posted about Working with properties and key-value pairs in theme.json on the Kinsta Blog site. “Whether you’re building a theme from scratch, customizing an existing one, developing a style variation, or working on a child theme, grasping how to work with theme.json is essential.” he wrote.
In episode 146 of the WP Tavern podcast Fränk Klein on Redesigning WordPress: The Shift to Block-Based Systems, Nathan Wrigley and Frank Klein discuss how block patterns improve user experience and highlight the need for adaptable design, cooperation among developers, and the ability to create more dynamic content with these new systems.
Brian Coords has Mike McAlister on his show and discussed with him Full Site Editing and Ollie. Mike talks about his extensive journey in the WordPress ecosystem, from a designer to a product builder with Ollie WP. They cover the importance of design in WordPress themes, the shift towards full site editing, the value of patterns and pattern libraries, responsive design controls, and more.
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor
The upcoming Developer Hours will happen on December 3rd, 2025 at 16:00 UTC. Ryan Welcher and Nick Diego will discuss and demonstrate how to Improve your workflows with WordPress development tools. They’ll take a deep dive into the advanced usage of tools like create-block and wp-scripts, along with a few others. They will also focus on solving common challenges and showcasing techniques that go beyond the basics, even for developers already familiar with these tools.
In this week’s Developer Hours: Exploring the Block Bindings API in WordPress 6.7, Justin Tadlock gave an overview of the Block Bindings API and how it works, including major changes in the API since WordPress 6.5. He demonstrated how to use the new Editor UI for binding attributes and work with the new JavaScript API. Whether you are new to Block Bindings or have already started using them in their projects, the session offered valuable insights for everyone.
In his latest article, How to add content-only editing support to a block, Nick Diego shows how this feature lets users edit the content in a block without changing the block’s settings, improving user experience during content creation. He includes clear code examples to demonstrate how to implement it.
In his post, WordPress Block Development: Complete Guide to Multiple Blocks & Interactivity API, Deryck Oñate tailored his tutorial to developers who want to streamline their WordPress build setup, making it both efficient and flexible. You’ll dive into optimizing webpack configurations, using the interactivity API, and building multiple blocks—all while keeping the codebase clean.
In his latest Livestream, Ryan Welcher explored Creating an advanced UI for plugins, and used as example building the UI for managing taxonomy controls for his Advanced Query Loop plugin.
This week in Playground
The Playground app now offers the Pull Request (PR) testers for WordPress Core and Gutenberg in the interface. Thanks to the contributions by Agata Dobrowolska and Brandon Payton, the feature is now reachable through the 3-dot menu in the left sidebar. If you are part of the outreach channel on Make Slack you might appreciate the easier way to test contributor work before it’ll be merged into the next release.
Don’t miss the upcoming Playground Hallway Hangouts:
- November 29, 2024, at 14:00 UTC – Playground Hallway Hangout with Ajit Bohra and Adam Zieliński – Ajit Bohra developed a block-based blueprint builder and will give us a walk-through and answer questions.
- December 6, 2024, at 14:00 UTC Playground Hallway Hangout with Tammie Lister and Adam Zieliński, as informal discussion on how agencies can use Playground for client and product demos and brainstorm ideas on how to improve it for this use case.
Details will follow in Make Slack channel #playground and the Make Blog.
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