Year: 2020

  • Should the Block Editor Have a Grid System?

    Should the Block Editor Have a Grid System?

    Laying out a webpage design and getting every element aligned perfectly can be a tough job. Even many developers rely on CSS grid frameworks. Granted, with the introduction of the flexbox and grid systems in the CSS language, such frameworks are becoming unnecessary. Whether it is getting the vertical and horizontal rhythm down or simply…

  • Watch the Women of React Conference for Free on Saturday, April 25

    Watch the Women of React Conference for Free on Saturday, April 25

    While much of the world is in lockdown, public gatherings and conferences have been cancelled, leaving a void in the lives of people who enjoy meeting their fellow open source contributors and colleagues in person throughout the year. Virtual events, which were already on the rise, are enjoying a bit of a renaissance by necessity.…

  • WP Feedback Kicks off Free Virtual Summit for WordPress Professionals on April 27

    WP Feedback Kicks off Free Virtual Summit for WordPress Professionals on April 27

    WP Feedback is running a virtual event from April 27 – May 1. The event is primarily geared toward WordPress professionals who are looking to scale their business. It will feature CEOs, designers, freelancers, and more from the WordPress space. Between five and seven video sessions will be available each new day of the event.…

  • Chatterbox Plugin Uses WordPress Blocks to Show Conversations

    Chatterbox Plugin Uses WordPress Blocks to Show Conversations

    Chatterbox is a new plugin with a fun and creative use for the block editor. It displays chat or text threads using blocks that are styled as conversations. Users can type in a record of a chat, including timestamps, with a live preview in the editor. Since written conversations are essentially little blocks of text…

  • You Deserve to Wear Sweatpants; Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Any Different

    You Deserve to Wear Sweatpants; Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Any Different

    Lounge in your Baby Yoda sweats. Break out those knee-high Santa socks that you love to wear during the holidays. Slide into your Rocket City Trash Pandas tee and pretend the baseball season is going to happen this year. Sure, you can wear a suit and tie when you’re working from home. However, I invite…

  • Frontity Raises €1M with Automattic and K Fund

    Frontity Raises €1M with Automattic and K Fund

    Frontity, a free, open source framework for building WordPress themes with React, has raised €1M in funding in a round led by K Fund, with Automattic covering 22%. The team behind the framework officially made it open source in May 2019, after battle testing it internally. In one year the framework has more than 12,700…

  • Gutenberg Hub Launches Online Block Template Builder

    Gutenberg Hub Launches Online Block Template Builder

    Gutenberg Hub launched the first version of its block template builder last week. The template builder allows users to select from the team’s existing library of nearly 200 templates. It is essentially an online builder that allows users to craft a full page layout by mixing and matching various sections. They can then copy the…

  • Google Shopping Is Now Open to Free Product Listings

    Google Shopping Is Now Open to Free Product Listings

    Google announced today that it is bringing free listings to the Shopping tab in the United States before the end of April and will expand globally by the end of the year. Previously, merchants were required to pay for ad placement and product listings, which led to major online retailers dominating the Shopping tab. “Beginning…

  • WordPress Dashicons Project to Discontinue Development in Favor of New Icon Component

    WordPress Dashicons Project to Discontinue Development in Favor of New Icon Component

    Dashicons, the WordPress admin icon font, is now closed to new icon requests. After the block editor adopted the approach of using SVG icons directly, WordPress design contributors have recently reevaluated the efforts going into the Dashicons project. The team decided to wrap up existing tickets for new icons, push out a final release, and…

  • WPBlockTalk Videos Now Available on WordPress.tv

    WPBlockTalk Videos Now Available on WordPress.tv

    All of the recordings from the free WPBlockTalk virtual event are now available on WordPress.tv. In case you missed it, WPBlockTalk was a WordPress community event sponsored by Automattic, and produced by Brian Richards, creator of WPSessions. It took place earlier this month on April 2, though some of its momentum may have been lost…

  • On Digital Gardens, Blogs, Personal Spaces, and the Future

    On Digital Gardens, Blogs, Personal Spaces, and the Future

    The concept of digital gardens is not new. It predates the modern blog, but there may be a resurgence, albeit small, of the sort of curated content that grows within a digital garden. The term “digital garden” is not well-defined. In general, it is a collection of thoughts, unfinished projects, links, and much more. However,…

  • Leave at Door: New Free WooCommerce Plugin Enables Contact-free Delivery

    Leave at Door: New Free WooCommerce Plugin Enables Contact-free Delivery

    As many countries around the world are currently in some form of lockdown to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, the hospitality industry has been one of the hardest hit by the new restrictions. Restaurants and breweries in particular have had to radically change how they do business and either lay off or furlough the…

  • GitHub Opens Free Plan to Unlimited Collaborators on Private Repositories

    GitHub Opens Free Plan to Unlimited Collaborators on Private Repositories

    On Tuesday, GitHub announced a change to its plans that would make collaboration between developers much cheaper. Free, in fact. Anyone can launch an organization for at no charge with unlimited public and private repositories. The change also includes an unlimited number of collaborators. This will be good news for small WordPress development teams without…

  • Gutenberg 7.9 Adds Gradients to More Blocks, Extra Typography Controls, and New Patterns

    Gutenberg 7.9 Adds Gradients to More Blocks, Extra Typography Controls, and New Patterns

    For Gutenberg junkies, the three-week wait between major releases has been rough, especially during this time when many are looking for new things to fill the gaps in our social calendars. Not to fret, the team dropped version 7.9 of the plugin earlier today. This release includes several goodies such as new typography-related controls for…

  • Block-a-saurus Embeds a Side-Scrolling T-Rex Game via the Block Editor

    Block-a-saurus Embeds a Side-Scrolling T-Rex Game via the Block Editor

    It is no secret that I love testing out the sort of fun WordPress blocks that hark back to my early days of the web. I have written on the subject once or twice. Imagine my surprise when I came across a side-scrolling dinosaur game that users could simply plop into the block editor and…

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