WordPress Relaunches Showcase Powered by Blocks

WordPress.org has launched the redesign of the Showcase, with new block-based components, through a collaboration between the Design, Marketing, and Meta teams that began last year. It’s part of a larger effort to modernize WordPress.org and comes two months after the project relaunched a new design for the WordPress.org homepage and Download page.

The updated Showcase allows visitors to browse via categories and tags and offers a significantly improved experience on mobile. It included 101 sites at launch, which can be filtered by five categories: Business, Community, Creative, Publication, and Store, along with nearly half a dozen tags. Visitors can also select from three flavors: WordPress, WordPress Enterprise, and Multisite.

The featured listing at the top of the Showcase randomly updates on refresh. Individual listings in the showcase include screenshots of both desktop and mobile views, along with a brief overview of why the site was included. The background for the screenshots is automatically matched to complement the website’s main colors.

The showcase was designed to inspire visitors and show them what WordPress can do. It contains a diverse representation of some of the best WordPress-powered sites on the web, including the Meta Newsroom, Harvard University, NASA, Rolling Stone, Usain Bolt, The White House, among many other high profile web properties. The showcase also includes some lesser known, beautifully designed sites, featuring art and creativity across a wide range of disciplines, highlighting the endless possibilities and versatility of the WordPress platform.

This new implementation of the showcase is powered by blocks, built on a custom child theme for WordPress.org’s parent block theme.

“This structure allows the site to take advantage of Core functionality like Group and Query blocks as well as custom blocks explicitly built for WordPress.org,” Automattic-sponsored WordPress core contributor Nick Diego said.

“The Showcase also introduces new block-based functionality and several components that will be used elsewhere on the WordPress.org network. Improvements, such as the standardization of layout and spacing variables (#105) and the new Query Filter block (#441), will make it easier to update other areas of WordPress.org to blocks.”

The updated showcase is an invaluable resource for agencies and freelancers who are building sites for clients and need to demonstrate the capabilities of WordPress to scale and serve any industry. It’s also still open for new submissions, which meet the following criteria:

Using WordPress in a unique or innovative way

Representing a notable organization, government entity, or corporation as an official blog or website

Using modern WordPress

Contributors are working to streamline and automate the submission process, although it will still include a manual review. As this process improves, the showcase will become easier to maintain than it has been in previous years.