Building with Blocks

Last year, I designed several patterns for showcasing coupon codes on a site. They were part of a larger theme project that I never finished. However, I had a ton of fun playing around with variations. Disliking them withering away on my laptop’s hard drive, I thought I would share them with the Tavern audience.…

I am a child of the late ’80s and ’90s. Before we all had cameras built into our mobile phones—well, before mobile phones took off, really—families would lug around Polaroid cameras to capture those special moments. Even though I hated posing for awkward photos with my siblings, I am still nostalgic about the magic of…

I was slightly frustrated last week when sharing a tutorial on a hero-style post header. I had planned to create a layout with a left-aligned Group with a maximum width, as shown in the following screenshot: This would allow the focal point of the background image to shine through on the right. However, neither of…

I have been obsessed with art direction on the web for as long as I can remember. The term is often used to describe the act of designing individual pages around the content itself. This is the opposite of how most users typically operate when writing posts. The template or design is disconnected from the…

I was neck-deep into the block system during the months leading up to its debut in 2018. This also just happened to coincide with the first November I had ever completed National Novel Writing Month, a 30-day challenge to write a 50,000-word first draft of a novel. I have since won a second time in…

One of the features I liked about Automattic’s Archeo theme that I reviewed earlier this week was its split-screen single post header. I loved that an author was doing a little something different with the Featured Image block, giving users some variety. The design was simple. It is a two-column section with an image on…

Last summer, I was on a pattern-creating bender. In two months, I had designed just shy of 100 block patterns. Outside of work and necessary household duties, I spent every waking moment building things with the block editor for fun. I had complete creative freedom, no need to roll out a commercial product, and no…

As I was looking over the latest releases from the WordPress theme directory this week, I came across one that caught my eye. Onia was clean and minimal while reserving its flourishes to bring attention to just a few elements across the page. Could this be one of those diamonds in the rough I am…

In today’s post, Tavern readers are in for something a little different than our regular stream of news and opinion. Welcome to the Building with Blocks series. It is a new type of post we are trying out to show people some of the fun, unique, or creative things they can do with WordPress blocks.…