Last Friday, Themes Team representative Carolina Nymark announced the Twenty Twenty-One Blocks theme project. It is a block-based version of the Twenty Twenty-One default theme that is shipping along with WordPress 5.6. It will work with the site editor available in the Gutenberg plugin. Developers will work on the two themes as separate projects. The…
It is no secret that I think the future of theming with WordPress is bright, that the Gutenberg project will eventually pay off. As a former full-time theme developer, I lived through the years where there were no standards for how to build certain features. It was much like the Wild West. There were vast,…
If you have been testing the latest development version of WordPress in the past week or so, you may have noticed that the ability to drag and drop meta boxes seemingly disappeared. This is not a bug. Nine days ago, lead developer Andrew Ozz committed a change that requires end-users to click the “screen options”…
Last week, Yext launched its Yext Answers plugin to the WordPress community. The goal was to bring a platform that won the Best Software Innovation category of the 2020 Global Search Awards to WordPress. However, my experience was far from satisfactory. “For people searching on a WordPress website, the Answers Connector provides a seamless search…
Mel Choyce-Dwan, the Default Theme Design Lead for WordPress 5.6, kick-started 10 tickets around two months ago that would bring new features to the old default WordPress themes. The proposal is to add unique block patterns, a feature added to WordPress 5.5, to all of the previous 10 Twenty* themes. It is a lofty goal…
Created by Donna Peplinskie, a Product Wrangler at Automattic, the Book Review Block plugin is nearly three years old. However, it only came to my attention during a recent excursion to find interesting block plugins. The plugin does pretty much what it says on the cover. It is designed to review books. It generally has…
Starter content. It was a grand idea, one of those big dreams of WordPress. It was the new kid on the block in late 2016. Like the introduction of post formats in 2011, the developer community was all in for at least that particular release version. Then, it was on to the next new thing,…
Two weeks ago, the Gutenberg team put out an open call for block-based widgets feedback. I had already written a lengthy review of the new system earlier in September but was asked by a member of the team to share my thoughts on the most recent iteration. With the upcoming freeze for WordPress 5.6 Beta…
Gutenberg 9.1 made a backward-incompatible change to its theme.json file (experimental-theme.json while full-site editing is under the experimental flag). This is the configuration file that theme developers will need to create as part of their block-based themes. Staying up to date with such changes can be a challenge for theme authors, but Ari Stathopoulos, a…
I have been eagerly awaiting the moment when I could install a theme and truly test Gutenberg’s full-site editing feature. By and large, each time I have tested it over the past few months, the experience has felt utterly broken. This is why I have remained skeptical of seeing the feature land in WordPress 5.6…
Gutenberg 9.1 was released to the public on Wednesday. The team announced over 200 commits from 77 contributors in its release post yesterday. One of the biggest changes to the interface was the addition of a new dropdown selector for block pattern categories. The team also reverted the block-based widgets section in the customizer and…
I love your articles. And now, in the middle of the WordPress revolution, I realized I’m constantly searching for an answer regarding WP these days. So many things are being said, so many previsions of the future, problems, etc., but, right now, I think I, as a designer, just want to understand one thing that…
I am often on the hunt for those hidden gems when it comes to block-related plugins. I like to see the interesting places that plugin authors venture. That is why it came as a surprise when someone recommended I check out the Twentig plugin a few days ago. Somehow, it has flown under my radar…
When Gutenberg 9.0 landed earlier this week, it came with an experimental padding control for the Group block. Most users will not see it unless their theme has opted into supporting the feature using the experimental-custom-spacing flag. This was not the first that we have seen of the padding option on a block. Gutenberg 8.3…
After publishing a post about the new Recipe Block plugin last week, several people were quick to point out that WPZOOM had released a recipe-related block plugin two years ago. Among them, was the plugin author, Pavel Ciorici. I had previously tested the Recipe Card Blocks plugin and thought it fit into that “overly complex”…