Things move fast on social media. You get mere seconds to impress those who happen upon your posts promoting your latest project. You must also pack a lot of information into a small window that would potentially draw in an array of different users. WordPress has not been doing any favors for plugin and theme…
Should developers bundle block patterns with their themes or submit them to the WordPress.org directory? That is the question that some will likely need to answer in the future. Currently, submissions are not open for the block pattern directory. However, that will change as the contributors eventually wrap up the pattern creation process. The milestone…
Jamie Marsland, the founder of Pootlepress, reached out a few weeks ago, asking for feedback on a beta version of Block Injector. It was a commercial plugin his team at Pootlepress was gearing up to launch. Earlier this week, they released an updated version that he said he was happy with as an initial release.…
Last week, under its news section, The Next Web published what could only be described as a hit piece: Developers hate WordPress — and so should marketers. The claim was that, despite its current 40% market share, folks should start looking at alternatives for a better experience. The first developer interviewed for this piece was…
Gutenberg 11.6 landed yesterday. Contributors added dozens of enhancements and bug fixes. Admittedly, there was not a whole lot that excited me as a user about this release. Typography options for the Post Title block. Nice. Cropping for the Site Logo. A necessary addition. Toolbar button for converting old Gallery blocks to the new —…
Ari Stathopoulos announced a proposal for implementing a web fonts API in core WordPress. The goal is to standardize how theme authors register and enqueue font styles. It may also serve as the foundation of other features down the road. Jono Alderson opened the original ticket for such an API in February 2019. The discussion…
Nick Diego released the Icon Block plugin last week. Unlike similar blocks that are available, it does not rely on a third-party library. Instead, it caters to the developer and DIY crowd, allowing them to add any SVG directly to the editor. Diego is the author of the Block Visibility plugin, which is just a…
As always, I like to highlight some things on the lighter side of the WordPress world. We have had enough business acquisitions in the past week — the whole year, really — that we need to take a break and enjoy the more experimental developments that the community has to offer. Such as the case…
When I first tried the block styles feature in WordPress, I was impressed. As a theme creator, it was a simple way of allowing users to select a design-related class without them actually needing to know what was happening under the hood. In that first week or so, I hit the problem that many others…
I have been secretly keeping tabs on Anders Norén over the past couple of weeks, awaiting the moment he pushed his first block theme to the WordPress directory. I first noticed it when he tweeted a screenshot two weeks ago. And, today was the day it happened. Tove landed in the review portal several hours…
Gutenberg 11.5 landed earlier today. It is a hefty release that includes extensive changes to the Navigation block, a new way for grouping widgets, and more block gap feature integration. I have had mixed reactions to the features that made it into the latest release. At some points, I thought to myself, finally, this made…
As a teen, I would visit my Uncle David’s house every other week or so. He was the only family member with a computer. It was an old, bulky monstrosity that ran whatever the latest version of Windows that existed at the time. It was one of my first introductions to dial-up, but my primary…
Earlier today, Dion Hulse announced the results of a six-week survey on the WordPress.org theme upload process. The goal was to figure out if uploading a ZIP file was a “pain point” and see what other methods theme authors prefer. Then, move forward based on the feedback. In total, 256 people responded to the survey.…
As I debugged issues with the new block gap feature added in Gutenberg 11.4 last week, I found the ticket introducing it. And, there was already a new ticket for one problem I had hit. However, there was some discussion over whether themes should be allowed to opt-out, rolling their own solution. There was no…
Autumn is my favorite time of the year. On some weekends, I like to drive through my old hometown with the windows rolled down. I crawl through the school zone at 25 mph and breathe in the football field’s freshly cut grass. All those memories of blood, guts, and glory under the Friday night lights…