WordPress Ramps Up Social Learning Events on Full Site Editing, Project Aims for 500 Block Themes in 2022

WordPress is hosting a live online event tomorrow called “Beginner’s Guide to Full Site Editing.” Within three minutes of WordPress’ Twitter account tweeting about it, all 70 spaces were booked and the waiting list kicked in.

As part of the project’s big picture goals for 2022, WordPress will be ramping up community efforts to help site builders learn how to use open source tools to get their sites up and running. One aspect of that goal involves publishing more educational content to learn.wordpress.org. Another part of that effort is hosting virtual social learning spaces through the project’s meetup group.

WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy identified specific metrics the community team is aiming for in 2022:

Ship LearnWP learning opportunities (1 workshop/week, 6 courses/year)

Increase the number of social learning spaces (4 SLSs/week)

Block theme contribution drive (500 block themes in the repo).

WordPress.org currently has 47 block themes that support FSE and they continue to trickle into the official directory. There doesn’t seem to be a mad rush to create block themes, but this could be due to theme authors’ lack of skills and reluctance to give up established, more efficient workflows.

During the 2021 State of the Word, Matt Mullenweg said he wanted the number of available block themes to be at 5,000. This figure seemed more aspirational after he pared it down to “300 or ideally 3,000 of these block themes” before the project enters the Collaboration phase.

Getting WordPress users up to speed with FSE goes hand-in-hand with growing a larger collection of free block themes. WordPress’ Facebook and Twitter accounts have been more active than in previous years, with marketing posts advertising new features with images and videos. It is helping familiarize more people with the major changes introduced in 5.9.

Based on the response to tomorrow’s event, there seems to be a demand for beginner’s FSE content. The session will cover block themes vs. theme blocks, styles, block patterns, and templates/template parts. More than 40 people are still waiting for spots. (When spots open up people on the waiting list get a place automatically.) This is a session that would benefit from being run multiple times to accommodate the large number of people wanting to learn the basics of how to use FSE.

If you want to learn more about creating block themes, you don’t have to wait for a WordCamp to get an interactive walkthrough. The “Zero to Block Theme” series is covering the basics for theme developers. It continues on with a new session on Friday (with spots still available) and previously recorded sessions linked in the notes. This is part of WordPress’ big picture goals for the ecosystem in 2022, which prioritize providing tools and training for building block themes.