WordPress theming has a rich history. Over the years, theme authors have brought a plethora of features to the platform. In part, it is because they have often had to solve foundational issues with WordPress to create the features that end users want. The post and body classes all theme (more…)
The Gutenberg team released version 6.7 of the Gutenberg plugin last week. The announcement post listed a little over three dozen bug fixes and several enhancements to existing features. The most notable features included in the update are Storybook support and gradient backgrounds for the button block. All of the (more…)
I began using WordPress in 2005. I’d already been learning HTML and CSS for a couple of years. I even had a home-brewed blog that pulled posts from plain text files at one point. I knew enough JavaScript to do pop-up alerts and other annoying things that served no purpose (more…)
WordPress core contributors worked together today to package up 5.3 Beta 1 for release on schedule. The Core slack channel was abuzz this afternoon as developers pushed through last-minute commits and fixed issues ahead of shipping the beta. Iterations on the block editor are a major part of of this (more…)
Gutenberg 6.5 was released today with a rough prototype that adds one-click search and installation of blocks from the block directory to the inserter. Selected blocks are automatically installed as a plugin in the background and inserted into the editor with one click. The pull request for the experiment indicates (more…)
This week Google announced changes to the 15-year old nofollow attribute that was previously recommended for identifying links related to advertising, sponsors, or content for which users are not intending to pass along ranking credit. The nofollow attribute is no longer a catchall for these types of instances, as Google (more…)
With the proliferation of block collection plugins over the past year, Kioken Blocks is a relatively unknown newcomer that you may have missed. Compared to competitors with thousands of users like CoBlocks (30K+), Atomic Blocks (20K+), Stackable (10K+), and Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg (100K+), Kioken is a small fish in (more…)
From its inception, the block editor was always intended to be more than just an editor for the main content area. Gutenberg phase 2 brings the block editor to other parts of the site, including widgets, menus, and other aspects of site customization. Matias Ventura, one of the lead engineers (more…)
Gutenberg 6.4 arrived this week with two more improvements to the Cover block. The background can now be set to a solid color (in addition to images and videos). Users can also easily resize the block, making it far more useful for those who are designing their own pages. One (more…)
Gutenberg users are requesting an easy way to add a nofollow attribute to links in the block editor. Users can currently toggle a setting to designate a link to open in a new tab, but a similarly user-friendly option for adding a nofollow attribute is not yet available. Requests have (more…)
Major accessibility improvements are the headline feature of this week’s Gutenberg plugin release. Version 6.3 introduces new Navigation and Editor modes to address long-standing problems navigating the block UI with a screen reader. The editor is now loaded in Navigation mode by default. Riad Benguella described it as “an important (more…)
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Michelle Schulp, an independent freelancer and Director of Technology at AIGA Minnesota. We discussed the impacts speaking at multiple WordCamps had on her business early on, why she continues to be a freelance contractor as opposed to managing her (more…)