And another theme shop hops on the block bandwagon. Catch Themes’ first block-based theme, Catch FSE, landed on WordPress.org over the weekend. The company is one of the most prolific authors in the official WordPress theme directory, touting a total of 109 themes. There are only a few others with such an impressive body of…
Kevin Batdorf released the Image Filters plugin for WordPress yesterday. It is a block that allows users to select from curated list of filters and apply it to their images. Batdorf is the creator of one of my favorite “fun” plugins for WordPress: Wavy Divider. It allows users to create wavy and jagged divider sections…
A couple of weeks ago, Munir Kamal updated his Block Slider plugin for WordPress. While not as popular as some of the other projects he has spearheaded, such as Editor Plus, he wanted to breathe some fresh life into it. The original plugin allowed users to insert a slider block and create the slides directly…
Less than a week after launching Block Enhancements, Phi Phan has released another project: Icon Separator. It is a block plugin for creating custom dividers with an SVG icon. “I’ve tried to support icons in the core/separator,” Phan said when we last spoke about adding icons to core blocks. “But it requires changing the markup.…
On its face, Grigora Blocks by Latracal Solutions seems almost pedestrian. It feels like a theme you would use as a starting point to build your own thing. It will not have enough personality for everyone to give it a shot. However, for others, a base layout to customize is what they might be looking…
Yesterday, DeoThemes’ latest block theme, Ona Creative, landed in the WordPress directory. It is the second child of Ona, a theme I initially showcased here on the Tavern in November 2021. When I first reviewed the Ona parent theme, WordPress 5.9 had yet to be released, and users were required to install the Gutenberg plugin…
Block themes continue to trickle into the WordPress theme directory. Classic design submissions still outpace them by margins that make it look like blocks are not even in the race yet. However, some designers seek to pioneer this still-foreign space. Brian Gardner is not new to this. His latest theme, Avant-Garde, plays on the block…
Automattic’s Skatepark landed in the WordPress.org theme directory on Monday. It was designed for modern events and organizations, but it should work well for many sites with a small amount of customization. For those keeping count, it is number 52 on the long path toward the 3,000 themes project lead Matt Mullenweg hopes for before…
Over the weekend, Virgiliu Diaconu asked me to check out his Carousel Slider Block plugin, a project he has maintained for three years. It has slowly garnered more than 5,000 active installs since its release. I get emails like this every day. More often than not, the projects are fundamentally broken or are a bit…
One of my favorite tools in the past few days is the Block X-ray Attributes plugin by Sal Ferrarello. It is geared toward developers and shows block attributes in the WordPress editor. After seeing his tweet on Friday, I immediately installed it. The plugin is currently only available via its GitHub repository, and anyone who…
Freelance WordPress developer Aurooba Ahmed released the Super List Block plugin earlier today. Essentially, it is like the core WordPress List block — just supercharged. It is her first publicly-released extension on WordPress.org. The primary use case for the plugin is adding other blocks within the list items. However, its options allow users to take…
It seems that Andrew Starr is quietly building a legion of block themes. He is the sole developer behind UXL Themes and has released six of them in the past year, with most landing in the last few months. Framboise, his latest project, is a child theme of Alara. He promised a new design variation,…
Todo lists. Checklists. While there are differences in their purposes, their output is essentially the same. They are lists of items with boxes to tick off, and a plugin like David Towoju’s Todo Block allows users to create them. I first downloaded and installed the plugin two weeks ago, but it had a problem. It…
Last week, Wicked Plugins launched version 1.0 of its Wicked Block Builder. I have kept my eye on this plugin since its November 2021 beta release. The project promised that developers would be able to “effortlessly build custom blocks,” and I was finally ready to put that to the test. In the past two months,…
I do not know how I overlooked LIQUID SPEECH BALLOON. The plugin is less than a month shy of being three years old, and I follow block-related projects religiously. This one slipped through the cracks, at least until I haphazardly stumbled upon it when searching for something else entirely. It is also relatively popular for…