


<p><em>Matias Ventura</em> will demo the current state of these features to the release lead team trio of&nbsp; Matt Mullenweg, Josepha Haden Chomphosy and Helen Hou-Sandi. </p>



<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> has the skinny: <a href="https://wptavern.com/will-full-site-editing-land-in-wordpress-5-8-a-decision-is-forthcoming">Will Full Site Editing Land in WordPress 5.8? A Decision Is Forthcoming</a></p>



<p><strong>Hector Prieto</strong> published the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/04/08/whats-next-in-gutenberg-april-2021/">April Focus areas for the Gutenberg team.&nbsp;</a></p>



<p>As expected, it covers Widget, Navigation Screen, and Full-Site Editing with more details. Please see the <strong>“Area to be aware of”</strong> section of the post, for Block and plugin Developers, Designers and Theme builders. We talked about most of them in one or the other episode, but you find them all in one place in Hector’s post.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Kjell Reigstad</strong> published the notes from the <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2021/04/08/block-themes-meeting-notes-april-7-2021/">Block Theme Meeting </a></strong> They team discussed among other things: </p>



<ul><li>TT1 Blocks update&nbsp;</li><li>Block-based theme updates in&nbsp;Gutenberg&nbsp;10.3 with alignment styles automatically for front and back end and the capability to use theme.json styles for every block. </li><li>New tools for transitioning to Block-based Themes.</li></ul>



<p>The deadline for the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/03/25/fse-program-testing-call-4-building-a-restaurant-themed-header/"><strong>Full Site Editing Testing Call #4</strong></a> has been extended until <strong>April 12th, 2021. </strong></p>




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<p>⏰ <strong>Don&#8217;t Miss this! </strong> <br /><strong>Mega-Meetup April 15th, 2021 </strong> 6:30 -8:30 pm EDT / 23:30 UTC with Anne McCarthy, David Bisset and the organizers of six Florida Meetup groups.  All <strong>About Full Site Editing </strong>(Coming in WordPress). <a href="https://www.meetup.com/SF-WordPress-Users/events/277019024/">Register via Meetup.com</a> <a href="https://t.co/36RYiMfivU?amp=1" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank"></a></p>



<p>For a more in-depth look on current Gutenberg development,  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/">the Index page with all the teams&#8217; updates</a> in the Core handbook has the latest. </p>




<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">The index 2020 is here</a></p>





<p class="has-small-font-size">Featured Image:  <em>Photo by&nbsp;<a href="https://unsplash.com/@fran_?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Fran Jacquier</a>&nbsp;on&nbsp;<a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/lego?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></em></p>





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<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>



<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button><p class="ngl-form-text">We hate spam, too and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>



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<p> <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/changelog-41-greg-ziolkowski-gutenberg-10-3-full-site-editing-mvp/"><strong>Episode #41</strong> is now available</a>, with new co-host <strong>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</strong></p>



<p> <strong>Subscribe to the&nbsp;<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/">Gutenberg Changelog</a>&nbsp;podcast </strong><br />?️&nbsp;<a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/620NwVKQJGdTupy36zYxvg?mc_cid=4b6c9f88fe">Spotify</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ndXRlbmJlcmd0aW1lcy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0">Google</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gutenberg-changelog/id1469294475">iTunes</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://pca.st/podcast/f8445ec0-7508-0137-f267-1d245fc5f9cf">PocketCasts</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/gutenberg-changelog">Stitcher</a>&nbsp;|<br />?️&nbsp;<a href="https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/chi7j-9904a/Gutenberg-Changelog-Podcast">Pod Bean</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/Gutenberg-Changelog-id2173375">CastBox</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/gutenberg-changelog-878239/">Podchaser</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/podcast">RSS Feed</a>&nbsp;</p>



<img />Review by <a href="https://twitter.com/Peter_Ingersoll"><strong>Peter Ingersoll</strong></a> on <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/gutenberg-changelog">Stitcher</a>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:24;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"Gutenberg Times: New Gallery Block, Convert Blocks, Business News and more  Weekend Edition #164";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=17347";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/gallery-block-convert-blocks-business-weekend-edition-164/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21372:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>Despite the new spread of the coronavirus in Europe and the problems around vaccinations, I am  quite hopeful to be able to travel again in the second half of the year and visit the homeland after two years. Patience is a virtue. </p>



<p>Today, we have a full roster of content for developers, content creators, theme authors, implementers and contributors.  Again I am awed by the astonishing creativity in the WordPress space! </p>



<p>Remember, you don&#8217;t need to read it all in one sitting. It&#8217;ll keep the whole week!  </p>



<p><strong>Yours ?<br />Birgit </strong></p>





<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-full-site-editing-themes">Full-Site Editing + Themes</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-refactor-of-the-gallery-block-using-image-blocks">Refactor of the Gallery Block, using image blocks. </a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-block-editor-for-content-creators">Block editor for content creators</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-should-you-switch-to-the-block-editor">Should you switch to the block editor? </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#4-business-news-around-gutenberg">Business News around Gutenberg</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#5-extendify">Extendify</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#6-plugins-now-owned-by-extendify">Plugins now owned by Extendify: </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#7-people-behind-extendify">People behind Extendify</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#8-go-daddy">GoDaddy</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#9-developing-for-the-block-editor">Developing for the block editor</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#10-meta-charset-utf-8-word-press-events">&lt;meta charset=&#8221;utf-8&#8243;>WordPress Events</a></li></ul></div>



<h2 id="0-full-site-editing-themes">Full-Site Editing + Themes</h2>



<p>WPTavern has a podcast again! The WordPress Juke Box. For the inaugural episode host Nathan Wrigley interviewed. Among other things, <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy</strong> talked about her benchmark for the Go/NoGo decision to merge Full-Site Editing into core for the 5.8 release in July. Find additional thoughts in my post: <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/full-site-editing-mvp-can-i-build-a-landing-page/"><strong>Full-site Editing MVP: Can I Build a Landing Page?</strong></a></p>



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<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> posted the fourth call for testing: <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/03/25/fse-program-testing-call-4-building-a-restaurant-themed-header/">Building a restaurant themed header</a></strong>, with instructions to use columns, navigation block and other features for the header template part. </p>



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<p>There is a lot of movement on the Gutenberg Repo and the Themes Team keeps a list of relevant issues and discussions for theme developers. <a href="https://twitter.com/one_maggie"><strong>Maggie Cabrera</strong></a> published the round-up post <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2021/03/26/gutenberg-themes-week-of-march-25-2021/">Gutenberg + Themes: Week of March 25, 2021</a></strong>. It&#8217;s an excellent reading list if you need to dive deeper in the upcoming changes for your theme or your customer. One of the issues caught my eye: the discussion and work around block alignment settings for themes. The current way predates the revamp of the Inner Blocks. There is some work to be done, streamlining the styling for themes. <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/29506">Join the discussion on GitHub</a>. </p>




<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">The index 2020 is here</a></p>




<h3 id="1-refactor-of-the-gallery-block-using-image-blocks">Refactor of the Gallery Block, using image blocks. </h3>



<p>If you love to take a sneak peek at the new version of the Gallery block, heed the call for testing by <a href="https://twitter.com/glendaviesnz"><strong>Glen</strong></a><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/glendaviesnz"> </a></strong><a href="https://twitter.com/glendaviesnz"><strong>Davies</strong>:</a> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/23/gallery-block-update-call-for-testing/"><strong>Gallery Block Update – Call for Testing</strong></a>. The refactored version is now using single image blocks inside the Gallery block. You can us all the great features: individual links per image, block styles, choices for size and editing capabilities. If you also use a plugin with your site, like CoBlocks, you can still apply the great filters and animations to your gallery block. In his post, Davies walks you through the few features and asked to test all the many facets of the new Gallery block. </p>



<p>On the WPTavern, <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> explains how this new change can make a lot of difference on how gallery layouts will be built. Among other ideas, he pictures that among images, a Pull Quote block could be added. <a href="https://wptavern.com/refactoring-gutenbergs-gallery-block-to-support-nested-images">Refactoring Gutenberg’s Gallery Block To Support Nested Images</a>.</p>



<p>I posted <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/23/gallery-block-update-call-for-testing/#comment-40962">my first impression as a comment</a> and created <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/30250">a bug report on GitHub</a> when my images lost all their styling when I added the gallery block to a group. I suggested making it possible to apply block styles to more than one image at a time, and that the gallery block / image block copies the respective Alt texts from the media library. Both suggestions made it into the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/projects/56#card-57737540">project board.</a></p>



<h2 id="2-block-editor-for-content-creators">Block editor for content creators</h2>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/liamdempsey"><strong>Liam Dempsey</strong></a> asked his Twitter followers for recommendation of Block plugins. He collected all the suggestions in this blog post: <strong><a href="https://liamdempsey.com/community-recommendations-for-gutenberg-blocks-in-wordpress/">Community Recommendations for Gutenberg Blocks in WordPress</a>.</strong> </p>



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<p><strong>Amie Suzan</strong> at at <a href="https://twitter.com/virfice"><strong>Virfice</strong></a> reviewed the <strong>Blocksy Theme and gives 18 <a href="https://www.virfice.com/blocksy-wordpress-theme-review/">Unavoidable Reasons to Build Sites With It</a></strong>. The theme received some attention after Chris Lema revamped his site using the block editor it <a href="https://chrislema.com/this-site-now-runs-on-the-blocksy-theme/">now runs on the Blocksy theme</a>. Justin Tadlock at the WPTavern also found the <a href="https://wptavern.com/blocksy-wordpress-theme-provides-a-solid-block-editor-experience">Blocksy theme to provide a solid block editor experience</a></p>



<p>?  <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/blocksy/">WPRepo</a> | <a href="https://creativethemes.com/blocksy/">Website</a></p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/andersnoren">Anders&nbsp;Norén</a></strong> published a new free theme in the WordPress Repository, named <strong>Eskell</strong>, inspired by the Swedish graphic designer&nbsp;Olle Eksell. In his <strong>introduction to the theme</strong>, Andres wrote: &#8220;(&#8230;) <em>the star of the show in Eksell is the archive page, which features a masonry grid of posts and a category filter that updates the grid with posts from the selected category without a hard reload.&#8221;</em> In includes full color settings and dark mode for devices that support it. He continues: <em>&#8220;The Blank Canvas Template hides everything on the page except the blocks you add to the Block Editor content. That gives users the freedom to create entirely custom pages, with whatever blocks they want. It feels like a little preview of what we’ll be able to do once Full Site Editing is merged into WordPress Core.&#8221;</em></p>



<p> <strong>Justin Tadlock </strong>published a review <a href="https://wptavern.com/compatibility-is-not-enough-the-eksell-wordpress-theme-creates-art-with-blocks">Eksell theme creates art with blocks</a> and <a href="https://wptavern.com/eksell-portfolio-theme-now-available-in-wordpress-themes-directory">a follow-up article</a> on the WPTavern. </p>



<p>? <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/eksell/">WPRepo</a> | <a href="https://www.andersnoren.se/teman/eksell-wordpress-theme/">Website</a> | <a href="https://andersnoren.se/themes/eksell/">Demo</a></p>



<h2 id="3-should-you-switch-to-the-block-editor">Should you switch to the block editor? </h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/bfintal">Benjamin Intal</a></strong> from Stackable posted <strong><a href="https://wpstackable.com/blog/why-you-should-switch-to-the-gutenberg-wordpress-editor/">Why You Should Switch to the Gutenberg WordPress Editor</a></strong>. He wrote: <em>&#8220;In this article, we enumerate some reasons why the Gutenberg WordPress editor might be your new primary choice for page building. Read on, and we might just convince you to give Gutenberg another shot.&#8221;</em></p>



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<p>WordPressVIP post takes us <strong><a href="https://wpvip.com/case-studies/behind-the-scenes-of-news-uks-rampant-speed-to-value/">Behind the scenes of News UK’s rampant speed to value</a></strong>. News UK is the powerhouse behind some of the UK’s most famous news, media, and lifestyle brands. Its reach ranges from the highly respected the London Times to the hugely popular Sun. In the more detailed case study, you&#8217;ll learn from the editor&#8217;s perspective how the usage of the block editor has streamlined content production, increased productivity and fosters a culture of innovation between teams. </p>



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<p>On the WPBuild podcast <strong>A-Z of WordPress</strong> this week, <strong>Nathan Wrigley </strong>and <strong>David Walmsley</strong> tackled the letter  <a href="https://wpbuilds.com/2021/03/25/222-g-is-for-gutenberg/"><strong>G &#8211; Gutenberg</strong></a>. If the early controversy in 2018 had you shy away from trying it out,  but now you heard so much positive about it, this episode will give you an update on how people are using the block-editor now and what&#8217;s in store for 2021. </p>



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<p>Let <a href="https://twitter.com/allie_nimmons"><strong>Allie Nimmons</strong></a> of WPBuffs tell you <strong><a href="https://wpbuffs.com/why-and-how-to-use-the-wordpress-block-editor/">Why and How to use the WordPress block editor.</a> </strong> It&#8217;s an excellent introduction and tutorial with dozens of links to learn more. </p>



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<p>For those of us who are worried about migrating a ton of content from classic editor and short codes to block editor, <a href="https://twitter.com/_dsawardekar"><strong>Darshan Sawardekar</strong></a>, lead web engineer at the web agency 10up, has good news. This week, he announced <a href="https://10up.com/blog/2021/convert-to-blocks/"><strong>the release of the Convert to Blocks plugin.</strong></a> Convert to Blocks converts your content to blocks on the fly and those changes will be saved when you update the post. It&#8217;s not a Bulk Converter, it only converts content once it is opened in the block editor. </p>



<p>? <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/convert-to-blocks/">WPRepo</a> | <a href="https://github.com/10up/convert-to-blocks">GitHub</a></p>



<p>A couple of months ago, the WPTavern published the article <strong><a href="https://wptavern.com/ask-the-bartender-how-to-bulk-convert-classic-wordpress-posts-to-blocks">How To Bulk Convert Classic WordPress Posts To Blocks?</a></strong>. Justin Tadlock listed two more plugins for the purpose: <a href="https://bulkconverttoblocks.com/">Bulk Convert to Blocks</a> (still in development) and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/bulk-block-converter/">Bulk Block Converter</a>, last updated a year ago. We used it at a recent project and it worked very well. </p>



<h2 id="4-business-news-around-gutenberg">Business News around Gutenberg</h2>



<h3 id="5-extendify">Extendify</h3>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/extendify-acquires-editor-plus-introduces-commercial-templates-in-its-plan-to-improve-block-editing">WPTavern has the scoop:  <em>Extendify</em> recently aquired plugin EditorPlus</a> and joined forces with Munir Kamal and his team around Gutenberg Hub. Back in November 2020, they also acquired Redux Framework, and hired its creator, <a href="https://twitter.com/dovyp">Dōvy Paukstys</a>, part-time. </p>



<h4 id="6-plugins-now-owned-by-extendify">Plugins now owned by Extendify: </h4>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/editorplus/">Editor Plus,</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/acf-blocks/">ACF Blocks</a>,</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/forms-gutenberg/">Gutenberg Forms</a>,</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/redux-framework/">Redux Framework</a>,</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/ml-slider/">MetaSlider</a>,&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-slider/">Block Slider</a>. </li></ul>



<h4 id="7-people-behind-extendify">People behind Extendify</h4>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/chrislubkert"><strong>Chris Lukbert</strong></a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/arturgrabo"><strong>Artur Grabowski</strong></a>, co-founders of <a href="https://extendify.com/">Extendify</a>, are former Automattic employees. So is <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/karmatosed">Tammie Lister,</a></strong> Extendify&#8217;s Head of Design. Lister has been a major WordPress contributor on the Gutenberg block-editor as co-lead since  the beginning in 2017. She participated in one of our first Live Q &amp; As in  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/episode-6-creating-gutenberg-live-q-a-w-leads-tammie-lister-joen-asmussen-and-matias-ventura/">November 2018 </a>with her Gutenberg co-leads  Joen Asmussen and Matias Ventura. You can also read more about Lister on <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/discovering-your-place/">HeroPress: Discovering Your Place</a>. </p>



<h3 id="8-go-daddy">GoDaddy</h3>



<p>GoDaddy is sponsoring <a href="https://twitter.com/Mamaduka"><strong>George Mamadashvili</strong></a> to contribute on the WordPress Gutenberg project full-time. Mamadashvili was one of the developers behind the cool blocks published under the brand of SortaBrilliant in 2018 and 2019. Recently, he released <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/toggles/">Toggles</a>, an accordion block for FAQs, and other use cases. You can also use it to hide spoilers in Movie or Book reviews. </p>



<h2 id="9-developing-for-the-block-editor">Developing for the block editor</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/mattwatsoncodes">Matt Watson</a></strong> published his 5th tutorial <a href="https://wholesomecode.ltd/guides/create-customizer-panel-wordpress-gutenberg-components/">Create a Customizer Panel using Gutenberg Components</a> for developers. You should read his previous posts before tackling this one. </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://wholesomecode.ltd/guides/creating-plugin-wordpress-gutenberg/">Creating a Plugin for the Block Editor</a></li><li><a href="https://wholesomecode.ltd/guides/options-settings-data-wordpress-gutenberg/">Using Options to Store Data in the Block Editor</a>&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://wholesomecode.ltd/guides/entry-points-wordpress-create-block-script/">Add Entry Points to the Create-Block Script</a></li><li><a href="https://wholesomecode.ltd/guides/create-settings-page-wordpress-gutenberg-components/">Create a Settings Page using Gutenberg Components</a></li></ul>



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<p>On <strong>WordPressTV</strong> you&#8217;ll find <strong>Chris van Patten</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2020/04/02/chris-van-patten-the-ultimate-beginners-guide-to-the-gutenberg-data-api/">The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to the Gutenberg Data&nbsp;API</a>. The Data API is how you get data in and out of Gutenberg, track changes across blocks, and execute events around the editor.</p>



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<p>The <strong>WordCamp India</strong> presentation by <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/gziolo">Grzegorz &#8220;Greg&#8221; Ziółkowski</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQwHsk27HMQ">Block</a></strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQwHsk27HMQ"><strong> Development with scaffolding</strong></a> helps you get started building a single block plugin with the <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@wordpress/create-block">create-block-script</a>. </p>



<p></p>




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<h2 id="10-meta-charset-utf-8-word-press-events">WordPress Events</h2>



<p><strong>April 6, 2021 9 am EDT / 14:00 UTC</strong><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAIlY3lTAos"><strong>WPCafe: Building the Twenty Twenty-One</strong> </a>with Caroline Nymark and Mel Dwan-Choyce, live on YouTube</p>



<p><strong>April 6, 2021 9 am EDT / 14:00 UTC</strong><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAIlY3lTAos"><strong>WPCafe: Building the Twenty Twenty-One</strong> </a>with Caroline Nymark and Mel Dwan-Choyce, live on YouTube</p>



<p><strong>April 15, 2021 6:30 pm EDT / 23:30 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/SF-WordPress-Users/events/277019024/">South Florida Mega Meetup</a></strong> &#8220;New Site Builder Edition&#8221;</p>



<p><strong>April 15 &#8211; 17, 2021</strong><br /><a href="https://centroamerica.wordcamp.org/2021/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordCamp Centroamérica 2021</a></p>



<p><strong>April 27 and 28th</strong><br /><a href="https://www.godaddy.com/pro/expand"><strong>Expand 2021</strong></a> &#8211;&nbsp;a virtual event hosted by GoDaddy that brings the web design and developer community together to share ideas and experiences, make connections and support each other.</p>



<p><strong>May 24 &#8211; 27. 2021</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://wordsesh.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordSesh 2021</a> </strong><br /><a href="https://wordsesh.com/speak/">Speaker submissions are </a>due on Monday! (March 29th)! </p>



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<p id="block-7cb87457-965b-4235-ab43-168b3a78f4ee">On the<a href="https://wpcalendar.io/online/">&nbsp;<strong>Calendar for WordPress Online Events</strong></a> you&#8217;ll find a list of the upcoming WordPress Meetups, around the world, including WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups.</p>






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<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>



<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button><p class="ngl-form-text">We hate spam, too and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:25;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"Gutenberg Times: Full-site Editing MVP: Can I Build a Landing Page?";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=17337";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:76:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/full-site-editing-mvp-can-i-build-a-landing-page/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6589:"<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy</strong> was the featured guest on the <a href="https://wptavern.com/podcast/1-josepha-haden-chomphosy-on-the-past-present-and-future-of-wordpress">inaugural episode of the WPTavern Jukebox podcast</a>, hosted by <strong>Nathan Wrigley</strong>. In their conversation, they covered a lot of ground. The show is definitely worth your 40 minutes of listen. </p>



<p>Around minute 23 of the audio they talked a bit more about Full-Site Editing and its merge into the core. Chomphosy said she knows &#8216;this summer&#8217; is an ambitions goal, and she also assured the listeners that the team won&#8217;t release something that&#8217;s not functional and usable. </p>



<h2>Go/NoGo Mid to End of April</h2>



<p>The Core release and Gutenberg teams will make the Go/NoGo decision to merge Full-Site Editing for the next WordPress release in July (5.8)  on April 17 or on April 23.  In other words, the state of Full Site editing in Gutenberg plugin version 10.4 and 10.5.  If it doesn&#8217;t get merged into 5.8, Full-Site Editing will be merged in WordPress 5.9 to be released in December 2021</p>



<p>Chomphosy also shared her &#8211; unofficial &#8211; benchmark of what should be possible with the prototype of the Site Editor by April: Can you &#8211; without writing code &#8211; create a landing page with Full-site editing tools. She calls it &#8220;the smallest viable sentence. The I-AM of websites.&#8221;</p>



<h2>A Landing page is the smallest viable unit</h2>



<p>This single web page consists of a header, a footer, a hero image with a button, some text, a form or a call to action.  This narrows the focus of the MVP, the prototype, considerably. It also increases the probability that the first low-key, opt-in version of Full-Site editing might actually make it into the next WordPress version. A narrow scope will also help content creators, teachers and developers get started working on their discovery of the new WordPress feature. As soon as it is merged into WordPress core, plugin developer and theme builders can test their ideas against it and get familiar with the underlying concepts. </p>



<p>It&#8217;s a good way to ease-in content creators, too. When you are not dealing with the header and footer of a big site, but just for a single page, it’s not so critical if you get lost on the way from content editing to template part (header, footer) editing and back again. It&#8217;s all on the same page, literally. </p>



<p>This transition was one of the major causes of confusion during the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/16/high-level-feedback-from-the-fse-program-march/">first few testing calls for the FSE outreach program</a> and the developers are working on making it less confusing. With this unofficial benchmark of a single landing page creation, the team will have additional time and input on how to better handle that switch between editing a template that is used for many pages and the content of a single post or page content.</p>



<p>A very tangible goal, &#8220;Can I build a landing page with the tools available?&#8221; makes it straightforward for WordPress contributors who work on the parts that make that are not code, like documentation, marketing, training and testing.</p>



<h2>Call For Testing: Create a Header</h2>



<p>The <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/03/25/fse-program-testing-call-4-building-a-restaurant-themed-header/">4th call for testing</a> via the WordPress FSE-Outreach program asks you to<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/03/25/fse-program-testing-call-4-building-a-restaurant-themed-header/"> create a header for a Restaurant</a>. <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> has detailed instructions for you as well as video if you are in a testing mood. Your input is definitely wanted!</p>



<p>Chomphosy also added that Matias Ventura, the technical lead for Gutenberg,  might have different benchmarks for the MVP. I am curious, and <a href="https://twitter.com/JosephaHaden/status/1371956586516606977">answer Josepha&#8217;s call for questions</a> on Full-Site Editing for her next episode of the WPBriefing podcast when Matias will be her guest. </p>



<p>Full-Side Editing project encompasses a lot more than the Site Editor with template parts. There are Global Styles, Widgets in Customizer, a new Navigation and Widget screen, block-based themes with a theme.json file and query block. Some of it will work its way into the MVP. We will see how far the team progresses on their journey, that will only begin once Full-Site editing comes to Millions of WordPress users. No Fear, though. It will all be opt-in. Nothing will break. </p>



<p class="has-white-color has-secondary-background-color has-text-color has-background has-large-font-size">&#8220;Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow&#8221; &#8212; Eric Raymond&#8217;s Linus&#8217; Law</p>



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<p class="has-text-align-center has-large-font-size">Take a deep dive into </p>



<p class="has-text-align-center has-white-color has-text-color has-huge-font-size"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/full-site-editing/">Full-Edit Editing </a></p>



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<div class="wp-block-button has-custom-width wp-block-button__width-50"><a class="wp-block-button__link has-background">Ultimate Resources List</a></div>
</div>
</div></div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:111:"Gutenberg Times: Building Forms with Blocks, Work w/ Blocks via GraphQL API,  and more – Weekend Edition #163";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=17282";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:47:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/weekend-edition-163/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17108:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>It&#8217;s another month, until we know if the Full-site editing experience is good enough for the merge into core. It still has many moving parts that need to fit neatly together to make it a good user experience and allow site owners to design their site within the boundaries of their block-based theme. </p>





<p>Discover two plugins to build forms with the editor and read two articles  on how to work with blocks in decoupled (also called headless) WordPress via GraphQL. Some developers might find it as exciting as I do. </p>



<p>Enjoy the plugins shared and check out the upcoming WordPress events. </p>



<p>Yours ?<br />Birgit </p>





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<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">The index 2020 is here</a></p>




<p><strong>Gutenberg team released version 10.2 of the plugin. </strong><br /><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-10-2-17-march/">Release notes by Bernhard Reiter</a><br />WPTavern post: <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-10-2-adds-spacers-to-navigation-lists-lets-users-categorize-template-parts-and-introduces-scoped-patterns">Gutenberg 10.2 Adds Spacers To Navigation Lists, Lets Users Categorize Template Parts, and Introduces Scoped Patterns</a></p>



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<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> shared <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/16/high-level-feedback-from-the-fse-program-march/"><strong>high level feedback from the FSE Program.</strong></a></p>



<p>The <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/03/09/fse-program-testing-call-3-create-a-fun-custom-404-page/">3rd Call for Testing</a> is only open until March 23, 2021. If you have about 20 minutes, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/03/09/fse-program-testing-call-3-create-a-fun-custom-404-page/"><strong>build a fun 404 page</strong> via the new Site Editor</a> in WordPress. <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> has some very details instructions. Please share your experience as a comment on the post. </p>



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<p>Monday started with <a href="https://news.wpbuilds.com/issues/154/"><strong>This Week in WordPress live show #154</strong></a>, a podcast by <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/wpbuilds">Nathan Wrigley</a></strong> and <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/wp_paullacey">Paul Lacey</a></strong>. This week <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> and <a href="https://twitter.com/jcasabona"><strong>Joe Casabona</strong> </a>were on the show as guests, and they covered the new features in WordPress 5.7 and more Full-Site Editing. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUrJHhv1InQ">Head on over to YouTube</a>!</p>




<p> <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/changelog-40-full-site-editing-rollout-gutenberg-10-2-farewell-to-mark-uraine/"><strong>Episode #40</strong> is now available</a>!</p>



<p> <strong>Subscribe to the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/">Gutenberg Changelog</a> podcast </strong><br />?️ <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/620NwVKQJGdTupy36zYxvg?mc_cid=4b6c9f88fe">Spotify</a> | <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ndXRlbmJlcmd0aW1lcy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0">Google</a> | <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gutenberg-changelog/id1469294475">iTunes</a> | <a href="https://pca.st/podcast/f8445ec0-7508-0137-f267-1d245fc5f9cf">PocketCasts</a> | <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/gutenberg-changelog">Stitcher</a> |<br />?️ <a href="https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/chi7j-9904a/Gutenberg-Changelog-Podcast">Pod Bean</a> | <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/Gutenberg-Changelog-id2173375">CastBox</a> | <a href="https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/gutenberg-changelog-878239/">Podchaser</a> | <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/podcast">RSS Feed</a> </p>



<img />Review by <a href="https://twitter.com/Peter_Ingersoll"><strong>Peter Ingersoll</strong></a> on <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/gutenberg-changelog">Stitcher</a>




<h2>Plugins for the Block Editor</h2>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/formality/"><strong>Formality</strong></a> is an all-in-one WordPress form plugin for the block editor. <a href="https://twitter.com/michelegiorgi"><strong>Michele Giorgi</strong></a>, who built it for fun and <em>&#8220;because he hates the gym.&#8221;</em> I definitely can relate to the sentiment, although, I get cranky when I skip our lunch runs for too many days. The plugin comes with 12 blocks that include usual form elements, multi-steps layout, and ratings. You&#8217;ll also find 24 templates with backgrounds from Unsplash and corresponding color palettes. For developers, there are hooks and filter to extend it for your needs. <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/benswrite">Ben Townsend</a></strong> of LayerWP reviewed it on<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjnDb_4bXeM"> YouTube.</a></p>



<p class="has-small-font-size">? <a href="https://formality.dev/">Website</a> | <a href="https://github.com/michelegiorgi/formality">GitHub</a> | <a href="https://gist.github.com/michelegiorgi/56fe4489b922cf2af4704b79d4f56bb6">Gist</a> | <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/formality/">WPRepo</a></p>



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<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/forms-gutenberg/"><strong>Gutenberg Forms</strong></a> is another block editor only plugin to create forms for your page and post. The author, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/m_munirkamal">Munir Kamal</a></strong>, also created add-ons for <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/guten-forms-mailchimp/">Mailchimp</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/guten-forms-mailpoet/">Mailpoet</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/guten-forms-akismet/">Akismet</a>. All his code it open-source, and maybe he inspires you to create your special integration as well. You can also read <a href="https://wptavern.com/build-forms-via-the-block-editor-with-gutenberg-forms">Justin Tadlock&#8217;s review</a> from last summer</p>



<p class="has-small-font-size">?  <a href="https://docs.gutenbergforms.com">Docs</a> | <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/forms-gutenberg/">WPRepo</a> | <a href="https://gutenbergforms.com/">Website</a> | <a href="https://github.com/gutenberghub/gutenberg-forms">GitHub</a></p>



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<p>The plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/full-screen-galleries/"><strong>Full Screen Galleries</strong></a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/NickHalsey_"><strong>Nick Halsey</strong></a> creates an automatic full-screen slideshow mode for images on your page or post. It works on both, block editor and classic editor. It&#8217;s designed to work with any theme out of the box. See the plugin page for code snippets to add custom styling and a launch button. It&#8217;s a focused way to showcase travel photos or art work. This week, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/justintadlock">Justin Tadlock</a></strong> of WPTavern published <a href="https://wptavern.com/automatically-create-image-slideshows-with-the-full-screen-galleries-plugin">a review</a>.</p>



<p class="has-small-font-size">? <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/full-screen-galleries/">WPRepo</a> | <a href="https://celloexpressions.com/photography/2020/02/raindance-ranch-winter-2020/">Demo</a> </p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/k2-blocks/">K2 Blocks </a></strong>is one of the Block collections extending the core block editor with additional blocks. The most interesting to me would be the Counter and Time blocks as well as the  Magic Image block. The <a href="https://twitter.com/PookiDevsTech"><strong>PookiDevs</strong></a> team from Islamabad <a href="https://pookidevs.com/2021/02/23/using-k2-blocks-to-make-gutenberg-blocks/">posted screenshots and more details.</a></p>



<p class="has-small-font-size">? <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/k2-blocks/">WPRepo</a> | <a href="https://k2plugins.com/">Website</a></p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<h2>Gutenberg for Developers</h2>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/rmccue"><strong>Ryan McCue</strong></a>, director of product at the agency HumanMade, shared some experimentation with the navigation components in Gutenberg and created a new WP-Admin navigation bar outside the editor. He &#8220;<em>based this stand-along plugin on existing work in WooCommerce.&#8221;</em> You can <a href="https://twitter.com/rmccue/status/1369312175513296908">follow the discussion on Twitter</a>.. The <a href="https://github.com/rmccue/experimental-navigation">code is available on GitHub</a> for your perusal.</p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/JustinFerriman">Justin Ferriman</a></strong> of LearnDash shared how they leveraged Gutenberg to make a <a href="https://www.learndash.com/certificate-builder-has-arrived/">Certificate Builder in LearnDash</a>. You can see short demos on how it works. </p>



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<p>As an alternative to <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/jasonbahl">Jason Bahl</a>&#8216;s</strong> work with <a href="https://www.wpgraphql.com/2021/03/09/gutenberg-and-decoupled-applications/">Gutenberg and WordPress decoupled</a> sites a couple of weeks ago, <a href="https://twitter.com/losoviz">Leo Losoviz</a> published <a href="https://graphql-api.com/blog/proposing-a-new-approach-for-gutenberg-and-decoupled-applications/">his proposal on how to handle blocks with a decoupled WordPress</a> and GraphQL site. The two different approaches are a deep dive into both plugins that provide GraphQL APIs for WordPress. </p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-graphql/">WPGraphQL</a>  and <a href="https://github.com/GraphQLAPI/graphql-api-for-wp">GraphQL API for WordPress</a></p>



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<p>Speaking of Headless or Decoupled: <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/3binco">Michal Trykoszko</a></strong> started a three-part series of blog posts: <strong>Headless WordPress Gutenberg &amp; NextJS </strong>with <a href="https://trykoszkom.medium.com/headless-wordpress-gutenberg-next-js-part-1-3-creating-a-block-with-react-e8d69e8460d4">Creating a block with React</a>.</p>



<h2>WordPress Events</h2>



<p><strong>March 23 &#8211; 26th, 2021</strong><br /><a href="https://atarim.io/summit/"><strong>Atarim Web Agency Summit</strong></a></p>



<p><strong>March 24, 2021 &#8211; 10 AM EDT / 14:00 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-discussions/events/276945655/">Intro to Publishing with the Block Editor</a></strong> (<strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-discussions/events/276945655/">Demo + Discussion group</a></strong>) with contributors of Learn. WordPress program</p>



<p><strong>March 26, 2021 &#8211; 10 AM EDT / 15:00 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-discussions/events/277036759/">Creating and Registering Block Patterns (Demo + Discussion group)</a></strong> with Daisy Olsen from via Learn WordPress program<br />If you want to come prepared with questions, watch the workshops <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/intro-to-block-patterns/">Intro to Block Patterns</a> and <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/registering-block-patterns/">Registering Block Patterns</a></p>



<p><strong>April 6, 2021 9 am EDT / 14:00 UTC</strong><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAIlY3lTAos"><strong>WPCafe: Building the Twenty Twenty-One</strong> </a>with Caroline Nymark and Mel Dwan-Choyce, live on YouTube</p>



<p><strong>April 15, 2021 6:30 pm EDT / 23:30 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/SF-WordPress-Users/events/277019024/">South Florida Mega Meetup</a></strong> &#8220;New Site Builder Edition&#8221;</p>



<p><strong>April 15 &#8211; 17, 2021</strong><br /><a href="https://centroamerica.wordcamp.org/2021/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordCamp Centroamérica 2021</a></p>



<p><strong>April 27 and 28th</strong><br /><a href="https://www.godaddy.com/pro/expand"><strong>Expand 2021</strong></a> &#8211;&nbsp;a virtual event hosted by GoDaddy that brings the web design and developer community together to share ideas and experiences, make connections and support each other.</p>



<p><strong>May 24 &#8211; 27. 2021</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://wordsesh.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordSesh 2021</a> </strong><br /><a href="https://wordsesh.com/speak/">Speaker submissions are </a>due on March 29! </p>



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<p>On the<a href="https://wpcalendar.io/online/">&nbsp;<strong>Calendar for WordPress Online Events</strong></a> you&#8217;ll find a list of the upcoming WordPress Meetups, around the world, including WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups.</p>




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<h2>Full-Site Editing Go/NoGo decision for 5.8</h2>



<p>Now that <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2021/03/esperanza/">WordPress 5.7 is released since  March 9th, 2021</a>, the core team is planning 5.8 and putting the next release team together. </p>



<p><em>Josepha Haden Chomphosy</em> published two posts with additional information.  </p>



<ul><li><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2021/03/12/full-site-editing-pre-merge-overview/">Full-site editing pre-merge overview</a>&nbsp;</strong>an updated time line of decision-making on the prototype/MVP and communication roll-out for the merge of Full-Site Editing (FSE) into the core software. </li><li>In a follow-up post<strong>,&nbsp;</strong>Josepha shared the core team’s&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/12/early-thoughts-on-wp5-8-planning/"><strong>early thoughts on 5.8 Planning</strong></a>&nbsp;and elaborated on the changes, depending on if FSE will be merged or not in assembling the release team.</li></ul>



<p class="has-text-color has-background has-large-font-size">The team will decide on April 13 or 27, if a successful merge can be achieved for the 5.8 release in July (Yes, it was moved a month) or if it will be pushed to 5.9 in December 2021.</p>



<h2 id="2021goals"><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2021/01/21/big-picture-goals-2021/">Big Picture Goals 2021</a></strong></h2>



<p>Josepha Haden set the goal posts for the WordPress projects for 2021</p>



<ul><li>Timeline for <strong>Full Site Editing: </strong><ul><li>MVP&nbsp;in the plugin by April 2021</li><li>v1 in Core by WordPress 5.8.</li></ul></li><li><strong>Learn.WordPress </strong><ul><li>regularly publish new workshops and lesson plans, </li><li>maintain a high pass rate on workshop quizzes to establish learner success and comprehension.</li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/block-editor-workshops-wordpress/">Block Editor related Workshops </a></li></ul></li><li><strong>Contributor tools</strong> decrease the manual overhead of maintenance work for teams through better tooling.&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2021/01/21/big-picture-goals-2021/">Read the full post here</a></p>



<h2>Follow along with these resources:</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/5-7/">WordPress 5.7 Development Cycle</a><br />WordPress 5.7 Beta 1 is scheduled for February 2nd, 2021.</li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/">Keeping up with Gutenberg Index</a><br />if you missed a week or month with updates from team you can always go back </li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/category/weekend-edition/">Weekend Edition of the Gutenberg Times Archive</a>  </li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/">Gutenberg Changelog Podcast</a>, every other week. <br /></li></ul>



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<h2>State of the Word 2020</h2>



<p>December 17, 2020, Matt Mullenweg gave his State of the Word talk with an extensive Q &amp; A afterwards with him and other team members. </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2020/12/17/matt-mullenweg-2020-state-of-the-word/">26 minutes keynote</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/2020/12/17/matt-mullenweg-2020-state-of-the-word-qa/">Questions and Answer session</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/site-editor-demo-sotw/">Site Editor coming to WordPress</a></li></ul>



<h2>WordPress 5.7 &#8211; March 2021</h2>



<p><strong>WordPress 5.7</strong> planning has already begun. </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/5-7/">WordPress 5.7 Development Cycle</a></li><li>Francesca Marano posted <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/11/23/wordpress-5-7-whats-on-your-wishlist/">WordPress 5.7: What’s on your wishlist?</a> to collect input from the WordPress Community. </li><li>JB Audras posted a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/11/call-for-volunteers-early-bug-scrubs-for-wordpress-5-7/">Call for Volunteers – Early bug scrubs for WordPress 5.7</a></li></ul>



<h3>Block Editor in 2021 &#8211; Full-Site Editing and Global Styles</h3>



<p><strong>Matias Ventura</strong> posted a <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/10/status-check-site-editing-and-customization/">Status Check: Site Editing and Customization</a></strong>. In this post, Ventura summarizes  the current status of Gutenberg’s Phase 2 Projects:  Site Editor, Block-based Themes, Navigation Block, Query Block, and Global Styles. </p>



<p>He ends with: &#8220;In terms of timelines, all of these are in advanced stages and can be used in the Gutenberg plugin already. The main hurdle to include the work in major WordPress releases are the various dependencies between each project when it comes to ensuring a great user experience. The immediate focus is then on completing the milestones, stabilizing the work, and doing as much testing with different kinds of users as possible. For that last purpose, there will be some calls for testing announced soon as part of the&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/handbook/full-site-editing-outreach-experiment/">Site Editing Outreach Program</a>.&#8221;</p>



<p><strong>?</strong>&nbsp;<strong>Bookmark&nbsp;<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e3062ef0fb204dbbc2135b555&id=71d0f52b69&e=3e58a13321" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">“Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index”</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />The WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development Phase 2 are listed on one page: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS from June to December 2020</p>



<h2>WordPress 5.6  &#8211; December 2020</h2>



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<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2020/12/simone/">WordPress 5.6 “Simone”</a></blockquote>
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<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/03/wordpress-5-6-core-editor-overview/">WordPress 5.6: Core Editor Overview</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/11/20/wordpress-5-6-field-guide/">WordPress 5.6 Field Guide</a></li></ul>



<p><strong>Update May 13, 2020: </strong>Josepha Haden posted </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2020/03/06/update-progress-on-goals/">Update: Progress on Goals</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/05/13/wordpress-5-5-planning-roundup/">WordPress 5.5 Planning Roundup</a></li></ul>



<h2>WP5.5 – August Release</h2>



<ul><li><strong>Feature Plugin</strong>: Automatic updates functionality for major WordPress Core releases (opt-in).</li><li><strong>Complete</strong>:&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/13204">Convert the widgets-editing areas complete</a>.</li><li><strong>Complete</strong>:&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/13489">Functionality for full site editing complete</a>&nbsp;behind experimental flag in the plugin.</li><li><strong>Complete</strong>: Global styles behind experimental flag in the plugin.</li><li><strong>Ship</strong>: Update WordPress Core to include current releases of the Gutenberg plugin.</li><li><strong>Ship</strong>: Navigation menus block in Core.</li><li><strong>Ship</strong>: Automatic updates for plugins and themes in Core.</li><li><strong>Ship</strong>: Block directory in Core.</li><li><strong>Ship</strong>:&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/01/27/feature-plugin-xml-sitemaps/">XML Sitemaps</a>&nbsp;</li><li><strong>Ship</strong>:&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/01/29/lazy-loading-images-in-wordpress-core/">Lazy Loading</a>&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p class="has-small-font-size">Quoted from Josepha&#8217;s post, these are <em>planned</em> items. </p>



<p class="has-small-font-size">&#8220;Current release of Gutenberg plugin&#8221;, means the current version at time of 5.5 Beta 1, which is <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/05/13/wordpress-5-5-planning-roundup/">planned for July 7, 2020</a>. It probably will be Gutenberg 8.5 or 8.6. Final release of 5.5 is scheduled for August 11, 2020. </p>



<h3>Design &amp; Dev Updates in May 2020</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/05/06/whats-next-in-gutenberg-may/">What’s next in Gutenberg? (May)</a> by Riad Benguella</li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2020/05/08/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-52/">Gutenberg Phase 2 Friday Design Update #52</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2020/05/02/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-51/">Gutenberg Phase 2 Friday Design Update #51</a></li></ul>



<h3>Matt Mullenweg at WPBlockTalk</h3>



<p>Matt Mullenweg open the <strong>April 2, 2020, </strong>WPBlockTalk conference with an updated Gutenberg Roadmap and what&#8217;s next in Gutenberg and Matias showed off the Full-site Editing experience. </p>



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<h3>Design updates Gutenberg Phase 2 <br />Jan &#8211; April 2020</h3>



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<p>April 2020</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2020/04/24/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-50/">Update #50</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2020/04/17/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-49/">Update #49</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2020/04/10/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-48/">Update #48</a></li></ul>
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<p>March 2020</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2020/03/28/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-47/">Update #47</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2020/03/20/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-46/">Update #46</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2020/03/13/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-45-2/">Update #45</a></li></ul>
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<p>Jan / February 2020</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2020/02/21/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-45/">Update #45</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2020/01/31/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-44/">Update #44</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2020/01/24/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-43/">Update #43</a></li></ul>
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<h2>Update on nine focus projects</h2>



<p>In <strong>December 2019</strong>, Josepha Haden, executive direct of the open-source projects published a<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/12/06/update-9-projects-for-2019/">n update on the nine focus projects</a>. </p>



<p>The migration of the widgets to blocks and the merge of the Site Health project into core were shipped in 5.3.</p>



<p>For the work in progress, Josepha also added the targeted versions, when we can expect them in core. </p>



<ul><li><strong>Navigation Block </strong>to build menus (5.5)</li><li><strong>Block Directory</strong> for discovery and installation single block plugins from the Block Inserter (5.5)</li><li><strong>Automating update</strong> opt-in for plugins and themes (5.5)</li><li><strong>Themes registering content areas</strong> for block editor (5.6)</li><li><strong>Widget areas and Customizer</strong> are able to use blocks (5.6)</li><li><strong>Automatic update</strong> of major core releases (5.6) </li></ul>



<p>The <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/roadmap/">WordPress Core Roadmap page</a> shows the target dates for the next releases.  WordPress 5.5 is planned for August 2020 (Call for tickets has already been published) and WordPress 5.6 is slated to be released in December 2020. </p>



<h3><strong>Gutenberg Phase 2 Updates<br />September &#8211; December 2019</strong></h3>



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<p>Nov / December 2019</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/12/20/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-42/">Update #42</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/12/07/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-41/">Update #41</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/11/22/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-40/">Update #40</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/11/08/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-39/">Update #39</a></li></ul>
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<div class="wp-block-column">
<p>October 2019</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/10/25/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-38/">Update #38</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/10/18/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-37/">Update #37</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/10/11/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-36/">Update #36</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/10/04/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-35/">Update #35</a></li></ul>
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<div class="wp-block-column">
<p>September 2019</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/10/11/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-36/">Update #34</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/09/06/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-33/">Update #33</a></li></ul>
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<h2>State of the Word 2019 &#8211; Matt Mullenweg </h2>



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<p>During his State of the Word 2019 in St. Louis in October 2019, Matt Mullenweg talked a lot about the first full year of Gutenberg. </p>



<h3>The Four Phases of Gutenberg. </h3>



<ol><li>Easier Editing &#8211; already in Core, refinement is ongoing</li><li>Customization &#8211; Full Site editing, Block Patterns, Block Directory, Block based themes</li><li>Collaboration &#8211; A more Google Doc co-authoring </li><li>Multi-lingual &#8211; Core implementation for Multi-lingual sites. </li></ol>



<p>Currently, it&#8217;s all about Phase 2,  and not only to make the post / page content editable via the block editor but add site-building capabilities to the block editor. The goal is to provide a single interface for all site customizations. </p>



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<h3>Gutenb<strong>erg Phase 2 Updates</strong><br /><strong>June &#8211; August 2019</strong></h3>



<div class="wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-block-column">
<p><strong>August 2019</strong></p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/08/30/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-32/">Update #32</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/08/23/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-31/">Update #31</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/08/16/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-30/">Update #30</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/08/09/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-29/">Update #29</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/08/02/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-28/">Update #28</a></li></ul>
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<div class="wp-block-column">
<p><strong>July 2019</strong></p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/07/19/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-27/">Update #27</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/07/12/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-26/">Update #26</a></li><li>*</li></ul>
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<div class="wp-block-column">
<p><strong>June 2019</strong></p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/06/28/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-24/">Update #24</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/06/21/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-23/">Update #23</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/06/14/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-22/">Update #22</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/06/07/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-21/">Update #21</a></li></ul>
</div>
</div>



<p class="has-text-align-right">*There is no Update #25</p>
</div></div>



<p><em>Updated July 4th, 2019 with Mullenweg&#8217;s Summer update. </em></p>



<h2>WordCamp Europe 2019</h2>



<p>At WordCamp Europe, Matt Mullenweg gave his Summer Update. </p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/on-gutenberg-resources-matt-mullenwegs-summer-update-at-wordcamp-europe/">On Gutenberg (Resources) &#8211; Matt Mullenweg&#8217;s Summer Update at WordCamp Europe</a></blockquote>
</div>



<h3><strong>Weekly Gutenberg Phase 2 Updates </strong><br /><strong>March &#8211; May 2019</strong></h3>



<div class="wp-container-615658ad20bf9 wp-block-group phase2 has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
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<div class="wp-block-column">
<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>May 2019</strong></p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/05/31/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-20/">Update #20</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/05/24/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-19/">Update #19</a>  </li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/05/17/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-18/">Update #18</a> </li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/05/10/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-17/">Update #17</a> </li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/04/26/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-16/">Update #16</a> </li></ul>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>April 2019</strong></p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/04/19/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-15/">Update #15</a> </li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/04/12/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-14/">Update #14</a> </li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/04/05/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-13/">Update #13</a> </li></ul>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<p class="has-text-align-left has-normal-font-size"><strong>March 2019</strong></p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/03/29/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-12/">Update #12</a> </li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/03/22/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-11/">Update #11</a> </li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/03/15/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-10/">Update #10</a> </li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/03/08/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-9/">Update #9</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/03/01/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-8/">Update #8</a></li></ul>
</div>
</div>
</div></div>



<h2>Progress on <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#9projects">Nine Projects</a>. </h2>



<p><em>February 11, 2019.</em>  </p>



<ul><li>#1 Navigation Menu is still in discussion on GitHub. (<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/13690" target="_blank">#13690</a>)</li><li>#2 has been moved forward already for quite a bit. The latest Gutenberg release(5.0), incorporated the RSS widget. Mel Choyce publishes regular <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/02/05/porting-widgets-to-blocks-feb-4-2019/">updates on this particular project</a></li><li>#3 is coupled with #2</li><li>#4 hasn&#8217;t started yet </li><li>#5 Partial integration in core is scheduled for the WordPress 5.1 release</li><li>#6 &amp; #7 haven&#8217;t started yet</li><li>#8 hastn&#8217;t started yet. It is the one that&#8217;s most exciting to me, as the proliferation of blocks are getting a bit overwhelming. </li><li>#9 The Core is still discussing best methodology and taxonomy for ticket gardening. Jon Desrosiers <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/01/04/short-term-trac-milestone-ticket-triage-proposal/">published a proposal</a> on how to handle punted tickets in the short term and also how to manage the other open tickets.  </li></ul>



<h3>Design Updates for Gutenberg Phase 2</h3>



<p>Every Friday, Mark Uraine publishes Updates for Gutenberg Phase 2 on the make/design blog. Here is the list: </p>



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<div class="wp-block-column">
<p>February 2019</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/02/22/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-7/">Update #7</a> (Feb 22, 2019)</li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/02/15/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-6/">Update #6</a> (Feb 15, 2019)</li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/02/08/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-5/">Update #5&nbsp;(Feb&nbsp;8,&nbsp;2019)</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/02/01/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-4/">Update #4&nbsp;(Feb&nbsp;1,&nbsp;2019)</a></li></ul>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<p>January 2019</p>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/01/25/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-3/">Update #3&nbsp;(Jan&nbsp;25,&nbsp;2019</a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/01/18/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update-2/">Update #2&nbsp;(Jan&nbsp;18,&nbsp;2019)</a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2019/01/11/gutenberg-phase-2-friday-design-update/"> Update&nbsp;#1&nbsp;(Jan&nbsp;11,&nbsp;2019</a></p>
</div>
</div>
</div></div>



<h2 id="9projects">Nine Projects for 2019 </h2>



<p><em>Dec 8th, 2019. </em>A couple days after the WordPress 5.0 release, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/08/9-priorities-for-2019/">Matt Mullenweg posted</a> on the make/core blog the 9 projects for 2019, highlighting what he outlined in his <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2018/12/27/state-of-the-word-2018/">State of the Word at WordCamp US 2018</a></p>



<ol><li>Creating a block for navigation menus.</li><li>Porting all existing widgets to blocks.</li><li>Upgrading the widgets-editing&nbsp;areas in&nbsp;<code>wp-admin/widgets.php</code>&nbsp;and the Customizer to support blocks.</li><li>Providing a way for themes to visually register content areas, and&nbsp;exposing that in Gutenberg.</li><li>Merging&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/health-check/">the site health check plugin</a>&nbsp;into Core, to assist with debugging and encouraging good software hygiene.</li><li>Providing a way for users to opt-in to automatic plugin and theme updates.</li><li>Providing a way for users to opt-in to automatic updates of major Core releases.</li><li>Building a WordPress.org directory for discovering blocks, and a way to seamlessly install them.</li><li>Forming a Triage team to tackle our&nbsp;<a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&status=reviewing&order=priority">6,500 open issues on Trac</a>.</li></ol>



<h2><em>WordPress 5.0 &#8220;Bebo&#8221; released on December 6th, 2018</em></h2>



<p><em>December 6th, 2018. </em>Today around 1:30pm ET, the core team released the WordPress 5.0 and with it the new block editor&nbsp; as default editor for content creators.&nbsp; </p>



<a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2018/12/bebo/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img /></a>Putting the final touches on the WordPress 5.0 release:  Tammie Lister, Gary Pendergast, Jonathan Desrosiers and William Earnhardt at WordCamp US  2018



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2018/12/bebo/">WordPress 5.0 “Bebo”</a></blockquote>
</div>


<ul class="wp-block-latest-posts__list is-grid columns-3 wp-block-latest-posts"><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/using-the-query-loop-for-custom-post-types-block-editor-and-ecommerce-live-coding-on-twitch-and-more-weekend-edition-186/">Using the Query Loop for Custom Post Types,  Block-editor and eCommerce, live coding on Twitch and more &#8211; Weekend Edition #186</a></li>
<li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/theme-building-for-fse-weekend-edition-185/">Insights into theme building for FSE, Headless and Gutenberg &#8212; Weekend Edition #185</a></li>
<li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/theme-switching-weekend-edition-184/">Theme Switching, Global Styles, Blocks in REST API and more &#8211; Weekend Edition #184</a></li>
</ul>


<hr class="wp-block-separator gt-sep-navy" />



<p><em>December 3rd, 2018.&nbsp;</em> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/04/new-5-0-target-date/">Matt Mullenweg posted</a> the new target date for the WordPress 5.0: December 6th, 2018, <a href="http://php.net/archive/2018.php#id2018-11-22-1">the same day PHP 7.3 will be released</a>. WordPress 5.0 includes not only the new Block editor but also compatibility fixes for the new PHP version. <br /></p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Based on the stability, testing, and reports on the release candidates for WordPress 5.0 so far, we are now targeting Thursday&nbsp;<strong>December 6th</strong> for public release and announcement. 5.0.1 will open for commits soon, and will be an area people can choose to focus on at the contributor day at WordCamp US in Nashville this Sunday.<br />As before, if new information arises that indicates the software is not stable, we will adjust or remove the target date.</p></blockquote>



<p>Below Questions and Answers are taken from <a href="https://ma.tt/2018/11/a-gutenberg-faq/">Matt Mullenweg&#8217;s&nbsp; Gutenberg FAQs&nbsp;</a> as well as from his <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/12/04/new-5-0-target-date/">post about the new target date.</a><br /></p>



<div class="schema-faq wp-block-yoast-faq-block"><div class="schema-faq-section" id="faq-question-1543929591132"><strong class="schema-faq-question">Do I have to switch to Gutenberg when WordPress 5.0 is released? <br /></strong> <p class="schema-faq-answer">Not at all. When it’s released, you get to choose what happens. You can install the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-editor/">Classic Editor plugin</a> today and when 5.0 is released, nothing will change. We’ve commited to supporting and updating Classic Editor until 2022. If you’d like to <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/">install Gutenberg early</a>, you can do that now too. The Classic Editor plugin has been available for 13 months now, and Gutenberg has been available for 18 months. Both have been heavily promoted since August 2018, and more than 1.3 million .org sites have opted-in already to either experience, so nothing will change for them when they update to 5.0.</p> </div> <div class="schema-faq-section" id="faq-question-1543929747530"><strong class="schema-faq-question">Is it terrible to do a release in December?</strong> <p class="schema-faq-answer">Some people think so, some don’t. There have been <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/roadmap/">9 major WordPress releases</a> in previous Decembers. December releases actually comprise 34% of our major releases in the past decade.</p> </div> <div class="schema-faq-section" id="faq-question-1543932662856"><strong class="schema-faq-question">What if I don’t want to update on that date, or I’m not ready?</strong> <p class="schema-faq-answer">That’s totally okay, there’s nothing that says you must update the moment there’s a new version released. You can push the button whenever you’re ready.</p> </div> <div class="schema-faq-section" id="faq-question-1543932734088"><strong class="schema-faq-question">What if I want to upgrade but I’m not ready for Gutenberg?</strong> <p class="schema-faq-answer">No problem, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-editor/">install the Classic Editor plugin</a> and 5.0 will be indistinguishable from 4.9.8 for your posting and editing experience, and you’ll still get the other improvements and fixes that have gone into 5.0. Classic Editor is supported until 2022, and now allows you to switch between Classic and Gutenberg on a per-user or per-post level.</p> </div> </div>



<p><em>November 30, 2018. </em><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/11/29/5-0-gutenberg-status-update-nov-29/">WordPress 5.0 RC2&nbsp;</a> is scheduled for&nbsp; today. Earlier this morning the team released <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/11/30/whats-new-in-gutenberg-30th-november/">Gutenberg 4.6.1.</a>&nbsp; &#8220;This brings plugin up to parity with RC2 packages&#8221;&nbsp; noted Matias Ventura on the #core-editor Slack channel.&nbsp; <br /><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/11/30/5-0-gutenberg-status-update-nov-30/">Read also today&#8217;s status update on the Make.Core Blog</a><br /></p>



<h3>When will 5.0 be released?</h3>



<p>Read Matt Mullenweg&#8217;s answer in his blog post: &#8220;<a href="https://ma.tt/2018/11/a-gutenberg-faq/">WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg&nbsp;FAQ</a>&#8220;<br /></p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><em>We have had a stable RC1, which stands for first release candidate, and about to do our second one. There is only currently one known blocker and it’s cosmetic. The stability and open issues in the release candidates thus far makes me optimistic we can release soon, but as before the primary driver will be the stability and quality of the underlying software. We made the mistake prior of announcing dates when lots of code was still changing, and had to delay because of regressions and bugs. Now that things aren’t changing, we’re approaching a time we can commit to a date soon.</em></p><cite><a href="https://ma.tt/2018/11/a-gutenberg-faq/"></a>Matt Mullenweg answer in <a href="https://ma.tt/2018/11/a-gutenberg-faq/">his blog post&nbsp; Nov 29, 2018</a><br /></cite></blockquote>



<hr class="wp-block-separator gt-separator" />



<p><em>November 23, 2018</em> WordPress 5.0 RC1 &#8211; the first release candidate was released about 4 days late.&nbsp; On Nov 21, Matias Ventura wrote: &#8220;The date for 5.0 release is under consideration, given it’s not plausible for it to be the on 27th. &#8220;</p>



<span id="more-6188"></span>



<p>Gutenberg 4.5.1 was released Nov 20th. This is the last Gutenberg version before the 5.0 Final release. There will be bug fixes in between, but no more changes to API etc. &#8211; or so I hear. It&#8217;s included in the WordPress 5.0 Release candidate 1 version. You can test both via the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta plugin.</a></p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><strong>The WordPress 5.0 release date has shifted from the 27th to give more time for the RC to be fully tested</strong>. A final release date will be announced soon, based on feedback on the RC.<br /></p><cite>Matias Ventura, <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2018/11/wordpress-5-0-release-candidate/">on the make.core blog</a><br /></cite></blockquote>



<p>Unless they are blockers to the 5.0 release, newly found issues will be tagged for Gutenberg 4.6 and 5.0.1. <br /></p>



<p><em>November 9, 2018.&nbsp; </em>Developer lead for Gutenberg, Matias Ventura <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/11/09/update-on-5-0-release-schedule/">announced today the updated schedule</a> for WordPress 5.0 release:&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>Final release scheduled for November 27, 2018 </li><li>Beta 4:&nbsp; Monday November 12, 2018 </li><li>Beta 5: Thursday, November 15, 2018<br /></li><li>Release Candidate 1: Monday November 19, 2018</li></ul>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>After listening to a lot of feedback — as well as looking at current issues, ongoing pull requests, and general progress — we’re going to take an extra week to make sure everything is fully dialed in (&#8230;)<br /></p><cite>Matias Ventura, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/11/09/update-on-5-0-release-schedule/">on make.blog November 9th, 2018.</a><br /></cite></blockquote>







<p><em>October 31, 2018.</em> After the first beta release date slipped to October 24, Gary Pendergast <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/10/31/wordpress-5-0-schedule-updates/">updated the release schedule </a>yesterday. He added a few more Beta release dates, which pushed the RC 1 to November 12th. The final release date of November 19, hasn&#8217;t been moved, though. </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2018/10/wordpress-5-0-beta-2/">Beta 2</a> released Oct 30</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2018/11/wordpress-5-0-beta-3/">Beta 3:</a> released Nov 5, 2018</li><li>Beta 4: November 5, 2018&nbsp;</li><li>RC 1: November 12, 2018</li><li>Final release: November 19, 2018</li></ul>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/10/31/wordpress-5-0-schedule-updates/">Details can be viewed in the post on make.wordpress</a></p>



<p><em>Updated Nov 6, 2018: updated with release dates and post for Betas 2 + 3 bph</em></p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/10/31/wordpress-5-0-schedule-updates/">WordPress 5.0 Schedule Updates</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p><em>Also updated the photo credit. The feature image was shot by </em><a href="http://www.instagram.com/adspedia/"><em>Val Vesa </em></a><em>and can be found on </em><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wceu/41176987410/"><em>WCEU&#8217;s Flickr account</em></a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator gt-sep-navy" />



<p><em>On October 3rd, 2018</em>, Matt Mullenweg published <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/10/03/a-plan-for-5-0/">&#8220;A Plan for 5.0&#8221; </a>on the WordPress Make Blog with the leadership team that will push Gutenberg over the finish line of becoming the default editor for WordPress.</p>



<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/10/03/a-plan-for-5-0/"><img /></a>



<p><strong>Gary Pendergast</strong>, WordPress Core Developer, followed suit with his post; <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/10/03/proposed-wordpress-5-0-scope-and-schedule/">Proposed WordPress 5.0 Scope and Schedule</a></p>



<h3>The Scope: </h3>



<ul><li>Merging the Gutenberg plugin into trunk.</li><li>Updating the default themes to work well with the block editor</li><li>Creating the new Twenty Nineteen theme.</li><li>Creating an upgrade experience to remove the Gutenberg plugin and offer the Classic Editor plugin.</li></ul>



<h3>The Schedule</h3>



<ul><li><strong>October 3, 2018 WordPress 5.0 Kickoff meeting&nbsp;</strong><br /></li><li><strong>October 19: Beta 1</strong><br /></li><li><strong>October 30: RC 1</strong><br /></li><li><strong>November 19:&nbsp; Release</strong><br /></li></ul>



<p><em>&#8220;We know there is a chance that 5.0 will need additional time, so these dates can slip by up to 8 days if needed. If additional time beyond that is required, we will instead aim for the following dates:&#8221; Gary wrote,</em></p>



<ul><li><strong>Secondary RC 1</strong>: January 8, 2019</li><li><strong>Secondary Release</strong>: January 22, 2019</li></ul>



<p>The following days, strong voices suggested to make Plan B to Plan A and not release WordPress 5.0 until after the busiest online business time of the year for the United States universe. </p>



<p>Here an opinion piece on the WPTavern: &#8220;<a href="https://wptavern.com/if-deadlines-are-not-arbitrary-why-not-release-wordpress-5-0-in-the-beginning-of-january">If Deadlines Are Not Arbitrary, Why Not Release WordPress 5.0 in the Beginning of January?</a>&#8220;</p>



<p>At <a href="https://www.paulisystems.net/gutenberg-ready/">Pauli Systems</a>, we plan to beta-best WordPress 5.0, help surfacing problems and report them either on Trac or on GitHub. The amount of issues and the time it will take to fix them will determine the final release date for WordPress 5.0.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-large"><p>With the track record on estimating release dates this year, there might be a RC (Release Candidate) in November. It seems to be a given that the final release will be pushed into late January 2019.</p><cite><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack,Oct 3rd, 2018 0&nbsp; <a href="https://www.paulisystems.net/gutenberg-ready/">Pauli Systems</a></em></cite></blockquote>



<h2>WordPress 5.0 Kick-off Meeting </h2>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/10/04/dev-chat-summary-october-3rd-5-0-week-1/">Dev Chat Summary: October 3rd (5.0 Week 1)</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p><em>updated: October 5, 2018 / bph</em></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator gt-sep-navy" />



<p>At WordCamp Europe, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, Matt Mullenweg, laid out the Gutenberg roadmap for the next three months.</p>



<p>For the rest of June, the development team will work on the few issues and features that are identified to land in the first core version. </p>



<p>In July more users will be able to use Gutenberg on wordpress.com as well as on self-hosted WordPress sites <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/try-out-gutenberg-call-out-will-be-in-4-9-5-release/">via a &#8220;Try Gutenberg&#8221; prompt in a future 4.9.x version.</a></p>



<p>In August, the team will work on bug fixes and the merge proposal to land in WordPress Core. Mullenweg said that after one hundred thousand users and two hundered fifty thousand blog posts, Gutenberg could be ready to be released with WordPress 5.0 as soon as August. He also stress he is not making any promises, though. <br /></p>



<img />



<h2>The Gutenberg Roadmap</h2>



<h3>June 2018<br /></h3>



<ul><li>Freeze new features into Gutenberg<br /></li><li>Hosts, agencies and teachers invited to opt-in sites they have influence over. </li><li>Opt-in for wp-admin users on WP.com</li><li>Mobile App support in the Aztec editor across iOs and Android.</li></ul>



<h3>July 2018</h3>



<ul><li>4.9.x release with a strong invitation to install either Gutenberg or Classic Editor plugin</li><li>Opt-out for wp-admin users on WP.com</li><li>Heavy triage and bug gardening, getting blockers to zero</li><li>Explore expanding Gutenberg beyond the post into site customization. </li></ul>



<h3>August 2018 and beyond<br /></h3>



<ul><li>All critical issues resolved</li><li>Integration with Calypso, offering opt-in users.</li><li>100k+ sites having makde 250k+ post using Gutenberg</li><li>Core merge, beginning the 5.0 release cycle.</li><li>5.0 beta releases and translations completed</li><li>Mobile version of Gutenberg by the end of the year.</li></ul>



<h2>Video: Gutenberg Roadmap section of Matt Mullenweg&#8217;s Keynote</h2>



<p><em>Find the transcript&nbsp; below.</em></p>



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<p><strong>Update July 6, 2018</strong><br />So far the Gutenberg section of <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2018/07/04/matt-mullenweg-a-summertime-update-keynote-and-qa/">Matt Mullenweg&#8217;s &#8220;Summertime Update&#8221;</a>. Earlier this month, the volunteers of WordCamp Europe uploaded the video of the <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2018/07/04/matt-mullenweg-a-summertime-update-keynote-and-qa/">whole keynote to WordPress TV</a>.</p>



<a href="https://wpbuffs.com/pricing/affilibuff/paulisystems/"><img src="https://i0.wp.com/wpbuffs.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Care-Plan-Wide.jpg?w=652&ssl=1" alt="WP Buffs" /></a>



<p><em>Featured Image: </em>Photo by Stephen M. Blythe, <a href="https://allmyfriendsarejpegs.com">allmyfriendsarejpegs.com</a></p>



<h2>Transcript: Matt Mullenweg&#8217;s Keynote at WordCamp Europe (Excerpt)<br /></h2>



<p>(&#8230;) The major features that are in effect so far are we have a block based writing experience, with over 20 blocks built in. Gutenberg is fully adaptive, meaning that whether you&#8217;re looking at it on a small screen, a medium screen, a large screen, a huge screen, the design and the functionality adapts to be fluid and easy to use on any of those.</p>



<p>There is ah, there we go &#8230; Optimized for direct manipulation of content, so we&#8217;re bringing it closer to where what you&#8217;re editing looks a lot more like what you&#8217;re seeing on the front page. They have a block aid [inaudible 00:00:43], support for static and dynamic blocks.</p>



<h3>Matt&#8217;s Favorite Gutenberg Feature: Copy/Paste API</h3>



<p>This is one of my favorite, the universal API, which is copy and paste. Who&#8217;s ever tried to copy and paste things into the WordPress editor, or anyplace else, and it just goes kind of sideways?</p>



<p>Gutenberg already has support for fully supported copy and paste from Google Docs, a Apple&#8217;s Pages, everyone&#8217;s favorite Microsoft Word, Office 365, Evernote, Legacy WordPress, random webpages, and then finally something that I know will be very popular with this audience is Markdown.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s actually what you are seeing in this little GIF there, is a copy and paste from a Markdown source. That&#8217;s a note editor or for wherever you want. You paste into Gutenberg, it translates it just instantly into Gutenberg blocks. It&#8217;s very, very slick. If you haven&#8217;t tried this yet, I&#8217;d highly recommend trying it. It&#8217;s one of my favorite hidden features alongside &#8230; I&#8217;ll tell you about my other favorite hidden feature. Which is that when you copy and paste the URL onto some text, it auto links it. Saves a ton of time.</p>



<h3>Templates, Shared Blocks, Nested Blocks and Child Blocks</h3>



<p>There are templates for predefined blocks. This is starting to go into where you can see hints of where we are going to end up, with full site customization with this. Which basically allows you to create for your users or for yourself kind of pre-built layouts where you can say, &#8220;Okay. A title goes here, an image goes here, some text goes here, a map goes here.&#8221; That can be reused over and over again, or assigned to entire pages. There&#8217;s shared blogs, so if you do want to reuse things across the entire site, that can be a shared unified resource. So when you edit it once, it shows up everywhere.</p>



<p>And finally, we are very excited about, that we have nested blocks and child blocks. These are blocks within blocks. Like it&#8217;s turtles and blocks all the way down, and child blocks, which only work if the parent block is there. Perhaps like your children. Media drag and drop. Extensions where you can add extra things to the sidebar. Like this beautiful &#8220;Hello Belgrade&#8221; extension here.</p>



<h2>30 Gutenberg releases, 1,700 issues open , 1,100 closed</h2>



<p>There have been 30 Gutenberg releases, since we started, and 12 just since WordCamp US in December. As you can see, this is kind of running through all the different releases. There have been over 1,700 issues opened, and 1,100 closed in the Gutenberg Project thus far. From the development point of view, I&#8217;m very proud of it. We have open development, design-led testing in our releases, presentations across pretty much every WordCamp now, including here. It&#8217;s developed a wide awareness. Support and awareness in every single page builder out there. You know the names.</p>



<p>We already have people who&#8217;ve extended Gutenberg through plugins they are starting to pick up in the directory, and major sites. Agencies and others have been building and launching things with Gutenberg because, to be honest, it works. It&#8217;s not perfect yet. We&#8217;re not ready to release it yet, but for the things it does, it does them well. You can actually start using this in production already.</p>



<p>There are now 14,000 sites actively using Gutenberg. So this isn&#8217;t just installed it&#8217;s actually active. Just released this week are tools for enterprises. This one called <a href="https://vip.wordpress.com/2018/06/13/jumpstart-gutenberg-testing-transition-ramp/">Gutenberg Ramp</a>, which is a new plugin from VIP which basically allows them to turn Gutenberg on for certain post ID&#8217;s, page ID&#8217;s or content text. So that way you can start to phase in. Say you have a really complex setup of WordPress and maybe certain post types of things, extra customization. You can start to turn Gutenberg on for parts of it, not for others until you get to the point where you have everything on and fully done.</p>



<p>But the question I&#8217;m going to preempt it, so you don&#8217;t need to ask it is &#8220;What&#8217;s coming next in the world of Gutenbergification?&#8221; Which is just kinda fun to say. It sounds almost like a German word right?</p>



<h3>Roadmap For Gutenberg Roll-Out</h3>



<h4>Happening in June</h4>



<p>Here&#8217;s the roadmap. So these are things happening in June which means they are highly .. [inaudible] . First I&#8217;m going to freeze new features coming in to Gutenberg. We&#8217;ve reached a point where there is a functionality that matches in affect of in the area it exceeds what we accomplished in the editor. We&#8217;re gonna encourage host agencies and teachers to start opting in folks that they have influence over to start using Gutenberg. Now very much &#8230; especially if it&#8217;s someone who you&#8217;re working with close to so that you can start to gather feedback from third party users of it, people who are involved in development everyday and pass that back, of course, to developers. This is to compliment the user testing, since the user testing that we&#8217;ve already been doing.</p>



<p>One of the hosts that&#8217;s gonna be sort of contributing to this is WordPress.com so there is several hundred thousand, in the high numbers of thousands folks from WordPress.com that actually use wp-admin interface primarily. So we&#8217;re gonna be offering a call to action to opt-in. You can start using it very soon. One of the key measures that we are tracking there are the number of sites and the number of posts that are using this.</p>



<p>Then finally the mobile apps, which I said are getting more and more popular. Right now, if you move between editing things in the mobile apps, Gutenberg, it breaks in pretty spectacular fashion. So within the next few weeks that will be all fixed up across both IOS and Android. </p>



<h4>Coming up in July: Thousands more users .org and .com<br /></h4>



<p>Coming up in July, there is going to be a 4.9 point WordPress release that has a <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/try-out-gutenberg-call-out-will-be-in-4-9-5-release/">strong invitation in the dashboard.</a> The first time we&#8217;ve had this, to either install Gutenberg or the Classic Editor Plugin. So basically we will be encouraging people to get on the train early, or if when 5.0 comes out and your site is not gonna be ready for it, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-editor/">install the Classic Editor Plugin</a>. For those who don&#8217;t know, basically locks in your site to use how WordPress WYSIWYG editor&nbsp; works today. So it kinda opts you out of Gutenberg. We&#8217;re, of course, going to be tracking the use of both those.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re gonna switch to opt-in for their wp-admin on dot com to be opt-out and I&#8217;m tracking who opts out and trying to gather as much data from them as well because there&#8217;s gonna be a lot of information there, especially from people who might be using third party plugins on WordPress.com. Be a heavy, heavy triage on bug gardening, getting all the blockers to zero. Then finally, we&#8217;re gonna actually kick off and maybe even branch off the customization leads to start the work for what we wanna launch hopefully this year. Which is more of the full site editing experience of Gutenberg.</p>



<h4>In August and Beyond: Merge Proposal<br /></h4>



<p>So in August and beyond we&#8217;ll have all critical issues resolved. It&#8217;ll be integrated with the Calypso interface on WordPress.com, which is where the majority of people use it. I want to have 100,000 sites, 250,000 posts made, so 100,000 sites active with Gutenberg over 10x, where it is today, about 10x where it is today. A quarter million posts I think we&#8217;ll be able to say that a lot of the bugs will be worked out. We&#8217;re gonna merge with Core beginning the 5.0 release cycle. So beta releases, translations and then finally we are planning &#8230; there&#8217;s work undergoing, it&#8217;s not ready yet, but there will be full mobile versions of Gutenberg at the end of the year in the iOS and Android app.</p>



<p>By August, they won&#8217;t break when you move between them. Of course, Gutenberg is done in a way that makes the content and the Markup backwards compatible. We&#8217;re actually gonna have the blocks supported in the mobile apps so that as you drag and drop blocks, move them around, have different sort of fun things you can do, that&#8217;ll all be there.</p>



<p>We could have a 5.0 as soon as August. Some of these things that I put up there, I&#8217;m very, very sure about. The big thing that we&#8217;re not sure about is as we vastly increase the average usage of Gutenberg across hopefully 100,000 sites. &#8220;What&#8217;s gonna come in?&#8221; </p>



<h4>Not date promised, though. </h4>



<p>The non-deterministic nature of fixing bugs means that I don&#8217;t know exactly the issues that could raise. Whether they&#8217;re going to be small tweaks or rather they might be sort of huge things that are going to require a few weeks of development. That is why I can&#8217;t promise you a date but we&#8217;ve done a lot of testing this far so the nature of bugs that we find &#8230; there&#8217;s no black swans in there of bugs. I do think that 5.0 is gonna be ready within a relatively short time frame.&nbsp; And that&#8217;s all I got so thank you very much.</p>



<p></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:109:"Gutenberg Times: Full-Site Editing Testing, Merge Timeline, and Plugins for Block Editor Weekend Edition #162";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=17216";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/full-site-editing-testing/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18059:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>With the WordPress 5.7 out of the way, the next couple of month are all about Full-site Editing testing and planing for 5.8. </p>



<p>I love it when a plan comes together! The WordPress team responsible for the release of the 5.7 version delivered on time. <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2021/03/esperanza/"><strong>Meet “Esperanza”, the first WordPress release of 2021</strong></a>. Marvel again at the numbers: Contributors (457), Trac tickets (250) and  Pull Requests on GitHub(950). </p>



<p> <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/AudrasJb">Jean-Baptist Audras</a></strong>, team rep of the core team, documentation release lead and data wizard compiled additional information about contributors, by country and employers. <a href="https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/a496c333-7e64-412c-9299-9ea2c84e5d2c/page/j595B?s=gxzoCOs8rSk"><strong>Have a sneak peek on his material</strong></a>, JB will soon share in a blog post. </p>



<p>If it&#8217;s been a while since you checked on the Gutenberg state of affairs, there are plenty of resources in today&#8217;s edition. Let me get out of your way now.  </p>



<p>Yours, ?<br />Birgit</p>



<p>PS: ?️ The new episode, number <strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/changelog-39-gutenberg-site-editor/">#39 of the Changelog</a> </strong>is now available with show notes and transcript. </p>





<h2>Full Site Editing Updates</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/JosephaHaden">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a></strong> published in her <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2021/03/12/full-site-editing-pre-merge-overview/">full-site editing pre-merge overview</a> </strong>an updated time line of decision-making on the prototype/MVP and communication roll-out for the merge of Full-Site Editing (FSE) into the core software. As far as I understood it, the team will decide  on April 13 or 27, if a successful merge can be achieved for the 5.8 release in July (Yes, it was moved a month) or if it will be pushed to 5.9 in December 2021. </p>



<p>Josepha wrote: <em>&#8220;The following is an outline of the communication work needed in the pre-merge period for Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project. This will put us in a position to merge Full Site Editing later this year while raising awareness and increasing the skills of our community as we go.&#8221;</em> She lists in bullet points, the who, what, why,  of the various teams to work together on this feature&#8217;s roll-out. </p>



<p>In a follow-up post<strong>, </strong>Josepha shared the core team&#8217;s <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/12/early-thoughts-on-wp5-8-planning/"><strong>early thoughts on 5.8 Planning</strong></a> and elaborated on the changes, depending on if FSE will be merged or not in assembling the release team. </p>




<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">The index 2020 is here</a></p>




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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/geoffreygraham">Geoff Graham</a></strong> discussed <a href="https://css-tricks.com/the-wordpress-evolution-toward-full-site-editing/"><strong>The WordPress Evolution Toward Full-Site Editing</strong></a> at CSS-Tricks. He wrote: <em>&#8220;I’m personally all-in on this direction. I’d even go so far as to say (peeking over my shoulder at Chris) that CSS-Tricks is all-in on this as well. <a href="https://css-tricks.com/wordpress-block-transforms/">We made the switch to blocks</a> last year, and it has reinvigorated our love for writing blog posts just like this one.&#8221;</em> </p>



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<h3>Calls for Testing Full-Site Editing</h3>



<p>Are you as excited about Full-Site Editing as I am? Well, I can&#8217;t wait to follow <strong>Anne McCarthy&#8217;</strong>s <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/03/09/fse-program-testing-call-3-create-a-fun-custom-404-page/"><strong>third call for FSE testing</strong></a>. This time she envisions you to <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/03/09/fse-program-testing-call-3-create-a-fun-custom-404-page/">create a fun 404 page</a>, something you normally couldn&#8217;t do without touching a php file and look at code. It&#8217;s called 404 because that&#8217;s the error code from web servers when they receive a browser request for a URL that doesn&#8217;t exist. If you need some inspiration the people at CreativeBloq have a <a href="https://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/best-404-pages-812505">great collection of 404 pages</a>. </p>



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<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> walked the path before you, and shared her experience on the WPTavern, calling it the <strong><a href="https://wptavern.com/new-full-site-editing-testing-challenge-create-a-custom-404-page">Full Site Editing Testing Challenge</a></strong>. </p>



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<p>The results of the second testing call are in. <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> published the summary overall comments:  <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/03/12/fse-program-build-a-homepage-testing-summary/">FSE Program Build a Homepage Testing</a></strong>. The team gained invaluable information from those tests reports. 29 GitHub Issues were either confirmed, commented on or newly filed. </p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<h2>Block Editor for Content Creators</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/critterverse">Channing Ritter</a></strong>, a new contributor on the design team she designed a site with large type, Dark Mode detection, and other accessibility-friendly styling such as visible underlines and focus states on links with the block editor. In her article <strong><a href="https://automattic.design/2021/03/12/accessibility-in-the-block-editor/">Accessibility in the Block Editor</a>: A Beginners Guide.</strong> She wrote about the <em>&#8220;many useful accessibility features available and provide some context about how recent improvements are helping take accessibility and usability to the next level.&#8221;</em> She elaborates on recent Keyboard Navigation, Keyboard Shortcuts, and other Usability updates of the block-editor. </p>



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<p>To learn about <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/block-editor-keyboard-shortcuts/" rel="nofollow">keyboard shortcuts the block-editor</a></strong> the documentation team  just published a comprehensive list of shortcuts and what they do, for both, Windows and Mac Operating Systems. </p>



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<p><strong>Will Morris</strong>, staff writer at <em>WordCandy, </em>published an in-depth article on the <em>Torque Magazine</em>: <strong><a href="https://torquemag.io/2021/03/gutenberg-full-site-editing/">What Is Gutenberg Full-Site Editing (And How to Access It Today)</a></strong>. He wrote: <em>&#8220;The upcoming Full-Site Editing (FSE) feature promises to be the next major step in WordPress design and development. By getting some hands-on experience now, you can ensure your site is prepared for the changes ahead.&#8221;</em> </p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/WordPressNYC/events/276672145/">Fantastic Blocks and Where To Find Them</a></strong> is the title of <a href="https://twitter.com/newyorkerlaura"><strong>Laura Byrne</strong></a>&#8216;s talk at the <strong>WordPress NYC Meetup</strong> group on Tuesday, March 16th, 2021 at 7:00 pm. She wrote:<em>&#8220;With so many blocks to choose from (both native and 3rd party blocks) and more being added every day, which are the most vital ones to have in your content creation arsenal? Pick up indispensable tips and tricks for yourself and your clients.&#8221;</em> It&#8217;ll be a fast-paced presentation and Laura has a wealth of knowledge. Come for the blocks and stay for the second talk: <strong>The Three Layers of WP Maintenance</strong> with Mervin Hernandez. I definitely try to make it. Will we see you there, too?</p>



<h2>Block Editor for Themes builders</h2>



<p>Given the above mentioned timeline for the merge of Full Site Editing, it&#8217;s no surprise that <strong>Hector Pietro</strong> grouped the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/08/whats-next-in-gutenberg-march-2021/"><strong>focus projects for March </strong></a>around that feature and the possible adoption path for conventional Themes.  He covers: Widget Screen, Navigation Screen, and Full-Site Editing. You might appreciate the section <strong>&#8220;Areas to be aware of&#8221;</strong> for block and plugin developers, theme builders, contributors and designers. </p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/jeffikus">Jeffrey Pears</a> </strong>again keeps everyone updated on the specific discussions and issues around Themes in the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2021/03/12/gutenberg-themes-week-of-march-11-2021/">Gutenberg + Themes: Week of March 11, 2021</a> for this week. </p>



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<p>In <strong><a href="https://wptavern.com/recreating-the-music-artist-wordpress-theme-homepage-with-the-block-editor">Recreating the Music Artist WordPress Theme Homepage With the Block Editor</a></strong>, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/justintadlock">Justin Tadlock</a></strong> walks us through his experience to replicate the theme&#8217;s design sections with the block editor and patterns starting with a theme already supporting the block editor.  It&#8217;s a great example, how theme developers and site builders could embrace the Block editor and create new designs fast and support their users. Not all the modifications are yet available in Gutenberg. Justin use the EditorPlus plugin by Munir Kamal to add additional styling. </p>



<h2>Developers and Block Building</h2>



<p><strong>Justin Ahinon</strong> updated the WordPress community on the <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/12/block-editor-handbook-restructuring-project-update-march-12/">block editor handbook restructuring project</a>.</strong> &#8220;<em>The idea is to build technical documentation around four parts: <strong>tutorials</strong>, <strong>how-to guides</strong>, <strong>technical reference</strong> and <strong>explanation</strong>.&#8221; he wrote. </em></p>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/jasonbahl">Jason Bahl</a></strong>, creator of the WPGraphQL plugin, tackled the topic <strong><a href="https://www.wpgraphql.com/2021/03/09/gutenberg-and-decoupled-applications/">Gutenberg and Decoupled Applications</a>.</strong> He walks you through three different approaches to use Gutenberg in a decouple application environment and lists the trade-offs for each. </p>



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<p><strong>Greg Ziolkowski</strong> shared on the core blog what it takes to <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/08/publishing-wordpress-packages-to-npm/"><strong>Publishing WordPress packages to npm</strong></a>, the NodeJS package manager registry. As of today, there are nearly 80 actively maintained packages under the <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/org/wordpress">WordPress organization</a> available. Greg shared some details about the latest addition to the process and summarize the overall strategy for publishing.</p>




<p><strong>Subscribe to the&nbsp;<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/">Gutenberg Changelog</a>&nbsp;podcast via your favorite podcast apps!</strong><br />?️&nbsp;<a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/620NwVKQJGdTupy36zYxvg?mc_cid=4b6c9f88fe">Spotify</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ndXRlbmJlcmd0aW1lcy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0">Google</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gutenberg-changelog/id1469294475">iTunes</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://pca.st/podcast/f8445ec0-7508-0137-f267-1d245fc5f9cf">PocketCasts</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/gutenberg-changelog">Stitcher</a>&nbsp;|<br />?️&nbsp;<a href="https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/chi7j-9904a/Gutenberg-Changelog-Podcast">Pod Bean</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/Gutenberg-Changelog-id2173375">CastBox</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/gutenberg-changelog-878239/">Podchaser</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/podcast">RSS Feed</a>&nbsp;</p>



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<h2>Plugins for the Block Editor</h2>



<p>Meet <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/olivercampion">Oliver Campion</a></strong> and his plugin <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/options-for-twenty-twenty-one/">Options for Twenty-Twenty One.</a> </strong>This plugin adds a ton, over 70 modification options to the default WordPress theme. James Huff, calls Oliver <em>&#8220;the most active helper in the Twenty-Twenty-one support forum&#8221;</em></p>



<p>He also created the plugin <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/display-remote-posts-block/">Display Remote Posts Block</a></strong>, used to display recent posts from a WordPress or Blogger sites, bringing back the blog roll. </p>



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<p>Speaking of Blog roll, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/tw2113">Michael Beckwith</a></strong> released the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/blogroll-block/"><strong>Blogroll Block</strong></a> plugin. <em>Justin Tadlock</em> wrote <a href="https://wptavern.com/a-throwback-to-the-past-introducing-the-blogroll-block-wordpress-plugin">about it for the WPTavern.</a> </p>



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<p>The <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/NewspackPub">Newspack </a></strong>team at Automattic published their <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/newspack-newsletters/">Newspack-Newsletter</a> plugin in the WordPress repository. Similar to the <a href="https://newsletterglue.com/">Newsletter Glue</a> plugin, that I use here, this plugin also enables you to use the block-editor design your newsletters, store them on your site and send them through Mailchimp or Constant Contact. Besides an account at one of the offered providers you also to apply for a free API key at MJML.org </p>



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<p><strong>GeneratePress</strong> offers their future <a href="https://generatepress.com/introducing-the-gp-theme-builder/">GP Theme Builder plugin in public beta</a>. It brings you theme building using the core block editor and the GenerateBlocks plugin.</p>



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<p>The <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-manager/">Gutenberg Block Manager</a></strong> Plugin by <a href="https://twitter.com/KaptonKaos"><strong>Darren Cooney</strong></a> helps you organize the hundreds of blocks on your site on various screens. It definitely will help you get organized. <em>Sarah Gooding</em><strong> </strong><a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-block-manager-plugin-enables-global-block-removal-and-recategorization">reviewed it for the WPTavern.</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<h2 id="4-word-press-events">WordPress Events</h2>



<p><strong>March 16, 2021, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT</strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/WordPressNYC/"><strong>WordPress NYC Meetup Group</strong></a><br />Fantastic Blocks and Where To Find Them  with Laura Byrne<br />The Three Layers of WP Maintenance with Mervin Hernandez</p>



<p><strong>March 18, 2021 6:30 &#8211; 8:30 PM EDT</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/SF-WordPress-Users/events/276654859/">Mega-Meetup South Florida</a></strong></p>



<p><strong>April 15 &#8211; 17, 2021</strong><br /><a href="https://centroamerica.wordcamp.org/2021/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordCamp Centroamérica 2021</a></p>



<p><strong>April 16th – 18th, 2021.</strong>&nbsp;<br /><strong><a href="https://greece.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp Greece 2021 Online</a></strong>.<br />The organizer published the&nbsp;<a href="https://greece.wordcamp.org/2021/call-for-speakers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">call for speakers</a>.</p>



<p><strong>April 16th – 18th, 2021</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://neo.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp Northeast Ohio</a></strong><br /><a href="https://neo.wordcamp.org/2021/call-for-sponsors/">Take a look at the Call for Sponsors</a></p>



<p><strong>May 24 &#8211; 27. 2021</strong><br /><a href="https://wordsesh.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordSesh 2021</a></p>



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<p>On the<a href="https://wpcalendar.io/online/"> <strong>Calendar for WordPress Online Events</strong></a> you&#8217;ll find a list of the upcoming WordPress Meetups, around the world, including WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:29;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:138:"Gutenberg Times: Using the Block Editor For Content Upgrades, Help Test New Gutenberg Features, Newsletter plugin – Weekend Edition #161";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=17170";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/using-the-block-editor-for-content-upgrades/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11344:"<p>Howdy, howdy! </p>



<p>I found some spectacular content for the various use cases of the Block Editor, especially for Content Creators and Site Owners,  also new plugins and updates from the WordPress teams. </p>



<p>Enjoy! </p>



<p>Yours, ?<br />Birgit</p>





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<h2 id="toc" class="toc">Table of Contents</h2>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-block-editor-for-content-creators-and-site-owners">Block Editor for Content Creators and Site Owners</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-block-editor-for-developers">Block Editor for Developers</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-testing-word-press-and-gutenberg">Testing WordPress and Gutenberg</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-plugins-for-the-block-editor">Plugins for the Block Editor</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#4-word-press-team-updates">WordPress Team Updates</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#5-gutenberg-10-1-was-released">Gutenberg 10.1 was released</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#4-word-press-events">WordPress Events</a></li></ul></div>




<h2 id="0-block-editor-for-content-creators-and-site-owners">Block Editor for Content Creators and Site Owners</h2>



<p><a href="https://torquemag.io/2021/03/gutenberg-features/"><strong>19 Gutenberg Features You Might Not Be Aware Of (But Should!)</strong></a><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/nschaeferhoff"><strong>Nick Schäferhoff</strong> </a>collected for on the Torque Magazine  a great list of block editor features, I would call the secrete features. Most end users don&#8217;t know about them.  Not all featured mentioned are in core, though. You would need to use the Gutenberg plugins to, for instance, use Blocks in Widgets, the Navigation block, the query block or work with Block Themes. Probably the most current of Listicles post about the block editor. </p>



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<p>In <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/02/11/core-editor-improvement-new-preferences-experience/"><strong>Core Editor Improvement: New Preferences experience</strong></a>, <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> describes the new modal for preference settings of your workspace coming to WordPress 5.7. The new interface allows you in a more compact way to toggle on or off General settings, appearance settings, the block manager and remove panels in the sidebar you don&#8217;t need for instance,tags or comments. </p>



<img src="https://i0.wp.com/make.wordpress.org/core/files/2021/02/Screen-Shot-2021-02-10-at-11.06.45-AM.png?w=652&ssl=1" alt="" />



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/joyofwp">Bud Kraus</a></strong>, JoyofWP, has published <strong>two video tutorials on <a href="https://joyofwp.com/topic/using-block-patterns/">using Block Patterns</a> and the <a href="https://joyofwp.com/topic/using-the-block-directory/">Block Directory</a>.</strong> They are quick reminders on how both features work, how you can discover new blocks and how you can integrate them into your workflow as content creators.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>In his post <strong><a href="https://chrislema.com/how-do-i-use-gutenberg-blocks/">How do I use Gutenberg blocks?</a></strong>, <strong>Chris Lema</strong> wrote that with the plugin Blocky, &#8220;I can create what I want, place it where I want, for however long I want.&#8221; and use it  for content upgrades, for upsells, for offers, for announcements and so much more! In his video Lema demos his workflow and in his post also have a few ideas how to apply it to your online business website. </p>



<h2 id="1-block-editor-for-developers">Block Editor for Developers</h2>



<h3 id="2-testing-word-press-and-gutenberg">Testing WordPress and Gutenberg</h3>



<p id="block-8e01da98-000c-4772-b905-62666ce4aac1"><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> described all the different <a href="https://wptavern.com/user-friendly-methods-for-testing-gutenberg-enhancements-and-bug-fixes">User-Friendly Methods for Testing Gutenberg Enhancements and Bug Fixes</a> on the WPTavern and mentioned the GB Nightly. </p>




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<p>There are times when you want to test single PRs before they are merged into the trunk code base. <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/Paaljoachim">Paal Joachim Romdahl</a></strong>&#8216;s tutorial on <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2021/03/03/testing-a-gutenberg-pull-request-pr/">Testing a Gutenberg Pull Request (PR)</a>  that has not yet been merged into the plugins code base.</p>



<p>In theory each PR added to the repository will run a build process for this particular code change and other people can test a new feature or a bug fix to gauge if it&#8217;s ready to be merged. </p>



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<h2 id="3-plugins-for-the-block-editor">Plugins for the Block Editor</h2>



<p>There have been a few plugins lately that caught my attention: </p>



<p><strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-patterns-collection/">Block Patterns Collection</a></strong> by&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jyoti_wp"><strong>Jyoti Shukla</strong></a>, a freelance WordPress and React Developer, providing &#8211; for now &#8211; two patterns: for statistics and a combine pattern with Heading, Text and Button blocks. On her blog, Jyoity Shukla writes about JavaScript and WordPress development. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>Developers at Automattic released the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/newspack-newsletters/"><strong>Newspack-Newsletters plugin in the WordPress Repository.</strong></a> With it, you can use the block editor to build newsletters and connect them with Email Marketing Providers, Mailchimp or Constant Contact, right from your WP Admin. You will need an<a href="https://mjml.io/"> API Key from MJML</a>. </p>



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<h2 id="4-word-press-team-updates">WordPress Team Updates</h2>



<p><strong>Matt Chowning</strong> posted about <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/05/dual-licensing-gutenberg-next-steps/"><strong>Dual-Licensing Gutenberg: Next Steps</strong></a> on the Make Core Blog. </p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2021/03/05/gutenberg-themes-week-of-march-4-2021/">Gutenberg + Themes: Week of March 4, 2021</a>:</strong> The weekly roundup  by <a href="https://twitter.com/jeffikus"><strong>Jeffrey Pearce</strong></a> and the Themes Team on theme-related discussions, fixes, and developments in Gutenberg. Please weigh in on the tickets listed  — your voice and feedback are welcome! In this list, I found the list of <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/29503">Medium projects by Matias Ventura</a>, that shows that beyond the focus on Full-Site Editing, Global Styles and Site editor, the team is also working on refinements on the block editor especially on Cover, Image, Columns and Gallery blocks, as well as continue working on Reusable blocks. </p>



<h3 id="5-gutenberg-10-1-was-released">Gutenberg 10.1 was released</h3>



<ul><li>Read the release notes: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/02/whats-new-in-gutenberg-10-1-3-march/">What’s new in Gutenberg 10.1? (3 March)</a> by Nik Tsekouras</li><li>Get the skinny from Justin Tadlock: <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-10-1-enhances-reusable-blocks-updates-social-icons-spacing-options-and-normalizes-image-block-toolbar">Gutenberg 10.1 Enhances Reusable Blocks, Updates Social Icons Spacing Options, and Normalizes Image Block Toolbar</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/04/core-editor-improvement-need-for-page-post-speed/">Core Editor Improvement: Need for (page/post) Speed</a></li></ul>



<p>The new episode, number <strong>#39 of the Changelog </strong>will come to your favorite podcast app on Monday.  </p>




<p><strong>Subscribe to the&nbsp;<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/">Gutenberg Changelog</a>&nbsp;podcast via your favorite podcast apps!</strong><br />?️&nbsp;<a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/620NwVKQJGdTupy36zYxvg?mc_cid=4b6c9f88fe">Spotify</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ndXRlbmJlcmd0aW1lcy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0">Google</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gutenberg-changelog/id1469294475">iTunes</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://pca.st/podcast/f8445ec0-7508-0137-f267-1d245fc5f9cf">PocketCasts</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/gutenberg-changelog">Stitcher</a>&nbsp;|<br />?️&nbsp;<a href="https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/chi7j-9904a/Gutenberg-Changelog-Podcast">Pod Bean</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/Gutenberg-Changelog-id2173375">CastBox</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/gutenberg-changelog-878239/">Podchaser</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/podcast">RSS Feed</a>&nbsp;</p>



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<h2 id="4-word-press-events">WordPress Events</h2>



<p><strong>March 8, 2021 7:00 pm&nbsp;–&nbsp;8:30 pm</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://burbswp.com/">Philly&#8217;burbs WordPress Meetup</a></strong><br /><a href="https://burbswp.com/events/event/bringing-a-wordpress-plugin-to-the-marketplace/">Bringing a WordPress Plugin to the Marketplace</a>  with Brad Williams and Corey Salzano</p>



<p><strong>March 16, 2021, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM EDT</strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/WordPressNYC/"><strong>WordPress NYC Meetup Group</strong></a><br />Fantastic Blocks and Where To Find Them  with Laura Byrne<br />The Three Layers of WP Maintenance with Mervin Hernandez</p>



<p><strong>April 16th – 18th, 2021.</strong>&nbsp;<br /><strong><a href="https://greece.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp Greece 2021 Online</a></strong>.<br />The organizer published the&nbsp;<a href="https://greece.wordcamp.org/2021/call-for-speakers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">call for speakers</a>.</p>



<p><strong>April 16th – 18th, 2021</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://neo.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp Northeast Ohio</a></strong><br /><a href="https://neo.wordcamp.org/2021/call-for-sponsors/">Take a look at the Call for Sponsors</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>On the<a href="https://wpcalendar.io/online/">&nbsp;<strong>Calendar for WordPress Online Events</strong>&nbsp;</a>you can browse a list of the upcoming WordPress Meetups, around the world, including WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:107:"Gutenberg Times: Block editor for screen readers, Reusable blocks and so much more – Weekend Edition #160";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=17128";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:112:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/block-editor-for-screen-readers-reusable-blocks-and-so-much-more-weekend-edition-160/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14583:"<p>Howdy, howdy! </p>



<p>I found plenty of Gutenberg posts around the net. From the DevNotes for the next major WordPress version to plugin updates and first feedback from the FSE second call for testing. </p>





<p> With the first <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2021/02/wordpress-5-7-release-candidate/">release candidate of WordPress 5.7 available</a>, we also get to study the upcoming features and changes via <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/02/23/wordpress-5-7-field-guide/">the Field Guide</a>. If you have more testing capacity, use the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">Beta Tester plugin</a> and give the new version whirl. </p>



<p>With the most important general WordPress news out of the way, enjoy the cornucopia of block and site editor updates. </p>



<p>Yours, ?<br />Birgit</p>




<p>ICYMI: <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/">Episode #38 of the Changelog</a> is now available with show notes and transcript. It was another fun conversation with Mark Uraine. We talked about 100th Release of Gutenberg, WordPress Core 5.7, 5.6.1, and Testing Call for Full-site Editing. </p>





<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-block-editor-for-content-creators">Block Editor for Content Creators</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-developing-for-the-block-editor">Developing for the Block Editor </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-block-editor-and-themes">Block Editor and Themes</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-plugins-for-the-block-editor">Plugins for the Block Editor</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#4-word-press-events">WordPress Events</a></li></ul></div>




<h2 id="0-block-editor-for-content-creators">Block Editor for Content Creators</h2>



<p>The first in a series of Gutenberg tutorials slated for the WordPress.org News section, <strong>Joen Asmussen</strong> wrote a <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2021/02/gutenberg-tutorial-reusable-blocks/">tutorial on how to create, edit and use Reusable Blocks.</a> This is impeccable timing  as the Reusable Blocks received quite some changes. You learn how to reuse text snippets across posts and pages of your website and save complex layouts once without having to copy/paste them from one page to the next. Joen explains the difference between templates, reusable blocks and Block patterns. He picked plenty of use cases to explain the ins and outs of handling reusable block and use them to your advantage. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>In his post: <a href="https://www.customerservant.com/an-in-depth-introduction-to-the-wordpress-block-editor-for-screen-reader-users/">An In-depth Introduction to the WordPress Block Editor for Screen reader Users</a>, <strong>John Carson</strong> gave an introduction to the block editor, provides keyboard shortcuts, and walks screen reader users through the editing options. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>Attendees of <em>WordCamp India</em> received a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqWZ5AMFxug"><strong>sneak preview on the site editor</strong></a> and the full-site editing experience coming to a WordPress instance near you later this year. <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/imranhsayed">Imran Sayed</a> </strong>gave a great introduction to the topic and also show how it currently works and how you can try it yourself via the recording on YouTube. You also learn how the experimental navigation and widget screens work. It&#8217;s a fun look into the future. Sayed also created the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments/tree/master/phoenix">Phoenix block-based theme</a> that is now available in the Gutenberg team&#8217;s Themes Experiments repository on GitHub</p>



<h2 id="1-developing-for-the-block-editor">Developing for the Block Editor </h2>



<p><strong>Robert Anderson</strong> published Block editor <strong>Dev Notes for the WordPress 5.7 release</strong>: </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/02/24/changes-to-block-editor-components-and-blocks/">Changes to block editor components and blocks</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/02/22/changes-in-wordpress-data-api/">Changes in @wordpress/data API</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/02/22/new-block-variation-apis-in-5-7/">New block variation APIs in 5.7</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/02/23/inner-blocks-api-changes/">Inner Blocks API Changes</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/02/23/new-i18n-filters-createi18n-changes/">New i18n filters &amp; createI18n() changes</a></li></ul>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/helenhousandi">Helen Hou-Sandi</a></strong>, WordPress Lead Developer, sometimes streams her WordPress contributer work sessions <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/helenhousandi">on Twitch</a>. In her latest blog post <a href="https://helen.blog/2021/02/updating-a-wordpress-plugin-with-a-publish-metabox-field-for-the-block-editor/">Updating a WordPress plugin with a publish metabox field for the block editor</a>, she summarized an almost <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/925609757">4-hour Twitch session</a>. Don&#8217;t worry, the blog post doesn&#8217;t take as long to read.  She explained the process of achieving the final code, first demonstrated what most people will need, then what she actually did to meet specific UX needs. She also shared the things she tried that didn’t work out. All in all, a great read from a WordPress developer to WordPress developer on how to bridge the gap to the modern block editor. </p>




<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">The index 2020 is here</a></p>




<p><strong><a href="https://wptavern.com/ask-the-bartender-what-happens-when-block-markup-changes">What Happens When Block Markup Changes?</a></strong> &#8211;<strong> Justin Tadlock</strong> and <strong>Riad Benguella </strong>answer a WPTavern reader&#8217;s question. It&#8217;s a fascinating read that explains some inner workings of the block editor when dealing with static JavaScript blocks. The details are fascinating, and I learned a great deal from the post. Different processes are firing depending on the context the block is used: for the edit screen, storing serialized data in the database, and rendering the block again on the front end, all the while offering hooks for 3rd party plugins to tap into those processes. It&#8217;s a delicate balancing act between the developer experience and the user experience. Riad made clear that the Gutenberg team needed to put the user experience first. </p>



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<p>As&nbsp;Gutenberg&nbsp;grows, the project sometimes experiences regressions: Features that used to work suddenly don’t anymore. To prevent these regressions from happening, contributors can <strong>write end-to-end (e2e) tests </strong>that cover a given piece of functionality and alert us when that functionality is broken. In his <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/02/19/hallway-hangout-fool-me-once-writing-end-to-end-tests-against-regressions/"><strong>Hallway-Hangout session</strong></a>, <strong>Bernhard Reiter</strong> demonstrated how to write end-to-end tests for the Gutenberg projects to prevent regressions. </p>



<h2 id="2-block-editor-and-themes">Block Editor and Themes</h2>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/fse-outreach-round-2-building-a-custom-homepage-with-gutenbergs-site-editor"><strong>Building a Custom Homepage </strong>With Gutenberg’s Site Editor</a> &#8211;  <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> shared his experience and thoughts when working through the Anne McCarthy&#8217;s instructions for the call for testing the full-side editing experience. It&#8217;s a detailed read, and you&#8217;ll find some GitHub issues, where most pain points are discussed for a better solution. </p>



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<p>For more updates on the topic <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2021/02/26/gutenberg-themes-week-of-feb-25-2021/"><strong>Gutenberg + Themes</strong></a> read <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/one_maggie">Maggie Cabrera</a></strong>&#8216;s 39th weekly round-up  theme-related discussions, fixes, and developments. Many of the listed issues and discussion could use your opinion as how to proceed. Chime in! </p>



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<p>With  <strong><a href="https://wptavern.com/build-a-full-wordpress-site-via-block-patterns-with-the-hansen-theme">Build a Full WordPress Site via Block Patterns With the Hansen Theme</a> </strong> <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> adds another theme review to the WPTavern. The Hansen Theme is the forth block-based theme in the WordPress repository and provides numerous block patterns and block styles for the site building needs of its users. </p>




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<h2 id="3-plugins-for-the-block-editor">Plugins for the Block Editor</h2>



<p>On the <em>Gutenberg Times</em> we have been using <a href="https://github.com/sortabrilliant/guidepost">Guidepost plugin</a> for our Table of Contents since its first version in 2018. It disappeared from the WordPress repository, but its GitHub repository is still available. Good news, though, the next version of the Gutenberg plugin will include a <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-gutenberg-wordpress-plugin-to-introduce-a-table-of-contents-block#comment-366968"><strong>native &#8220;Table of Contents&#8221; block</strong></a>, inspired by the Guidepost version. <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> dug a little deeper into the genesis and details of it. </p>




<p><strong>Subscribe to the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/">Gutenberg Changelog</a> podcast via your favorite podcast apps! </strong><br />?️ <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/620NwVKQJGdTupy36zYxvg?mc_cid=4b6c9f88fe">Spotify</a> | <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ndXRlbmJlcmd0aW1lcy5jb20vZmVlZC9wb2RjYXN0">Google</a> | <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gutenberg-changelog/id1469294475">iTunes</a> | <a href="https://pca.st/podcast/f8445ec0-7508-0137-f267-1d245fc5f9cf">PocketCasts</a> | <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/show/gutenberg-changelog">Stitcher</a> | <br />?️ <a href="https://www.podbean.com/podcast-detail/chi7j-9904a/Gutenberg-Changelog-Podcast">Pod Bean</a> | <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/Gutenberg-Changelog-id2173375">CastBox</a> | <a href="https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/gutenberg-changelog-878239/">Podchaser</a> | <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/podcast">RSS Feed</a>&nbsp;</p>



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<p>If you have been a listener, please <a href="https://lovethepodcast.com/gutenbergchangelog">write a review </a>on iTunes, Stitcher, Podchaser or Castbox. We would love to read from you, and more reviews help with the distributions.</p>




<h2 id="4-word-press-events">WordPress Events</h2>



<p><strong>February 27, 2021</strong><br /><a href="https://prague.wordcamp.org/2021/"><strong>WordCamp Praha</strong></a></p>



<p><strong>March 4, 2021 11:00 AM ET /  16:00 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://attend.wpengine.com/decode-2021/">WP Engine DE{CODE} 2021&nbsp;</a></strong><br /><em>With an awesome line-up of speakers! </em></p>



<p><strong>April 16th &#8211; 18th, 2021.</strong>&nbsp;<br /><strong><a href="https://greece.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp Greece 2021 Online</a></strong>.<br />The organizer published the <a href="https://greece.wordcamp.org/2021/call-for-speakers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">call for speakers</a>.</p>



<p><strong>April 16th &#8211; 18th, 2021</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://neo.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp Northeast Ohio</a></strong><br /><a href="https://neo.wordcamp.org/2021/call-for-sponsors/">Take a look at the Call for Sponsors</a></p>



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<p>On the<a href="https://wpcalendar.io/online/"> <strong>Calendar for WordPress Online Events</strong> </a>you can browse a list of the upcoming WordPress Meetups, around the world, including WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups. </p>




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<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>



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<p></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:31;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"Gutenberg Times: Case Study: A #Nocode Contributor Journey On The WordPress Gutenberg GitHub Repo";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:41:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?page_id=16385";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:106:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/case-study-a-nocode-contributor-journey-on-the-wordpress-gutenberg-github-repo/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:24216:"<h2>WordFest 2021 Talk by Birgit Pauli-Haack</h2>



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<p>Ways a non-developer can contribute via the GitHub repository.</p>



<p>Example: WordPress Gutenberg. Learn some lingo, creating and commenting on issues, search labels and work on finding solutions by commenting on design, and functionality. You don’t have to be a developer to contribute to WordPress.</p>



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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Very helpful walk-through talk from <a href="https://twitter.com/bph?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@bph</a> on how you can contribute to the Gutenberg GitHub repository. Potential benefits (according to Birgit) are street cred and personal joy, what's not to love?! ?? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordFest?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordFest</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordFestLive2021?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordFestLive2021</a></p>&mdash; Henriette Stewart (@HAOstewart) <a href="https://twitter.com/HAOstewart/status/1352731617488478209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 22, 2021</a></blockquote>
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<p class="has-background">A very important session showing that you don’t have to be a developer to be an important contributor.<br />                                                      <em>&#8212; <a href="https://twitter.com/palmiak_fp">Maciek Palmowski</a>, WPOwl</em></p>







<p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color">The talk was live-streamed on January 22, 2021, at WordFest Live. Below is the pre-recorded segment of the talk. We also had a 15-minute Live Q &amp; A around Gutenberg in general, but it seems that part did not get recorded. </p>



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<p>On my personal dev blog, I post a few months ago a <a href="https://icodeforapurpose.com/a-nocode-contributor-journey-on-the-wordpress-gutenberg-github-repo/">blog post recounting my journey on GitHub.</a></p>



<p><strong>Mentioned Resources and Links</strong></p>



<ul><li><a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://jeanbaptisteaudras.com/en/2020/12/wordpress-5-6-core-stats-contributions-by-country-company/">WordPress 5.6 Core Stats: contributions by country &amp; company</a></li><li><a href="https://yoast.com/open-source-story/">Open source: Better solutions and a more inclusive society</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-the-making-of-open-source-story-by-yoast-with-blocks/">Live Q &amp; A: The Making of Open-Source Story by Yoast with Blocks</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2019/03/20/why-contributing-to-wordpress-benefits-everyone/">Why Contributing to WordPress Benefits Everyone!</a></li><li><strong>How to get started</strong><ul><li><a href="https://login.wordpress.org/register">Create&nbsp; a wordpress.org account</a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/join">Create a GitHub account</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/chat/">Create a WordPress Slack Account</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/03/19/associating-github-accounts-with-wordpress-org-profiles/">Connect your wp.org account to your GitHub account.</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/contributors/">Developer Documentation: Contributor Guide</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/how-to-do-triage-on-github/">Anne McCarthy: How to do triage on&nbsp;GitHub</a></li><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/contributors/repository-management/">Repository Management</a></li></ul>



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<p class="has-large-font-size">Transcript </p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: So thank you for being here with me. This is a bit weird doing a talk like this online. If I were talking at an in-person WordCamp, we would be in the smallest room, and could have it quite interactive and have other contributors share their journey as well. So, considering how hard it is to volunteer time, especially after 2020 with working from home, and the childcare challenges, and care for older parents or worse. The latest version of WordPress 5.6 had over 600 contributors. I&#8217;m grateful that this new talk was accepted at WordFest, and I want to thank the organizers, volunteers, speakers and sponsors for making it happen. And thank you all who are interested in contributing to WordPress or at least learning more from contributors.</p>



<p>So come work on this open source software used by hundreds of millions of users. So on the site make.wordpress.org, there are over 18 teams that have their blog there, and all the handbooks and how the team works. Not every team contributes code, and every coding team has a great need for people who don&#8217;t know how to contribute code. But all project managers can test features, facilitate meetings, discuss new features or processes, and organize meetups and speak at WordCamps.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Why contributing? First, there&#8217;s the business case. In our web development business at Pauli Systems, we have been using WordPress for a decade now and made good money with it, and we worked with the software without any licensing fees or any monetary upgrade costs in a community of very generous people.</p>



<p>Working on the project, gave us an even deeper appreciation for the work and the people behind the project. We are all standing on the shoulders of giants. Contributing to WordPress is part of giving back as much as I can. Others wrote about it, most recently the team Yoast produced a great long read about how open source brings better solutions and a more inclusive society. Apart from some street credit in form of badges, contributing to WordPress brings me personal joy, too. The last five years have been very inspiring and I learned so much for my personal growth and how to lead and work remotely as well as meeting people around the world. The kindness, patience, and professionalism is reassuring even if the rest of the world descends in chaos, fear, uncertainty and doubt.</p>



<p>I consider many teammates friends, and as soon as we get back into in-person meetings, there will be a hugfest. The marketing team, also a Nocode team, published a longer post about why contributing to WordPress benefits everyone, or also why contributors give their skills for free. Let me leave that for an introduction into generally contributing. You were promised a case study on Nocode Contributor Journey on the WordPress GitHub Repository for Gutenberg. So let&#8217;s get to the meat of the matter.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The Gutenberg/Block Editor team belongs to the larger core team. It&#8217;s the team developing the Block Editor and the Site Editor. I often get the question, &#8220;What&#8217;s the difference between the Block Editor and Gutenberg?&#8221; So per se, there isn&#8217;t really a difference. So you can think about the Block Editor is what&#8217;s in WordPress or WordPress core, and Gutenberg is the plugin where it&#8217;s developed. Gutenberg is also the idea of a larger revamping of the whole WordPress experience. The WordPress core releases are every three to four months and the Gutenberg developers, however, release a new version for the plugin every two weeks. So when the next WordPress release comes around, all the features and fixes the plugin received since the last major release, will be merged into the core code base.</p>



<p>So for WordPress version 5.6, that was released in December, it incorporated the plugin versions 8.6 to 9.2. So Gutenberg team has regular meetings in their Slack channel on Wednesdays, 9:00 AM Eastern, 6:00 AM Pacific, sorry, West Coast people and it&#8217;s 1400 UTC. The Slack channel is separate from core, it&#8217;s #core-editor slack channel. There are also meeting notes posted on the make.wordpress.org core blog, so /org/core. And apart from meetings, most Gutenberg developers communicate on GitHub. So, let&#8217;s get started.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So, I do not contribute any code to the project. I&#8217;m not a PHP developer and my JavaScript knowledge is 10 years old. I would be useless as a developer or designer, but I use the Block Editor a lot. I mean, I spend time, many, many hours per week working in it. And the Gutenberg times, is pretty much the test site in production for the Gutenberg plugin. What I do is I create issues on the GitHub repository and the screen that you just see is just a screenshot of my issues, but we&#8217;ll go into a little bit more detail.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Situations. What are the situations when I create issues? Whenever I encounter a bug or annoyance or inconsistencies, most of the time I stop what I&#8217;m doing and I create the issue, or I make a note of it so I can go back to that. I also test new features for an article. So, if I want to write about the Block Directory, I definitely want to test it before that and once in a while, I run into issues there and write up a bug report. I also do release testers, so Release Candidates from the plugin.</p>



<p>And then the last but not the least is, any idea I have on future feature improvements and that&#8217;s when I feel a different approach might make a feature much more helpful for power users, or if something is missing that I find. So, let&#8217;s look about some examples. Don&#8217;t worry, I will not discuss the merit of the issues, or just go deeper into Gutenberg code or something like that, I want to show you what paths and engagement they can take.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The first example is about bugs and annoyances when I click on this link. It works, excellent. I have to have it, at the right my bullet points is a normal paragraph and then when I&#8217;m done with all the bullet points, I convert them to a list. And up until summer of 2018, I found it very easy to do this in the Block Editor and with the next version for this, I encountered that it wouldn&#8217;t work anymore.</p>



<p>When you&#8217;re scrolling through this, that one was pretty fast resolved. Matias gave me a hint that I can do this now through the transform button that was back then just introduced. So that was easy, right?&nbsp;</p>



<p>So the next one was also a bug, but it had to do with the Meta Box. And so the Meta Box would scroll up to the top of the editor instead of staying put on the bottom of it and it seems that there are still quite a few people who were able to replicate it. Joen kind of said, &#8220;Oh, I was able to reproduce, so that was all good.&#8221; But then he also said that while debugging this, he found that that was actually an upstream issue from a plugin. This issue was closed, but then here was the issue at the Yoast GitHub repository, so I was able to follow along there and then tested again when the new Yoast plugin was then released. So those two were all bug reports, but then I also test new features.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And the first example here is for the widget screen. So it was just recently last in October, the calendar block triggered an error, developers reproduced it and labeled it with a calendar widget, and screen, and debug and bug. And then what happened was that in October, it was reproducible and then just a few days ago, Robert Anderson also tested it again, if this is still something that needs to be taken care of, and obviously, that has now moved to development.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For the test Release Candidates, I have two examples, warning of a missing file which was almost instantly resolved because it was a Release Candidate, and a day later there was the plugin fix and another one was…. In this one that was issued, the audio block did a disappearing act in the editor and that was also fixed.</p>



<p>You can imagine that it has increased the quality of the plugin when these kinds of bugs are caught before the final release. But it was hit and miss for me to be able to test the Release Candidates because there are only two days in between. Since mid-December, they changed the frequency of it, and so now it&#8217;s a seven-day period and we can do some more consistent testing of the Release Candidates.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And then I do Feature Improvements issues and this one might interest a few. So the keyboard shortcut to switch to HTML editing on a block level. There&#8217;s a shortcut keyboard to change the whole editor from visual to code similar to the classic editor where you have your text and the visual kind of tabs. But I found with a block-based idea, I&#8217;m normally not going through the whole code of a whole post.</p>



<p>If I want to fiddle with HTML of a block, it&#8217;s mostly block-based, so I suggested to have that implemented because it would ease the flow of things as well. And although menu items actually have keyboard shortcuts, so it would also fall into the consistency of that. Well, I suggested as of September 2018, and there was a lot of engagement there, cool idea that really make sense, Mattias got involved. But still in December, so in November, there was some discussion about it, and there were quite a few who tried it and then didn&#8217;t get finished with the PR or with the code base. So I hope that sooner or later, a developer finds time to work through this to get this going. But that&#8217;s a classic example that even if you have a good idea, it does not always make it into a developer&#8217;s head, so we always also need to find a developer for actually implementing those features.</p>



<p>The last one that I&#8217;ll share with you is a Feature Improvement that you might want to help support, that&#8217;s a user triggered search in the Block Directory. So right now in the Block Directory, if you already have a block for a keyword, you are not able to see what else is in the Block Directory, you only see what&#8217;s on yours. So we went through, and this is pretty normal for feature requests that you first kind of need an idea of clearly how to actually implement that. And so, I posted a few screenshots kind of mock-ups where I put the button, and there were some ideas, and then the designers chimed in and also had some ideas. They are a little bit more fancy with their mock-ups, and then there&#8217;s some discussion going on and more mock-ups when they&#8217;re there and then it stalls a bit.</p>



<p>The last comment was September 2nd, and I started a couple of weeks ago to discuss it again, or just put another comment in there and, lo and behold, Kelly Dwan actually worked on something like that and already has a working design now, so this is cool. See, you can really influence how things are working when you are a little bit more engaged in the GitHub repository.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So these were quite a few examples on how someone who isn&#8217;t part of the developer team can contribute quite a bit to the development of WordPress. So, before you raise an issue, you might want to consider the following: isolate the issue to the core Block Editor, or plugin or the Gutenberg plugin. The icon that you see there is actually the icon of the health check and troubleshooting plugin which is fantastic to help you with that.</p>



<p>Check that out, because it will allow you to switch on a site, it can be a production site, but because it&#8217;s your admin, only for you, you can switch up all plugins and all themes and just enable the Gutenberg plugin and already have a test site, and your visitors and your fellow editors will see your site like it was. So we&#8217;ll use that plugin quite a bit, but it might help you with this as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And then the next step would be to search on existing issues. You can use labels and keywords. As you saw, there are some labels for blocks and labels for features that you can drill down into the Gutenberg repository, and then use the bug report issue template and that has five components.</p>



<p>One is, put a description of what you find and that description should be concise, but also comprehensive, so you need to strike a balance there. But the more details you put already in the pros, the more someone who reads it can kind of put themselves into your shoes and figure out what might go wrong, and also where you&#8217;re coming from, what you&#8217;re trying to do and what you&#8217;ve found, and then list the steps to replicate the issue. In order to do this right, you actually need to know how that thing happens. What are the steps that got you to that? And that&#8217;s one of the most difficult things to actually nail down so somebody else can have the same experience, but it&#8217;s a critical thing. So others can also reproduce the problem and then they can decide where the attack vector is and where the code needs to change.</p>



<p>What of course always helps is a screenshot or a screencast and then it has another section there that&#8217;s the expected behavior. It helps really mentally after I go through the steps, okay, this is what happens, I try that too. So what is it exactly that the person expected to happen? And it helps to reiterate that and show how you think this can be best solved.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And then the last part, the fifth part is, your environment information, what operating system you use, what browser you use, and which version. Also, if you use the WordPress core without the plugin, or a plugin, and the Gutenberg plugin and then also which version of the plugin. So when you go to the repository, and go to new issues and then click on bug report, that&#8217;s when you see the section&#8211;describe the bug, how to reproduce expected behavior screenshots and then the editor version, the desktop. And then, if you are on a smartphone, also what device and operating system and another iteration reports security issues not on GitHub, go to the WordPress hacker one program, report them there, because this is public information, and security issues should not be publicly disclosed before a fix is available. So this would be the plugin report issue template.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Okay, so how do you get started? You need a WordPress or it&#8217;s just a checklist to make sure that you have everything. You need a wordpress.org account and the links pointed to the places where you can do that. You do need to create a GitHub account, and then you also need to create a WordPress Slack account, and then connect your WordPress profile to your GitHub account, that is so you get all the credits for it.</p>



<p>In my profile I have here the GitHub account, when I go to edit profile I can revoke access. So there&#8217;s a GitHub username, and you should be logged in to both of them so you can directly connect the two. Jon Derosiers has also published a post on the core block about how that happened and all that.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So after creating issues, the four variations, you can stop there. You can just do that all day long or once a week and nobody will tell you what to do. This is all self-motivated and self-driven. You probably are expected to actually answer some of the questions as they come up on the GitHub repository, there&#8217;s a notification set up, but what comes next? What could you do afterwards? So, the first one would be, check out the labor needs testing. What does it entail?</p>



<p>What does it entail &#8212; the needs testing? It would entail that you&#8217;d go to the issues, read the description and then go through the steps here, too, and figure out if you are also seeing the same occurrence. If you do, share your information, share that you can reproduce it so someone as a developer is more sure that that is actually what needs to be solved, it&#8217;s not caused by something else that&#8217;s an underlying issue or something like that.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You could also participate in discussions. So, this is a fascinating place for me and I do productive procrastination on that quite a bit and fascinated by the discussions about possible solutions for a new feature or an enhancement. And sometimes that&#8217;s all that is in the discussions, but sometimes I actually have an opinion or a different idea and I share it, I chime in. And more often than not, my ideas might not make it into the final version of a new feature, but I always feel hurt that no aspects of my idea were considered, and I find great satisfaction with it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So an example could be improving the list block, so do we need more versions of that? And how those are going to be and any discussions like that, you don&#8217;t have to chime in, you just can read it, but I appreciate really how much thought in every issue goes and how many people have ideas or already have tested that, or have a working example implementation of that. Like here, Jeffrey Carandang has already something in his blogging.</p>



<p>And so, it&#8217;s really interesting to read through some discussions and if you don&#8217;t have an opinion, you don&#8217;t have opinion, but sometimes you have, and this is a moment where you can actually be heard, have your opinions made known, even if it doesn&#8217;t turn out that way entirely, but you bring yourself in and the team is very patient, and it&#8217;s very considerate and very thoughtful about how to answer to some suggestions. So, it&#8217;s definitely another way to contribute, and you can join the triage team.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So the triage team is an open group of people who label all the issues and shepherd them more or less through that process. You can read up about that on the contributor&#8217;s handbook. So that&#8217;s certainly another way to contribute and can join. You need additional permission to do that. And they tell you how, and follow that link, it shows you what is entailed on the Triage Team, and what the expectations are, and how they&#8217;ll meet and all that.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Now, if you need a broader focus on value working in a group on certain things, there is also the FSE means Full-Site-Editing Outreach Program, that&#8217;s run by Developer Relations Manager or Wrangler, Ann McCarthy. It&#8217;s geared towards people who build sites for others, but don&#8217;t write code. We get scripting tests for the author versions and then share our experience. You meet everyone in a separate Slack channel, it&#8217;s kind of a way to figure out if the people that would use it get everything they need.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s about not only the site editing flow, do the interfaces make sense, or you&#8217;re getting confused? Do you know how to go from one section to the other section? But also, how would you migrate themes over to the new way to do this? Or can you mix and match the old way with the new way and all that kind of things will be discussed there. So it&#8217;s a small group and it&#8217;s an experiment, that&#8217;s the first outreach program that WordPress has, so it&#8217;s quite an interesting way to also contribute to really work on the bleeding edge of a great feature that will change how WordPress or how people interact with WordPress and build their sites, definitely.</p>



<p>So, that&#8217;s all I have for you today. Of course, I&#8217;m looking forward to your questions now. You can stay in touch with me on the WordPress Slack, or on Twitter DMs, or Private Messaging or Direct Messagings are open. You can email me at <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">pauli@gutenbergtimes.com</a> or follow the <a href="https://twitter.com/gutenbergtimes?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">@gutenbergtimes</a> Twitter handle. You can also find all our live Q&amp;A shows on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/gutenbergtimes">Gutenberg Times YouTube Channel</a>, and if you want to keep up with what&#8217;s happening on a weekly basis, we release a weekend edition of hand-curated links from the community and from the team. And as I said, the slides are at bit.ly, <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/case-study-a-nocode-contributor-journey-on-the-wordpress-gutenberg-github-repo/">bit.ly/wordfest21</a>. All right, thanks so much and back to you.</p>



<p></p>
</div></div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"Gutenberg Times: Weekend Edition #154 WordPress Page Builders and Blocks";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=16453";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/weekend-edition-154-wordpress-page-builders-and-blocks/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19129:"<p>Howdy, howdy. </p>





<p>We had another interesting week and a lot of creativity around the block-editor. </p>





<p>I hope, you enjoy this eclectic collection of links from brilliant people sharing their expertise on podcasts, YouTube shows, Meetups, and in blog posts. </p>



<p>Let&#8217;s dive in &#8230; </p>



<p>Yours, ?<br />Birgit </p>





<p class="has-large-font-size"><strong>Sections</strong></p>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-block-editor-for-content-creators">Block-editor for Content Creators</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-block-based-theme-development-for-full-site-editing">Block-based Theme Development for Full-Site Editing</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-plugins-for-the-block-editor">Plugins for the Block Editor</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-gutenberg-and-page-builders">Gutenberg and Page Builders</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#4-developing-for-the-block-editor">Developing for the Block-Editor</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#5-upcoming-word-press-events">Upcoming WordPress Events</a></li></ul></div>



<div class="wp-container-615658ad4d224 wp-block-group has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p class="has-small-font-size"><strong>Bookmark the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index page&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />The WordPress make blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development Phase 2 are listed on one page: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS.</p>
</div></div>



<h2 id="0-block-editor-for-content-creators">Block-editor for Content Creators</h2>



<p>At WordPress Meetup Montclair, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/NewYorkerLaura">Laura Byrne</a></strong> gave the presentation: <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/play/sLUOBU6xMyfs8qgVq5FQs2PEsOk7-N3zNghtQYvshO-LFodK-wFfBmsZ71xAss-DwD9nuAjxTvr-e5O6.RyXu6bGU5y1GcHjo?continueMode=true&_x_zm_rtaid=7TfDJHTlSvyoXzp_YOMcQA.1610472197750.265ac9192d4ce11be2ece39374a6f2c3&_x_zm_rhtaid=495">Indespensible Blocks &#8211; How to use them and where to find them.</a>(Video). Laura showed the attendees how she, a power WordPress user,  works with the Block Editor, how she teaches the block editor to clients, and how the various blocks work. If you are still on the fence, definitely a show to watch. If you are already using it, still tune in for the secrets of a power user. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>Talking about content creators:  The recording of our  December <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-the-making-of-open-source-story-by-yoast-with-blocks/"><strong>Live Q &amp; A: The Making of Open-Source Story by Yoast with Blocks</strong></a> is now available on the Gutenberg Times including transcript and a ton of resources. Huge &#8220;Thank You&#8221; to Omar Reiss, Willemien Hallebeek and Anne McCarthy for the look behind the scenes of content creation at Yoast. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Mukarram Hossain</strong> shows you in his blog post <a href="https://www.netplanter.com/each-and-every-gutenberg-block-in-wordpress/">&#8220;How to Use each and every Gutenberg Block in WordPress&#8221;</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/corinaschedler">Corina Schedler</a></strong> explains in her article <a href="https://required.com/en/from-the-classic-to-the-block-editor-why-it-is-worth-switching-now/">Why it is now worth switching from Classic Editor to the block Editor.</a> And that is not only because the previous “Classic Editor” is&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/11/07/classic-editor-plugin-support-window/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">officially</a>&nbsp;only supported until the end of December 2021&#8230; ?</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<h2 id="1-block-based-theme-development-for-full-site-editing">Block-based Theme Development for Full-Site Editing</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/karks88">Eric Karkovack</a></strong> took an <a href="https://speckyboy.com/full-site-editing-in-wordpress/">Early Look at Full Site Editing in WordPress</a> and guides you along his first impressions. If you are new to the topic this is an excellent introduction. Similar to the FSE testing group, Eric also has a few more questions for the Gutenberg developers. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />






<p class="has-small-font-size">Join us for the next <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8916060629467/WN_vtNXZ0zTTs2S0S98X0Y9og">Gutenberg Times Live Q &amp; A on January 29th at 11:00 am ET (16:00 UTC)</a></p>



<a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8916060629467/WN_vtNXZ0zTTs2S0S98X0Y9og"><img /></a>



<p class="has-small-font-size">I am delighted to have these great experts on our show: </p>



<ul class="has-small-font-size"><li><strong>Carolina Nymark,</strong> teacher at fullsiteediting.com &amp; Themes team rep</li><li><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong>, runs Full-Site Editing outreach group and</li><li><strong>Ari Stathopoulos</strong>, core contributor, also Themes team</li></ul>



<p class="has-small-font-size">We’ll have the latest updates on Full-Site-Editing, block-based Themes and Global Styles for you. We will touch on what features will most likely land in WordPress 5.7 and as well as the Navigation and Widget screens. Join us and bring all your questions. <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8916060629467/WN_vtNXZ0zTTs2S0S98X0Y9og">Register on Zoom</a></p>




<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/fklux">Fränk Klein</a></strong> shared how he <a href="https://wpdevelopment.courses/articles/global-styles-in-block-based-bosco/">implemented the newly developed Global Styles feature</a> into his experimental block-based Bosco Theme, <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/block-based-bosco/">available in the WordPress themes directory.</a>. Fränk gives you a tour around the experimental <code>themes.json</code> file, and compares working with Styling for Full-Site-Editing with the current way themes deal with styling of headings, typography etc. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> published the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/01/15/fse-program-template-editing-testing-summary/">summary of the first call for testing from the FSE-program</a>. It&#8217;s an interesting read of what non-developers found when working from within the new Site Editor. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Kjellr Reigstad</strong> posted the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2021/01/15/gutenberg-themes-week-of-jan-11-2021/">#34 Gutenberg + Theme Update</a> on the Make blog &#8211; a weekly roundup of theme-related discussions, fixes, and developments in&nbsp;Gutenberg collected by the Themes team. </p>



<p>One of the highlights is the announcement that <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/tt1-blocks/">the TT1 Blocks theme is now available in the Theme Directory</a>. That&#8217;s this year&#8217;s default theme version made ready for the Full-Site-Editing experience.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>On ThemeShaper, <strong> <a href="https://twitter.com/JackLenox">Jack Lenox</a></strong> wrote the next post in the series <a href="https://themeshaper.com/2021/01/11/getting-started-with-block-themes-patterns/">&#8220;Getting Started with Block Themes&#8221;. </a>In his post you&#8217;ll learn how to create block patterns in a <em>from-Zero-to-Hero</em> way</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-landscape" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email">Email</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>



<h2 id="2-plugins-for-the-block-editor">Plugins for the Block Editor</h2>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/rob_stino"><strong>Rob Stinson</strong></a> wrote a tutorial on <a href="https://studiopress.blog/custom-block-for-woocommerce-how-to-build-a-related-products-block-you-can-put-anywhere/">how to create a related products Custom Block for WooCommerce</a>, using <strong>Genesis Block Pro</strong>, without using JavaScript. Rob Stinson is the co-founder of Block Lab, acquired by WP Engine last fall,  and now head of product management. <em>Beware: Not all features described in this tutorial are available with the free version of the plugin. </em></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>In his article <a href="https://wptavern.com/show-and-hide-content-via-the-block-visibility-wordpress-plugin">&#8220;Show and Hide Content via the Block Visibility WordPress Plugin&#8221;</a>,  <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> reviewed <em>Nick Diego</em>&#8216;s plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-visibility/"><strong>Block Visibility</strong></a>. It caught my eye as I have been trying to figure out how to manage content for different audiences, myself. &#8220;Block Visibility allows you to dynamically control which blocks are visible on your website and who can see them, which includes the ability to schedule blocks.&#8221; The scheduling part got me all excited as it allows me to prepare posts that contain embargo&#8217;ed information. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/editor-block-outline/"><strong>Editor Block Outline</strong></a> by Kalimah Apps is a plugin that has implemented what many people find missing with the Block Editor: Better outlines and identification of blocks, especially when they are tested inside other blocks like a Group blocks or column block.</p>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/navigate-the-content-canvas-with-the-block-editor-outline-wordpress-plugin?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=navigate-the-content-canvas-with-the-block-editor-outline-wordpress-plugin">WPTavern posted a review</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<h2 id="3-gutenberg-and-page-builders">Gutenberg and Page Builders</h2>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/brianleejackson">Brain Jackson</a>, tweeted: <em>&#8220;Page builders are dead and blocks are the future of WordPress (yes, I said it.) &#8220;</em> And he shared his <a href="https://woorkup.com/generateblocks-review/">review of the plugin Generate Blocks Pro, that was release this week.</a> &#8220;See how to build fast and lightweight WordPress sites with Generate blocks&#8221; he <a href="https://twitter.com/brianleejackson/status/1349843804371632129">continued</a>. </p>



<p><a href="https://woorkup.com/go/generateblocks" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GenerateBlocks</a>&nbsp;is a free WordPress plugin created by Tom Usborne. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> wrote an interesting article on the topic of speed.  <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenbergs-faster-performance-is-eroding-page-builders-dominance">Gutenberg’s Faster Performance Is Eroding Page Builders’ Dominance</a>. After citing blog posts by Munir Kamal, Kyle Van Deusen and others, and providing the bigger context with Google&#8217;s Web Vitals initiative, Sarah concludes: </p>



<p>&#8220;For the past two years, WordPress users have been asking if Gutenberg will replace page builders. It looks more and more likely if the most popular ones remain bloated alternatives and the smaller ones keep on the same trajectory of attrition. It won’t happen overnight, but it is bound to accelerate when full-site editing makes its debut in WordPress core.&#8221;. </p>



<p>Don&#8217;t just read the article, though. The discussion in the comments is also very enlightening. </p>



<h2 id="4-developing-for-the-block-editor">Developing for the Block-Editor</h2>



<p>In this interview on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aElPWRqV9zQ">Highrise Digital WPCafe Episode 8</a>, <strong>Bill Erickson</strong> discussed with Keith Devon and Mark Wilkinson his process on working with Gutenberg. </p>



<p>He made Block Areas work for sites was ahead of the Gutenberg team adding blocks to sidebars and footers. It was a refreshing to hear Bill talk about the rich user experiences and the joy his customers gain from seeing the editor mirror their homepage exactly as it will be on the front-end and his goal to make that experience pixel perfect. </p>



<p>If you are a developer or designer or agency owner this is definitely a podcast episode well worth listening to. </p>





<h2 id="5-upcoming-word-press-events">Upcoming WordPress Events</h2>



<p><strong>January 19, 2021 6:30 PM&nbsp;to&nbsp;8:30 PM EST (23:30 UTC)</strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/SF-WordPress-Users/events/275538774/"><strong>WordPress &#8220;Mega Meetup&#8221;: The &#8220;New Year, New Stuff&#8221; Episode</strong></a><br />Four Speakers: Taco Verdonschot,  David Yarde, Gary Smith, Valerie Pierce</p>



<p><strong>January 21, 2021 7:00 pm ET (00:00 UTC)</strong><br /><a href="https://burbswp.com/events/event/its-a-gutenberg-world/"><strong>Philly &#8216;burbs WordPress Meetup &#8220;It’s a Gutenberg World&#8221;</strong></a><br />The local community will share their recommendations for a combined total of 10 blocks or block libraries. </p>



<p><strong>January 22, 2021 – 24-hour event</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.wordfest.live/register/"><em>The</em>&nbsp;festival of WordPress – WordFest</a></strong><br />The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wordfest.live/schedule/">sessions and schedule</a>&nbsp;are now posted. The format is 30 min pre-recorded w/ 15 min Q &amp; A, so attendees can interact with the speakers live. There are 48 sessions on four stages. The Global stage runs talks for the full 24 hrs. Holy Cow!</p>



<ul><li><strong>Daisy Olsen</strong>&nbsp;will talk on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wordfest.live/sessions/extending-the-wordpress-editor-with-block-patterns/">Extending the WordPress Editor With Block Patterns</a>&nbsp;at 11 pm ET on 1/21 / 2:00 UTC –</li><li>My talk will be on 1/22 at 4 pm ET / 21:00 UTC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wordfest.live/sessions/case-study-a-nocode-contributor-journey-on-the-wordpress-gutenberg-github-repo/">“Case Study: A #Nocode Contributor Journey On The WordPress Gutenberg GitHub Repo”</a>.</li></ul>



<p><strong>January 30–February 14, 2021</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://india.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp India</a></strong><br />Yes! You read those dates right.&nbsp;The Organizers plan to have a WordCamp over three weekends!&nbsp; It will be a fully online event.</p>



<ul><li>January 30 – 31&nbsp; – Workshop Days</li><li>February 6 – 7 – Contributor Days</li><li>February 13 – 14 – Speaker Talks</li></ul>




<p><em>Featured Image: Photo by&nbsp;<a href="https://unsplash.com/@socialcut?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">S O C I A L . C U T</a>&nbsp;on&nbsp;<a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/block-background?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></em></p>




<div class="wp-container-615658ad4d742 wp-block-group has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p class="has-large-font-size"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e3062ef0fb204dbbc2135b555&id=b91bccb20a&e=51a7acdf8f">Gutenberg Changelog</a><strong> Update</strong></p>



<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/changelog-35-gutenberg-9-6-and-9-7-fse-pattern-directory-live-qa/">Episode #35</a></strong> <strong>is now available with show notes and transcript. </strong><br /><strong>Episode #36 will be recorded on January 22nd, 2021</strong></p>



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<div class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/ejkuWklfspWjopIFKeM7MPUxg38ytwspTneupQtkg6wzjI7G5PJskwI1RWTFGjY-xPQVoChNEfboZYlhi5N-u1HHgMEeroWjuUf6XXI2fegG5uBWVArjSGqQK9_d5KJl_J4_mhAy" alt="" width="546" height="195" />Joy of WP: <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e3062ef0fb204dbbc2135b555&id=2827db0e1c&e=51a7acdf8f">The NPR Of All Things Gutenberg</a> –<br />an Interview with Birgit Pauli-Haack</div>



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<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"Gutenberg Times: Live Q &amp; A: The Making of Open-Source Story by Yoast with Blocks";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=16447";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:89:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-the-making-of-open-source-story-by-yoast-with-blocks/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:59772:"<p>Yoast partner and CTO, Omar Reiss and content team lead Willemien Hallebeek took us behind the scenes of the making of the Open-Source Story, a richly illustrated and interactive post about the nature of open-source from a collaborative business point of view. They also shared how they built it with the WordPress block editor, explain their approaches and answer your questions. </p>



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<p class="has-huge-font-size">Transcript</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: 26 Gutenberg Live Q&amp;A. My name is Birgit Pauli-Haack and I&#8217;m your host, and the curator of Gutenberg Times. Thank you all for watching, it&#8217;s great to have you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In today&#8217;s show, we will discuss The Making of the Post Open Source Better Solutions and more inclusive society that the content creators at Yoast and the techies put together. I&#8217;m extremely honored to have as guests three wonderful experts to discuss this and answer all your questions. We have Willemien Hallebeek, she&#8217;s the manager of content at Yoast. Hi, Willemien. How are you this evening?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Hi. I&#8217;m doing great. Thank you so much for having us.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s awesome that you&#8217;re here and then I finally get to meet you. I read a lot of your content. We also have with us Anne McCarthy, developer relations wrangler at Automattic and on loan to the WordPress open source project. She&#8217;s also co-host of the show. Good afternoon, Anne. How are you today?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Doing great. Thanks so much for having me.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Awesome. And then, we have Omar Reiss, partner and CTO at Yoast. Hi, Omar. Welcome to the show. Thank you for all three of you, you&#8217;ve taken the time out of your day and be with us together. So how are you doing?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Great, great. Thank you so much for having us.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right. Well, and welcome to Bob from Las Vegas. Who else is in there? Yeah, well, use the chat window to let us know more about you, dear listeners. Before we do proper introductions, in less than a minute, I hope, I have a few housekeeping notes and an announcement. This is going to be a mixed conversation, so we have demos, we have the questions that we have, and then we have your questions. If you have questions, please add them to the YouTube chat on the right, or use the Q&amp;A feature on the bottom of your screen to let us know your questions. We will give answers in between segments, so put them in here so they&#8217;re in the queue and we can get right to them. Feel free also to share your thoughts and comments in the chat, but please be kind, even if you disagree. This is a family-friendly endeavor.</p>



<h2>Announcement</h2>



<p>Before we go into the deep weeds, and I have you here and your attention, State of the Word, the annual keynote by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg is next week. Because WordCamp US was canceled, this is going to be a live stream event simultaneously streamed to the WordPress YouTube channel, the WordPress Facebook page, and the WordPress Twitter account. So mark your calendar. It&#8217;s on December 17th at 16:00 UTC. That is 11 a.m in Eastern, it&#8217;s 8 a.m Pacific, and it&#8217;s 5 o&#8217;clock Middle European time, I think.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For the Q&amp;A part of the live stream, and that&#8217;s something totally new, you can pre-record your question via a video. And a big emphasis on landscape format, not landscape, and send it before the event. Actually, the deadline for that is tomorrow, so you don&#8217;t have a whole lot of time left. Detailed instructions are in the news post on the WordPress.org, so go there. Yes, so that&#8217;s out of the way.</p>



<h2>Introductions</h2>



<p>I&#8217;m thrilled you&#8217;re all here. So let&#8217;s start. Omar, it&#8217;s been a while that we connected on WordCamp. I think we met in 2019 or so in &#8230; no, &#8217;18.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: 2018.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: In Nashville.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: You&#8217;re a partner with Yoast, one of four, now six, I heard, or the border is now six, and you&#8217;re the chief technology officer. What exactly are you doing with Yoast? What&#8217;s your responsibility?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Well, yeah, I&#8217;m just in charge of everything that has to do with technology at Yoast. So the development teams, the QA teams, and the devops teams all report to me. I am also responsible for software architecture, so basically, the design of the code itself.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right. Interesting. Are you also going to fix my printer or you don&#8217;t have any printers anymore?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: No. That&#8217;s the only part of technology that I&#8217;m not responsible for at the Yoast. That&#8217;s part of the operations side of things.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right. Well, thank you. Yoast is, after Automattic, the biggest corporate contributor to the open source project, WordPress open source project. How deep are you involved in this part of the Yoast team.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Well, I&#8217;m starting to get quite involved again. The team is led by Francesca Morano, who you might know.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I led a couple of WordPress releases. I think we have meetings every Tuesday where we discuss our efforts, and I&#8217;m generally present there. It kind of got the contributor virus reactivated, and I plan to work on some build tooling stuff for WordPress 5.7. So, yeah, ready to get back in the game.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay, excellent.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Anne, we had many, many chats conversations on Slack about the various aspects of Gutenberg adoption events and the testing part of it. I&#8217;m so thrilled that you&#8217;re a co-host on the show today. You work as developer relations wrangler on loan through the WordPress project. What exactly do you do?</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: It&#8217;s a good question. I also just want to say it&#8217;s so awesome to actually be able to collaborate with you on this. I feel like we talk so much. It&#8217;s really, really an honor, so thank you for having me.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Yeah, I focus on the developer experience, whether that&#8217;s through creating better product feedback loops, through things like the full site outreach program, or calls for testing, trying to help get developers better connected both with each other and with the wider community and sharing resources. I helped kind of start a thing called Hallway Hangouts, which a bunch of people have done, which is super exciting. Trying to make it easier for new devs, that they&#8217;re first coming in to get acquainted with the community and get onboarded. So there&#8217;s been a couple different like documentation initiatives with that.</p>



<p>Most recently, if you join co-editor for the first time, you&#8217;ll get a nice little Slack bot ping introducing you to things. So trying to be a bit creative there, especially while we can&#8217;t gather in person. And probably the last thing is just community-wide communication to get people excited about what&#8217;s happening with development and kind of just making it known in a way that&#8217;s user-focused and just builds excitement about the future of WordPress. So that&#8217;s kind of it in a nutshell.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, but that&#8217;s a lot of work. I&#8217;m glad that you&#8217;re doing it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Willemien, it&#8217;s such a pleasure to meet you, manager of content. Knowing Yoast&#8217;s work in SEO, that sounds like a big job. What is it exactly that you do and how many people do you have doing it?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Well, yeah, it&#8217;s a great job. It details a lot of content. Yoast.com has a lot of content. My main focus used to be on our blog, but since you&#8217;re short while, I&#8217;m also responsible for all the content on Yoast.com. That means we have a lot of help pages, feature pages, product pages. Well, I&#8217;m responsible for the entire thing, so make sure what&#8217;s created, and check the coherence and consistency of it. Because we&#8217;re growing, more people are working on our content, we want to prevent that we&#8217;re doing on one side something and on the other side the same thing. Yeah. It&#8217;s like the overview, overall responsibility of the content.</p>



<p>How many people? Yeah, that&#8217;s actually quite difficult. Well, I have three people in my blog team, well, we&#8217;re three actually; and three people from our academy team, they make our courses but also contribute a lot to the website; and then we have some people who actually work on the website but are not necessarily in my team, people creating content for our product pages, feature pages.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, interesting.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Who writes documentation at Yoast?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Documentation. I think &#8230; Omar, I think it&#8217;s Jimmy who writes for the dev portal documentation, right?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah. Even Joost himself still writes a lot of documentation. Jono-</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: &#8230; Jimmy. That&#8217;s a lot of development documentation and the support team does a lot of the help documentation.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I think the academy team recently rewrote a lot of the stuff as well.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Exactly, yeah. Yeah. We had a huge knowledge base, which was transformed to our help section of the site, and academy did a great job in making that very easy to understand for people. Because if you&#8217;re looking for a help article, it needs to be you know understandable for many people.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah. It&#8217;s not mainly the academy job. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It needs all the green lights on the Yoast plug-in, right?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Exactly, yeah. Yeah. We read all of that on our website. Yeah.</p>



<h2>Open-Source Story</h2>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So taking this open-source story that&#8217;s our topic today, as an example, so what&#8217;s your process from idea to publishing? What&#8217;s the genesis pretty much of that post on your site?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. The idea, I think Omar can tell that story best because he was there when the idea was born. I just took it on later.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: You can tell something about the creation process that&#8217;s been mostly your job.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Exactly. I can tell &#8230;</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: But let me give a brief, I think I was with Marieke at a WordCamp, Marieke, our CEO, and she gave a really great talk about gender stereotypes and prejudices. It&#8217;s a really, really nice talk. If you&#8217;re into diversity, I think it&#8217;s a really nice talk to also go look up on WordPress.tv. At Yoast, we&#8217;ve traditionally been really strong in our core values. We have a couple of things that are important to us, diversity is one, open source is another one. We have all these great stories that we tell on WordCamps, wouldn&#8217;t it be awesome to have these in a digital story format on Yoast.com as well, as really rich content that is dynamic and interactive?</p>



<p>With Gutenberg being present at the time, that was actually something that seemed really attainable. We basically said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s go. Let&#8217;s turn our important sort of core value stories that are close to our hearts. Let&#8217;s turn them into digital stories on Yoast.com and really give people something special. And then we turn to Willemien to create that.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: That&#8217;s how that process goes.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: And then I was involved.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, go ahead.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: I got this idea, and then what we did was I started, first, we thought what do we want to tell people of course. And then I started gathering content we already had on our website, because we had some story, well, not stories, just more posts about why open source is great, or how to contribute. We had smaller parts of the story already on our website. I started gathering that and writing a complete story of it. We would really have a long read, and then I started thinking about what is a nice way to visualize this? We also had videos and we had a copy on some parts. I thought about a quiz for instance that we could add.</p>



<p>So, yeah, that was just a big document actually with ideas and content, some links to videos and that went to our design department. They&#8217;ve created this awesome design of the page. They already kept in mind the blocks that were created previously for the prejudice story. Because they&#8217;ve kept that in mind, in fact, it was quite easy to create the content in the editor because the blocks were there, the content was there, and mainly, it was just on the getting it in.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Sure.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Making sure it all looks fine on the front end.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I think it would be a good occasion here to have Omar kind of walk us through the back end, just scroll through the front end and then also through the back end of it and kind of talk about those segments. You can certainly, both of you kind of talk about things. What do you think?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Definitely.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Let me show you the page.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Just for reference, I&#8217;ve also opened up the first one that we made, which is the &#8216;Gender, stereotypes and prejudice&#8217; one and you see that it&#8217;s also got animations; the open source one, we left it out for this time, but something that you can also do with Gutenberg, and I might show a little bit later. Basically, most of the stuff you see here, even this probably, it can be done with Gutenberg natively, which is really nice, even though, in our case, this table of contents is block, because we generated it with a special block, but we&#8217;ll show you about that later.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: This was added later, right, Willemien?</p>



<p>Willemien Hallebeek: Yeah, it was added later. It was actually some feedback from Yoast. He thought, well, maybe we could have something at the beginning just making clear what you can find in the story. Because it&#8217;s a long story, so you want to take people by the hand and already give them some idea of what&#8217;s in it.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah. The funny thing is right at the start of the story you see this sort of card game where you can basically do sort of a quiz, where you can guess, so is this washing machine? Is it partly or created with the help of open source technology? And then you can guess like, &#8220;Well, no, it&#8217;s a washing machine, it&#8217;s not open source.&#8221; It&#8217;s like &#8230; no, oops.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: I love this. I thought this was such a cool way to bring home the power of open source and engage with the page.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Right.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. This part was really, because I thought, well, maybe people know some software is open source, but perhaps they don&#8217;t know washing machines can be open source.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: This kind of quiz sort of format we actually reused it from the stereotype where you have to choose if this is a stereotype or a prejudice. Basically, &#8220;This sentence, is it the prejudice?&#8221; And they&#8217;re like, &#8220;Yes, well done. It&#8217;s a prejudice because it makes a harmful judgment based ….&#8221; It&#8217;s the exact same kind of quiz format where you have to guess if it&#8217;s one or the other, but it&#8217;s a completely different game because this is aimed at understanding the difference between a stereotype and a prejudice. Here, it&#8217;s aimed at sort of simply guessing if open source is involved or not. You can even imagine a true or false game or whatever. There&#8217;s many different things that you could use this block for.</p>



<p>But the funny thing is that, like for instance, behind here, you can see a nice cover. That&#8217;s something that is just using Gutenberg natively. I&#8217;ll show you that in a minute. Yeah. So it&#8217;s got all kinds of this kind of interactive elements. You can see that there is a regular video here and that it has a sort of special functionality, that you can read also the transcript of that video. So it&#8217;s in there, if you want to read it; and if you want to hide it, you can hide it. So that makes it a really dynamic story. You can watch the video and it will tell you a little bit more, and then you continue farther into the story.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Yeah. Like I said, most of what you can see here, you can do this in Gutenberg. There&#8217;s nothing needed to make this work. It&#8217;s just an image in a column block, and I will show you that later, which I think is amazing because what we set out to do &#8230; like, you have a couple of these examples of big publishers like the New York Times who creates these really compelling interactive digital stories. That&#8217;s really costly to do and they need designers and developers to make it. Basically, all of them have tried also turning that stuff into a framework that can be reused to create other stories. Well, basically, with Gutenberg, in a few blocks you have this framework. It&#8217;s really easy for anyone to sort of create this sort of rich, compelling content by themselves. It only requires a few blocks and a really nice book editor. So, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: That reminds me of the snow article from New York Times. I think Mel Choyce might have given a WordPress TV. I think it&#8217;s a WordPress TV talked about that, how you can recreate that in Gutenberg and how much it&#8217;s unlocked. It&#8217;s super cool.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I&#8217;d love to see that talk. That&#8217;s exactly the kind of ….</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: I&#8217;ll get back on you when I find it.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: That&#8217;s exactly the kind of example that I was thinking about.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: It&#8217;s also the example that I gave I think about four years ago in the cafeteria of the Yoast.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah, I remember.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I gave a presentation about digital storytelling and I gave that example as well. It&#8217;s like so cool what you could do. But it was so hard to make that at that time.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: They spent months on that, right? It was a huge undertaking from them to do that.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Exactly. You can see there&#8217;s some design things that are being reused. I&#8217;ll show you some examples from the other story as well what we did. Let me look if I can find another compelling block.&nbsp;</p>



<p>This is the important. This &#8216;Thrive for the future&#8217; talk here, which is a talk by Joost and Marieke, and it&#8217;s been done in different forms also by Joost alone and he also did it together in a couple of occasions, which is really sort of our story about open source. That story sort of explained here in WordPress.tv, but then it&#8217;s also completely explained here in the whole &#8216;Tragedy of the commons&#8217; and how open source can help lead to a sort of reverse tragedy of the commons, and how can we get to a victory of the commons. Basically, the whole fight for the future thing in WordPress is explained and why it&#8217;s important. It&#8217;s a really important story for us and we really like to tell it. And you see the &#8216;Five for the Future&#8217; is explained here.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right. Are these column blocks or are these media and text blocks?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: We should watch it. Let&#8217;s briefly go to the back end to see what this looks like. Let&#8217;s first go to those blocks that we were just looking at. Yeah, we were looking at this one, right?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, they&#8217;re column blocks, yeah. Okay, got it.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: So these are column blocks. I think, just here, if you look at this, this is I think is a group block. No, that&#8217;s a column block, and then this is a group block, and then these are columns. It&#8217;s so incredible what you can just do with playing old Gutenberg right out of the box.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So that&#8217;s a gallery, I would assume, the pictures up there.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Oh, yeah. We&#8217;re looking at this one. Which one did you say, gallery?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: The four pictures, kind of in the further up I think it was.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Oh, yeah. Right. So it seems like this is also a column block with multiple images.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: And then to right below each other. This is a group.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: And you can see the structure here.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s called the list view now. It was the block navigator. Just kind of a little tidbit here, we changed the interface, everything.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah. That&#8217;s been quite some interface changes, but fortunately, it all still works.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I think a good thing to take a look at now is the how we use ACF. Because that&#8217;s made it so much easier to do this stuff, right?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p>Omar Reiss: We actually have a native table of contents block in Yoast SEO, but it doesn&#8217;t include this sort of image format. So if you go to that, you see these images that are in front of the table of contents and then basically the sub-headings. We created the sort of custom fields block for that where you can….</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, okay, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reis</em>s: Yeah. Basically this is &#8230; I think it&#8217;s a repeater where you can have multiple links.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: These are the three sections, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah. The downside of this is that it&#8217;s not 100% what-you-see-is-what-you-get. But the upside of this is that it&#8217;s really easy to give rich elements, interactive elements and just fill them with the data and the content that&#8217;s needed.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, even more so with the quiz, I would think.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reis</em>s: Definitely, this is a really good example. So this is the quiz. What I really find compelling about is that here you see there&#8217;s a Cover block, there&#8217;s a Group inside there with a Heading and a Paragraph, which is these two, and then the Yoast Stories Card Game and it all just seamlessly works together. I think it&#8217;s really miraculous how intuitive that is.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So, in ACF, you create your field group, and then you tell in the field group that is for a block, and then you need to&#8230;?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah. Let me show you the card game. Here, this is our field groups in ACF. Basically, what we did is we defined upfront what a card game is in terms of data. Here, we&#8217;ve defined that, we&#8217;re saying basically a card game is a repeater block and every sort of card game has its own image: Option A, Option B, Statement, and Explanation. Yeah, what you get here to put there. Basically, what ACF requires you to do to turn a sort of field group into a block is you need to register a template for that block, and then the template can use the fields. And then that&#8217;s basically how you can use it as a blog.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: How quickly did you realize you needed to use ACF for this? Did you try to use Gutenberg first and then it was like, &#8220;This isn&#8217;t going to work, we have to switch over,&#8221; or did you live with this?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: No. Basically, we knew that it wasn&#8217;t possible to do it with Gutenberg natively without coding a block so we would have to create a custom block. Then you can do it with ACF, which is really simple to do, especially if you have a little bit of development power. But anybody who&#8217;s able to create a WordPress theme or even tweak a WordPress theme could create an ACF block.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you want to create a custom sort of Javascript powered what-you-see-is-what-you-get block in Gutenberg, it&#8217;s much more work, basically. You have to completely think through the entire interface of how to interact with that. Yeah, it&#8217;s really not trivial to do, especially if you want to make something dynamic and interactive.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Have you tried any other of the non-Javascript block builders like Block Lab that&#8217;s now Genesis Blocks Pro, I think it&#8217;s called, the other one is called Lazy Blocks?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I haven&#8217;t tried those yet. But I have created a lot of custom blocks sort of from scratch. Also, Yoast SEO has got a couple of ones. So we are definitely familiar with how to create native blocks, so to speak. But I haven&#8217;t tried the other sort of custom block solutions that are out there.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I did a few months back, maybe a year and a half ago, kind of a summary on that, on the W Tavern from creating blocks without Javascript and comparing all three of them. I&#8217;m going to try if I can grab that and share it in a bit. Yeah. Oh, and then you wanted to show us the video, the special features?</p>



<h2>Video data in ACF Block</h2>



<p>Omar Reiss: Yeah. I just wanted to show you this example because I think it would have been nice to create this as a native block, because this is a video. A video is something that the Gutenberg Editor actually knows how to do. But then again, because we also wanted to have a transcript, we sort of took a shortcut. And it was just the easiest thing to do this in an ACF block because I would only have to worry about the template. Well, it kind of works, but then again, this would not have been hard to do more natively. Maybe if we put in like two hours extra, then this could have been a nicer, better experience.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, I&#8217;m always on the impression, if it works, why change it?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah, that&#8217;s true as well.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: It also adds a nice experience for people who are building the content to kind of prime them to include a transcript, which I think on the content side I&#8217;m sure that&#8217;s also helpful.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes, it&#8217;s absolutely helpful. Yeah. Because not everybody can listen to audio on their computers.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah, exactly. That&#8217;s why these are added.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I think I&#8217;d like to show &#8230; Oh, sorry?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: I just want to say we added them to these two videos.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I&#8217;m just making a call for our audience here. If you have any questions to Willemien and Omar, please use the Q&amp;A on the bottom of the screen and then we can kind of read them here for both of them to answer. Just not seeing any, so I think I need to coax a little bit more.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Won&#8217;t you pull up the animations? I know, Omar, you said you might show how that&#8217;s done.</p>



<h2>Animations</h2>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Wanted to show you is there&#8217;s two things about this post that I really like, that I also wanted to showcase, because it shows a little bit more what&#8217;s possible even. All of these animations are powered by a library called Lottie. Lottie is basically a Javascript library that allows you to animate SVGs in a certain format. If you use I think Adobe, some kind of Adobe product, it&#8217;s really easy to make those animations with Lottie. It&#8217;s a library by Airbnb. Basically, what I did is I included Lottie with Yoast.com. So it now comes with Yoast.com and you can now directly export these sort of animated SVGs from Adobe and upload them to Yoast.com and use them in any content, basically.</p>



<p>So this was an experiment to do that. I think it&#8217;s really cool that sort of Yoast.com now by default supports these animations in the block editor. I actually got it to work &#8230; Let me, this is going to be a live demo risk, but I&#8217;m still going to take it. Let me see. I think they work also in the editor themselves, which I was like, you know, my nerd heart beating….</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: I have one of those moments.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah. So because I want, when I upload those images, and I hope I can find an example, yeah &#8230; that I can see them animate in the editor.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Wow, that&#8217;s really cool.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: That would be the magic moment for me. That, I got to work so. Yeah, that was a really big, big victory and a lot of fun.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Do you share how you&#8217;re doing it all? Have you all written up like the process you went through, to integrate the library?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah, actually I think I do.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: That would be super cool to see.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah. Frontliners &#8230;</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: I&#8217;m glad we all Google the same way for things.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah. I wrote this post.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: But Yoast app just wouldn&#8217;t be showing up in Google.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: In 2020, I wrote this post &#8216;Digital storytelling in the age of blocks&#8217; where I explained every step and, basically, the basics just use the block editor. I also show how we did a lot of the stuff and also the templating and stuff. Because one of the things that I was excited about, and I also show in this post, is that we actually use the Yoast FAQ block. Let me try to find it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I&#8217;m glad you mentioned that.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Here, in this post, this is just the Yoast FAQ block. You can see that this &#8220;Are men smarter than women?&#8221; This format is not what you see on the front end because what you see on the front end is this, it&#8217;s where the answer is actually hidden and these prejudices are shown. And then you sort of first get to think about it and then you show the answer and you hopefully get confronted with something to think about even more.</p>



<p>So what I did is on the front end I filtered the blocks, the Yoast FAQ block, and came up with a different representation of the same block, which sort of turned it a little bit in this game format. It&#8217;s just one other example of how incredibly flexible the block editor is and blocks are to use to your advantage. I thought it was really compelling, nice example of how we can reuse an existing block actually made by a plugin in our, in this case, our plugin. But, yeah, that was really exciting for me.</p>



<p>In terms of demo, I think that&#8217;s the most important thing. Is there anything you would like me to showcase or show?</p>



<h2>Questions</h2>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, ask the people in the audience I think &#8230; well, we certainly have a few questions.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: I&#8217;m also happy to jump in with some too because this has been really fun.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: When do you decide between kind of using something like ACF or do you want to do custom build blocks. It&#8217;s certainly one that I&#8217;m always struggling with. Also, what does Willemien think about ACF versus a custom-built block and all that.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Well, yeah, I&#8217;m really the least technical person here. Awesome. I think that the nice thing is if you really use block &#8230; for us, it&#8217;s mostly important that you can see what you get. So, yeah, if it gets closest to that, if you&#8217;re creating the content in the back end, it&#8217;s just so nice that you don&#8217;t have to switch all the time between preview and go back to the editor and doesn&#8217;t really look like what you want to. Yeah, that&#8217;s mainly ….</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. That&#8217;s a very important one.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: I think, well, it&#8217;s just nice to see, to do most stuff in the editor whenever it&#8217;s possible, what Omar said as well.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: And if-</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Go ahead, Omar.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: No, I just want to share, if anybody wants to see anything, I can always share again.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haac</em>k: Yeah, sure.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: But I like to see you large as well, so that&#8217;s right.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I think it&#8217;s important to, what you say, Willemien, in terms of, well, on that blog or post, you only had maybe three videos in ACF and that quiz, but when you look at larger publishers’ websites, yeah, I went to the WordCamp for publishers and one of the speakers showed nine pages of ACF fields with all kinds of different data. But only when you hit Preview, you were able to actually see what you put where and where it will show up. I think that what you see is what you get is really important. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. It makes our job a lot easier, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I totally agree with the long list of ACF that is not a great user experience. We&#8217;ve created a couple of dynamic blocks because this is what we&#8217;re talking about. Basically, blocks that are rendered in the PHP via a template, that&#8217;s very easy to create.&nbsp;</p>



<p>What I think I prefer in those blocks and maybe the other examples that you gave just now Birgit. It more like that is where you have sort of the server-side render component in the editor where you actually see what is being rendered in the editor. And you do the editing in the sidebar and then, on mobile, this is not the best experience maybe, but it&#8217;s a really nice experience on desktop where you can actually see what you&#8217;re editing. That might be a good middle ground. But generally the reason why we chose ACF blocks for this kind of stuff is just also cost. A cost reason because it&#8217;s just you know it&#8217;s really easy, much easier to do and cheaper.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Yeah. Quickly, there&#8217;s an attendee question that we can answer. The question&#8217;s anonymous and it&#8217;s, &#8220;How About Site Speed in such long stories? Were there any measurements done in terms of site speed both front-end and back end good question yes thank you well a really.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Good question, thank you.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Well, it&#8217;s a really good question. I remember having the question the first time, I don&#8217;t know, did you look at site speed for the open source post that we did.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: We did. After we posted it, we checked it. We found out we could improve some images so we really we turned them all into png to make sure they can be with clouds there. They now are transferred, they&#8217;re now made into a web pea and I think that&#8217;s the fastest way and to make them as small as possible actually I think there are also Lazy Loaded now, right?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. I think yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: When you scroll….</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. Lazy Loading. I don&#8217;t know about the animations and those are actually ….</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: SVGs, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: So the animated image, I remember also looking at that, they&#8217;re not very big but there are a lot of them on the page. I think in the end we also &#8230; but I should check if that if that indeed works. But I think we also managed to lazily load those SVGs.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s always a little bit of a technical, so what&#8217;s speed and what&#8217;s perceived speed.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So as soon as I can read something very quickly, yeah, I don&#8217;t care that much how long it takes that what I&#8217;m not who I&#8217;m not scrolling to is not there. Yet, yes, it kind of comes back comes later so I think that &#8230; have you done any measurements in that regard or optimized your site like the text is not, that the site doesn&#8217;t have to be fully built to show people something, or fully rendered.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I think the main thing that we lazily load is the images. So those are not rendered on page. But all the rest is entirely cached in CloudFlare, so generally Yoast.com pages, even bigger pages are really quite fast to load because they&#8217;re completely cached and nothing has to be sort of made ready to download before it can come to your browser.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. It&#8217;s definitely something to keep in mind when you create a story like this.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So does that answer the question of Anonymous? All right. Yes. Okay, good.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I had also a question that we put together. Now that it&#8217;s out there and how you built it, if you had it to do all over again, would you do anything differently or what is it to improve?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: I can&#8217;t tell, but after looking again at the other story, I just really regret that we didn&#8217;t add more animations in it. Yeah, because they mostly make it just more fun to watch, more dynamic. But they also take more time to be created, to be developed. So, it&#8217;s kind of the&#8230;.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: The victory of the commons, I feel like that could have been really cool, like people cycling together kind of thing.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah, exactly.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: The animations.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: And you can make it alive, right? Yeah. There&#8217;s lots of ideas, right? We are actually planning on another big one. I think it&#8217;s coming out in a couple of weeks.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah, Schema.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss:</em> It&#8217;s a big one on Schema. But the idea from the start was to have a framework and to improve on it. Basically, we wanted to just see how difficult is it to create a framework for digital storytelling now that we have this awesome block editor. I think the experience with this second post, the second story, was that it really didn&#8217;t require a lot of extra work to build it technically. We got a new table of contents idea there and it was built by a front end there. It was added to what we had already and mostly we could build with the building blocks that we had. I do think that it would be nice to explore the other options, for instance, that you shared, I think Atomic Blocks, is that the one??</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Atomic Blocks. Yeah. You mean not using Javascript but a templating thing for that?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: One is the Genesis Blocks actually, which is the Block Lab out of Australia, was bought by WP Engines, and they are now Genesis Blocks Pro I think.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Right. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: They have a free version in the repository. That was actually quite powerful. Actually, when I scrolled through this and now listening to you, have you thought about would it be even faster to put together if you had section block patterns instead of kind of having, yeah, together three &#8230; I can see that the columns block was the group block with a different background and with the different images in there take actually quite a bit to put together from scratch. If you had a block pattern then you could just kind of pull it in and say, &#8220;Okay. I have these two guys to the right with text and then in the middle column and just kind of pull it in with the background.” Yeah. Have you thought about doing that and kind of improving on your framework?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah, definitely. I haven&#8217;t thought about it yet, but it sounds like a great idea.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. It sounds like a dream for a content editor to be able to drag it in. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: I made a site recently and I did something like that with some patterns where at first I was like manually copying-pasting, removing the stuff I didn&#8217;t want and all of a sudden I was like, &#8220;Wait a second. I can just have a pattern, have it ago, and just plug and play,&#8221; so for content, it&#8217;s amazing, especially&#8230;.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Did you need to do any development for that or is it something that you can do as a content editor?</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: No. I did it just on the side. A lot of it was done, for this site in particular, I did it on WordPress.com which has come in with built-in like I think 117 block patterns. So this was just kind of like a for fun. I have a lot of for fun sites.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Nice.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: But it was kind of showing the future where we&#8217;re going to go. I&#8217;ll link to the WordPress.com pattern library.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s pretty cool. Well, there is a plugin out there by JB Audras where you can actually convert your reusable blocks to block patterns, kind of get over that problem that if you change reusable blocks you change it on all of them instead of using it as a template. Here, in his plugin, he has a feature where you can actually transfer it. And then there&#8217;s another plugin out there called Block Pattern Builder and the author is Blockmeister. They also let you kind of highlight a block and then have a menu in the more options block save as a block pattern.</p>



<p>Yeah. So content creators can at least start out with that. And if you need them tweaking you can hand it to your designer because it&#8217;s pretty much templating, yeah, that can be added to theme. Yeah. There is a resource list of all the things Block Patterns on the Gutenberg Times. I think it was the second last post that I did and it has a lot of additional ideas on themes that have come with Block Patterns. So it&#8217;s definitely something to take a look at.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Did you all explore or have you looked into Google&#8217;s web stories plugin? Because I feel like they&#8217;re trying to accomplish a similar thing. I haven&#8217;t played around with it yet though.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. We&#8217;re actually experimenting a bit with that as well. It was really nice that we got a tweet from someone who is also working on the web stories and he contacted us saying, &#8220;Well, this is actually&#8230;&#8221;</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Perfect use case.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. This would be a perfect web story. Definitely, I think we&#8217;re now in the process of getting it on Yoast.com. We really want to start creating some web stories. Well, I don&#8217;t know if we&#8217;re going to choose this topic or another one, but yeah, definitely, something we&#8217;d like to &#8230; it will be like, yeah, we have to play around with it and see what we can make with. It might be a bit you know shorter I think. The content needs to be even more snackable than what we have here.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Do you struggle with that at all, of trying to make something snackable like you said versus like a long form, or have you intentionally gone more long form with this stuff?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. I think it&#8217;s intentionally more long form because &#8230; yeah. We really want to tell the story well and otherwise it gets &#8230; snackable, is nice but this is something like maybe elaborate a bit more.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: I&#8217;m all for long form, so you can consider me a fan.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Me too. Me too. But I liked how you broke it up. Yeah. So it&#8217;s kind of snackable to kind of come back and say okay yeah this is the topic and then they have bullet lists and not this wall of text that others have. So you kind of really &#8230; yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: The best of both worlds.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Both worlds, yeah. Yeah, and having a good designer as well, with the iconography. Even if it&#8217;s just a non-animated thing, it still kind of breaks up the text so much. Yeah. My favorite block right now is the media and text block because the image can change the size of it, depending on the text. So you can fill the full bleed of the column with an image and then you have the text next to it. So I really like that.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: So it&#8217;s dynamic to the amount of text you ….</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Great.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So if you have a long picture, you don&#8217;t need to have long text to go with it there. You can say crop it to the text size and that&#8217;s really good.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So use it a bit more.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That&#8217;s why I was asking are these columns or are these media and text blocks at the beginning. And I can see that columns from the idea is really easy to grasp, &#8220;Okay. I have two columns, three columns, four columns,&#8221; but then, yeah, so I really like that.</p>



<p>Well, yeah, so we don&#8217;t have any more audience questions. Do you have any more questions, Anne, that you want to ask them?</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: I&#8217;d love to know if you have any more stories coming up, just like content wise? Is there another WordPress related open source maybe inspired story that you all are trying to tell, like a next version because these are the next things we we&#8217;re going to get into.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: We wanted to build the next story on Schema and structured data. So that will be coming out.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: There&#8217;s a there&#8217;s a lot of things to do: that&#8217;s reviews, it&#8217;s recipes.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Oh, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Also, just the higher level, philosophically.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. I think we will be….</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: It&#8217;s super interesting. It&#8217;s basically the story of open data and of the sort of evolution of the web. Yeah. So that&#8217;s also something near and dear.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So you&#8217;re going back to Adam and Eve, practically.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. I&#8217;m not sure if you go back that far, but &#8230; No.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s not your fault, that&#8217;s 2000 years. Yeah. Andrea had a question here from the audience, &#8220;Based on your experience working in the block editor for complex posts like this, is there a particular request you&#8217;d like to make to the team working on Gutenberg?&#8221; Apart from switching off the full screen.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I&#8217;m leaving it to our competitor, but otherwise &#8230; I also have a request, but I think it&#8217;s already on the roadmap.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Okay. Yeah. That&#8217;s a hard question. Yeah. Well, let me think about it. Yeah. Maybe we have to add some help from front end, making tweaks to headings and stuff to be able to move them easily. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s something ….</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Yeah, drag-and-drop is a big thing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, maybe the alignment, kind of full width.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Alignment option.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah, alignment options.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Do you want to control line heights as well?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Sometimes it&#8217;s something a little bit too compressed and if you have more line height, control ….</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Sometimes you might have like a heading in the design, which I think it&#8217;s probably already possible where you have a relatively small heading, but you need a bigger heading level. That&#8217;s probably already possible. I can almost not imagine that to be a problem today. I know you have a font size. You have a font size.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Yeah, there&#8217;s a font size. I regularly mess with that.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: Well, the heading, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah. I would personally really, really like collaborative editing features.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: It would make me completely skip Google Docs in writing. I really like collaborative editing personally for whatever I do. It&#8217;s not for everyone maybe, but especially the commenting part of that.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I don&#8217;t need to be in the same document with someone necessarily, but I would really like some editorial workflows where you can comment on stuff and give suggestions.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. Skip the heading part, focus on that, that&#8217;s better, that&#8217;s the best idea, definitely.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. What I struggle with is that, if I have an older post yeah and when I edit it I have to kind of copy it somewhere else, edit it, and then get it back because I cannot finish it in one session. And I cannot schedule these revisions, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And that&#8217;s kind of one thing, but, yeah, collaboration is on the roadmap. You&#8217;re right, Omar.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: I just dropped a link to something Riad had experimented with. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Riad had experimented with it, yeah. Quite, quite a bit actually here. Site up there it&#8217;s called Asblocks.com, but it&#8217;s on the roadmap for the next phase. So, I think 2023 or something like that.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Or 22, yeah. I think &#8217;21 is already over and I&#8217;m thinking &#8217;22, but that&#8217;s not right. That&#8217;s not right. &#8217;20 is almost over.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: We&#8217;re still just trying to get through 2020. I mean, I think there&#8217;s also already a plug-in offering it. And yeah, and I really reapps work on this as well. I remember when he tweeted his AS blocks out, it&#8217;s, yeah, good to be reminded of that.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: But it&#8217;s just so exciting. I want to see it. Also, we will probably utilize it if we have something like that in Yoast SEO. We can imagine using a sort of commenting system to give inline feedback really granularly. That I think could turn into a really amazing experience where you sort of enable sort of SEO mode and you get really granular SEO comments sort of automated editorial workflows, that kind of stuff.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Really promising.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: We already have the readability analysis that says, &#8220;Your sentences are too long.&#8221; So if you could get this kind of feedback on a more granular level that would be super helpful.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Andrea, you indeed specialize in hard questions, that&#8217;s okay.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: It&#8217;s really cool to see you also like the collaborative editing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So much, yeah. So we are at the end of our show. I could probably talk with you another two more hours, but I want to, yeah, let you go. And we probably can do this again. Thank you for the questions from the audience. At this point, I have two more questions for you, all three of you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Do you have any announcements that you couldn&#8217;t get to talk about before, what you want people to keep in mind? If people want to get in touch with you, what would be the best way? Willemein, do you want to start?</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. I don&#8217;t really have any announcements I think.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Which is fine.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah. Well, you can find me on Twitter and reach out to me on willemien@yoast.com.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Via email, yeah, cool.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Yeah, the best, fastest way.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Omar?</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: The best way to reach me is either Twitter @OmarReiss or on the WordPress Slack where I typically respond quite fast. No announcements here either.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: No announcement.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: I would like to say that I really enjoyed this webinar, of course.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay. We enjoyed having you, of course. Anne?</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: I actually do have some announcements.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Anne McCarthy</em>: There&#8217;s a great post speaking of kind of the phases of the core editor. Matias just posted a really awesome update kind of showing what&#8217;s happening with editing. I think it&#8217;s really worth reading through and kind of getting excited about it. I read through it and just kind of had my brain exploding with ideas and hopefully it does the same for you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I also just want to give a big props to the 5.16 that release just came out this week. It was the first women in non-binary-led release for WordPress, which feels pretty historic. So I just want to like shout that out and major props to everyone involved in that effort.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And then, for keeping in touch. I&#8217;m a weird millennial who doesn&#8217;t like social media, but I blog at nomad.blog and you can find me on WordPress.org slack as annezazu. Feel free to reach out to me either place.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right. And that&#8217;s it. Big thank you to the viewers. Big thank you to you for being here. You can reach out to me on twitter or on the WordPress Slack. You could also send emails to <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">pauli@gutenbergtimes.com</a>, a recording of this will be available in a few minutes on YouTube and I&#8217;ll share it of course also with a panelist, so you can share it, but also over the social media. </p>



<p>Well, it was a joy talking to you. Yeah. I wish everybody wonderful holidays. Happy Hanukkah to Israel and the Jewish community Merry Christmas and happy holiday. This is also the last show of the year from Gutenberg Times we won&#8217;t have a Changelog because the team. We always do a Changelog podcast after the release and the release moved a week into my holiday or into my vacation time, so we will be back January 8th with a Changelog and we will cover two Gutenberg releases. And so, that&#8217;s my announcement. I wish you all yeah good evening, a nice afternoon, and thank you for watching and being with me here.</p>



<p><em>Willemien Hallebeek</em>: Thanks so much, Brigit. This was wonderful.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Thank you.</p>



<p><em>Omar Reiss</em>: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Thank you.</p>



<h2>Resources mentioned </h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://yoast.com/open-source-story/">Open source: Better solutions and a more inclusive society</a></li><li><a href="https://yoast.com/gender-stereotypes-prejudice-sociology/">Gender, stereotypes and prejudice; a sociological exploration</a></li><li><a href="https://wptavern.com/block-building-without-javascript-testing-acf-block-lab-and-lazy-blocks">Block Building with our JavaScript </a>by Birgit Pauli-Haack at WPTavern </li><li><a href="https://airbnb.io/lottie/#/">Lottie library</a> (Animation)</li><li><a href="https://developer.yoast.com/blog/digital-storytelling-in-the-age-of-blocks/">Digital storytelling in the age of blocks</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2020/10/28/introducing-patterns/">Introducing Patterns: Prebuilt Blocks for Beautifully Designed Websites</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/the-wordpress-block-patterns-resource-list/">The WordPress Block Patterns Resource List</a></li><li><a href="https://asblocks.com/">AsBlocks</a> &#8211; end-to-end encrypted (private) collaborative writing environment</li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?v=5ejk24_XWeI&redir_token=QUFFLUhqa0Y1dDBNc1FuZzgxbjN4Q0hfb3hqeFRZMmZlUXxBQ3Jtc0tsNnYxN1I5WVBfeEtfX1pOLUx3eEplSW1PWk95ZG5GbmlweFN2SkVCUmxQY3NackM1Zk9mNDZ5alhnRHFScFJmLVgwaWtkYm1jR2dIQTRWaVYtd0k2S0w0YUpaR0l4U2Iwb25SNmNqS2hLY2lsTXZ2WQ%3D%3D&event=video_description&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwordpress.org%2Fplugins%2Fcommenting-feature%2F">Google Doc-Style Editorial Commenting for WordPress</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/10/status-check-site-editing-and-customization/">Status Check: Site Editing and Customization by Matias Ventura (Core Team) </a></li></ul>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"Gutenberg Times: Weekend Edition #153 Query-Block, Page Builders, Site Editor and more";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=16345";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/weekend-edition-153-query-block-page-builders-site-editor-and-more/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14149:"<p>Howdy,</p>



<p>It&#8217;s been a while! How were your holidays? Did you get some rest? </p>





<p>Wishing you and yours a Happy, healthy and prosperous New Year! May all the goals be reached and serendipity take you to new adventures. </p>



<p class="has-text-align-center has-large-font-size">? ✨ ? ?</p>



<p>Now we need to catch up on the development and community around Gutenberg. What a long list again! It&#8217;s a feature of the persistent medium of a blog or an email,  you don&#8217;t have to consume it all in one sitting. You can come back to it every day. </p>



<p>Glad you are here again! </p>



<p>Yours, ?<br />Birgit</p>





<h2>Gutenberg and Page Builders</h2>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/kylevandeusen"><strong>Kyle Van Deusen</strong></a> shared his experience building a simple Landing Page with Elementor and then built the same page with Gutenberg with a helping of <a href="https://generateblocks.com/">GenerateBlocks plugin</a>. In his post<strong> <a href="https://theadminbar.com/damn-gutenberg-smokes-elementor/">&#8220;</a></strong><a href="https://theadminbar.com/damn-gutenberg-smokes-elementor/">Damn. Gutenberg Smokes Elementor&#8221;</a>, you can read more about the process, challenges and speed metrics measured via GTMetrix as well as with Lighthouse. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/karks88"><strong>Eric Karkovack</strong></a> published his <a href="https://speckyboy.com/page-builder-wordpress-gutenberg-block-editor/">take on switching from a page builder</a> (here: Visual Composer) to a Gutenberg-based site, the challenges he encountered and how he solved them. </p>



<h2>Gutenberg Plugin Releases</h2>



<p>Two new plugin versions were released: <strong>Gutenberg <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/23/whats-new-in-gutenberg-23-december/">9.6</a></strong> and<strong> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/01/07/whats-new-in-gutenberg-6-january/">9.7</a></strong>. The <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a> episode covering both versions will be available later this weekend. Meanwhile, WPTavern has you covered: </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-9-7-improves-user-experience-updates-reusable-blocks-and-brings-page-templates-to-fse-themes">Gutenberg 9.7 Improves User Experience(&#8230;)</a></li><li><a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-9-6-introduces-drag-and-drop-blocks-and-global-inheritance-for-the-query-block">Gutenberg 9.6 Introduces Drag-and-Drop Blocks (&#8230;) </a></li></ul>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> has more details and a video on the new Drag and Drop features in the Block editor: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/01/08/core-editor-improvement-drag-drop-blocks-and-patterns-from-the-inserter/">Core Editor Improvement: Drag &amp; Drop Blocks and Patterns from the Inserter</a> ? &amp; ?</p>



<h2>Full-Site-Editing</h2>



<p>Right after the release of Gutenberg 9.6, <strong>Anne McCarthy </strong>called upon participants of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2020/12/23/fse-program-testing-call-1-template-editing/">FSE Outreach program to test specific parts of the full-site-editing experience</a> and report back their findings. You can still participate in this first test. The deadline is January 13, 2021. </p>



<p><em>Learn more about the program <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/11/the-fse-outreach-program-is-officially-starting/">here </a>and <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/handbook/full-site-editing-outreach-experiment/faq-for-fse-outreach-experiment/">here</a>, and in the separate WP Slack channel </em><a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C015GUFFC00">#fse-outreach-experiment</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>For setting up local tests <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/cdils">Carrie Dils</a> </strong>published a <a href="https://carriedils.com/full-site-editing-blueprint-for-local/">Full-Site-Editing Blueprint for Local</a> by Flywheel, now Local Lightening.</p>





<p><strong>On ThemeShaper, <a href="https://twitter.com/jcristpbking">Jason Crist</a> </strong>published the 3rd part of &#8220;Get Started with Block Themes&#8221; tutorial. He covered <a href="https://themeshaper.com/2021/01/08/getting-started-with-block-themes-global-styles/">how the new feature Global Styles come into play.</a>  &#8220;An important goal of Global Styles is to make it easier for users to change how their site looks without having to know or write any CSS.&nbsp;&#8221; He explains the new global settings, naming conventions, how to set global and block styles not only via JSON file of your Theme. You also learn how users could change them via the Sidebar in the new <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/site-editor-demo-sotw/">Site Editor </a>screen. Jason has links to an empty theme and the themes experiments repo and also to the developer documentation. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>Apropos, Global Styles,<strong><a href="https://twitter.com/itsJonQ"> Jon Quach</a></strong> has and update for us on the Implementation of the new G2 Components. Now you can follow along on the <a href="https://g2components.wordpress.com/2021/01/07/integration-status/">progress on this project via the beautiful new Status page.</a></p>






<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />




<p>Triggered by audience questions, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/justintadlock">Justin Tadlock</a></strong> ventured into the details of the Query Block in his post <a href="https://wptavern.com/understanding-the-query-block-and-its-importance-in-site-editing">&#8220;Understanding the Query Block and Its Importance in Site Editing&#8221;</a>.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>During last year&#8217;s State of the Word, <strong>Joen Asmussen</strong> demonstrated the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/site-editor-demo-sotw/">Site Editor screen.</a> He showed us how to edit template parts, or change the Global Styles or the Archive pages. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>Join us on <strong>January 29th, 2021 at 11 am ET / 16:00 UTC</strong>  (<span class="has-inline-color">Changed date!</span>) for our <strong><a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8916060629467/WN_vtNXZ0zTTs2S0S98X0Y9og">Gutenberg Times Live Q &amp; A: Update on the WordPress Site-Editor (TNG)</a></strong><br />We will talk with <strong>Carolina Nymark</strong> back, our resident expert on Full-site Editing as well as <strong>Ari Stathopoulos</strong>, Core Contributor and who landed the first block-based theme, Q, in the repository and <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong>, from Full-Site editing outreach program. We&#8217;ll have the latest updates on Full-Site-Editing, block-based Themes and Global Styles for you and answer all your questions. </p>



<h2>Gutenberg outside of WordPress.</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/ftrain">Paul Ford</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ginatrapani">Gina Trapani</a> of PostLight</strong>, a WordPressVIP agency,  discussed with Matt Mullenweg the expansion of WordPress and his love for open source. <a href="https://postlight.com/podcast/wordpress-and-beyond-with-matthew-mullenweg">In the podcast episode  &#8220;WordPress and Beyond&#8221;</a>, Mullenweg &#8220;shared controversial opinions on open source and explains why we’ll all be headed there in the future.&#8221; It&#8217;s one of the more thoughtful conversations on the web and open-source. They also cover the aspect that Gutenberg can be integrated into non-WordPress sites and CMS. </p>



<p>Matt said: <em>&#8220;(&#8230;) We’re actually re-licensing Gutenberg to the MPL, which is the<a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/MPL/"> Mozilla Public License</a> to allow it to be used in proprietary mobile apps. So, the idea is that a Mailchimp or WordPress or Tumblr, a Drupal, a Facebook all can utilize this.&#8221; </em></p>



<p>The whole episode is a great listen for web workers of the 21st century. </p>



<h2>Plugins for the WordPress Block Editor</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/timmyblog">Tim Toomey</a></strong>, and the team at Covertnine has been busy updating their <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/c9-blocks/">C9 Blocks plugin</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/author/ttoomey/">themes</a> with <a href="https://c9.covertnine.com/c9-animation-plugin/">Animations</a>. They also published a <a href="https://2021.covertnine.com">demo site </a>with the Twenty Twenty One theme and their plugins installed.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/artpi">Artur Piszek</a></strong> released a new plugin for the block editor: <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/roam-block/">Roam Research Block</a> &#8211; This block lets you search and embed&nbsp;<a href="https://roamresearch.com/">Roam Research</a>&nbsp;blocks inside WordPress block editor. I started using Roam Research a week ago, and I found a complete more organic way to organize my thoughts, my writing, my bullet lists and notes for projects. I am in the process of migrating approx 2800 notes from Evernote. That has its challenges, but I will move ahead as the hassle is absolutely worth it.  Artur has more details about the <a href="https://deliber.at/wp-roam-block/">WordPress plugin on his blog </a></p>



<h2>Block Development</h2>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/justinfoell"><strong>Justin Foell</strong></a>,  shared his thoughts on <a href="https://webdevstudios.com/2020/12/29/wordpress-blocks-backwards-compatibility/">WordPress Blocks Backwards Compatibility </a>on the WebDevStudios blog. There are several things to consider: React versions, Gutenberg plugin versions, version of the @wordpress/packages, to name just a few. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/gziolo"><strong>Greg Ziółkowski</strong></a> published the tutorial &#8220;<a href="https://gziolo.pl/2020/12/22/how-to-start-block-development-with-scaffolding/">How to Start Block Development with Scaffolding&#8221;</a> and walks you through the use of the official create-block script. The command line tool gets you started on a single-block plugin with all PHP, JavaScript and CSS files wired up for the plugin directory and the block editor. Greg walks you through various sections and how to customize the templates for our processes. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/nickmdiego"><strong>Nick Diego</strong></a> write <a href="https://nickdiego.com/a-primer-on-wordpress-slotfill-technology/">&#8220;A primer on WordPress SlotFill technology&#8221;</a>. Slot and Fill together with the <code>SlotFillProvider</code> are available for developers to extend the Block Editor in JavaScript. </p>



<h2>WordPress Events</h2>



<p><strong>January 22, 2021 – 24-hour event</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.wordfest.live/register/"><em>The</em>&nbsp;festival of WordPress – WordFest</a></strong><br />The <a href="https://www.wordfest.live/schedule/">session and schedule</a> are now posted. The format is 30 min pre-recorded w/ 15 min Q &amp; A, so attendees can interact with the speakers live. There are over 45 sessions on four stages. The Global stage runs talks for the full 24 hrs. Holy Cow! </p>



<p>I am looking forward to connecting with the audience for my talk on 1/22 at 4 pm ET / 21:00 UTC <a href="https://www.wordfest.live/sessions/case-study-a-nocode-contributor-journey-on-the-wordpress-gutenberg-github-repo/">&#8220;Case Study: A #Nocode Contributor Journey On The WordPress Gutenberg GitHub Repo&#8221;</a>. </p>



<p><strong>Daisy Olsen</strong> will also give a block editor related talk: <a href="https://www.wordfest.live/sessions/extending-the-wordpress-editor-with-block-patterns/">Extending the WordPress Editor With Block Patterns</a> (11 pm ET on 1/21 / 2:00 UTC &#8211;  I will need to catch it on the re-run). </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>January 30–February 14, 2021 </strong><br /><strong><a href="https://india.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp India</a></strong><br />Yes! You read those dates right.&nbsp;The Organizers plan to have our WordCamp over three weekends!&nbsp; It will be a fully online event</p>



<ul><li>January 30 – 31&nbsp; – Workshop Days</li><li>February 6 – 7 – Contributor Days</li><li>February 13 – 14 – Speaker Talks</li></ul>



<p><em>Featured Image: Photo by&nbsp;<a href="https://unsplash.com/@single_lens_reflex?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Dan Burton</a>&nbsp;on&nbsp;<a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/building-blocks?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a></em></p>




<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email">Subscribe with your email address</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>



<p>We will use this email address only to send you the Gutenberg Times Weekend edition and invitations to Live Q &amp; A events. You will receive a request for confirmation to your email address from pauli@gutenbergtimes.com. Once you confirm there, your subscription will be complete. </p>




<p><br /></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"Gutenberg Times: Site Editor Demo #SOTW";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=16135";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:49:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/site-editor-demo-sotw/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12135:"<p>During State of the Word 2020, Joan Asmussen gave a 3-minute demo of the beta-version of the Site Editor that will come to WordPress as part of the Full-Site Editing experience in 2021. There are a few places where you can catch the whole State of the Word. This post is about the Site-Editor demo. </p>



<div class="wp-container-615658ad7cf19 wp-block-group alignwide has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<h2>State of the Word 2020 </h2>



<div class="wp-block-columns alignwide">
<div class="wp-block-column is-vertically-aligned-top">
<p class="has-small-font-size">This year, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic gave his keynote from home. He reviewed the year 2020. Afterwards, he and other members of the WordPress team answered questions from the community. The event was livestreamed on Dec. 17, 2020. </p>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<ul class="has-small-font-size"><li>Video: <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2020/12/17/matt-mullenweg-2020-state-of-the-word/">Matt Mullenweg&#8217;s State of the Word 2020</a> (26 min) </li><li>Video: <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2020/12/17/matt-mullenweg-2020-state-of-the-word-qa/">State of the Word 2020 Question &amp; Answers</a> (61 min)</li><li><a href="https://wptavern.com/state-of-the-word-2020-wordpress-moves-toward-full-site-editing">State of the Word 2020: WordPress Moves Toward Full Site Editing</a> (WPTavern)</li><li><a href="https://mailchi.mp/poststatus/426?e=e31bffca27">Excellent summary and background information</a> by David Bisset in the Post Status newsletter. </li></ul>
</div>
</div>
</div></div>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>Joen Asmussen, one of the designers on the Gutenberg project from the beginning, did a walk-through of the current version of the Site Editor. </p>



<p>Matt said: <em>&#8220;2021 makes it easier than ever to get your vision onto your site, and your site onto the web. And now we&#8217;d like to show you a sneak peek at some of what&#8217;s coming around the corner with Gutenberg.&#8221;</em> </p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<div class="toolbelt-video-wrapper"></div>
</div><a href="https://bit.ly/SotW2020">Excerpt of the State of the Word 2020 </a>



<p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size"><em><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#transcript">Full Transcript is below</a></em></p>



<p>For his demo, Joen used the theme <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments/tree/master/tt1-blocks">Twenty-Twenty-One Blocks Theme (TT1-Blocks)</a>. The team is preparing this year&#8217;s default theme, Twenty-Twenty One, for the release of the full-site editing experience in 2021. You can find it in the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments">Theme Experiments</a> Repo on GitHub. </p>



<p>To use the theme yourself you need to install the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/">Gutenberg plugin</a>, and the full-site-editing experience will be available to you after activating the TT1-Blocks theme or any other block-based themes from the themes-experiments. </p>



<p class="has-text-color has-background has-small-font-size">&#8220;Warning: Full Site Editing is an experimental feature and potential API changes are to be expected!&#8221;</p>



<p>The full-site experience comprises the Site-Editor, Navigation  &amp; Widget Screens and Global Styles sidebar. You can read about the current status of development of each part in Matias Ventura&#8217;s post <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/10/status-check-site-editing-and-customization/"><strong>Status Check: Site Editing and Customization</strong></a> </p>



<p>I also want to point out that the speed in which Joen change screens and reloads his updates seems a wee bit faster than in real life. It will depend heavily on the oomph of your server and Internet speed how fast you can navigate and change settings on the editor. </p>



<p>The first feature, Joen points out is the <strong>Query Block</strong>, a feature rich block for the Loop &#8211; a list of posts or pages or other content types, displayed on the homepage or on archive pages. The already available &#8220;Latest post&#8221; block is its first iteration. The query block will give users and theme developers alike great flexibility with an easy integration and customization process. </p>



<p>Without knowing the technical terms, you can change the Site Title, the Navigation and the tagline right from the Site Editor screen. Use the <strong>Block List View</strong> to orient yourself and jump directly to the various sections of your site. Behind the scenes, the <strong>Site Editor Engine</strong> keeps track of all your edits, displays them in a sidebar overview and save the various parts and template at the right places. </p>



<p>You can pull into the Site-Editor any kind of template, Joen mentions the default error handling page (also 404-page), and modify it with existing blocks and familiar tools. </p>



<p>With a Theme&#8217;s <strong>block patterns</strong>, you should have a set of ready-made templates you can add to your site&#8217;s footer or pages for various display options.</p>



<p>The <strong>Global Styles</strong> controls in the sidebar of the site editor allow you to make decision on the color palette of your site and you can review your pages and posts on how they change the design on the fly.</p>



<p>After watching this demo, I can only echo Matt&#8217;s &#8220;(&#8230;) We&#8217;ve come a long, long way with Gutenberg from those first versions you might&#8217;ve seen and tried out. If you haven&#8217;t given a try recently, I encourage you to check out Gutenberg.&#8221; I have been following the project with you here on the Gutenberg Times for the last three years and I can still get excited about the new features the team adds to the editor to make it a tool of creativity on the web. </p>



<h2>Live Q &amp; A: WordPress Site-Editor (TNG)  Jan 28, 2020</h2>



<div class="wp-block-image"><img />Ari Stathopoulos</div>



<div class="wp-block-image"><img />Carolina Nymark</div>



<div class="wp-block-image"><img />Anne McCarthy</div>



<p><strong>In our next Live Q &amp; A</strong>, we will have <strong>Carolina Nymark</strong> back, our resident expert on Full-site Editing as well as <strong>Ari Stathopoulos</strong>, Core Contributor and who  landed the first block-based theme, Q,  in the repository and <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong>, who runs the Full-Site editing outreach program. We have the latest updates for you on <strong>January 28th, 2020 at 11am ET / 16:00 UTC</strong> &#8211; <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8916060629467/WN_vtNXZ0zTTs2S0S98X0Y9og">You can already reserve your seat</a>. </p>



<p>Until then, enjoy our previous discussions on Full-Site Editing and block-based themes.  Or browse through the show notes of the Gutenberg changelog podcast next door. Each episode comes with a ton of links to resources. </p>



<h2>Discussions on Block-Based Themes with Theme designers and Gutenberg developers</h2>



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide has-media-on-the-right is-stacked-on-mobile is-image-fill has-dark-gray-color has-text-color has-background"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-block-based-themes-for-full-site-editing-feature-in-wordpress/"><img /></a><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p class="has-normal-font-size"><br /><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-block-based-themes-for-full-site-editing-feature-in-wordpress/"><strong>Block-based WordPress Themes / Full Site Editing</strong></a> with Carolina Nymark, Kjell Reigstad and Eileen Violini <br /><em>June 2020</em></p>
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<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide has-media-on-the-right is-stacked-on-mobile is-image-fill has-dark-gray-color has-text-color has-background"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/theme-templates-full-site-editing-experience-enrique-piqueras/"><img /></a><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p class="has-normal-font-size"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/theme-templates-full-site-editing-experience-enrique-piqueras/"><strong>Themes and the Full Site Editing experience for WordPress (experimental)</strong></a> with Enrique Piqueras<br /><em>January 2020</em></p>
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<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide has-media-on-the-right is-stacked-on-mobile is-image-fill has-dark-gray-color has-text-color has-background"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/rethinking-themes-in-wordpress/"><img /></a><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p class="has-normal-font-size"><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/rethinking-themes-in-wordpress/">Rethinking WordPress Themes</a> </strong>with Ellen Bauer, William Patton, and Rich Tabor<br /><em>December 2019</em></p>
</div></div>



<p class="has-large-font-size" id="transcript">Transcript </p>



<p>Matt Mullenweg: 2021 makes it easier than ever to get your vision onto your site, and your site onto the web. And now we&#8217;d like to show you a sneak peek at some of what&#8217;s coming around the corner with Gutenberg. We have Joen showing the site editor beta.</p>



<p>Joen Asmussen:&nbsp; In this demo, I&#8217;d like to walk you through the new Gutenberg site editor. The site editor allows you to edit the theme templates beyond the post content. It introduces several new blocks like the query loop. When you make a modification like adding a featured image, it naturally adds it to every post in the query. You can configure the layout, make simple tweaks, and it propagates to all the posts. If you prefer the featured image above the titles, no problem. All the familiar block interactions are available.</p>



<p>While the header is a separate template part, it could be edited seamlessly. Everything is a block, navigation, the site title, the tagline, making it easy to edit anything and make use of all the block tools available. The block list view shows all the different areas like header and footer for quick access. Since everything is created with blocks, it&#8217;s easy to edit. The site editor engine keeps track of all the modifications, giving the user a clear overview of what has been modified. The site title, the header area, etcetera. You can open the 404 template, modify it like any other content. With the introduction of block patterns to WordPress, themes will be able to offer any number of designs, providing a shortcut to replicating demo sites or swapping out aspects users may not like with another that they do.</p>



<p>This is the culmination of several ongoing projects to improve and expand upon the customization possibilities in WordPress. Both templates and regular pages can be edited in the site editor. Small previews can be seen when hovering the different templates. The style customization panel allows making global changes like text, link, or background color. These modifications can be quickly checked against the different pages in the site. You can customize any template of the site, such as the page template. Drag and drop the page title into a cover block to use a gradient for that page. The possibilities are endless. We can&#8217;t wait to see what you build with this.</p>



<p>Matt Mullenweg: As you can see, we&#8217;ve come a long, long way with Gutenberg from those first versions you might&#8217;ve seen and tried out. If you haven&#8217;t given a try recently, I encourage you to check out Gutenberg. By creating this common framework that every theme and plugin can build on we&#8217;re reducing the Balkanization within WordPress from people who are solving these problems lots of different ways, and providing what I believe is the basis for the next decade of WordPress&#8217;s growth. So we&#8217;re about two years into a 10 year project. We&#8217;ve got good chunks of phase one and phase two of Gutenberg done. That&#8217;s the post and page editing and then editing the entire site. I&#8217;m excited to continue these in 2021 and hopefully start to get to phases three and four.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:105:"Gutenberg Times: Weekend Edition #152-Block-Based Themes, G2 Components, Block Pattern Directory and more";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=16062";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/weekend-edition-152-block-pattern-directory/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13491:"<p>Happy Holidays! </p>



<p>It&#8217;s almost there, in less than two weeks, we leave 2020 behind us and start the New Year! Wishing you and yours all the best for this new beginning, good health, prosperity and happiness. </p>





<p>Yours, ?<br />Birgit</p>



<h2>State of the Word</h2>



<p>This week&#8217;s State of the Word was different from the previous years, as it didn&#8217;t come with a whole room full of WordPress enthusiast at a WordCamp US. This year it was <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2020/12/17/matt-mullenweg-2020-state-of-the-word/">a short sweet 26 minutes keynote by Matt Mullenweg</a> with appearances of Joen Asmussen demoing the Site Editor and Josepha Haden introducing successful businesses that started because of the pandemic. &#8220;When online is your only options, WordPress is your best option&#8221;. </p>



<p>The <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2020/12/17/matt-mullenweg-2020-state-of-the-word-qa/">Question &amp; Answer session</a> was also different: WordPress Community members were asked to send in their questions via video, and instead answering all the questions himself, Matt deferred to other members on the WordPress teams. It was high diversity crowd coming together. </p>



<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> wrote a <a href="https://wptavern.com/state-of-the-word-2020-wordpress-moves-toward-full-site-editing">full recap for the WPTavern</a>. </p>



<p><strong>David Bisset</strong> also posted an <a href="https://mailchi.mp/poststatus/426?e=e31bffca27">excellent summary with some background information on the Post Status</a> newsletter. </p>



<p>Here on the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/site-editor-demo-sotw/">Gutenberg Times</a>, I was most intrigued by the demo of the beta version of the Site-Editor by Joen Asmussen. <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/site-editor-demo-sotw/">You can read all about here.</a></p>





<p><strong>Learn.WordPress</strong> was officially launched with over 30 Workshops and Discussion groups. Let Hugh Lashbrooke <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2020/12/introducing-learn-wordpress/">introduce you to the new program</a>. We have a  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/block-editor-workshops-wordpress/">list of Block Editor Workshops</a>, for beginners and advanced content creators and developers. </p>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/g2-components-a-from-scratch-reimagining-of-wordpress-components?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=g2-components-a-from-scratch-reimagining-of-wordpress-components">G2 Components, a From-Scratch Reimagining of WordPress Components</a> (WPTavern) <br /><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> wrote about  Jon Quach&#8217;s new component design system, G2 Components, that has been in the works for the last six months. It&#8217;s about to start bleeding into the Gutenberg @wordpress/components script, with switching out the base components one at a time, without breaking 3rd party developers plugins. At least that&#8217;s the idea of it. Jon and the Gutenberg team is carefully walking the backwards compatibility line. The developer experience around the block-editor will get a major upgrade once the G2 components are successfully integrated. They will not only be available for the block-editor but of other wp-admin interfaces as well. </p>



<h2>Block-based Themes (aka Full-Site-Editing)</h2>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/jump-start-block-based-theme-development-with-the-fse-theme-generator">How to use the scaffolding script to start your new block-based theme</a>, is the topic of <a href="https://wptavern.com/jump-start-block-based-theme-development-with-the-fse-theme-generator">this article </a>in the WPTavern by Justin Tadlock. He walks you how to get started and then use the Gutenberg site-editor to finish the theme. It&#8217;s a bar bones theme, of course, a fresh canvas for designers. Justin then digs into the various pieces of the generated theme. </p>



<p><strong>Carolina Nymark</strong>, contributor to the Themes team and educator at <a href="https://fullsiteediting.com">full-site-editing.com</a>, started the &#8220;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2020/12/14/discussion-requirements-for-full-site-editing-themes/">Discussion: Requirements for full site editing themes</a>&#8221; for themes to be approved to the official Themes repository on WordPress.org. </p>



<p><strong>Ernesto Mendez</strong> wrote Part II in ThemeShaper&#8217;s series of <a href="https://themeshaper.com/2020/12/18/getting-started-with-block-themes-templates/">Getting Started with Block Themes on Templates</a>. He explained: &#8220;In the classic way of theming, we usually have functions that give us the different parts that make up a post, such as&nbsp;<code>the_title()</code>,&nbsp;<code>the_content()</code>, and so on. Block themes give us the same features using blocks directly!&#8221;. Ernesto also shared shared more about the difference between a classic WordPress theme and a block-based one and walks you through creation, saving and editing of the various pieces. </p>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/help-steer-the-future-of-wordpress-via-the-fse-outreach-program">Help Steer the Future of WordPress via the FSE Outreach Program</a> &#8220;The official launch of the program should coincide with the release of Gutenberg 9.6, which is expected to ship within the next week. The program will focus on specific features and flows related to full-site editing.&#8221; wrote<strong> Justin Tadlock</strong></p>



<p><strong>Kjell Reigstad</strong> published is #32 <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2020/12/18/gutenberg-themes-week-of-dec-14-2020/">Gutenberg + Themes: Week update</a> of ongoing development. He keeps us updated on the latest discussions and issues that can use your input. Also, his list of Overview Issues and Resources is a treasure chest. <br />I just discovered an article I missed in by Ari Stathopoulos: &#8220;<a href="https://wp.me/p29gdg-4MC">Printing navigation-block HTML from a legacy menu in themes</a>&#8221; Something really helpful when you might need to migrate a site from a classic theme to a block-based theme. If you are up for a theme experiment, earlier this month, Kjell published a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments/pull/120">Photo blog theme for blocks</a></p>



<h2 id="patterns">Block Pattern Directory</h2>



<p>Speaking of WordPress.org Directory: Late in October, Alex Shiels kicked of the work on a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2020/10/27/block-pattern-directory-ideas-and-discussion/">Block Pattern Directory ideas and discussion</a>. </p>



<p>The meta-team hasn&#8217;t been wasting any time. You can follow along on the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory">GitHub repository</a> and its <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/projects/1">project board for the initial version</a>. Similar to the Block-directory, there are a few moving pieces that need to fit together: </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues/11">The website of the Pattern Directory for WordPress.org</a>, similar to on the plugin and themes directories. </li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues/10">Pattern Directory support in the core editor</a> so users can search and insert block patterns directory from the inserter, similar to the block directory, without the installation steps. Patterns probably can be directly added to the post or page from the directory. </li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues/9">Pattern Submission Tool</a> &#8211; based on the editor with sidebar controls and metadata entry. This will include <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues/22">a validation and curation step</a> before the submitted pattern is published. You can also follow along the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues/9#issuecomment-724362494">first designs by Michael Arestad</a>. This is probably the most exciting part of the new directory as it will accommodate the community&#8217;s creativity. </li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues/8">Pattern Directory API for the backend of the site</a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues/3">REST-API end-point</a>, and </li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues/30">new Pattern CPT permissions for creation and editing</a> </li></ul>





<h2>Developing for the Block Editor</h2>



<p><strong>Ronald Huereca</strong> published a 12 part series on <a href="https://wpandajax.com/series/building-a-gutenberg-sidebar/">&#8220;Creating a Gutenberg Sidebar&#8221;</a> plugin. He wrote: &#8220;Building sidebars is hard and not very straightforward.&#8221; In he walks you through how to get&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://webpack.js.org/" target="_blank">webpack</a>&nbsp;set up so you can create a sidebar without the use of any boiler-plate-type scripts. This is set up as a basic course to create a plugin for WordPress, in general and for the block-editor specifically.  </p>



<h2>WordPress Events</h2>




<div class="wp-container-615658ad814c2 wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><strong>December 22, 2020 a 6:30 pm ET &#8211; 23:30 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/SF-WordPress-Users/events/275108037/">WordPress Mega-Meetup </a></strong></p>



<p><strong>David Bisset</strong> wrote on <a href="https://twitter.com/dimensionmedia/status/1339685263036080128">Twitter: </a>&#8220;What is some place to chill next week? Try the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#WordPress Mega-Meetup">#WordPress Mega-Meetup</a>. Host Jean Felisme and me will be talking with Birgit Pauli-Haack about Gutenberg and WordPress 5.6 and playing some WP games. Thanks to meetup organizers and <a href="https://twitter.com/GoDaddyPro">GoDaddy Pro</a> for supporting us.&#8221; </p>
</div></div>




<p><strong>January 22, 2021 – 24-hour event</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.wordfest.live/register/"><em>The</em>&nbsp;festival of WordPress – WordFest</a></strong><br />Enabling a global celebration of WordPress, bringing our community together in a safe environment, whilst facilitating freedom of movement within a 24-hour virtual event. The organizers just announced the <a href="https://www.wordfest.live/speakers/">first, second, third and fourth set of speakers</a>, among them <a href="https://www.wordfest.live/speakers/leonardo-losoviz/">Leonardo Losoviz</a>, <a href="https://www.wordfest.live/speakers/chris-ford/">Chris Ford</a>, <a href="https://www.wordfest.live/speakers/fatima-sarah-khalid/">Fatima Sarah Khalid</a>, <a href="https://www.wordfest.live/speakers/naomi-c-bush/">Naomi C. Bush</a>, <a href="https://www.wordfest.live/speakers/piccia-neri/">Piccia Neri</a> and so many more. Can&#8217;t wait until the organizer publish the list of sessions. The format is 30 min pre-recorded w/ 15 min Q &amp; A, so attendees can interact with the speakers live. </p>



<p><strong>January 28th, 2021 at 11 am ET / 16:00 UTC</strong> <br /><strong><a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8916060629467/WN_vtNXZ0zTTs2S0S98X0Y9og">Gutenberg Times Live Q &amp; A: WordPress Site-Editor (TNG)</a></strong><br />We talk with <strong>Carolina Nymark</strong> back, our resident expert on Full-site Editing as well as <strong>Ari Stathopoulos</strong>, Core Contributor and who landed the first block-based theme, Q, in the repository and <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong>, who runs the Full-Site editing outreach program. We&#8217;ll have the latest updates on Full-Site-Editing, block-based Themes and Global Styles for you and answer all your questions. </p>



<p><strong>January 30–February 14, 2021 </strong><br /><strong><a href="https://india.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp India</a></strong><br />Yes! You read those dates right.&nbsp;The Organizers plan to have our WordCamp over three weekends!&nbsp; It will be a fully online event</p>



<ul><li>January 30 – 31&nbsp; – Workshop Days</li><li>February 6 – 7 – Contributor Days</li><li>February 13 – 14 – Speaker Talks</li></ul>



<p><a href="https://india.wordcamp.org/2021/call-for-speakers/">The call for speakers will be open until December 31, 2020.</a></p>




<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email">Subscribe with your email address</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>



<p>We will use this email address only to send you the email Gutenberg Times Weekend edition and invitations to Live Q &amp; A events. You will receive a request for confirmation to your email address from pauli@gutenbergtimes.com. Only once you confirm there will your subscription be complete. </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:116:"Gutenberg Times: Weekend Edition #151 – Theme Development, Block Editor Plugins and Using Blocks Outside WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=15946";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:68:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/weekend-edition-151-block-editor-plugins/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17495:"<p>Howdy! </p>



<p>WordPress history was made this week, when the all-women release squad pushed WordPress 5.6 over the finish line. Congratulations to the co-leads,  Josepha Haden, Helen Hou-Sandi and Dee Teal and their crew of 30+ women and people who identify as non-binary.  <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2020/12/simone/">On the announcement post, </a>you can browse the list of all contributors and follow the links to their profiles. I know, I know. You are here to read about the block editor and Gutenberg. I will get to that in a minute. </p>




<ul><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><img /></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><img /></li></ul>WordPress 5.6 Noteworthy Contributors.




<p>Let&#8217;s marvel a moment longer at the astonishing First of an all-women release squad for a major WordPress release, the open-source project that powers <a href="https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management">over 39% of the Internet.</a> </p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">?  ? ? ? ✨</p>



<p>Back to the block-editor. The many links and information in this edition might be a bit overwhelming. It will tide you over the upcoming quiet time around the Holidays. Don&#8217;t forget to scroll all the way down to learn about the upcoming WordPress events. </p>



<p>Next week (#152) will be the last Gutenberg Times Weekend Edition for 2020. I will take a break for two weeks from work and WordPress. It&#8217;s the time of year to catch-up with close friends and family and plan for the uncertainty of 2021 in business and life.  On Jan 9th, we&#8217;ll start the new year with edition #153. </p>




<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div><div><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email">Subscribe with your email address</label><div><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button></div><div><div></div><div>Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>



<p>We will use this email address only to send you the email Gutenberg Times Weekend edition and invitations to Live Q &amp; A events. You will receive a request for confirmation to your email address from pauli@gutenbergtimes.com. Only once you confirm there will your subscription be complete. </p>




<p>Now, don&#8217;t let me keep you from watching videos, reading tutorials, editorials testing plugins and themes and register for awesome WordPress events. </p>



<p>Until next week, stay safe and warm.</p>



<p>Yours, ?<br />Birgit</p>



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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ejk24_XWeI"><img /></a>



<p><strong>Recording: <a href="https://youtu.be/5ejk24_XWeI">Case Study: The Making of Open-Source Story by Yoast with Blocks</a></strong></p>



<p>We had a fabulous time chatting with Yoast partner and CTO, Omar Reiss and content team lead Willemien Hallebeek, who took us behind the scenes of the making of the <a href="https://yoast.com/open-source-story/">Open-Source Story</a>, a richly illustrated and interactive post about the nature of open-source from a collaborative business point of view. </p>



<p>Thanks for everyone who joined us and brought some great questions. A big Thank You to Anne McCarthy, who joined me as co-host and moderator.</p>



<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ejk24_XWeI">The video is now on YouTube</a> with the shared resources. The transcript is in the works. </p>



<p>And &#8220;Welcome&#8221; to our new subscribers, who came for the show and stayed for the Weekend Edition. ? So happy to have you! </p>



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<p><strong>The Gutenberg team</strong> has changed their release cycle slightly. Instead of 2 days between Release Candidate and new version, they give themselves and others 7 days to tests the new version. This changed the schedule a bit for the next release. </p>



<ul><li>9.6 will be released on Dec. 23 (RC on Dec. 16th) </li><li>9.7 will be released Jan 6th, with RC on Dec. 30th) </li></ul>



<p>Mark and I will be on holiday break and our next episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast will be recorded on January 8th, 2021, and cover both releases. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>To bridge the time, I suggest you read two posts by <strong>Matias Ventura</strong>, architect for Gutenberg and learn more about the current state of affairs. </p>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/10/status-check-site-editing-and-customization/"><strong>Status Check: Site Editing and Customization</strong></a><br />It&#8217;s an excellent summary of the current status of Gutenberg&#8217;s Phase 2. It&#8217;s a bit longer, you probably should get another cup of hot beverage and get comfortable reading in. It definitely is worth your time. </p>



<p><strong><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/27331">Sidebar Controls &amp; Component System</a></strong><br />&#8220;The first half of this year brought some needed updates to the design language of blocks, with a strong focus on improving the block footprint, toolbar system, and the inserters. Now it’s time to revise the state of block controls primarily used in the sidebar and its underlying component set. This is the next widest topic for the evolving design language.&#8221; wrote Ventura. </p>



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<h2>Theme Development</h2>



<p><strong>Kjell Reigstad</strong> published the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2020/12/11/gutenberg-themes-week-of-dec-7-2020/">31st update on Gutenberg + Themes</a> with the week&#8217;s discussion on theme related issues, updates and fixes to theme related editor aspects. Towards the end he also lists these &#8220;Overview&#8221; issues: </p>



<ul><li>Full Site Editing Milestones.&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24551" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">24551</a></li><li>Template Tags in Full Site Editing.&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/22724" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">22724</a>&nbsp;</li><li>Missing query block functionality.&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24934" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">24934</a> </li><li>Query and Loop block tracking:&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24762" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">24762</a></li></ul>



<h3>Full-Side Editing</h3>



<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> headlined: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/11/the-fse-outreach-program-is-officially-starting/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>The FSE Outreach Program is Officially&nbsp;Starting!</strong></a>. You might remember the call for WordPress users to test the Full-Site-Editing experience in Spring. It&#8217;s now time to get ready.  </p>



<p>If you build, manage or maintain sites for yourself or others or if you publish content using WordPress, join the program! It is a great opportunity to shape the next big change coming to WordPress in 2021. We will be testing specific workflows every week and discuss them with a cohort of people as well as with the Gutenberg team. This is not for developers, but WordPress users who don&#8217;t use code to built their sites. Go on, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/11/the-fse-outreach-program-is-officially-starting/">read the article.</a> I wait ? </p>





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<p><strong>Carrie Dils</strong>, Freelancer Coach,  published the <a href="https://studiopress.blog/full-site-editing-update/"><strong>Full Site Editing Update for Studio Press</strong></a>. After a short introduction, she went into more detail on each of these moving pieces and highlighted the aspects most relevant to full site editing.&nbsp;</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>In his post, <a href="https://themeshaper.com/2020/12/09/getting-started-with-block-themes/"><strong>Getting Started with Block&nbsp;Themes</strong></a>, <strong>Ben Dwyer</strong>, provides you with the first steps to create your block-based Theme, with the Site-Editor in mind. It&#8217;s the first post of a series it seems. Future posts will cover: <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/tutorials/block-based-themes/#creating-the-templates-and-template-parts">Templates</a>,  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/the-wordpress-block-patterns-resource-list/">Patterns</a> and <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/handbook/focuses/global-styles/">Global Styles</a>. Meanwhile, these links are for your perusal and self-study. </p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://g2components.wordpress.com/about/">G2 Components</a></strong> started as an experimental project.  It is a from-scratch reimagining of&nbsp;<code>@wordpress/components</code>&nbsp;designed to accommodate the ever-growing and ever-expressive needs of the Editor and the platform.&nbsp;We shared links to the site before. <strong>Jon Quach</strong> and his Gutenberg teammates are getting ready on exploring how and integration into the block editor might work. Let Jon take on you on his <a href="https://g2components.wordpress.com/2020/12/02/walkthrough-integration-ideas/">Walkthrough + Integration&nbsp;Ideas </a> on Twitch, where he holds almost daily live stream while working on this project. </p>



<img />



<h3>Twenty-Twenty-One Default Theme</h3>



<p><a href="https://melchoyce.design/2020/12/09/twenty-twenty-one-available-for-download/">Tweny-Twenty-One is now available for download</a> announced co-lead developer Mel Choyce. She thanked her co-lead Carolina Nymark and all contributors. It&#8217;s an impressive list. This year&#8217;s default theme is <em>WCAG 2.1 AAA-compatible</em>. Here are additional resources: </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/twentytwentyone/">Download</a> from the WordPress Theme repository</li><li>The <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/twenty-twenty-one/">Documentation</a> of the Theme is now available on the WordPress Support pages. It lists details of all the different features, for accessibility, Starter content, Block Patterns, overlapping columns, support for Post Formats, Dark Mode support, and more. </li><li>The <strong>block-based version</strong> of the Twenty-Twenty-One Theme is still under development and you can follow, test and contribute via the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments/">GitHub Repository</a></li></ul>



<p><a href="https://www.bluehost.com/blog/twenty-twenty-one-theme-for-wordpress-a-minimal-default-theme-for-2020/">Twenty Twenty-One Theme for WordPress: A Minimal Default Theme for 2020 </a>  <strong>Machielle Thomas</strong> at Bluehost, wrote about what’s new with WordPress Twenty Twenty-One theme and how the new default theme supports block-building. </p>



<h2>Block editor plugins</h2>



<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> has an update on EditorPlus 2.4 for you: <a href="https://wptavern.com/editorplus-2-4-released-builds-upon-its-extend-core-blocks-system">EditorPlus 2.4 Released, Builds Upon Its ‘Extend Core Blocks’ System</a></p>



<p>Just released and also mentioned in our Live Q &amp; A show this week: <a href="https://www.multidots.com/google-doc-style-editorial-commenting-for-wordpress/">Google Doc-Style Editorial Commenting for WordPress</a>, a precursor to Collaboration coming to Gutenberg in Phase 3. </p>





<h2>Developing for block editor and Gutenberg</h2>



<p><strong>Igor Benic</strong>, early adopter of the block editor, has some tips for you how to troubleshoot &#8220;<a href="https://www.ibenic.com/gutenberg-components-and-invalid-hook-call-error-in-react-what-do-do/">Invalid Hook Call Error in React&#8221;</a> in your Components. It&#8217;s especially interesting because Igor teaches nice bits about package handling. </p>



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<p><strong>Antonio Villegas</strong> explored in his post <a href="https://neliosoftware.com/blog/how-to-work-with-wordpress-blocks-outside-gutenberg-with-node-js/">&#8220;How to work with WordPress blocks outside Gutenberg with Node.js&#8221;</a> and provides a short code example. It could open up all kind of opportunities to leverage the modern JavaScript environment in other apps. </p>



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<p><strong>Tim Toomey</strong> and his team at CovertNine, builder of the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/c9-blocks/">C9 Blocks plugin</a>, shared their latest project in the post: <a href="https://wpcontent.io/article/building-a-custom-blocks-based-wordpress-website-for-a-client-with-a-free-theme/">Building a Custom Blocks-based WordPress Website for A Client with A Free Theme</a>, using their creations. You can sign up for early access to their <a href="https://greensock.com/">GreenSock</a> based C9 Animation Blocks plugins</p>



<h2>Upcoming WordPress and Related Events</h2>



<p><strong>December 15, 2020  12 pm ET 17:00 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://poststatus.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ff3456b27ebe0be0155087894&id=54a1a1a159&e=e31bffca27" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">5 Tips For Building Rockin’ Membership Sites</a></strong>  <br />Join Brian Krogsgard and Cory Miller to discuss the secret to successful membership sites. On <a href="https://commercejourney.com/">Commerce Journey</a></p>



<p><strong>December 15, 2020 at 12:30 pm ET</strong> <strong>/ 17;30 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="Webinar: Grow Your Agency by Offering SEO Services">Webinar: Grow Your Agency by Offering SEO Services</a></strong><br />Join Lindsay Halsey of Pathfinder SEO<strong>&nbsp;</strong>as you learn how to package your SEO services, pitching them, and the process to deliver them.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.gowp.com/">Hosted by GoWP</a></p>





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<p><strong>December 17, 2020 11am EST / 16:00 UTC</strong><br /><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2020/12/state-of-the-word-2020/"><strong>State of the Word 2020 w/ Matt Mullenweg</strong></a>, co-founder of WordPress. Livestream on WordPress YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2020/12/state-of-the-word-2020/">Details here.</a></p>



<p>Viewing party: <a href="https://robertjacobi.com/steak-of-the-word-2020.html">Steak of the Word 2020</a> organized by Robert Jacobi and Big Orange Heart.</p>



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<p><strong>December 17, 2020 1pm ET / 18:00 UTC</strong><br /><a href="Webinar: The 5 W's of Decoupled"><strong>Webinar:</strong> <strong>The 5 W&#8217;s of Decoupled</strong></a> Hosted by Pantheon.<br />Boost Performance and Gain Flexibility Through Decoupled Architecture. Join Pantheon’s Technical Product Marketing Manager, Steve Persch to learn how decoupling gives you the power of flexibility and access to modern build practices which can provide a significant boost in performance.</p>



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<p><strong>December 22, 2020</strong> <strong>6:30 &#8211; 8:30 pm EST</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/SF-WordPress-Users/events/275108037/">WordPress &#8220;Mega Meetup&#8221;: The &#8220;End of 2020&#8221; Episode</a></strong>  &#8211; David Bisset will be interviewing me about the latest editor and Gutenberg goodies in the latest WordPress 5.6 release. Ending the year with fun games and a WP-T-Shirt contest. <a href="https://www.meetup.com/SF-WordPress-Users/events/275108037/">Find out more </a></p>



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<p><strong>January 22, 2021 &#8211; 24-hour event </strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.wordfest.live/register/"><em>The</em>&nbsp;festival of WordPress &#8211; WordFest</a> </strong><br />Enabling a global celebration of WordPress, bringing our community together in a safe environment, whilst facilitating freedom of movement within a 24-hour virtual event. The organizers just announced the <a href="https://www.wordfest.live/speakers/">first set of speakers.</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Ongoing </strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-discussions/events/">Learn. WordPress Discussions Groups</a></strong>, with discussion and Q &amp; A for workshops help by WordPress Training Team, some of them on the block-editor. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><a href="https://wpcalendar.io/online/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>WordPress Meetup Online Events Calendar.&nbsp;</strong></a><br />It&#8217;s a single place to see what upcoming events are planned by the army of WordPress Meetup organizers, as well as specialized meetups, like&nbsp;Elementor, &nbsp;or WooCommerce. A site built by the brilliant&nbsp;<a href="https://www.javiercasares.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Javier Casares</a>.  &nbsp;</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />





<p></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:99:"Gutenberg Times: Weekend Edition #150 – Full-Site Editing, WordPress 5.6, Live Q &amp; A and more";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=15819";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:61:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/weekend-edition-150-wordpress-5-6/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10005:"<p class="has-small-font-size">Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.<em> &#8212; Marie Curie</em></p>




<div class="wp-container-615658ad8cc6e wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>For the 150th edition of this newsletter, I decided to publish it also as a post on the Gutenberg Times website. The email version will still have subscribers-only (?) content, though. </p>



<p>With <a href="https://newsletterglue.com/"><strong>Newsletter Glue Pro</strong></a>, install on your web site, it is fairly easy to create a newsletter template, give it some custom CSS and use the block editor to build the next edition in the post admin screen.  It&#8217;s a powerful new plugin.</p>





<p>Speaking of &#8220;Making of&#8221;: Don&#8217;t miss our next <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8815997529896/WN_RF5Vj5K8SbeCQ7AP5XpepQ">Gutenberg Times Live Q &amp; A</a> on December 10th at 2:30pm EST (19:30 UTC). More information below. <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8815997529896/WN_RF5Vj5K8SbeCQ7AP5XpepQ">Sign-up here.</a></p>



<p>And now without further ado, this week&#8217;s links around the  block editor and Gutenberg. </p>



<p>Be well, be safe, </p>



<p>Yours, ?<br />Birgit </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />
</div></div>



<p><a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8815997529896/WN_RF5Vj5K8SbeCQ7AP5XpepQ"><strong>Case Study: The Making of Open-Source Story by Yoast with Blocks</strong></a></p>



<p>Join Anne McCarthy and me for our next <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8815997529896/WN_RF5Vj5K8SbeCQ7AP5XpepQ">Gutenberg Times Live Q &amp; A on December 10th, 2020 at 2:30 pm EST (19:30 UTC)</a></p>



<a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8815997529896/WN_RF5Vj5K8SbeCQ7AP5XpepQ"><img /></a>



<p>Yoast partner and CTO, <strong>Omar Reiss</strong> and blog team lead <strong>Willemien Hallebeek</strong>, will take us behind the scenes of the making of the post <a href="https://yoast.com/open-source-story/">&#8220;Open source: Better solutions and a more inclusive society&#8221;,</a> a richly illustrated and interactive post about the nature of open-source from a collaborative business point of view. Omar and Willemien will share how they built it with the WordPress block editor, explain their approaches and answer your questions. <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8815997529896/WN_RF5Vj5K8SbeCQ7AP5XpepQ">Register via Zoom</a></p>



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<h2>WordPress 5.6 to be released Dec 8th, 2020</h2>



<p>We are coming up on the <strong>WordPress 5.6 release next week</strong>. Behind the scenes, everyone is really busy to get the last changes in. The <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/03/wordpress-5-6-rc-3/">Release Candidate 3 is now available and needs testing.</a> There are a ton of changes coming with this new version. </p>



<p>The <strong>release team&#8217;s <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/11/20/wordpress-5-6-field-guide/">Field Guide</a></strong> makes for interesting weekend reading, if you are a developer. Around the net, the &#8216;What&#8217;s new in WordPress 5.6&#8217; posts are mushrooming already. </p>



<h3>What&#8217;s new with the Block Editor in WP 5.6</h3>



<p><strong>Isabel Brison</strong> did a marvelous job putting all block-editor related changes into one post: <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/12/03/wordpress-5-6-core-editor-overview/">WordPress 5.6: Core Editor Overview</a></strong>. She sorted them by&nbsp;content creation, adapting the experience, under the hood, and themes section. If one of the changes grabs your attentions, she provides links to the details. </p>



<p><strong>Carlo Daniele</strong> in his article on the Kinsta block: <a href="https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-5-6/">&#8220;What’s New in WordPress 5.6 (Accessibility, Performance, Security)&#8221;</a> he did an excellent job diving into all the changes and make them more readable for non-developers. For many of the changes he provides examples and more explanations. Here are the <strong><a href="https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-5-6/#whats-new-with-the-block-editor">Block Editor specific changes</a>,</strong> but if you are interested also in the other changes in WordPress 5.6, it&#8217;s definitely worth your time. </p>



<p>If you are less interested in the underpinnings of WordPress and more about content creation, let <strong>Bud Kraus, publisher of the Joy of WP</strong> take you by the hand and walk you through the <a href="https://joyofwp.com/topic/whats-new-in-wordpress-5-6/">most important changes for content creators</a> in his newest Video. Kraus is an excellent educator and his videos are easy to follow.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Or you could <strong>listen to the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-31-tools-for-css-theme-json-twenty-twenty-one-theme-a-long-changelog-9-2/">Episode #31</a> of our podcast</strong>. Mark and I talked through all the block editor changes for content creators that made it into WordPress 5.6.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><a href="https://speckyboy.com/when-do-you-need-a-custom-wordpress-gutenberg-block/"><strong>When Do You Need a Custom WordPress Gutenberg Block?</strong></a></p>



<p>In this article, Eric Karkovack goes through a few scenarios when you might or might not need to build a custom block. It’s a thoughtful read about how to make the best decision for a client project. He also lists the various ways, how developers might be able to lock down what site owners can do with blocks without locking them in. &gt;&gt; <a href="https://speckyboy.com/when-do-you-need-a-custom-wordpress-gutenberg-block/">Read the article</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide gt-separator" />





<h2>Full-Site Editing</h2>



<p><a href="https://gutenberghub.com/wordpress-full-site-editing/"><strong>What is Full Site Editing and how is it shaping a new WordPress? </strong></a></p>



<p>Munir Kamal explains all the aspects of Full-Site Editing that are in the works for the block editor. It&#8217;s a great overview and should get you caught up with the latest development.  &gt;&gt; <a href="https://gutenberghub.com/wordpress-full-site-editing/">Read the article</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator" />



<p><a href="https://themeshaper.com/2020/11/06/creating-a-block-based-landing-page-theme/"><strong>Creating a Block-based Landing Page&nbsp;Theme</strong></a></p>



<p>Kjell Reigstad details how to build a single-page block-based theme, following the principles seen at Carrd, a SaaS page builder site. In this ThemeShaper article, Reigstad goes into all the details of the theme and explains the various parts needed for a block-based Theme. &gt;&gt; <a href="https://themeshaper.com/2020/11/06/creating-a-block-based-landing-page-theme/">Read the article.</a></p>





<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/block-based-bosco-second-full-site-editing-theme-lands-in-the-wordpress-directory"><strong>Block-Based Bosco, Second Full-Site Editing Theme Lands in the WordPress Directory</strong></a></p>



<p>A couple of weeks ago, we pointed you to <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=e3062ef0fb204dbbc2135b555&id=83df1f699a&e=3e58a13321">Fränk Klein&#8217;s post on his learned lessons </a>when he worked on the block-based Bosco theme. This week, Justin Tadlock at the WP Tavern, wrote: &#8220;Developers like Klein and Stathopoulos are paving the way for others. For those who do not have the time or the inclination to scour the Gutenberg plugin’s code or follow dozens of tickets, they can take the easy route. Study the code of people who have done the legwork.&#8221; &gt;&gt; <a href="https://wptavern.com/block-based-bosco-second-full-site-editing-theme-lands-in-the-wordpress-directory">Read the article.</a></p>






<p><strong> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index&#8221;</a> </strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">The index 2020 is here</a></p>





<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<h2>WordPress Events</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://www.wordfest.live/register/">January 22, 2021 &#8211; <em>The</em>&nbsp;festival of WordPress &#8211; WordFest</a> </strong><br />Enabling a global celebration of WordPress, bringing our community together in a safe environment, whilst facilitating freedom of movement within a 24-hour virtual event.</p>



<p><a href="https://wpcalendar.io/online/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>WordPress Meetup Online Events Calendar.&nbsp;</strong></a><br />It&#8217;s a single place to see what upcoming events are planned by the army of WordPress Meetup organizers, as well as specialized meetups, like&nbsp;Elementor, &nbsp;or WooCommerce. A site built by the brilliant&nbsp;<a href="https://www.javiercasares.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Javier Casares</a>.  &nbsp;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:39;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:108:"Gutenberg Times: OEmbed and WordPress Embed blocks for Facebook and Instagram will stop working Oct 24, 2020";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=15048";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/embed-blocks-for-facebook-and-instagram-will-be-removed-for-wp-5-6/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5424:"<p>In August, <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2020/08/04/Introducing-graph-v8-marketing-api-v8">Facebook announced updates to their Marketing API </a>.  </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>By October 24, 2020, developers must leverage a user, app, or client token when querying Graph API for user profile pictures via UID, FB OEmbeds and IG OEmbeds.</p></blockquote>



<p>This means, the <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/oembed-legacy">old embed request will result in an error with a 400-status</a>. In the future, <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/oembed">Facebook embeds will require </a>an authentication token, available to users who have a Facebook developer account and created a Facebook app. </p>



<p>Ahead of this change, the Gutenberg team removed the Facebook and Instagram blocks in the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/24472">9.0 version</a>, which will come to WordPress core in December&#8217;s 5.6 releases. WordPress core will also remove the oEmbed call for the <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/50861">next version(5.6)</a>. </p>



<p>Although the blocks are removed in Gutenberg plugin 9.0 version, the auto-oEmbed of pasted links into an empty row will still work until Facebook switches off the open format endpoint. </p>



<h2>Frequently Asked Questions</h2>



<div class="schema-faq wp-block-yoast-faq-block"><div class="schema-faq-section" id="faq-question-1600182573960"><strong class="schema-faq-question">How will that work with legacy embeds? Is the data that is stored in post meta still usable?</strong> <p class="schema-faq-answer">As with other broken embeds, instead of the embed, the used link will show. </p> </div> <div class="schema-faq-section" id="faq-question-1600182652112"><strong class="schema-faq-question">Does this also apply to Instagram embeds?</strong> <p class="schema-faq-answer">Yes.  If there was an Instagram link embedding a photo, instead of a photo showing it would be a link to the Instagram post.</p> </div> <div class="schema-faq-section" id="faq-question-1600182749376"><strong class="schema-faq-question">Is there a way WordPress could assist? </strong> <p class="schema-faq-answer">There&#8217;s nothing that WordPress can do about existing embeds, when the provider, here Facebook decides to turn off the oEmbed endpoint.  If the oEmbed endpoint for a service ceases to work and the embed HTML isn&#8217;t in the post meta cache, then it will stop working.</p> </div> <div class="schema-faq-section" id="faq-question-1600184431180"><strong class="schema-faq-question">Is there another way to embed Facebook and Instagram links? </strong> <p class="schema-faq-answer">Instagram has a menu item called embed, that will give you the embed code and you can use the Custom HTML block to add it to your page. Various Facebook posts format have a similar feature. </p> </div> <div class="schema-faq-section" id="faq-question-1600185930668"><strong class="schema-faq-question">How to get the necessary Facebook developer &amp; app credentials? </strong> <p class="schema-faq-answer"><a href="https://php.watch/articles/wordpress-facebook-instagram-oembed">PHP.Watch has detailed instructions</a> on how to go through the process. Site owners and their consultants only have to go through this once.</p> </div> <div class="schema-faq-section" id="faq-question-1600191942681"><strong class="schema-faq-question"></strong> <p class="schema-faq-answer"></p> </div> </div>



<h2>Using native embed code </h2>



<p>Both Facebook and Instagram offer in their menus embed functionality and provide <em>iframe code</em> for embedding in 3rd party sites. As far as we know, those will still be available. </p>



<p>This video shows how to use the feature to embed an Instagram photo. </p>







<h2>Plugin to Migrate Embeds to new API calls</h2>



<p>Ayesh Karunaratne created the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/oembed-plus/">oEmbed Plus plugin</a> to ease the pain for publishers and bloggers, who might have used hundreds of Facebook embed views in their news.  </p>



<p>This plugin implements the new Facebook APIs to bring back support for Facebook and Instagram content embedding. Each site owner would need to register as developer and get app credentials to add them to the plugin&#8217;s settings page. </p>



<img /><strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/oembed-plus/">Screenshot: Oembed Plus plugin</a></strong>



<p>Sarah Gooding also <a href="https://wptavern.com/upcoming-api-change-will-break-facebook-and-instagram-oembed-links-across-the-web-beginning-october-24">wrote about this on the WPTavern</a> with more background on what oEmbed is and how it came about. </p>



<p><strong>How are you handling this breaking change from Facebook?</strong><em> </em><br /><em>Leave your ideas and questions in the comments. </em></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide gt-separator" />



<a href="https://zoom.us/webinar/register/1415659662994/WN_AqDSqxCASKuoK9O6yIZsJA"><img /></a>



<p class="has-small-font-size">Receive your Block Editor &amp; Gutenberg Fix every Saturday at noon EDT.</p>



<div class="wp-block-genesis-blocks-gb-button gb-block-button"><a href="http://eepurl.com/dh9Qi5" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="gb-button gb-button-shape-rounded gb-button-size-medium">Subscribe</a></div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"Gutenberg Times: Customizing WordPress Block Editor for Client Projects";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=15014";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:82:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/customizing-wordpress-block-editor-for-client-projects/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:61696:"<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<div class="toolbelt-video-wrapper"></div>
</div>Recording of a Live Q &amp; A with Victor Ramirez, TheKnottWW



<p>Victor Ramirez is the&nbsp;Lead product analytics engineer<a href="https://twitter.com/TheKnotWW"> @TheKnotWW</a> and worked <a href="https://twitter.com/DowJones">@DowJones</a><a href="https://twitter.com/WSJ"> @WSJ</a> until about 9 months ago? He is also a&nbsp;co-organizer of WordCamp NYC and WordPress meetup. Founder of the<a href="https://www.abstractwp.com/"> Abstract Agency </a>doing digital marketing and content strategy for customers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Over Labor Day weekend he posted a twitter thread on his progressive plant to customizing the WordPress editor for clients. </p>



<p>This is the tweet that started the thread:</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">1/<br />Because I am overly opinionated I present <br /><br />The progressive plan for customizing the WordPress (Gutenberg) editor for clients.<br /><br />First 3 levels require ZERO plugins &amp; are 90% CSS.</p>&mdash; Victor M Ramirez (@isvictoriousss) <a href="https://twitter.com/isvictoriousss/status/1302297166237532160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 5, 2020</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>For better readability, I posted the other tweets here.</p>



<h2>The progressive plan for customizing the WordPress Editor for clientx</h2>



<div class="wp-container-615658ad9d4e9 wp-block-group has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p class="has-large-font-size"><strong>Level 1</strong></p>



<ul><li><a href="https://richtabor.com/add-wordpress-theme-styles-to-gutenberg/">Style the editor and core blocks</a> to match the client theme.<a href="https://t.co/FiAAZcJ6AH?amp=1">&nbsp;</a></li><li><a href="https://richtabor.com/disable-gutenberg-colors/">Disable custom colors &amp; fonts</a> to keep the client on brand<a href="https://t.co/otVTweSNLG?amp=1">&nbsp;</a></li><li>Disable all core blocks your client doesn&#8217;t need per post type. Too many options are confusing. (Optional)</li></ul>



<p class="has-large-font-size">Level 2</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://jeffreycarandang.com/how-to-add-custom-gutenberg-block-styles/">Customize the core blocks by adding block styles</a> (think body styles on a car)</li><li><a href="https://jeffreycarandang.com/extending-gutenberg-core-blocks-with-custom-attributes-and-controls/">And extend existing functionality&nbsp;</a></li><li>Example: You don&#8217;t need a custom testimonial block. You need a block quote with a custom style and link attribute!</li></ul>



<p class="has-large-font-size">Level 3</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://richtabor.com/build-block-patterns/">Build Gutenberg block patterns</a> by grouping together core blocks and styling with CSS.</li><li>Pro-tip: also disable columns. They&#8217;re too messy &amp; your patterns can cover these.</li></ul>



<p>We still have not created a custom block, installed any plugins, or added dependencies</p>



<p class="has-large-font-size">Level 4</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/resources/blocks/">Build custom blocks via ACF.</a> We are only adding ACF for ease of use. Fields, custom post types, taxonomies, &amp; user roles are all core WP.&nbsp;</li><li>Less time training developers, training users, &amp; maintaining systems (the hardest part!)</li><li><a href="https://joeyfarruggio.com/wordpress/custom-post-loop-as-a-gutenberg-block/">6-Step Guide To Custom Post Loop Gutenberg Blocks</a> by <a href="https://joeyfarruggio.com/">Joey Farruggio</a></li></ul>
</div></div>



<h2>More Block Editor &amp; Development Resources</h2>



<ul id="block-89ca30b7-867f-4a44-90d2-eb726732c0f8"><li><a href="https://github.com/isvictorious/wcphx-2020">Victor&#8217;s repository from WordCamp Phoenix</a> (GitHub)</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-unit-test/">Block Unit Test</a> (plugin) by Rich Tabor</li><li><a href="https://gogutenberg.com">GoGutenberg </a> &#8211; What is the Block Editor documentation and tutorials. </li><li><a href="https://www.billerickson.net/innerblocks-with-acf-blocks/">InnerBlocks with ACF blocks</a></li></ul>



<h2>Transcript </h2>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So, hi there. Welcome to the 21st Gutenberg Times Live Q&amp;A. My name is Birgit Pauli-Haack and I&#8217;m your host and the publisher of Gutenberg Times. Thank you all for watching and joining us on this short-term notice, kind of two days before the event. Today&#8217;s show, we will discuss a multitude approach on customizing the block editor for clients.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Victor Ramirez is here with me and we will take a look at how he and his team approach it. Thank you, Victor, for taking the time and putting this together. Walk us through the process.</p>



<p>We’ll do some proper introduction in less than a minute. I have just a few housekeeping notes. As you all know, there is on the right-hand side &#8230; oh, on the bottom of the screen you see the chat window and that&#8217;s where you can post comments and say hi and where you&#8217;re coming from or where you&#8217;re watching from. Then there&#8217;s another one that says Q&amp;A and that&#8217;s when you can put in your question and I will then, with Victor, kind of answer those. On YouTube, we are also live now and there&#8217;s on the right-hand side, there&#8217;s the chat window where you can leave your questions and your comments.</p>



<p>So thank you, all, for watching. Also those that are watching this on the re-run, welcome.</p>



<p>Well, if you make sure that you keep your questions question-like, not so much a blog post but more a question, and then also keep it family-friendly. Even if you disagree, be kind. That&#8217;s part of our housekeeping here. Yeah.</p>



<p>Well, Victor, you agreed to come to the show and I get an hour with you to talk about your work. But let me introduce you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Victor Ramirez is the lead on product analytics engineer at The Knot WW, and formerly worked at Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal until about nine months ago, and he&#8217;s also co-organizer for WordCamp New York City. One of my favorite WordCamps, of the WordPress MeetUp. He&#8217;s also the founder of Abstract Agency, doing digital marketing and content strategy for customers.</p>



<p>Hi, Victor. How are you and what&#8217;s new in your life?</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Just living through a pandemic like everyone else and just moved into a &#8230; you and I were just talking before. I moved into a co-working space to kind of get out of the house a little bit. I am isolated, though. I&#8217;m in my own little two desk space. Just moved in, so there&#8217;s &#8230; I don&#8217;t know if anyone sees the mess behind me. But yeah, doing that. And interesting enough, this year, even though it&#8217;s been a terrible year for the economy, I&#8217;m very lucky. Still employed, fingers crossed, at The Knot, but also my side business doing WordPress has been busier than ever just because clients are looking for ways to streamline content creation, and I&#8217;ve been working a lot with that, so I&#8217;ve been really busy.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Wow, that&#8217;s awesome. I&#8217;ve had actually the same occurrence with February, March I got really busy and it got busier, busier. Right now, I&#8217;m still a little bit in the summer, summer ditch a bit which is actually good for recovering. So, I say hi to Ramona from Colorado. Hi to Rita from Reno. Thanks for saying hi in the chat.</p>



<p>You got my attention when you, Victor, when you tweeted over Labor Day weekend, and I think not only my attention but somebody else. Very quite insightful and succinct. This four-tiered approach on customizing block editor for clients. I think it&#8217;s very helpful for developers, aspiring developers and also developer designers who are just getting started with WordPress or Gutenberg. You started out with, because I&#8217;m overly opinionated &#8230; aren&#8217;t we all, Victor? The progressive plan for customizing WordPress Gutenberg and level one &#8230; so we have levels one, two and three. Then they require zero plug-ins and 90% cascading side sheets and level four. So do you want to walk us through the levels and kind of get started on that?</p>



<p>Hi, Andre.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Yeah. Yeah, so the &#8230; it&#8217;s interesting. So my girlfriend and my coworkers have been telling me to begin to document the stuff that we&#8217;re doing because one of the things that I&#8217;ve gotten really, and I think it&#8217;s just from being involved in the meetup, in the WordCamp, and as like a quick FYI, every time a speaker flakes, and I don&#8217;t mean flakes. Things happen, people get busy, people can&#8217;t make a call. So I will step in as the speaker and so the challenge to me is then to have to write something quickly and what I do is at my day job, not just at The Knot doing analytics but my side business doing WordPress, most of the work I do is educating my developers and educating my clients about how we use WordPress.</p>



<p>So what I had to begin to do was &#8230; so I guess like my one teammate, she calls them Victor-isms, and they&#8217;re things that where I compartmentalize ideas to be in very kind of digestible steps that not only allow us to communicate to the client, but to communicate to the developers and communicate to the larger groups. For example, and this comes from the concept of when I was at Dow Jones, it took us two months to get a local environment set up, and I said, &#8220;Guys, it should take one day. Why does it take &#8230; a student can set up tensor flow in a weekend,&#8221; tensor flow&#8217;s a machine learning algorithm from Google, &#8220;and it takes us two months to set up a local environment for a WordPress website.&#8221; Now I keep that in my mind when I work with clients and I work with developers.</p>



<p>We recently hired some developers from offshore. One developer&#8217;s based in Vietnam, one&#8217;s based in Brazil, and then I work with a developer in Croatia. Every developer has their own approach, so what I wanted to do was try to one, have a uniform approach but two, I wanted to hire from less &#8230; from different talent pools. So one of the things when I hired the person that I hired from Vietnam, he&#8217;s like 23, just graduated college with two kids so he&#8217;s a very busy guy, and the other person, this young woman in Brazil, she is mainly a view developer, not a WordPress developer, but she knows WordPress enough.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So by doing this kind of leveled framework of where I&#8217;m like, &#8220;Hey guys,&#8221; they immediately would go, &#8220;Yeah, no, I&#8217;m going to go away for four weeks and do all this the way I do it and research things.&#8221; Now that could lead to a nightmare because some people might use ACF for fields, someone might use Metabox for fields, someone might roll their own fields. Again, think about all the things that are involved in a WordPress, basic WordPress project, right? Whereas I said, &#8220;Hey, I don&#8217;t want you to go away for four weeks because by the time that happens, WordPress could change completely, Gutenberg could change. Let&#8217;s work incrementally. What could we do in a week? What could we do in two weeks?&#8221;&nbsp;</p>



<p>So when I add a developer, the developer from Vietnam when I tested him before being hired, I gave him an HTML template to add in and he added the HTML template and knew how to use Gulp and SaaS and because of that, he was more able to get to what I would say the level two or level three of my tweets better than some WordPress developers because a lot of WordPress developers are so focused on PHP. They&#8217;re still using PH &#8230; most WordPress plug-ins and tutorials are still using PHP 5. You can cut and paste from PHP 5, 6. So what I tried to do was say, &#8220;Hey, let&#8217;s break this down where it&#8217;s just what can I do? What can I have a low level developer from Vietnam, Brazil, who&#8217;s just starting out do in three steps?&#8221; So the first three levels, I can hand them a handbook, walk away, and one week later they&#8217;ve completed it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So the level one is kind of &#8230; has three things on it, right? One is style the editor and the core blocks to match the client theme. Then this enables the custom colors and the fonts to keep the client on brand, and then disable all core blocks that your client doesn&#8217;t need for post type. Too many options are confusing. I totally agree with that. So style the editor and core blocks to match the client theme.</p>



<p>What other tools that you suggest to developers? You linked a page, or a website, an article by Rich Tabor saying how to add retro theme styles to Gutenberg. I&#8217;m going to share that link.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Yeah, and if you want, what I can do also share my screen about….</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: I brought up &#8230; so WordCamp Phoenix, I did a talk about Gutenberg and the joke was that you don&#8217;t even need to know a reactor JavaScript to do half the things that we&#8217;re doing here. So this is my &#8230; and by the way, after the call, or after this Zoom or YouTube or whatever we&#8217;re calling it these days, this is a repository. It&#8217;s public. It&#8217;s on my GitHub user name is victorious. It&#8217;s WCHPX 2020. Shout Out out to WordCamp Phoenix. That was a really fun time. They had laser tag.</p>



<p>So basic WordPress &#8230; so if you see, the first step was style the editor and the core blocks to match the client theme. What I did was I would say to them, &#8220;Hey, look, the first thing I set up, and I even have it on my own personal site to show you guys,&#8221; I have them set up Richard Tabor&#8217;s block unit test. So that is not actually available in the WordPress repository anymore, but Richard Tabor&#8217;s project was acquired by GoDaddy and he was acqui-hired, but the plug-in is still available on the Go Daddy repository.</p>



<p>So the first thing my developers do is they go in and install the block unit test and what the block unit test does is creates every single available version of every single core block in the system and creates a mega page. Then what we do is if the developer &#8230; sorry, if the client already has brand styles, then we just match the brand styles to this. So for example, this is Heading One, Two, Three through Six, and we will then say to the client, &#8220;Do you have any alternate styles?&#8221; What we will do is then we will add, and this is in the level two I&#8217;ll talk about that, but we say, &#8220;Hey, do you have any H One through Six?&#8221; And it&#8217;s kind of funny. A lot of times, clients won&#8217;t have these styled, and this is one of the most frustrating things about WordPress. A lot of times when agencies sell a theme, they sell an incomplete theme. They sell a theme that only designs what the clients sees, whereas with this block unit test, we&#8217;re designing everything the client could potentially see in the future.</p>



<p>So we have the designer go and style these on the front end and on the back end as well so that not only when the user or the site owner is interacting with the blocks, they are interacting with it, excuse me, in the way that the user would. So we expect the same thing from our developers and it&#8217;s a challenge to them.</p>



<p>So in level one, they&#8217;re going and &#8230; let me just jump into this site to show you how the block unit test actually works.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That&#8217;s cool.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: So when that loads, like I said, from Richard Tabor, the block unit test and that plug-in goes and creates a page, and that page I have here called Block Unit Test, and the other thing, too, is we say to the developer, because a lot of times developers will just go and style the front end and they&#8217;ll go &#8230; and so many developers I found are used to the WordPress backend just being ugly and not looking nice. So what I say to them, &#8220;No, no. Look. This has to work this way and the client should be able to &#8230;&#8221; so that&#8217;s the level one, right? Just go and style all the things that are available in the core blocks.</p>



<p>The level two is disable custom colors and fonts. This isn&#8217;t on my site, but I can just let you know why this is a problem. You give this client this beautiful H 1. It matches their branding exactly. Then the client goes and instead of going to H 6 to make it smaller, they go and &#8230; oh, sorry. We did disable this. We remove the default font picker so they can&#8217;t go and pick the font size for these. The reason we do that is we don&#8217;t want the client to go and highlight this and then go make this font size 35 and all of sudden, they&#8217;re not using the H 1 in the way that it was meant &#8230; they&#8217;re going to take an H 6 and resize it, right?</p>



<p>The other thing is we usually disable custom colors, but we import the client colors. You can do a color palette for the client and have all their colors there, and then remove the custom color because in reality, they&#8217;re just going to go and do something silly like put a black font on a dark blue background and make it unreadable. So we restrict that.</p>



<p>Then in that same thing, we go and disable core blocks, and this is actually &#8230; this is kind of a nightmare. I have these things, there&#8217;s the affiliate&#8217;s image. That&#8217;s from my site, and I&#8217;m a WordPress user so I know what needs to be there, like layout elements, but one of the things we found is that clients &#8230; the column system is just not, and this isn&#8217;t any &#8230; it&#8217;s not even just like &#8230; it is not the system because Beaver Builder, Elementor, they&#8217;ve kind of been working on columns for four years. Clients just don&#8217;t understand columns. They&#8217;re never going to get a column to work correctly on mobile. So what we do is we disable the column picker, we disable Spotify, and we create a spreadsheet.&nbsp;</p>



<p>What I actually do is I go and I actively do a rest API, call up all the available blocks, dump it to a spreadsheet on a monthly basis, and when we onboard a client, we quickly go through and go, &#8220;Here&#8217;s your suggested configuration and here&#8217;s some blocks that we&#8217;re turning off. Do you think you need Spotify?&#8221; And the clients are like, &#8220;No,&#8221; and it&#8217;s very easy to turn off, by the way. Just to show you what I wanted to show you was in the repository that I shared from WordCamp Phoenix, I didn&#8217;t get into block development but I got into customizing the editor. What we went and did on every single type, this is &#8230; we create a custom functionality plug-in, and again this is more modern development that WordPress developers may not be used to. They go into everything into functions.php. The problem is if you throw everything into fucntions.php, and you change your theme, you lose everything.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So we go and add all of our blocks &#8230; sorry, all of our custom functionality that is not related to the theme into a file in a core functionality plug-in. In that core functionality plug-in, we require, once all the types and so for example here, we have this type of service and I think it&#8217;s the type of case study, I think, is where we removed &#8230; we did a block white list in one of these, so this was in February that I did this talk so I forget &#8230; ah, here we go. So in this February talk, all we do is run this big function, and I know I don&#8217;t normally like commented code left in a PR, but we leave this here so the client can just go and say &#8230; the client goes, &#8220;Oh, I want gallery back.&#8221; Okay, we comment it back on. &#8220;Okay, we want this back.&#8221; Oh, we turn it back. In each CPT file, we just have this big directory of the available blocks. So for this promotion, we limited it to only paragraphs, images, and headings for this CPT.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: CPT is custom post type?</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: The other thing I do, just if anyone asks custom post type. Custom post type. Correct. Sorry. Thank you for that. I forget that we&#8217;re &#8230; outside the WordPress, we get in our little bubble.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That&#8217;s okay. That&#8217;s okay.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Yeah. There&#8217;s some other things that I highly recommend in this. Always document your functions. So we document the function of what it does. Restricts blocks for promotions post type. Put a link, so you can do at link. Again, if you borrow this repo, I put a hot link to every single function and you can command click it in VS Code or PhpStorm, and that way instead of my developers coming and going, &#8220;How&#8217;d you do that?&#8221; I literally link to every single thing because I&#8217;m not that smart and it makes it easier. So we&#8217;re documenting in the code, where the developers then, we go and hack and borrow from our own code.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s level one and that was a lot, but those little things all of a sudden, cleaning up the client theme so it looks exactly how they want it, removing certain functionalities so they can&#8217;t make it look the way they don&#8217;t want it, because you don&#8217;t want a phone call when the client goes, &#8220;All my text is blue when I&#8217;m green,&#8221; and then disable the blocks they don&#8217;t need and then already the editor is much cleaner.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So there are, I think, two functions. One is to disable the core block colors and the other one is disable the core block font types.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Correct.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, and the &#8230; you said you used the API column to clean, install, and then have that in a spreadsheet when you try to serve all available blocks?</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Yeah. So let me actually bring up my &#8230; in my other window, I have it. Let me &#8230; I&#8217;m just looking for it because we&#8217;ve done so many client projects recently with this, but it is called 03 and it is structure, so one second here. I&#8217;m actually going to show you one of the spreadsheets that we do this with, and it&#8217;s called &#8230; I&#8217;m in another window. Here we go.</p>



<p>So when we go and plan out the CMS, and this is something we&#8217;re doing now for clients, and I&#8217;ll show you guys in the window, we go &#8230; we don&#8217;t even work in the CMS with the client, because the client, they start to get blind. They go and see all these things in CMS, so we work in spreadsheets, and this client, for example, they had &#8230; their dashboard had all this garbage in there and so we were like, &#8220;Hey, we&#8217;re going to go and make it so all these are hidden and sliders, etc.,&#8221; then we go and get the types and then finally what I do is I hit the rest API and the rest API gives you all the available blocks. It can print out all the blocks. And we just shoot it into a spreadsheet and we go &#8230; if you recognize, let me zoom in a little bit here. If you recognize common formatting, all of these blocks, we go and say to the client, &#8220;Hey, which ones will be available per post type?&#8221; So the blog will have paragraph, we&#8217;re turning off audio, we&#8217;re going to turn on this.</p>



<p>Then also to make it easier for the client to understand, we go and link to every single &#8230; we do a demo where they as the &#8230; because everything&#8217;s remote and I kind of, not that I don&#8217;t like phone calls, it&#8217;s just exhausting to be talking all day. And so what I do is I say to the client, and also the client, I&#8217;m working with a CMO or marketing director or a manager, they don&#8217;t want to have to go and bother them so what they do is they can share this in a 20-person team and they&#8217;re like, &#8220;Well, what&#8217;s a quote block and how does that work?&#8221; Then I link to that for each one and then they go and &#8230; they just go and, &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s a quote block and that&#8217;s great. Wait a minute. But our quote blocks should look different,&#8221; and that brings me to level two where we go and say, &#8220;Hey, you can choose styles,&#8221; and that&#8217;s how we demo this. We say, &#8220;Hey, look. There&#8217;s quote style one and quote style two, but we can do &#8230; what&#8217;s your brand&#8217;s quote style one and quote style two?&#8221; So yeah, so that&#8217;s how we plan that.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That&#8217;s awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. So any questions for this level one customization from our people that are watching? Well, hi, Yuca, on YouTube. She had a comment. Although seeing the Gutenberg engine already, but definitely interested in this show. Super big thanks. Okay. Cool. There was this funny joke, you saw it kind of. Are those short stack developers instead of full stack developers? That&#8217;s pretty cool.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Yes. Yeah, and it&#8217;s &#8230; but I think the thing, too, is we don&#8217;t &#8230; it&#8217;s not even like we&#8217;re not trying &#8230; I&#8217;m not hiring developers that are purposely lower skilled. It&#8217;s that also there are some developers who just to get up and running on WordPress, it&#8217;s so much work. It&#8217;s easier to find someone, in my opinion, who understands semantic HTML, CSS, and build tools, and then we disable the PHP engine and we just say, &#8220;Hey, look, now the WordPress site, the template, looks the way it needs to look, the HTML template looks the way it needs to look. Please go and use JavaScript and CSS to add the UI functionality that we need for the client to be happy.&#8221;</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I totally get it, yeah. So if that&#8217;s level one, what&#8217;s level two? It says customize the core blocks by adding block styles, and then extend the existing functionality. Example, you don&#8217;t need a custom testimonial block. What you actually need is a block quote with a custom style and a link attribute. That&#8217;s kind of the next tweet. There was a lot of information in this Twitter thread.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Right. So I don&#8217;t have &#8230; again, I don&#8217;t have styles loaded from a client, but if you guys steal somebody&#8217;s screen, this is a default functionality of WordPress core. So again, this is not anything custom. This is the default block quote from WordPress and it comes in two styles, default and large. What a lot of people may not realize is you can then &#8230; what this large is actually doing, and all it&#8217;s doing, is it is going and adding a wrapper, a class wrapper, around this block quote, with the class of let&#8217;s say large, right? And then so when I go to that quote, so then the client comes to us and says, &#8220;Oh, well, our block quote looks a certain way.&#8221; We can just go to this actual &#8230; find the block quote and see it says is style large, right? Well, now I just go look for that is style large in my CSS, and I could go and target only that particular style large class, right?&nbsp;</p>



<p>So when you go, and that&#8217;s why kind of that Richard Tabor tutorial, and actually I think the other one that&#8217;s really good that keeps it very straightforward, Bill Erickson does Gutenberg styles and he does block styles. Again, because I don&#8217;t have an option ready, he shows two versions. He just modified large and modified a regular, right? Again, you can just use the default styles, but then you can add an additional style by adding a JavaScript call. You do need a custom JavaScript file for your core editor and you can see here, some of what I was talking about before, he did Heading 1 through 6 one style, had a style two. So it&#8217;s about &#8230; I think it&#8217;s about 10 lines of code. You&#8217;re creating and queuing custom scripts that load in the editor and then he is registering the custom style and he labeled it alternate.</p>



<p>So they&#8217;re doing the same thing here in core, where they&#8217;re saying is large. You&#8217;re going to do is alternate, and then your new style will be available for each of these. You can do these for any of these. You can make your headings &#8230; I worked with clients where when you add that style, now that style will be pickable there, and that happens all the time where a client may have a cursive font or some kind of CTA font they want. You can do that even with buttons. We have, and actually I think that&#8217;s in core, in core there&#8217;s button style one and button style two. Actually, this is from this theme that I&#8217;m using. So you can go build your own.</p>



<p>Then extending the custom functionality, again I don&#8217;t have one right in front of me right now, but we had a client that wanted to do quotes, and what we did was we found okay, they wanted quotes with a link to the author&#8217;s name. All we did was we extended it, and I think linked in there to add extended functionality. That&#8217;s from Jeffrey Carandang. Sorry, Jeffrey, if I&#8217;m butchering your name. I know we&#8217;ve met twice.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So he has it&#8217;s extending blocks and it&#8217;s Jeffrey Carandang. So all you do is again, basic JavaScript. Now that you&#8217;ve added that basic JavaScript file that loads particular styles, you can use that same JavaScript file to add an attribute. What you can see he&#8217;s doing here is he is adding a custom attribute to a core Gutenberg block of like, and it adds an attribute and what it looks like it&#8217;s doing here is it&#8217;s assigning an attribute of visible on mobile and he&#8217;s registering it to &#8230; let me see here. Where he&#8217;s passing it? Right. Custom panel control. See, he added mobile, and this is a toggle. Mobile device visibility.</p>



<p>So recently we did that for a client where all we did was we added a text field and let them add a URL, and we didn&#8217;t add a custom testimonial block. All we did was add a custom attribute of a URL and they could click &#8230; they could highlight here, or click there, and have the URL and add the link. So you can modify the basic WordPress blocks very easily. So what we try to do is when we go and work with a client on a project, we work through these and we say, &#8220;Okay, do they need level one, level two, level three,&#8221; and that gives us also a better way to scope time.</p>



<p>So yeah, that&#8217;s what I was saying here. You don&#8217;t need a testimonial block. And also the other thing, too, is you can actually use Inner Blocks to cheat. I guess I should have put that as a level 2.5, where now ACF has Inner Blocks and even Gutenberg has Inner Blocks. An Inner Block is where you essentially create a block that calls in other blocks. So you can make your own testimonial block by using the H 1, the paragraph, a link, and then an image. Then now, use Inner Blocks to put those in with default attributes and now you&#8217;ve created your own testimonial block, but you&#8217;re not actually &#8230; you didn&#8217;t actually create a block. You&#8217;re just using the core blocks and calling them in a pattern.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, so Juca Pauline has a question on YouTube. Is name scope a problem in doing Gutenberg blocks? Can the component be easily shielded into its own name space?</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: So I&#8217;ve not run into any issue, but name spacing is important to make sure when you&#8217;re going and it&#8217;s all about how you build your files. So whenever we&#8217;re working with CSS, prefixing all of our functions, prefixing everything and actually had that in the demo. We&#8217;re building out currently where all of our CSS, all of our JavaScript is modularized where it is all name spaced and so by default, ES 6, and if you guys can see my screen, we go through all of our code and we make sure to name space this &#8230; sorry, I just pulled this down. I have a developer working on it. So yeah, for all that, you will run into name space issues if you don&#8217;t properly prefix, name space, and work with your code.</p>



<p>So that is one of the things that gets frustrating for developers, but that&#8217;s why I recommend, again, starting with level one and two. You really shouldn&#8217;t run into those issues as long as you&#8217;re using the core blocks and you&#8217;re, again, prefixing your functions, making sure to name space things and import properly. But yeah, that will be an issue if you go to scale and you don&#8217;t plan for those things.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I&#8217;m just making a little pause here to make sure that people who have questions can kind of be more targeted and not have to wait until later. If you have questions about adding custom block styles as well as extending core blocks, now is a good time. Of course, we can do the Q&amp;A later, but just to get the first questions out of the way.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Then one more thing. On my screen, you might see there&#8217;s this guy, Igor Benic, who&#8217;s really….</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Benic.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Yeah, Benic. Sorry. I&#8217;m going to butcher his name, yeah. So butchering names today. But yeah, so he writes great stuff and he actually wrote this a while back. If you look at this article, he talks about Inner Blocks but the thing I think that he did great was he showed how CoBlocks, which is owned by Richard Tabor, went and used the Accordion lock and the Accordion Block is using Inner Blocks. They didn&#8217;t really go and write their own block, they just used the core blocks to create a block called Accordion that uses Inner Blocks.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, I&#8217;m glad that you mentioned that. That is actually one of the most clicked links on one of our resource pages from the Gutenberg Times. It&#8217;s Enable Inner Blocks for Gutenberg. It&#8217;s kind of interesting, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we have that. I&#8217;m looking around the space and I don&#8217;t see any questions right now. Oh, good. Yuca Pauline says, &#8220;Good tip on naming.&#8221;</p>



<p>All right. We are at level three. Build Gutenberg block patterns by grouping together core blocks and styling with CSS. Pro tip, also disable columns. That&#8217;s what you mentioned before. Nobody gets that right. The Gutenberg block patterns is just new in WordPress 5.5, but it was around the Gutenberg plug-in for quite a while, and we have another link to Rich Tabor, How to Build Block Patterns for the WordPress Editor.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Right. So the way that I came into that, I didn&#8217;t even know it was called block patterns because I had not been really following the block pattern build-out. So I left Dow Jones in January and I had not really been involved, kind of like tracking the active development of Gutenberg, but I did go &#8230; and what I was doing was we were using StudioPress Genesis, and a couple of things I actually kind of don&#8217;t like about StudioPress Genesis. I want to give a warning because sometimes I feel like some people may go and purchase something because I recommend it and then get mad because I didn&#8217;t warn them about something.</p>



<p>One of the things I don&#8217;t like about Genesis is it goes and changes default functional &#8230; I&#8217;m very opinionated in the sense that everything that you do should be as close to core as possible because you&#8217;re doing your clients and your user a disservice. So for example, if I want to change the layout of this to full width sidebar, in default WordPress you would go to page attributes and choose the &#8230; this should say sidebar left, sidebar right, but Genesis does this thing where it does layout. We actually kill this, get rid of this whole custom sidebar and move all the settings back over here via custom attributes.</p>



<p>Again, they had that. It wasn&#8217;t &#8230; again, they may be doing it for a particular reason. We did it and moved it over, and now we&#8217;re moving back to Patterns because before Atomic Blocks and Genesis, before Patterns was out, they had this thing called Layouts, and it actually was Patterns, but built a different way. So we would go and it wasn&#8217;t really well documented, but Atomic Blocks had in their repository you could go and make your own patterns. So these are patterns.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So if you see the way I&#8217;m doing this now, if I want to go and add something here on this page, instead of going add a block, and by the way in the new WordPress, in 5.5 which I don&#8217;t have active right here now, you would go like and instead of just adding a block, these patterns would show up next to your blocks as well and you can add a preview of each one. The layout picker, the way it works from Genesis or Atomic, is if I go and pick a layout and then I go and pick this and I click it, it goes and adds a layout, and what do you know? Three columns, right? I&#8217;ve disabled, again not in this instance, but they went and added in this layout, they went and added columns, they added column gap. So this whole pattern has its own controls, had its own functionality.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So now it&#8217;s really restricting the user, but it&#8217;s restricting the user in a good way. If you remember I said remove columns, now it&#8217;s easier because there&#8217;s so many times where a client will say, &#8220;Oh, I want to add two columns,&#8221; but then they go and &#8230; I had a client who was adding &#8230; they kept making columns and trying to put the media text block. If anyone&#8217;s not familiar, the media text is like a hero type image. But they kept trying to put the media text block into four columns and then getting annoyed that it looked terrible on mobile, but they didn&#8217;t understand padding, they didn&#8217;t understand all these things. So what we did was by getting rid of columns and restricting to layouts, they couldn&#8217;t just go and add other blocks in other places. If you see here actually, I can&#8217;t go and add other blocks into this layout.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So by restricting that, you&#8217;re taking away control for the client, but you&#8217;re also giving high value adds where you&#8217;re saying to the client, &#8220;Hey, just give me all of the available patterns or all the things you use, and I will add these for you.&#8221; Now some clients, I hear marketers and people that use Beaver Builder screaming, but what I do is I restrict &#8230; I will go and create a custom post type of promotions and restrict the page builder to only promotions of a custom post type. That way when the user logs in, they can only ruin those pages and then they can fight with the designer on how to get that. But for the primary users, we use this. So that&#8217;s what I like to do there.</p>



<p>Then yeah, that&#8217;s kind of it, really. They&#8217;re simple. You can build these blocks and similar to Richard Tabor&#8217;s tutorial, once I build out a group of blocks, I can just take that group and then export it and turn it into a pattern.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Yeah, and that&#8217;s what Rich is showing. I also shared a link to the Gutenberg Times WordPress Block Pattern resource list, which is actually covering the whole aspect of it, not only how you use them but also how there are plug-ins available that you can install as a site owner on your site, and then create, with the core blocks, your pattern so to speak, and then save it to the Pattern and it will show up as a pattern in your inserter. Those are quite nice. There&#8217;s some other cool links in there, also.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I found three themes that do block patterns quite well, so you can actually look at them and maybe learn from it and do some creative inspiration there. But that is &#8230; with 5.5, it has been &#8230; I think it&#8217;s a game changer, block patterns, because it can be done by anybody to do these templates but you don&#8217;t really need JavaScript for it. What Rich is showing is actually how to put it in your Functions page or a separate plug-in but also using the block editor to create them. You can style them and everything, so it&#8217;s really interesting.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I would suggest that any designer and developer to learn more about block patterns because it helps you so much with the Gutenberg and making really good with the clients, yeah.</p>



<p>All right. So, but we &#8230; as you said in your tweet, we still have not created a single custom block, installed any plug-ins, or added any dependencies, right?</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Right.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So now we come to level four, or do we have questions before we go to level four? No question here. Nope. Nope. Yeah, go ahead.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Okay, cool. Yeah, so on the level four, and again, there was actually someone that commented on the tweet, or the tweet storm I guess, that I did and they said, &#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t agree about ACF.&#8221; I&#8217;ll be honest. I actually, when I was at Dow Jones, I kind of began to not like Advanced Custom Fields but the other thing was I &#8230; and I think a lot of developers make this mistake that you are in the WordPress developer bubble because what happens is you end up thinking, &#8220;Yeah, man. It&#8217;s just easy to maintain a block,&#8221; and it&#8217;s like if it was so easy to maintain code, I mean look at it like, what is it? Space Jam? Has anyone ever seen that, by the way? The Space Jam website, the Michael Jordan cartoon movie, the website&#8217;s still standing, I think 20 years later. Twenty years later this site is still standing, right, but if we were to go and look at the source code it is just plain HTML. There&#8217;s nothing in here. There&#8217;s no scripts. There&#8217;s nothing. I think there&#8217;s a script for a policy update warning and that&#8217;s it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: There&#8217;s a tracker, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Yeah, where as modern development, there&#8217;s so many different changes, so many things going in and when you are &#8230; and you&#8217;re doing yourself, in my opinion, a disservice. You can&#8217;t be mad at a client who pays you $10,000 for a website and then when you &#8230; when a block breaks they call you three months later to fix it and you&#8217;re like, &#8220;Oh, that will be another $500,&#8221; because now you&#8217;re charging them 5%. They&#8217;re abstracted from that mentally, meaning where they are like &#8230; and the one reason I bring that up, too, is I would say at Dow Jones and I even say at The Knot, we&#8217;re competing with Domino&#8217;s and the reason is that the user experience, when you go and order a Domino&#8217;s pizza, there&#8217;s a pizza tracker and you can watch from the minute the person puts the pizza in the oven to the minute the person delivers the pizza. For $10, that&#8217;s the user experience they get. People don&#8217;t realize there&#8217;s a 500-person development team at Domino&#8217;s who&#8217;s building their infrastructure systems, but to the user, they&#8217;re like, &#8220;Why does my $10 pizza have a better user experience than my $10,000 website,&#8221; right?</p>



<p>So one of the big things that I brought from being in enterprise development to now still doing websites for marketing for start-ups for their marketing websites is kind of how&#8217;s this thing going to stay standing? So AVF may &#8230; it doesn&#8217;t have inline &#8230; the one thing that drove me nuts, it didn&#8217;t have inline editing, right? You&#8217;re essentially just putting fields inside of the Gutenberg editor. The one thing that it does do is it handles the dependencies. Your client only has to worry about updating Advanced Custom Fields. They don&#8217;t have to worry about updating low dash, updating babble, updated web pack, updating all these JavaScript technologies, right? So ACF is really beneficial for that.</p>



<p>Now, of course, if you&#8217;re dealing with an enterprise client where you&#8217;re on an annual retainer and you have the development hours, go for it. Build custom blocks, right, but like I said, if you don&#8217;t have a client on a retainer and they&#8217;re not doing a maintenance plan you&#8217;re putting yourself in for a world of trouble by not using Advanced Custom Fields. The other thing, too….</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Especially now, yeah. Especially now that Gutenberg is still so volatile, changing APIs left and right and CSS and all that. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Right. And JavaScript and the web in general is getting volatile with core web vitals now, the way that we track speed. Everything&#8217;s changing.</p>



<p>But the beauty of Advanced Custom Fields is that, and actually I can even show you. Let me see if I have a demo available. So this is &#8230; let me see if this still works. Give me one second. And probably not, but let me see if I get in here. Give me one second. And auto fill. Nope, that&#8217;s the old one. Other pro tip, use a password manager always.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p>Victor Ramirez: And so….</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, so I shared in the chat the link to the documentation for ACF guide, how to do blocks, so people can then study for themselves later on. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Yeah. And so this is actually one of my favorite examples of what we do now for clients. This is like full circle WordPress 101, okay? This is actually &#8230; this is what I spoke about at WordCamp Phoenix. If you go and borrow that repo, it&#8217;s what I built in here.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So the number one thing that drives me nuts at most WordPress build-outs is you will see here that notice it says Search. That should say Search Testimonials. But even Modern Tribe Events Calendar Pro, when you go and hit view or whatever, it will say when you hit Add a New Testimonial or you publish a testimonial or publish an event, it will say View Post. That drives me crazy. It&#8217;s not a post, it&#8217;s an event. Again remember, get out of your WordPress bubble. Outside of the WordPress bubble, that is very confusing because you know that an event is a custom post type because you&#8217;re in the bubble. Outside the bubble, they don&#8217;t know that.</p>



<p>So the other thing is that on most people when they go and create CPTs, they leave this button up here that says View Posts, View Testimonials. Well, this testimonial is headless, meaning where we don&#8217;t even allow &#8230; there&#8217;s no render. And so what people don&#8217;t realize you can do, and I did this at WordCamp Phoenix, is you can go to the type of testimonial, and I did this here. I went and disabled &#8230; I changed all the labels to match exactly which is insert testimonial, view testimonial, filter testimonials, et cetera, et cetera. I go and remove &#8230; I leave the title, by the way. It drives me nuts when people change the default title to an ACF field. There&#8217;s so much rich functionality that the default title field does. You&#8217;re creating work for yourself. Don&#8217;t do it. So I change that.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Then we go and do this kind of work, and again it&#8217;s documented here at site point, where we go and it says testimonial updated, testimonial created, and if there is no front forward facing publicly queryable link, it will not say view update. It will just say updated. It won&#8217;t say view updated testimonial.</p>



<p>So why does this all matter? The reason this is great is now we have this set up where there&#8217;s a front-end submission form where the client, via gravity forms, can send it to the user, they go and fill out the form with their testimonial. When the testimonial &#8230; and then they see it as a draft. The client goes into the testimonial and then publishes it. If you see here, just standard ACF, they can go and see here. It gets categorized, the testimonials, the user image, and then the program type. The reason I&#8217;m showing you CPT when I&#8217;m talking about blocks or ACF and blocks is now this user can go and simply add this testimonial wherever they want.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The way that we&#8217;ve written these &#8230; let me just go here. The way that we&#8217;ve written these blocks is if the testimonial that they chose has been deleted, it will fall back to the most recent testimonial. So that way if the client forgets to put a testimonial, and so I can go here. And the other thing we did was we put the user&#8217;s &#8230; we put the site&#8217;s keywords into each custom block. So if you see here, this is ACF, ACF, ACF. So they have SEI testimonials, and then it by default lists all the testimonials but they can go pick one, they can select the testimonials. So a lot of the stuff that I see people doing with custom blocks, the client doesn&#8217;t want a custom block. All they want to be able to do is get the content into here.</p>



<p>Now an example of that is you go and get a tool like &#8230; I was using, in my younger days when I was in WordPress, eight years ago, I would go and reach for a plug-in. I would go and say, &#8220;Okay, they want testimonials. What&#8217;s the best testimonials plug-in? Tick, tick, tick. Okay, what&#8217;s the best whatever?&#8221; And then there was a great plug-in called like Super &#8230; not Super. Great Testimonial &#8230; there was a great testimonial plug-in, but the user would have to go and create a testimonial view, then take that testimonial short code and paste it where they wanted it. Then they would have to go and add the testimonials in the testimonials section. That was actually good &#8230; so you&#8217;re sending the user all these places.</p>



<p>Now think about this. The people who maintain this site, they don&#8217;t have to actually go and create the testimonials. They&#8217;re submitted to a page. They go and get an alert when there&#8217;s a new testimonial via Gravity forms that needs to be approved. They approve it and then the people creating the content can just go and grab the testimonials and add them where they want them, swap them out, select the testimonials here. They can even go taxonomy. So now you&#8217;ve made this &#8230; and there&#8217;s nothing to change, there&#8217;s nothing here. They can&#8217;t really break it because they&#8217;re not actually choosing the testimonials.</p>



<p>Now some people might say, &#8220;Well, why not just make a testimonial block they can fill in,&#8221; right? Well, you&#8217;re assuming that someone wants to go and change the testimonials on 50 different pages, right? What I&#8217;m doing here is I&#8217;m giving them hey, you never have to touch this page again because it&#8217;s using a CPT and it&#8217;s querying those.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So that even means like when we&#8217;ve done &#8230; outside of this, I&#8217;ve done logo sliders. I&#8217;ve done logo arrays where people show off their favorite clients and all they have to do &#8230; and even bigger, and this is kind of like I don&#8217;t want to jump off Gutenberg, you can use something like WP All Import and there&#8217;s other ones too, that synchronize via CSV and we have clients where they have sites with thousands of posts. They don&#8217;t actually go into WordPress, they edit the event via CSV in a Google sheet. The Google sheet is dynamically being pulled in the blocks and then people can go and style and do whatever they want to do and add different things to the pages, but the events are automatically pulled into CPTs and no one can even actually edit the custom types.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s why I love &#8230; again, I went on a little diatribe there, but that&#8217;s why I love ACF for blocks for CPTs.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, yeah, very interesting. Good. Then you shared &#8230; so you shared the post with ACF, how to bridge custom blocks, but you&#8217;re still &#8230; so it&#8217;s without code on that side, but you still need to template the block on how it&#8217;s rendered.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Right. So that would require &#8230; yeah. And to show you kind of, let me bring it up. SAI. So this is the code base. It&#8217;s not public, sorry. I probably should make an OpenSource of a full theme that we did. Again, we do everything in the functions file. So the types and taxonomies are in the functions file….</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Of the plug-in.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Of the plug-in, correct. The plug-in function file. But then for the theme, we do put all of the in the lib, all of the blocks which are actually under &#8230; man, I haven&#8217;t touched this in forever, and I&#8217;m actually on the wrong branch, I think. Ah, doo, doo, doo. It&#8217;s under either template parts &#8230; here we go. Template parts. And so for the testimonials, they have the block CSS and this is all it is. Block PHP and it&#8217;s just a loop to, &#8220;Hey, here&#8217;s the loop.&#8221; If the testimonials are ordered by single or by count or selected and remember I told you all we do is go and get basic HTML and this is super basic HTML. It&#8217;s going and getting the post thumbnail, the attachment URL. By the way, that&#8217;s because I prefer thumbnails over custom fields. Gets the attachment responsive. Post meta. And that&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s the template to go and create the block and then the CSS is very light as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Again, just basic CSS and then the block is actually declared, because again this belongs to the theme itself. The type, the data still exists, but the block belongs to the theme in this case. So in that case, we went and moved &#8230; again, this is crazy. This was built four or five months ago, and now we&#8217;re realizing no, this is not how we want to do it. We want to move these over somewhere else. But we go and register those here, so like that. And that&#8217;s all it is. Like 10 lines.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Yeah, and then in the level four, you also shared a link to the 6-Step Guide To Custom Post Loop Gutenberg Blocks by Joey Farruggio, I think was his name. So I&#8217;m going to share that out as well, because you want to….</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: And actually my comments are &#8230; I have a super comment on there where I told him, &#8220;Hey man, you probably should not use the word post because people don&#8217;t know what that means. It should be select testimonials,&#8221; and when you see in his tutorial, he literally tells people select post, and that makes no sense. Again, because he&#8217;s using WordPress brain, not user brain.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. All right. So well, we are all through the level one with styling, core block disabling parts. Then customizing the core blocks with adding block styles, adding stuff. That&#8217;s the level two. Level three is build the Gutenberg block patterns with a lot of resources there, and then level four is build the custom block with ACF, or if you are willing to do that, you can certainly do this in JavaScript and build your own custom blocks, but for maintainability….</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: By the way, I just saw Carrie &#8230; sorry. I just saw Carrie Delzazon here, by the way. So Carrie, if I did anything stupid with Genesis, tweet me because now I&#8217;m like, &#8220;Uh oh.&#8221; I&#8217;m checking the names to make sure &#8230; yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Carrie &#8230; I steal all of Carrie&#8217;s &#8230; can I just say that the best part of the WordPress community, I feel like we&#8217;re all just Mad Max ripping stuff off each other&#8217;s car and trying to put together hot rods and I borrow Carrie&#8217;s. Carrie&#8217;s like &#8230; if anyone is interested in Genesis after this, go look up Carrie&#8217;s LinkedIn courses, and then also Tonya Mork has this great site called Know the Code, and so I borrow their stuff from Genesis. So I&#8217;m like all these concepts I borrowed from the Genesis community and the Atomic community who gave me a heads-up. You can tell I kind of have my favorite artists that I follow, right? It&#8217;s like a record collection. You have these certain labels and groups. If anyone remembers, you used to follow a record label, you know?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, yeah. So Tom, yes. This show will be shared on YouTube and I have the links here. I&#8217;ll put them on <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/">gutenbergtimes.com</a>. So each of our live Q&amp;As has its own post on the Gutenberg Times with all the links that were shared in a transcript later on. You can always use it as a resource. Carrie Dils just published another article on Gutenberg blocks and Genesis, so we will have that in our newsletter that comes out tomorrow. So if you want to sign up for it.</p>



<p>All right. Now are there any questions, apart from things? Yeah, hi, Carrie. Any other questions? I see &#8230; yeah, this is awesome. All right.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We also have &#8230; the Gutenberg Times also has the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. The number 28 has been published, or the episode 28 has been published and we will record next week, Friday, after Gutenberg 9.0 comes out and do that.</p>



<p>Other announcements I don&#8217;t have. Do you have anything?</p>



<p>So if people want to contact you, Victor, thank you so much for leading us through this and giving a little deep insight on how you and your team work this all out. Is there a place &#8230; how can they reach you and if you have anything else that you want to have last words, so to speak?</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: One thing I did not mention in this tweet storm, and I probably should add it at the end, is I use WPGulp. It&#8217;s not &#8230; it hasn&#8217;t updated in a minute. It&#8217;s by a guy named Ahmad Awais. WPGulp, there&#8217;s a comment in there &#8230; I think Carrie and I actually uploaded the comment and I even &#8230; the guy has had a &#8230; there&#8217;s a guy who made a PR and it&#8217;s how to split your code between so you can write one file for your fonts and it will automatically split it between the editor and the front end. Same thing with JavaScript, same thing so you&#8217;re not having one giant, 20,000-line front end code item. You can split your code, and I even now have it where I split code by CPT, split code by the editor if we have a really large set of data for our front-end component. So I highly recommend that.</p>



<p>If you want to talk to me, just talk to me on Twitter is probably the best space. DMs, there&#8217;s just so much spam out there and that way, too, on Twitter, it makes it I can share answers with everybody. So yeah, check it out on there. That&#8217;s the best &#8230; or even go to &#8230; we have a meetup. Shout out to WordPress NYC. We have a meetup this Tuesday. Luckily I&#8217;m not speaking this week, but someone will be speaking about unit testing and we are 100% virtual, so just go to meetup or just Google meetup WP NYC, and also more of my talks are on <a href="https://wpnyc.org/">wpnyc.org</a>, we record all of those, or you can check me out on WordPress TV.</p>



<p>Birgit, you&#8217;re muted, Birgit.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, I didn&#8217;t want to &#8230; I muted myself because I was typing and some folks kind of get those vibration on the show. I just shared the WPGulp link in the chat and it&#8217;s by Ahmad Awais, who also is kind of very strong in VS code stuff as well as he was the first with cool grade Guten blocks.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Yeah. CGB.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So it&#8217;s a great community. Thank you so much, Victor. This was an awesome show walk-through. Within one hour you kind of have the whole development process revolutionized for a few people. Thank you so much and it was great that we had you.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: By the way, I&#8217;m flattered that you even thought that, so thank you for everyone who was impressed by that tweet, so thank you.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, thank everybody for attending. If you have any questions, just shoot me an email or also connect on Twitter. Well, this was it. Thank you so much, everybody. Have a great weekend, and I&#8217;ll see you when I see you.</p>



<p><em>Victor Ramirez</em>: Bye. Thanks, guys.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Bye. Bye bye. Bye, Peter. Bye, Rita. Kristen. Bye bye.&nbsp;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"Gutenberg Times: New Block-Based Widget Screen in Gutenberg 8.9 – First Tests";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=14809";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/new-block-based-widget-screen-in-gutenberg-8-9-first-tests/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:20027:"<p class="has-drop-cap">With the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/releases/tag/v8.9.0">Gutenberg 8.9 release</a>, WordPress developers removed the &#8216;experimental flag&#8217; from the new block-based Widget Screen and it will take over the default way of managing widgets. </p>



<p>Not to be a spoiler, but the widget screen is still experimental. If you use the Gutenberg plugin in a production environment, you might be accustomed to a polished interface with great workflows and smooth transition. In its first iteration, the block-based widget handling is &#8211; as expected &#8211; not there yet. </p>



<p>Riad Benguella wrote the September 2nd meeting: </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>&#8220;Unfortunately, the screen has been there for a long time now but received very little feedback, and since we’re approaching WordPress 5.6, making it default + call for testing post is the best way to ensure we receive the necessary feedback before landing it on Core.&#8221;</p><cite>Riad Benguella, #core-editor meeting September 2, 2020</cite></blockquote>



<h2 id="toc" class="toc">Table of Contents</h2>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-tl-dr-how-can-i-switch-off-the-widget-screen">TL;DR: How can I Switch off the block-based Widget Screen?</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-getting-familiar-with-the-new-screen">Getting Familiar with the New Screen. </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-using-regular-blocks-in-the-widget-section">Using Regular Blocks in the Widget section.</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-testing-third-party-widgets-bb-press-and-jetpack">Testing Third-Party Legacy Widgets: bbPress and Jetpack</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#4-bb-press-widgets">bbPress Widgets</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#5-jetpack-widgets">Jetpack Widgets</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#6-widget-screen-and-the-customizer">Block-Based Widget Screen and the Customizer</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#7-preliminary-list-of-issues">Unordered List of Issues</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#8-this-months-focus-work">This Month&#8217;s Focus</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#9-f">First Conclusion</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#11-widgets-in-open-floor-at-meeting-september-9-2020">Widget Screen in Open Floor at Meeting September 9, 2020</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#11-block-patterns-for-block-areas">Block Patterns for Block Areas</a></li></ul></div>



<h2 id="0-tl-dr-how-can-i-switch-off-the-widget-screen">TL;DR: How can I Switch off the block-based Widget Screen?</h2>



<p>Funny you should ask that! The Gutenberg developers learned during the last three years that every new feature they add needs code to switch it off or opt-out. </p>



<p>If you or your customers want to change widgets in the next few weeks, wait until the next Gutenberg update. You add this line of code to your theme&#8217;s <code>function.php</code></p>


<pre class="wp-block-code"><div><code class="hljs language-javascript">remove_theme_support( <span class="hljs-string">'widgets-block-editor'</span> );</code></div><small class="shcb-language" id="shcb-language-1"><span class="shcb-language__label">Code language:</span> <span class="shcb-language__name">JavaScript</span> <span class="shcb-language__paren">(</span><span class="shcb-language__slug">javascript</span><span class="shcb-language__paren">)</span></small></pre>


<p><em>Note: Due to a bug, the legacy widget section won&#8217;t be available in the Customizer after adding the opt-out code. </em>Marcio Duarte filed this <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24949">GitHub issue</a>.</p>



<h2 id="1-getting-familiar-with-the-new-screen">Getting Familiar with the New Screen. </h2>



<p>For those interested in testing the Block-based Widget Screen, welcome to my tour. </p>



<p>My test environment: Local Site with WP trunk (5.6-alpha-48937), Gutenberg 8.9, Twenty-Twenty theme. </p>



<p>After you installed Gutenberg 8.9, go to <code>Appearance &gt; Widgets</code> in your WP-Admin menu. You see this new screen with your theme&#8217;s registered Widget Areas &#8211; now called Block Areas.</p>



<img />WordPress new block-based Widget Screen introduced in Gutenberg 8.9



<p>In the content section, you see all your widgets already set. In the sidebar you see the Block Areas screen with the list of your widget areas. </p>



<p class="has-background"><em>&#8220;Block Areas (also known as &#8220;Widget Areas&#8221;) are global parts in your site&#8217;s layout that can accept blocks. These vary by theme, but are typically parts like your Sidebar or Footer.&#8221;</em></p>



<p>At first, I was a little lost in the new screen. All these empty title boxes didn&#8217;t mean anything to me. As soon as I clicked on a title, I could identify which widget type I had selected and then it all became oddly familiar. </p>



<p>When you click in the section, you see the outline of the block, the widget title, and the form fields to adjust the setting. As the block-editor for posts, the interface feels kind of busy. </p>



<img />Recent Post Widget



<p>Instead of empty titles, adding widget name as the default title would have helped to avoid the feeling of disorientation on an empty screen with empty title boxes at the beginning. This needs some helpful guidance for first time users. </p>



<h2 id="2-using-regular-blocks-in-the-widget-section">Using Regular Blocks in the Widget section.</h2>



<p>My first task was to add a list of quick links to the footer. Doing it with conventional blocks should work. I wanted to add a heading block and a list block with links. </p>



Video: Adding a Quick LInks section to the Footer with Heading and List blocks. 



<p>It feels there would be enough real estate on the screen to add the left sidebar with the available blocks/widgets. The + button seems to be a residue from the pre-5.5 Block UI and will be updated in due time. The preview in the widget screen is bare-bones. It doesn&#8217;t show how the widget area would look on the front end.  </p>



<h2 id="3-testing-third-party-widgets-bb-press-and-jetpack">Testing Third-Party Legacy Widgets: bbPress and Jetpack</h2>



<p>For this first iteration, these first impressions might not be all that important. Those of us who use the Gutenberg plugins are expecting new features to be a little rough around the edges, especially concerning the UX experience. </p>



<p>Jorge wrote: &#8220;Yes even if the UX may be improved in the future, testing if the screen is reliable, if it works with third-party widgets, does not crash, etc. is very useful.&#8221;</p>



<p>For now, the team needs testing on backwards compatibility and third-party widgets. So let&#8217;s see if I can get myself some of those. We are expecting a &#8220;Call for Testing&#8221; from the Core team in a few days and I will update this post with the links at the time. </p>



<h3 id="4-bb-press-widgets">bbPress Widgets</h3>



<p>First I installed  bbPress, the WordPress forums package, to get to the bbPress widgets. I had to create a forum and a topic to fill those widgets with content. </p>



<p>For comparison, here is a screenshot of the old widget screen. </p>



<img />Old Widget Screen on WP-Admin



<p>My expectation was that I would see the array of bbPress widgets somehow in the inserter. Not so, though. The solution for now is to use a block called &#8220;Legacy Widget.&#8221;. It&#8217;s a block wrapper rendering the old-style widget code. When added to the block area, it shows a drop-down box with a list of all registered widgets. </p>



<p><em>Note: The &#8220;Legacy Widget&#8221; doesn&#8217;t come up in the search of the Inserter if you use &#8220;Widget&#8221; as keyword. Start the search with &#8220;lega&#8221;.</em> </p>



<img />Use the Legacy Widget block to place 3rd Party widgets from plugins into the block areas.



<p>As mentioned, the widget screen doesn&#8217;t have a preview screen, so you need to open a second tab on your browser with your website to see how the widget  looks on the front end of your site. </p>



<p>The settings for the widgets appear within the block, similar to the old widget behavior. </p>



<img />The bbPress Recent Topics Widget



<h3 id="5-jetpack-widgets">Jetpack Widgets</h3>



<p>After installation, we need to enable the widgets in the Jetpack <code>Settings &gt; Writing</code> and switch the toggles into the &#8216;on&#8217; position. </p>



<img />Settings section to turn on additional widgets by Jetpack



<p>Again, let&#8217;s take a quick look at the old widget screen again, where we can see some of the widgets available.</p>



<img />Example of old Widget screen 



<p>We are adding another  &#8220;Legacy Widget&#8221; block to the block area,  and open the dropdown menu for the list of all the third-party widgets available. The list has now become quite long and unwieldy. We will use our Twitter timeline and our Flickr account. </p>



<img />Legacy Widget DropDown box with a list of 3rd Party Widgets



<p>Adding the two Jetpack Widgets worked easily through the Legacy Widget for now. </p>



Video: Adding Twitter and Flicker Feed widgets to the footer areas via Legacy Widget block



<p>According to Mark Uraine, the next version of this process is already in the works and will be much better, &#8220;All those third-party widgets would show as blocks under the Widget category in the Inserter.&#8221; The legacy widget functionality would still exist but it will be hidden from the content creator. They would just see all the blocks in the widget section, as they do now in the block editor when editing posts or pages. <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24870#issuecomment-685854011">You can follow along on GitHub Issue #24870</a></p>



<p>Here is the latest design prototype for the future block-based widget screen as visible and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24561">discussed on GitHub.</a> </p>



<img src="https://i0.wp.com/user-images.githubusercontent.com/617986/91365018-f9d77d00-e7b4-11ea-8264-c2d18214d892.gif?w=652&ssl=1" alt="" />Animated GIF demonstrating the vision for the block-based widget screen



<h2 id="6-widget-screen-and-the-customizer">Block-Based Widget Screen and the Customizer</h2>



<p>Being curious, I also switched over to the Customizer as that&#8217;s what many people used to manage their widgets today. As you can see in below screenshot,  the screen real estate for the block-based widget handling is much smaller, then the one via WP-Admin. It basically shows a mobile version of the widget screen. </p>



<img />Screenshot of the &#8220;Widget Blocks&#8221; section in the WordPress Customizer



<p>My personal preference is to use the WP admin widget screen for menus and widgets. I found the Customizer a bit too confined and claustrophobic to get comfortable. At this point it&#8217;s not sure what will happen with the Customizer when the block-editor is moving to full-site editing. And that&#8217;s definitely a conversation for another time. </p>



<h2 id="7-preliminary-list-of-issues">Unordered List of Issues</h2>



<p>Meanwhile, here is the list of issues, I found while spending the better part of yesterday morning testing. One way or another, these issues will make it to the GitHub repository. The list it by far not complete. I am sure the upcoming call for testing has a few more use cases, too. </p>



<ul><li>Soften the interface switch for first-time users. </li><li>Use widget name as &#8220;Title&#8221; placeholder or other form of identifying the widget type.</li><li>Legacy Widget block doesn&#8217;t work in Customizer (Error message about not enough permissions).</li><li>After you delete them from the Block Areas, Core Widgets disappear and are not visible in the inserter. You only see the block-editor version of the widget blocks, but they are not working in the Widget Screen. (Example Recent Posts ⇾ Latest Posts, Sidebar controls don&#8217;t work).  </li><li>Needs a similar preview screen as the block-editor for post, or somehow be able to handle theme styles in the widget screen.</li><li>When changing the title of bbPress widgets, the title of the widget following disappeared (needs further testing). </li><li>Customizer &#8220;Widget Blocks&#8221; is empty when first loading and takes a bit until the widget areas and blocks appear. Could use a &#8220;Loading&#8230; &#8221; spinner since it&#8217;s empty at first.</li><li>Drag &amp; Drop is missing. (<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/25243">#25243</a>)</li><li>Widgets don&#8217;t move from one block area to another. (<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/25243">#25243</a>)</li><li>Block Navigator (List of Blocks) only shows the first block area. Footer #2 is missing</li></ul>



<h2 id="8-this-months-focus-work">This Month&#8217;s Focus</h2>



<p>Anne McCarthy posted <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/09/03/whats-next-in-gutenberg-september/">What’s next in Gutenberg? (September)</a>, outlining this month&#8217;s focus work on the Gutenberg plugins. For the block-based widget screen she lists the following links. </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24561" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Creating updated designs</a>&nbsp;for an improved user experience.</li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/24822" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Enabling the Global Inserter</a>&nbsp;to be open by default for the widget screen.</li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24663" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Exploring how third party widgets</a>&nbsp;can be integrated.</li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24530" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Refactoring the widgets screen</a>&nbsp;to use the sidebars endpoint.&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/24861" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Fixing the legacy widgets</a>&nbsp;preview experience.</li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/24886" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">Ensuring only superadmins can store HTML</a>&nbsp;using the new API endpoint.</li><li>Addressing a11y feedback around&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24943" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">proper labelling</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24940" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">improved navigation tool</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24938" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">more</a>.</li></ul>



<p>In her post, Anne also included links to getting started as a Core contributor. There is a plenty of work to be done and the team appreciates all contributors. </p>



<h2 id="9-f">First Conclusion</h2>



<p>After using the block-editor for a couple of years to create posts and pages, using it on the widget screen feels like time travel into the past. The block-based widget screen is in its early stages and needs a lot more people testing it to get the kinks out. The workflow could use a bit more innovation and design. Functionality definitely needs testing for backwards compatibility and for any conflict with existing plugins. I am looking forward to the next iterations to come. The Legacy Widget compatibility with 3rd party plugins widgets performed well. I have yet to use the block-based widget screen with an existing site. </p>



<p class="has-primary-background-color has-background has-large-font-size"><strong>Linus&#8217;s law</strong>:  &#8220;Given enough eyeballs, all&nbsp;bugs&nbsp;are shallow.&#8221;</p>



<p>Watch for the  &#8220;Call for Testing.&#8221; You can also bookmark the &#8220;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/">Keeping up with Gutenberg: Index</a>&#8221; from the reference section of the Core Handbook. </p>



<p>On this GitHub <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/projects/27">project board,</a> you&#8217;ll find all the discussions about a new design flow and other widget screen related discussions.  Chime in! </p>



<p>Share your experiences in the <strong>comments,</strong> so we can get more information on how this new widget screen works on existing sites and with your set of plugins. </p>



<h2 id="11-widgets-in-open-floor-at-meeting-september-9-2020">Widget Screen in Open Floor at Meeting September 9, 2020</h2>



<p>During <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02QB2JS7/p1599661386001500">open-floor section</a> of the #core-editor meeting on Slack, I raised my hand. I referred<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/25174"> to a new issue</a>, @paaljoachim: The answer: This theme developers can target the block in the block area with class names. Example: .my-widget-area .wp-block-latest-posts &#8211;&nbsp;</p>



<p>On another issue,<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/24870#issuecomment-689533725"> in a comment</a> I tried to explore what I know now and what will change for widgets. &#8220;I am utterly confused on what the future widget handling entails in respect to&nbsp; widget registration, functions” and if there is a goal of feature parity.&nbsp;</p>



<p>&#8220;The APIs you raise are probably something to look at and see whether support is possible, but we shouldn’t be expecting 1-1 parity”</p>



<ul><li>The widgets themselves should work as close as possible with the new editor. The registration and other widget related functions should also be unchanged.</li><li>There will be incompatibilities in <strong>hooking into the widget editor itself</strong> as the new screen uses a completely different architecture</li><li>If there is anything that <em>cannot</em> be implemented then that will break backward compatibility. If it is possible to support things it should be attempted to be supported</li><li>It’s a different paradigm since it will just wrap the whole list of blocks. Widgets don’t map to blocks.</li><li>Core Widgets vs. Core blocks, if a core widget like recent posts has a block equivalent, the core widget doesn’t appear in the inserter for the Widget screen. &#8220;Authors have the <em>option</em> to hide widgets if block equivalents are provided”.&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p>All &#8220;clear evidence that we should be cautious with opt-in opt-out in Core&#8221; wrote Riad. </p>



<h2 id="11-block-patterns-for-block-areas">Block Patterns for Block Areas</h2>



<p>My takeaway from the meeting was that, things are still in flux as to the end vision of widgets. Ultimately, a theme developer&#8217;s work will get much easier, as they don&#8217;t have to create widgets at all. They can now create block patterns to fit into the newly declared block areas. The only time it&#8217;s important to consider widgets would be plugins, creating widgets that need to be accommodated and the team is working to provide the legacy widget functionality.  </p>



<p>Justin Tadlock explores this idea on block patterns instead of widgets in his post: &#8220;<a href="https://wptavern.com/addressing-the-theme-design-problem-with-gutenbergs-new-block-based-widgets-system">Addressing the Theme Design Problem With Gutenberg’s New Block-Based Widgets System&#8221;</a> with Widget Block Patterns. </p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/the-wordpress-block-patterns-resource-list/">The WordPress Block Patterns Resource List</a></blockquote>
</div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 18:15:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"WordPress.org blog: People of WordPress: Yordan Soares";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=11279";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://wordpress.org/news/2021/09/people-of-wordpress-yordan-soares/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11609:"<p><strong>WordPress is open source software, maintained by a global network of contributors. There are many examples of how WordPress has changed people’s lives for the better. In this monthly series, we share some of the amazing stories.</strong> </p>



<p><strong>To coincide with International Translation Day and the final day of the <a href="https://wptranslationday.org/">2021 WordPress Translation celebration</a>, we feature the story of a WordPresser who has made a major impact in the polyglots team. </strong></p>



<h2>Beyond software, meeting the WordPress community</h2>



<img width="600" height="600" src="https://i2.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2021/09/yordan-min-300x300@2x.jpg?resize=600%2C600&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-11299" />



<p>For Yordan Soares from South America, finding WordPress also meant discovering friends, community, and opportunities. He had not expected to find a whole global movement behind the web development software.</p>



<p>Yordan, who is from Venezuela, South America, said: “The first time I used WordPress, I had no idea what was going on behind the software or beyond it. I knew there was someone making it all work, but I couldn’t even remotely imagine all the people who were making WordPress not just a tool for developing websites, but a whole movement that comes together to share, build, and help make the world better.”<br /></p>



<h2>Turning your hobby into your job</h2>



<p>Initially, Yordan earned his income from computer technical support and installing networks for small and medium-sized businesses. Back in 2005, web development and code-writing was just a hobby. When he discovered the concept of CSS and how it could make everything dynamic. This opened up a whole new career pathway for him.</p>



<p>In 2010, an introduction to WordPress through a friend opened up a future he had not imagined. He stopped using any other content management system (CMS) and wanted to explore how much he could do with the platform.</p>



<p>Three years later in 2013, he was able to take his WordPress journey further by starting a small advertising agency with some of his friends. During this time, they crafted commercials for local radio and TV stations. Through WordPress, they found it easy to build more than 15 websites for businesses in a market that previously had not valued the importance of having an online presence.</p>



<p>He said: “We were working for almost four years until at the end of 2017 the economic crisis in Venezuela became too acute, and we decided to close the agency when we stopped making profits. Taking stock of that period, I think we changed the way merchants saw the Internet business in the city.”</p>



<h2>Working full time as a freelancer</h2>



<p>One year on in 2018, Yordan began to freelance full-time as a web developer. His first clients were primarily agencies and friends who had emigrated to other countries. Later, he expanded into freelance marketplaces.</p>



<p>At that time, getting started as a freelancer was quite a challenging task in Venezuela. The first hindrance was getting a fair level of recompense. Additionally, the deteriorating conditions in the country with constant blackouts and internet connection failures complicated matters.</p>



<p>At the time, Yordan was living in Guarenas, where the situation was relatively better. He managed to get a reasonably uninterrupted electricity supply with adequate internet speed, which was just good enough to complete his projects.</p>



<h2>Meeting the WordPress community</h2>



<p>“Surely if I hadn’t met the community, I would have continued to work on my own, like a lone wolf, doing the ordinary work of solving problems for occasional customers and paying my bills,” he said.</p>



<p>Living in Guarenas, Yordan began to experience stability in his career and made new friends and contacts. He began looking for co-working spaces or technology communities nearby, and that’s when he met the WordPress community in Caracas.</p>



<p>He quickly signed up for the first face-to-face event. As soon as the event concluded, he went to talk to the co-organizer and offered his help. He was inspired to help with designing promotional pieces, managing social networks, and organizing events.</p>



<p>Through such events, he met and connected with several people living in nearby cities.</p>



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile"><img width="120" height="300" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2021/09/WP_Guarenas-Guatire-120x300-1-120x300.png?resize=120%2C300&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-11300 size-medium" /><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p class="has-normal-font-size"> A few months later, with other WordPress users in the area, the idea emerged to start a new Guarenas-Guatire meetup group. The idea became a reality by December 2019, when they applied to the WordPress community team. </p>



<p>Once the final approvals came in, the team started scheduling the activities. The <a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-meetup-guarenas-guatire/">WordPress Guarenas-Guatire Meetup</a> was officially recognized!</p>



<p>During the first quarter of 2020, just before the pandemic, Yordan and colleagues organized five face-to-face events. With the worldwide lockdown, in-person community engagements came to a halt. However, the Guarenas-Guatire community was eager to continue meeting.</p>
</div></div>



<p>To keep the community active and motivated, and with the support of sponsors, they started organizing online events under a format called “WordPress a la medianoche” (WordPress at midnight).</p>



<p>The format of these events was inspired by Alexis Arnal, who suggested meeting at midnight to make the most of the internet speed that would usually improve somewhat after that time!</p>



<p>At the time of writing, Yordan and the team have organized 16 WordPress a la medianoche events with an attendance of up to 50 people per online gathering. An impressive audience which enabled a comparatively small meetup to keep communications flowing at a difficult and unprecedented time.</p>



<p>One positive of such events, is an opportunity to invite people from other countries and run sessions in partnership with others. An example was a special translation event with Javier Esteban, a member of the translation team from Spain. The meetup also invited contributors from Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia who were happy to participate.</p>



<h2>Strengthened by the community</h2>



<img width="632" height="241" src="https://i1.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2021/09/wp-translation-2020.jpg?resize=632%2C241&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-11307" />Yordan (pictured bottom left) speaking at the WordPress Translation Day 2020 events



<p>Yordan believes that he would have continued to work on his own had he not met the WordPress community.</p>



<p>He said: &#8220;Fortunately, this was not the case and I have been able to live a lot of transforming experiences that have shown me the meaning of the words &#8216;community&#8217; and &#8216;volunteerism&#8217;.&#8221;</p>



<p>Yordan felt empowered by the community and it led him to volunteer for many other roles and activities, including Locale Manager for <a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/locale/es-ve/">Spanish Venezuela</a>, a moderator for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/tv/">WordPress.tv</a>, and as a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/">support</a> contributor in the forums helping people with technical issues. He has also developed free plugins for the official WordPress directory and <a href="https://wordpress.tv/speakers/yordan-soares/">spoken at community events</a> including <a href="https://spain.wordcamp.org/2020/session/actualizaciones-automaticas-para-tus-plugins-y-temas-personalizados/">WordCamp Spain 2020</a>.  </p>



<p>All this has a boomerang effect, Yordan explains. These experiences helped him grow personally and professionally, as it’s always rewarding to know that you’ve helped improve the WordPress ecosystem.</p>



<p>He also likes being able to directly help people when they need it and feels it is a two-way learning process.</p>



<p>&#8220;At first, when I told my family and friends about the community and the work I was doing, they would ask me &#8216;what do you get in return?&#8217; Perhaps they expected me to tell them a specific amount of money, but the answer is more complex,&#8221; he said.</p>



<p>&#8220;It’s rewarding to know that you’ve helped improve the WordPress ecosystem, the tool you use to work and put food on the table.&#8221;</p>



<p>During his journey, Yordan has met many wonderful people with common interests and values, and the best part is that many of these people are now his friends, business partners, or customers.</p>



<p>At the same time, he has learned new skills and gained experience, which have given him a significant confidence boost in facing difficult situations that may come in life.</p>



<p>As part of the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2021/09/join-us-for-wordpress-translation-day-global-events-in-september-2021/">WordPress Translation Day 2021</a> celebrations, Yordan was nominated for his contribution to the work of the Polyglots Team translating WordPress. The full nominations list and stories will be published in October and November on the <a href="https://wptranslationday.org/">WordPress Translation Day website</a>. Check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2021/09/30/30-days-of-translation-celebration/">final events for International Translation Day</a>.</p>



<h2>Contributors</h2>



<p>Thanks to Abha Thakor (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/webcommsat/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>webcommsat</a>), Larissa Murillo (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/lmurillom/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>lmurillom</a>), Maedah Batool (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/maedahbatool/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>maedahbatool</a>), Chloé Bringmann (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>cbringmann</a>), and Nalini (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/nalininonstopnewsuk/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>nalininonstopnewsuk</a>) for work on this story. Thank you to Yordan Soares (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/yordansoares/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>yordansoares</a>) for sharing his Contributor Story, and to Josepha Haden (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>chanthaboune</a>) and Topher DeRosia (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/topher1kenobe/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>topher1kenobe</a>) for their support of the series. The WordPress Guarenas-Guatire logo on this page was designed by <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bragnieljimenez/">Bragniel Jimenez</a> </p>



<p>This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an article originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. The initiative highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories would otherwise go unheard. Meet more WordPressers in our <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/category/newsletter/interviews/">People of WordPress series.</a></p>



<p>#ContributorStory #HeroPress</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 13:14:35 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"webcommsat AbhaNonStopNewsUK";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"WPTavern: Preview WordPress Block Pattern and Theme Combinations via New Site";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=123494";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:199:"https://wptavern.com/preview-wordpress-block-pattern-and-theme-combinations-via-new-site?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=preview-wordpress-block-pattern-and-theme-combinations-via-new-site";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5101:"<img />Viewing patterns from the WP Block Patterns homepage.



<p class="has-drop-cap">Andrew Starr, the owner of UXL Themes, has cobbled together a new project around block patterns. His new site, aptly named <a href="https://wpblockpatterns.com/">WP Block Patterns</a>, allows users to preview any WordPress.org-hosted block themes and patterns together.</p>



<p>The project does not allow visitors to download anything or ask them to sign up. It is a basic demo system, one that WordPress.org should consider at some point.</p>



<p>Visitors can choose any block pattern. Then, they can select any theme to see what they look like together. It is a quick way to test patterns and themes without actually adding them to your WordPress installation.</p>



<p>For example, a user can view the <a href="https://wpblockpatterns.com/team-social-cards/?theme=tove">Team Social Cards</a> pattern &mdash; one that I had a hand in creating &mdash; along with Anders Nor&eacute;n&rsquo;s Tove theme.</p>



<img />



<p>Or, the <a href="https://wpblockpatterns.com/image-and-quote-on-a-background/?theme=naledi">Image and a Quote on a Background</a> pattern with Anariel Design&rsquo;s Naledi theme.</p>



<img />



<p>From Gutenberg Hub&rsquo;s <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-hub-launches-landing-page-templates-directory">landing page templates</a> to EditorsKit&rsquo;s <a href="https://wptavern.com/creator-of-editorskit-launches-community-block-sharing-site">ShareABlock collection</a>, the block system has allowed developers to experiment with unique sites for end-users. Because everything is built upon a standard, I am guessing we will see even more of these creative projects in the future. WP Block Patterns is another step in that journey.</p>



<p>This was not always the plan for the WP Block Patterns site. Starr set out to blog about patterns after their feature release in WordPress 5.5. After only publishing a single post, the project fell to the wayside. Fortunately, inspiration struck.</p>



<p>&ldquo;I have a site that I use as my reference point when providing support for my themes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This site has a blend of varying content and code that allows me to quickly switch/preview any of my themes, without the need to actually change the active theme in the admin, or maintain a different site for every theme.&rdquo;</p>



<p>In the process of making improvements to his theme-switching functionality, the domain came up for renewal. He had planned to let it expire but decided to see if he could come up with something to do with the site.</p>



<p>&ldquo;I got the inspiration to use the theme switcher in conjunction with content from block patterns,&rdquo; said Starr. &ldquo;If I hadn&rsquo;t been working on my script at the same time as I coincidently received the domain expiration message, I probably wouldn&rsquo;t have had this idea.&rdquo;</p>



<p>Currently, he is manually installing the themes on the site but may have to automate it in the future as more block themes are released. However, he is pulling patterns and categories directly from the WordPress.org API, which is periodically updated.</p>



<p>The site only showcases 100% block themes. Technically, it should work with any that supports editor styles. Starr said it had never crossed his mind to showcase non-block themes.</p>



<p>&ldquo;I have been keeping my eye on the releases of FSE themes, checking out every block theme that I come across, and it just sort of seems that block themes are the future, and classic themes feel like a step backwards now after investing so much time working with block themes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The site would work just fine with classic themes, but there are so many available I&rsquo;m not sure how to make it manageable or select which themes to feature (and which ones to leave out). I guess that&rsquo;s also something I&rsquo;ll have to think about as the number of block themes increases.&rdquo;</p>



<p>Thus far, Starr has released two block themes, <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/hansen/">Hansen</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/pria/">Pria</a>, through his UXL Themes brand. Users can preview both via the site. However, he is already working on his next project.</p>



<p>&ldquo;As a proof of concept, I am working on a classic theme that will have the functionality to also be a block-based theme when FSE is available in core,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The idea is that the user will not notice any front-end differences when the theme &lsquo;switches&rsquo; from classic to block-based, but the user will gain the new FSE admin tools, with the user&rsquo;s classic customizer modifications switched over intact to the new Site Editor. I have found that there are compromises that need to be made when getting classic and FSE to work together seamlessly in a single theme, so I am not sure whether this will be released generally.&rdquo;</p>



<p>He also teased a project related to FSE that is neither a theme nor a plugin. However, he was not ready to share any details just yet.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:44:54 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Justin Tadlock";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"WPTavern: WordCamp US 2021 Kicks Off Online in 48 Hours";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=123520";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:155:"https://wptavern.com/wordcamp-us-2021-kicks-off-online-in-48-hours?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordcamp-us-2021-kicks-off-online-in-48-hours";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2517:"<p><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp US</a>, WordPress&rsquo; largest flagship event in the Western Hemisphere, is set to   kick off on Friday, October 1, at 11:45 AM EDT. The single-day event will include sessions, workshops, networking events, virtual sponsor booths, and <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2021/musicians/">musical interludes</a>. Get ready to be inspired by new ideas and learn about the latest and greatest capabilities in the exciting frontier of blocks.</p>



<p>In preparation for the event, attendees can view the <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2021/schedule/">schedule</a>, star sessions they want to catch, and email, link, or print them. The event features two simultaneous tracks, one focused more on development (Columbia) and another for less-technical topics (Yukon). </p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><img /></div>



<p>Unlike many previous years, WordCamp US will not include Matt Mullenweg&rsquo;s annual State of the Word address. This year the event will be capped off with a presentation from WordPress&rsquo; executive director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, titled &ldquo;<a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2021/session/a-chat-with-josepha/">Grow Your Story</a>,&rdquo; where she will discuss&nbsp;&ldquo;trends seeded in 2020&rdquo; and future growth opportunities for the community. Haden Chomphosy said there will be a State of the Word later in the year, possibly &ldquo;at a hybrid in-person/live broadcast format (in December),&rdquo; but the details are still being worked out.</p>



<p>WordCamp US 2021 has its own custom, outdoorsy wapuu designed by Alyssa Hogan. The mascot is holding a map and sporting a WordPress cap, backpack, and camping gear to go along with the event&rsquo;s National Parks website theme designed by Mel Choyce-Dwan.</p>



<img />image credit: <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2021/meet-wcus-2021-wapuu/">WordCamp US</a>



<p>The traditional <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2021/job-board/">Job Board</a> has made a return this year but is limited to the event&rsquo;s upper level sponsors. In future years, if the virtual aspect of the event is preserved alongside the in-person activities, it would be good to see this board expanded to include all sponsors and even some community-submitted listings. </p>



<p>More than 2,000 people have already signed up to attend WordCamp US online. <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2021/tickets/">Registration is free</a> and still open if you haven&rsquo;t yet gotten your ticket.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 29 Sep 2021 20:56:52 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:150:"HeroPress: When the world was down, the WordPress community was up – Cuando el mundo necesitaba un descanso, la comunidad de WordPress estaba activa";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=4140";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:182:"https://heropress.com/essays/when-the-world-was-down-the-wordpress-community-was-up/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=when-the-world-was-down-the-wordpress-community-was-up";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6293:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/092821-min.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: Thank you to everyone who contributes to WordPress." /><p><a href="https://heropress.com/feed/#espanol">Este ensayo también está disponible en español.</a></p>
<p>This is not meant to be another gloomy story about the year 2020 but a big thank you to the WordPress community.</p>
<p>All started four days into 2020 when my biggest client called me to ask to take his website down as he was filing for bankruptcy. I should’ve known it was a bad omen of what was to come.</p>
<p>As the year continued and the world succumbed into the unknown, many businesses closed their doors, among them, most of my clients, my own business and my mental health.</p>
<p>Of course, when left without income, I applied to as many jobs as I followed people on Twitter who were helping others get WordPress related jobs, but I couldn’t even get an interview.</p>
<h3>Then Came WordCamp</h3>
<p>By the time we were busy helping plan for the first WordPress Europe Online, I was asked to become a team rep for design and later joined the 5.5 release team, I even designed the 5.5 About page and showed the world that I am not a visual designer!</p>
<p>As time passed, I started looking forward to those weekly meetings with the design team, which brought many lessons and stressful evenings accompanied by cheers, smiles, support comments and many virtual hugs. I don’t know if everyone knew I needed them, but they brought me back to life, day by day… week by week, I so much needed those meetings.</p>
<p>Months passed and I got involved with other teams and got to virtually meet many more contributors and everyone always had something positive to give.</p>
<p>Last summer, at WCEU at a panel I was asked what my favorite part was from contributing to WordPress and my answer without hesitation will always be “the community”.</p>
<h3>Personal Triumph</h3>
<p>I am proud of everything I have done within WordPress but perhaps my most loved project, still in progress, is the recategorization of the end-user documentation. It started as a personal project, now is my gift to the community.</p>
<p>As I am about to end my tenure as design team rep, I want to reflect into the good things I got from the community: many late nights with the release teams (the release parties are the best), many new friends &#8211; that I am so looking forward to one day meet in person and to hug those that I already know. A better idea of what I want to do in my professional life. An intense learning year about WordPress, leadership, contribution, open source and friendship.</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone who has in one way, or another been there for me. Thank you to everyone who has been there to mentor and to support other contributors. Thank you to everyone who contributes to WordPress. And lastly, thank you to my two friends and guardian angels, Tammie <a href="https://twitter.com/karmatosed">@karmatosed</a> and Monique <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/boemedia/">@boemedia</a>.</p>
<h1 id="espanol">Cuando el mundo necesitaba un descanso, la comunidad de WordPress estaba activa</h1>
<p>Esta no pretende ser otra historia sombría sobre el año 2020, sino un gran agradecimiento a la comunidad de WordPress.</p>
<p>Todo comenzó cuatro días después de 2020 cuando mi mayor cliente me llamó para pedirme que cerrara su sitio web porque se iba a declarar en quiebra. Debería haber sabido que era un mal presagio de lo que estaba por venir.</p>
<p>A medida que avanzaba el año y el mundo sucumbía a lo desconocido, muchos negocios cerraron sus puertas, entre ellos, la mayoría de mis clientes, mi propio negocio y mi salud mental.</p>
<p>Por supuesto, cuando me quedé sin ingresos, solicité tantos trabajos como seguí a personas en Twitter que estaban ayudando a otros a conseguir trabajo relacionado con WordPress, pero ni siquiera pude conseguir una entrevista.</p>
<h3>Tiempo de la WordCamp</h3>
<p>Mas adelante, mientras planeábamos la primera WordPress Europe Online, me invitaron a ser representante del equipo de diseño y luego me uní al equipo de lanzamiento de 5.5, incluso diseñé la página Acerca de 5.5 y le mostré al mundo que no soy una diseñadora visual!</p>
<p>Con el paso del tiempo, comencé a esperar con ansias esas reuniones semanales con el equipo de diseño, que trajeron muchas lecciones y veladas estresantes acompañadas de sonrisas, comentarios de apoyo y muchos abrazos virtuales. No sé si todos sabían que los necesitaba, pero me devolvieron la vida, día a día &#8230; semana a semana, necesitaba tanto esas reuniones.</p>
<p>Pasaron los meses y me involucré con otros equipos y pude conocer virtualmente a muchos más colaboradores que siempre tenían algo positivo que ofrecer.</p>
<p>El verano pasado, durante un panel en WCEU, me preguntaron cuál es mi parte favorita de contribuir a WordPress y mi respuesta sin dudarlo siempre ha sido “la comunidad”.</p>
<h3>Un triunfo personal</h3>
<p>Estoy orgullosa de mis contribuciones para WordPress, pero quizás mi proyecto más querido, que continúo trabajando en el, es la re-categorización de la documentación del usuario. Este comenzó como un proyecto personal, hoy en día, es mi regalo a la comunidad.</p>
<p>Ahora que estoy finalizando mi termino como representante del equipo global de diseño, quiero reflexionar sobre las cosas buenas que obtuve de la comunidad: muchas noches con los equipos de lanzamiento (las fiestas de lanzamiento son las mejores), muchos amigos nuevos, que espero algún día conocer en persona y abrazar a los que ya conozco. Una mejor idea de lo que quiero hacer en mi vida profesional. Un año de intenso aprendizaje sobre WordPress, liderazgo, contribución, código abierto y amistad.</p>
<p>Gracias a todos los que de una forma u otra me han apoyado. Gracias a todos los que han orientado y apoyado a otros colaboradores. Gracias a todos los que contribuyen a WordPress. Y por último, gracias a mis dos amigas y ángeles de la guarda, Tammie <a href="https://twitter.com/karmatosed">@karmatosed</a> y Monique <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/boemedia/">@boemedia</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 29 Sep 2021 06:00:20 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Estela Rueda";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:26:"Matt: Print Magazine on WP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:22:"https://ma.tt/?p=54801";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:43:"https://ma.tt/2021/09/print-magazine-on-wp/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:358:"<p>One of my favorite magazines, that I have issues going back to the 40s and 50s, has <a href="https://www.printmag.com/branding-identity-design/how-to-get-that-new-print-look/">relaunched and redesigned their site on WordPress and it&#8217;s gorgeous</a>. Speaking of great redesigns, the <a href="https://grist.org/">new Grist</a> is pretty great too.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 29 Sep 2021 01:26:24 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"WPTavern: A Web Font API Possibly Coming to WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=123496";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:151:"https://wptavern.com/a-web-font-api-possibly-coming-to-wordpress?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-web-font-api-possibly-coming-to-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4741:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Ari Stathopoulos announced a proposal for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/09/28/implementing-a-webfonts-api-in-wordpress-core/">implementing a web fonts API</a> 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.</p>



<p>Jono Alderson opened the <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/46370">original ticket</a> for such an API in February 2019. The discussion has continued off and on since then but has only recently gained momentum.</p>



<p>The proposal would allow developers to register fonts from local files or a stylesheet URL like those provided by Google Fonts and other third-party APIs. It would mirror the functions used for loading scripts and styles with WordPress, so developers should transition without much of a learning curve. However, some parameters are different and account for the broader feature range necessary to support web fonts.</p>



<p>Loading web fonts is nothing new for theme authors. There are multiple methods to use, depending on whether the files are local or served by a third-party API. However, WordPress has never offered a solution, the closest thing to a standard being copying and pasting what the Twenty* themes were doing. However, various projects have popped up over the years for handling a feature that many theme authors implement almost as a second thought.</p>



<p>Last year, Stathopoulos and others from the WordPress Themes Team launched the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2020/09/25/new-package-to-allow-locally-hosting-webfonts/">Webfonts Loader project</a>, a drop-in library for developers. It allowed theme authors to load stylesheets from the Google Fonts API, then stored them locally on the user&rsquo;s server.</p>



<p>I even dabbled in a <a href="https://github.com/themehybrid/hybrid-font">font-loading package</a> at one time, building a simple set of functions to enqueue and dequeue font stylesheets. It was an idea built on top of a <a href="https://blog.josemcastaneda.com/2016/02/29/adding-removing-fonts-from-a-theme/">tutorial written by Jose Castaneda</a> in 2016. However, I am currently borrowing the <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-automattic-theme-team-announces-blockbase-its-new-block-parent-theme">method used in Automattic&rsquo;s Blockbase</a> theme, using a mix of <code>functions.php</code> and <code>theme.json</code>.</p>



<p>Loading fonts is a relatively simple affair, so one might wonder why there is a need for a core API around doing it. It is because standards simplify routine tasks for everyone. When such conventions exist, every developer can look at a few lines of code and immediately understand what is happening. It also allows us to build new features on top of a solid foundation in the future.</p>



<p>One thing to not overlook from the announcement is the mention of <code>theme.json</code>:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>With the recent advancements in Gutenberg, global-styles, and an effort to consolidate options and UIs in the site-editor, a Webfonts API is becoming a necessity as it will allow theme developers to define fonts in their theme.json files.</p></blockquote>



<p>Stathopoulos also <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/1573#issuecomment-917854532">noted in the pull request</a> that once this patch makes it through, the next step would be submitting a new ticket for registering web fonts when parsing <code>theme.json</code>.</p>



<p>The theme JSON file is the underlying code for the global styles system that more and more users will be interacting with in the months and years to come. If we build a font-loading API now, it gives us room to explore. It may even open up future integrations within the user interface in the backend.</p>



<p>I am not sure what that might look like yet, but it will pave the way for a savvy theme author to experiment with new user experiences around fonts.</p>



<p>There does not seem to be a way to register commercial fonts from APIs like Adobe Fonts. However, Stathopoulos noted last year that it might be a possibility. &ldquo;Adding an extra argument in one of the calls to allow tweaking the request headers (and therefore allow API authentication) is something we can definitely do,&rdquo; he <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/46370#comment:33">commented on the original ticket</a>.</p>



<p>I like the proposal. There might be a few kinks to work out, but the more we standardize these common features, the better. It creates less work for theme authors, allowing them to focus more on nailing down their designs.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 29 Sep 2021 00:09:24 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Justin Tadlock";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"WPTavern: WooCommerce Marks 10 Year Anniversary of Forking Jigoshop";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=123436";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:179:"https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-marks-10-year-anniversary-of-forking-jigoshop?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=woocommerce-marks-10-year-anniversary-of-forking-jigoshop";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6720:"<p>WooCommerce is <a href="https://woocommerce.com/posts/celebrating-10-years-of-woocommerce/">celebrating 10 years</a> since WooThemes launched the first iteration of the WooCommerce plugin. Paul Maiorana, WooCommerce&rsquo;s current CEO, covered a few high highlights of the plugin&rsquo;s rising popularity over the years in his anniversary post. After 16 months in the wild, WooCommerce had been downloaded 500,000 times and passed the 1 million downloads milestone just 137 days later. In 2014, the night before the very first WooConf, the plugin celebrated passing 5 million downloads. It was <a href="https://wptavern.com/automattic-acquires-woocommerce">acquired by Automattic</a> in 2015 in a deal rumored to be more than $20 million.</p>



<p>WooCommerce&rsquo;s anniversary post, which glossed over its checkered origin story, <a href="https://twitter.com/carlhancock/status/1442516499030216714">reignited</a> some of the controversy surrounding the Jigoshop fork. While the post mentions that WooThemes <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111225034531/http://wpcandy.com/reports/woothemes-forks-jigoshop-into-woocommerce/">hired two Jigoshop developers</a> &ldquo;to create a dedicated eCommerce plugin called WooCommerce,&rdquo; it neglected to mention that the initial version was actually a fork of Jigoshop. WooThemes had convinced Mike Jolley and Jay Koster to fork the work they had done for their previous employer,&nbsp;Jigowatt, after failing to make a deal with the Jigowatt team.</p>



<p>In a post titled &ldquo;<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20141222123219/https://www.jigoshop.com/blog/2011/08/26/our-forking-views/">Our forking views</a>,&rdquo; the remaining Jigoshop team shed some light on what transpired privately before WooThemes announced its fork:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Woo&rsquo;s bid to buy out the Jigoshop project&nbsp;grossly&nbsp;undervalued the business and didn&rsquo;t come close to covering our initial development costs, not forgetting the planning, time and effort both the Jigowatt team and community put into the project.</p><p>Woo then made to an offer to &lsquo;collaborate&rsquo; which led to their decision to fork Jigoshop. What hasn&rsquo;t been made public is that collaboration offer included conditions which would have given WooThemes full strategic control over the direction and development of the Jigoshop project in the future.</p></blockquote>



<p>WooThemes was well within its rights to fork the open source Jigoshop code, but convincing some of its key developers to leave the project essentially forked Jigoshop out of its momentum and fractured its user base. It&rsquo;s clear from the reactions to the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111225034531/http://wpcandy.com/reports/woothemes-forks-jigoshop-into-woocommerce/">WP Candy news post</a> on the topic that many people in the community frowned upon this move at the time. It was one of the most eviscerating, real-world applications of the GPL in the earliest days of WordPress product businesses.</p>



<p>Mike Jolley was interviewed earlier this year by <a href="https://hollerwp.com/mike-jolley-interview/">HollerWP</a>. When asked about the Jigoshop fork he said that his job at Jigowatt was 90% client work on e-commerce sites, and &ldquo;Jigoshop felt more like a side-hustle than anything.&rdquo; He found it draining to stay on top of both the client work and the open source project. Jigowatt had offered him no shares or vested interest beyond his salary. Jolley said his move to WooThemes &ldquo;was inevitable&rdquo; and that he was grateful to continue working on a project that he was passionate about.</p>



<p>In a post titled <a href="https://bradt.ca/blog/lessons-learned-from-the-jigoshop-woocommerce-fiasco/">Lessons learned from the Jigoshop &ndash; WooCommerce fiasco</a>, Delicious Brains founder and CEO Brad Touesnard said he agreed Jigowatt had received<em> &ldquo;a stiff kick in the crotch courtesy of WooThemes,&rdquo;</em> due to what he perceived to be a fatal error on Jigowatt&rsquo;s part:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>If you are a company with an open source project gaining momentum, your core developers absolutely must have a vested interest in your company. And not 1%. It has to be a good chunk of the pie. Enough that the developers feel your company is also&nbsp;<em>their</em>&nbsp;company. Then if another company comes along to hire them, the developer is much more likely to tell them, &ldquo;Buy&nbsp;the&nbsp;company or take a hike.&rdquo;</p><p>I think the whole situation would have been different if Mike and Jay owned a piece of the pie and had a vested interest in Jigowatt. In such a case, they most likely would not have entertained employment at WooThemes unless it was part of a buyout deal.&nbsp;</p></blockquote>



<p>These events have almost faded from memory for most casual observers after 10 years, but not for those of us who were there to watch it happen. Many of these websites referenced are no longer online but they are available via the Internet Archive. </p>



<p>In 2014, Jigowatt <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140819083103/http://www.jigoshop.com/blog/2014/03/28/jigoshop-announcement/">sold Jigoshop to Proxar IT Consulting</a>. The new plugin they launched was <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/jigoshop-ecommerce/">available in the official plugin directory</a> until 2020 when WordPress.org removed it, citing a guideline violation.  </p>



<p>In 2021, WooCommerce is more of a force than ever before, installed on more than 5 million websites. Merchants around the world are building thriving, profitable businesses on top of WooCommerce and its diverse ecosystem of extensions. Ten years later, it appears the founding partners of Jigowatt have largely moved past the controversy and are now <a href="https://jigowatt.co.uk/services/ecommerce/">building all of their e-commerce websites with WooCommerce</a>.</p>



<p>&ldquo;A lot has happened over the past 10 years, and we&rsquo;ve come a long way from our humble beginnings,&rdquo; Paul Maiorana said in the anniversary post. The subsequent &ldquo;trip down memory lane&rdquo; omits the messy details of forking Jigoshop. The Jigoshop.com website has now disappeared from the web, with the exception of pages preserved through the Internet Archive.  Before the rest of these historical references disappear, it&rsquo;s good to remember that all the earliest contributors to the Jigoshop open source project were also part of WooCommerce&rsquo;s &ldquo;humble beginnings,&rdquo; even if not formally recognized by the e-commerce powerhouse that benefits from their contributions today.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 28 Sep 2021 03:05:30 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:61:"WPTavern: Add Custom SVGs via the Icon Block WordPress Plugin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=123393";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:167:"https://wptavern.com/add-custom-svgs-via-the-icon-block-wordpress-plugin?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=add-custom-svgs-via-the-icon-block-wordpress-plugin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5305:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Nick Diego released the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/icon-block/">Icon Block</a> 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.</p>



<p>Diego is the author of the <a href="https://wptavern.com/show-and-hide-content-via-the-block-visibility-wordpress-plugin">Block Visibility</a> plugin, which is just a little over a year old and shaping up to be the best project in the space. Over the summer, he expanded it <a href="https://wptavern.com/from-ecommerce-integration-to-location-based-controls-block-visibility-pro-expands-upon-its-free-version">with a pro version</a> that adds value with more niche options. When it comes to the block editor, he has thus far shown a willingness to find creative solutions to problems with a focus on a well-rounded user experience. His latest plugin seems to be no different.</p>



<p>Piecing together the <a href="https://www.blockvisibilitywp.com/pricing/">pricing page</a> for Block Visibility is what pushed him to create Icon Block. He had a massive feature list and was hand-coding the icons via the HTML block.</p>



<img />Block Visibility pricing table.



<p>&ldquo;I threw this little block together this week after becoming very annoyed at using HTML blocks for SVG icons (and not wanting to use a block library),&rdquo; said Diego. &ldquo;My goal was to build a simple SVG icon block using basically all native WP components. And as more functionality is added to core (margin, responsive controls, etc.), I will add them to the block.&rdquo;</p>



<p>The result was a success. It checks a lot of boxes for such an icon solution that leans into the WordPress block system.</p>



<p>At its core, it allows end-users to copy and paste any SVG code into a text field and have it render in the editor and on the front end.</p>



<img />Adding a basic icon.



<p>However, it does not stop there. It uses a range of core components and block-supported features to round out the solution. It supports must-have features like colors and alignment. Users can adjust the icon size, padding, and the border-radius while linking it to any URL.</p>



<p>One feature I want to see tacked on is a set of border style, width, and color controls. That is more of a nice-to-have extra than a priority.</p>



<img />Adjusting the icon&rsquo;s colors, size, spacing, and border-radius.



<p>Supporting core components would have been fine for a launch, but Diego took that extra step and added custom functionality. The Icon block has a &ldquo;rotate&rdquo; button that allows users to turn the icon in 90&deg; increments. It also has buttons for flipping the icon horizontally and vertically.</p>



<p>There are tons of use cases for such icon plugins in the WordPress editor. One of the more common scenarios is a simple set of boxes with a graphic at the top.</p>



<img />Boxes with icons.



<p>With Icon Block, this is simple enough to do by using the Columns block, dropping in custom icons, and customizing them. However, there is so much more that is possible.</p>



<p>The missing pieces are on WordPress&rsquo;s end. Currently, there are not many robust solutions for building horizontal layouts. It makes it tough to align icons next to text.</p>



<p>The <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-11-5-adds-widget-grouping-iterates-on-the-block-gap-feature-and-updates-nav-menus">recently-added Row variation</a> on the Group block shows promise. The experience is a bit fussy, but it is possible to place the Icon block next to a Paragraph, as shown in the following screenshot. I built a quick pricing table with check icons.</p>



<img />Pricing columns with icon list.



<p>There is no way to control the spacing between items in each row from the interface yet. I wanted my icons a bit closer to the text.</p>



<p>The other issue is that this should be a list. There is no reason to repurpose other blocks to build the layout. However, the List block does not allow users to nest blocks.</p>



<p>These are not issues of the Icon Block plugin. It just shows a reasonably common use case that WordPress should make possible. This would make these types of plugins far more powerful.</p>



<p>There is support for an icon block to land in the Gutenberg plugin and, eventually, make it to WordPress. Gutenberg Project Lead Mat&iacute;as Ventura <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/16484">opened a ticket in 2019</a> to explore the idea of allowing users to insert SVGs directly into the editor. If this ever made it in, it would more likely be a visual selector that does not allow end-users to add custom code. Diego&rsquo;s block might still exist as an alternative solution with more flexibility in that case.</p>



<p>While the plugin could serve as a perfect solution in its current form to a large share of the WordPress community, Diego has plans for improving it. He is considering adding an icon selector for users who do not want to add SVG code. By default, this would show the built-in WordPress icons. However, he also has plans to allow third-party developers to extend it with custom &ldquo;icon packs.&rdquo;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 28 Sep 2021 00:16:41 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Justin Tadlock";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:"type";i:128;s:7:"headers";O:42:"Requests_Utility_CaseInsensitiveDictionary":1:{s:7:"*data";a:8:{s:6:"server";s:5:"nginx";s:4:"date";s:29:"Fri, 01 Oct 2021 11:49:24 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Fri, 01 Oct 2021 11:45:07 GMT";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:4:"x-nc";s:9:"HIT ord 2";s:16:"content-encoding";s:4:"gzip";}}s:5:"build";s:14:"20210921233023";}