The Wacky World of Sorta Brilliant’s Sorta Fun Block Plugins
You could say that I am a bit of a fanboy of the late 1990s and early 2000s web. I loved the funkiness of GeoCities.
Opinion
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Advice for Newcomers to Remote Work: Lessons Learned
“What did you do today?” asked my aunt. “Take a nap? Watch TV?” “You know, I work a real job, Auntie? They pay me and everything.” Making some of my family and friends understand what I actually do from home is tough. If it is a family member I don’t really like, I sometimes respond,…
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Will Page Builders Remain Competitive in the Block Era?
As Elementor, the most-used WordPress page builder, celebrated its first round of funding at $15 million, some of our readers questioned whether this was a sound investment. With movement in the Gutenberg plugin toward a full-site editing solution, which will eventually make its way into core WordPress, it is a valid concern. Will page builders…
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On MAGA Caps and WordCamps
Within WordPress circles, I don’t talk much about politics. I was raised to believe that politics and religion are not polite dinner topics. That belief generally extends to my work-life too. However, sometimes these topics crash into one another at full speed. I don’t typically provide qualifying statements about my beliefs when writing an article.…
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Key Takeaways From the First ‘Future of Themes’ Meeting
There are few clear answers. As members of the core design, editor, and theme review teams joined for the inaugural biweekly meeting that may decide the fate, at least in part, of WordPress themes, it became clear that there is no structured game plan. There are many ideas. There are several moving pieces. There are…
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Emoji Conbini and the Case for a Block Enhancements Directory
In December of 2019, Nick Hamze, the owner of Sorta Brilliant, quietly launched Block Garden with a proposal for plugin authors to build block-based plugins off concepts, called seeds, from his site. He has since written extensively on the block editor and has shared a multitude of ideas, many of which are sorta brilliant. It…
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GoDaddy’s ‘Go’ WordPress Theme Offers a Page-Building Experience via the Block Editor
GoDaddy launched its Go WordPress theme last week. It has been publicly available through its GitHub repository for several months, but the theme review team finally approved and set it live in the theme directory. Thus far, the theme has garnered 7,000 active installs and is likely to hit the popular list, given GoDaddy’s history…
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Gutenberg Can Tackle the Problems the Fields API Tried to Solve
The Fields API. Never heard of it? That’s OK. Outside of the inner development community, it is not widely known. The average WordPress user does not need to know about it. Before understanding how the Fields API fits into Gutenberg’s future, you must first understand what it is and the problems it was meant to…
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Blocksy WordPress Theme Provides a Solid Block-Editor Experience
Creative Themes dropped version 1.6.8 of its Blocksy WordPress theme yesterday. It was an update to a theme that is quickly becoming popular, having garnered 58 five-star reviews and one thousand active installs since it first went live in the WordPress theme directory. The theme is specifically built to work with the block editor and…
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Lessons Learned by Stepping Outside WordPress Comfort Zone
It was late summer in 2018. I was an aging developer who wasn’t quite sure where I fit into the WordPress world anymore. I had spent over a decade learning the ins and outs of the platform that launched my career and also served as a hobby for other pet projects I wanted to tackle.…
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What Should an Author Bio Block Look Like?
Joshua Wold, co-representative for the WordPress design team, shared an early exploration of an author card block. Community members explored several ideas at the design table during the contributor day at WordCamp US 2019. In the post, Wold followed up on the original sketches from that melding of design minds. The original idea for the…
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One-Time vs. Recurring Payments for WordPress Products
Jeff Starr posed the question at Digging into WordPress: Which Pricing Model Do You Prefer: One-Time or Recurring? It is not the first time the question has been asked in the WordPress community and will not be the last. It is important that we keep coming back to it from time to time. In the…
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Slim SEO Keeps Options Simple and Handles the Legwork of SEO
I have been running a blog of some kind since the Spring of 2003. In a few short months, it will be my 17th blog-aversary. The most important lesson I have learned over the years is to not do more work than is necessary to publish a blog post. There was a time when I…
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Gutenberg: One Year Later
As we quickly head into the final weeks of 2019, we also pass the first anniversary of WordPress 5.0 and, subsequently, Gutenberg coming headlong into our lives. Love it or hate it, Gutenberg is here to stay. If you had asked my thoughts on it last December, I would have probably sided with a large…
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Optimizing Code in a World That Doesn’t Want to Optimize
Premature optimization is the root of all evil. It is a common saying among developers. It makes sense. Optimizing prematurely can mean redoing work down the line, and time is the developer’s most finite resource. It can mean spending that precious time optimizing for scenarios that do not yet exist for a product’s users. It…