Gutenberg 12.8 landed in the WordPress plugin directory earlier today. I have been tinkering with many of the features as they were committed over the last couple of weeks. There are some things that I am excited about. The Web Fonts API is something I have patiently waited months for, but the ability to quickly…
I have said it before, but it bears repeating: the next generation of WordPress theme authors will design from the site editor. It seems that Gutenberg project contributors are making good on my promise. Earlier today, I exported a WordPress theme from the site editor. The resulting ZIP file seemed to include all the necessary…
“I have so many design ideas in my head that I am about to make it my mission to singlehandedly fulfill [Matt Mullenweg’s] vision of 5,000 Full Site Editing #WordPress themes in the directory,” tweeted Brian Gardner earlier today. Daniel Schutzsmith responded: I’m just not seeing the need for more than one theme for FSE…
The short answer: probably not. The longer answer… It will depend on many things going right over the next couple of months. WordPress 6.0 is scheduled for launch on May 24, 2022. The 6.0 Beta 1 is on April 12. Even with a slightly extended cycle, major updates come fast. Anne McCarthy opened a discussion…
Block themes continue to trickle into the WordPress theme directory. Classic design submissions still outpace them by margins that make it look like blocks are not even in the race yet. However, some designers seek to pioneer this still-foreign space. Brian Gardner is not new to this. His latest theme, Avant-Garde, plays on the block…
Tetsuaki Hamano released the Piano Block plugin for WordPress on Monday. It allows users to insert a piano-based interface into the editor for playing music. Mostly, it is just a lot of fun. Hamano launched RichText Extension, his first submission to the WordPress plugin directory, in the spring of 2020. At the time, block-related plugins…
Another two weeks have flown by, and another Gutenberg plugin update is in the books. This release is not as feature-heavy as the last, but it feels solid overall. Other than one breaking issue, version 12.7 includes several nice-to-have enhancements. The latest update includes some early work for a new style engine. This is a…
It feels like the end of an era. Last week, core contributors merged a patch that removed PHP variables named $pee and $tinkle from the WordPress codebase. Yes, the software that powers 43% of the web has pee-pee jokes in its code. I know how it sounds. I felt silly writing that sentence. My job…
Rob Howard rocked the boat last week in calling for the deprecation of WordPress multisite in the latest MasterWP newsletter. He argued that “the brave and noble add-on is no longer necessary or valuable to developers.” The responses via Twitter were swift and in disagreement. Before WordPress 3.0, multisite was an entirely separate system called…
On Wednesday, Anne McCarthy announced Round #12 of the FSE Outreach Program. As always, everyone is free to join by testing features and providing direct feedback on problem areas with the design tools in WordPress. Anyone interested should respond by March 16. For this round, volunteers are tasked with testing some oldies but goodies. Early…
Automattic’s Skatepark landed in the WordPress.org theme directory on Monday. It was designed for modern events and organizations, but it should work well for many sites with a small amount of customization. For those keeping count, it is number 52 on the long path toward the 3,000 themes project lead Matt Mullenweg hopes for before…
Earlier today, Mark Root-Wiley published an in-depth proposal around standardized design tokens and CSS for WordPress. The goal is to create a consistent, customizable, and interoperable system around the design tools in core. Essentially, he is proposing a standardized design framework or, as he refers to it, a “shared CSS toolkit” that WordPress, themes, and…
There is not much I miss about the classic editor. It was dead to me when the block system became the new normal. However, there might be a feature or two that I miss. The biggest of those features? The “Add New” button at the top of the post editor. So, when Aurooba Ahmed mentioned…
After being involved in web design for almost 19 years now, there are grinding days where nothing feels fresh. However, there are also moments where you look at another web developer’s approach to problems and feel like there is a whole world of possibilities that you have yet to step into. And, it is rarely…
Gutenberg 12.6 landed in the WordPress plugin directory yesterday. The update includes several transform-related enhancements and new Read More and Post Author Biography blocks. Users can now also show visible labels via the Social Icons block. Nothing seems to be broken with this release, which is always welcome. Gutenberg has not fundamentally wrecked something I…