On Saturday, one side of my family held our pre-Thanksgiving reunion. It had been two years since we were able to do it. I offered to host this year when our previous venue’s loss threatened to sideline the event for yet another year. Needless to say, I was exhausted by the time my last cousin…
Over the weekend, Nick Bohle asked Ellen Bauer of Elma Studio how post formats fit into the block-theming world. The question was a proposal for her a WordPress theme and FSE chat she held yesterday via Twitter Spaces. I could not attend and see if Bauer touched on the subject, but the question is something…
On Wednesday, Ben Dwyer announced a new block-based plugin on the Theme Shaper blog. The Automattic Theme Team had built a child theme creator for its Blockbase WordPress parent theme. Blockbase has quickly started filling the role of Underscores, a starter that many developers used to create custom themes in the classic era. For block…
Flipping the usual popularity contests WordPress-related award systems on their heads, Nathan Wrigley has created something where we can all be a winner. What started as a joke to crown his WP Builds podcast as the best quickly took a positive turn that has seen several charitable donations in the past week or so. The…
Last week, the popular Rank Math SEO plugin received a major update that includes a new artificial intelligence system. The Content AI feature is a SaaS product that behaves like a personal writing assistant to boost search rankings. “We built Rank Math’s Content AI feature to revolutionize the content production and optimization process with proprietary…
The Wowmall theme was released to the public today. It is the second 100% block theme that integrates with WooCommerce to land in the WordPress directory. Responsive FSE was the first. Two weeks ago, a reader sent in a question for the Ask the Bartender column. He wanted to know where the WooCommerce block themes…
A current proposal could spell the death of at least one form of child theming. The feature would allow themes to ship multiple theme.json files, housing variations on a site’s default styles. Essentially, it is the old-school concept of “skins.” How the feature would work is not yet defined. However, theme authors would presumably be…
Gutenberg 11.9 landed on Wednesday, and it is packed with dozens of enhancements. Contributors are speeding forward, getting in some of the final features before the release of WordPress 5.9, expected on December 14. Version 11.9 is the last plugin release to include new features for the upcoming WordPress update. Bug fixes will continue to…
I’m still wondering about the best method to approach a new project. As a background, besides the traditional way, I’ve worked with Divi, love Bricks, and am loving Blocks. But I still feel that there is nothing like building a website from the root, with raw material: HTML, dynamic PHP, and CSS — even more…
It has been a long year since Paal Joachim Romdahl’s proposed an alternative block pattern experience. In November 2020, he opened a ticket on the Gutenberg GitHub repository to explore an overlay-based approach to viewing, searching, and inserting patterns into the content canvas. Late last week, a pull request for the long-awaited feature landed in…
At what point are FSE theme developers going to start integrating and considering WooCommerce for their themes? WooCommerce has almost always seemed to lag behind all other considerations. It’s a bit like it’s an afterthought to simply scramble in the elements of a solid WooCommerce store. Where is a persistent cart header? Where are the…
It needed to be said. I know some of you loved writing in the classic editor. I know some of you enjoy the current block editor. Some of you may have even been thrilled with the platform’s earlier attempt at a distraction-free writing mode. But, for actual writing, WordPress has always been kind of, sort…
No sooner than I said the floodgates of block theme development would be open, a couple of more FSE-capable themes landed in the WordPress.org directory. I checked the review system, and three more were queued up. It took mere days for me to find another favorite: Ona by DeoThemes. When the author mentioned it, I…
It is November, and that only means one thing. It is National Novel Writing Month — NaNoWriMo for short. Autumn is my favorite time of year. Football is in full swing. Warm mugs of coffee replace the cold brew. Eggnog cartons line supermarket fridges. There are weekend hayrides, face paintings, corn mazes, ring-toss games, and…
It is only a matter of time before the floodgates are flung open. Many of the block themes released in the past year have been little different than your typical starter theme. However, there is a quiet momentum building that might just surprise some folks in a few months. Automattic has put out several block…