One of the most exciting parts of Matt Mullenweg’s session at WordCamp Europe 2020 Online was the live demo of the new image editing tools that will land in the next release of the Gutenberg plugin. The video is already available on WordPress.tv (and embedded below). At the 8:30 mark, Mullenweg and Matías Ventura, lead…
On Wednesday, the development team behind Gutenberg dropped version 8.2 of the plugin. The new release focuses on a better editing flow, includes a new content positioning control for the Cover block, and adds categories to block patterns. With this release, users can copy an entire block via the Ctrl + C keyboard shortcut or…
One of the repositories I have been keeping an eye on over the past few months is Block Experiments. It is a monorepo of blocks in various stages of development from Automattic. In total, five of the team’s block experiments are now available for download from the plugin directory. Three others seem to still be…
On Wednesday, the Gutenberg team released version 8.1.0 of the plugin. The update includes a new block-copying feature, block pattern search, testimonials pattern, and API changes. The new version does not add a lot of major user-facing changes but improves the experience overall. The update included two dozen bug fixes and nearly as many enhancements.…
With full-site editing just around the bend, it is a fair question to ask whether the WordPress ecosystem is prepared for such a transition, particularly on the theme development side of things. It is no secret that theme developers have struggled to keep up with the barrage of changes between Gutenberg plugin updates and, ultimately,…
Matt Mullenweg joined Matías Ventura at WordCamp Spain yesterday for a lively Q&A session. The virtual event drew 5,000 registered users, and attendees came prepared with some thought-provoking questions about the future of WordPress. Here are a few highlights on some recent topics of interest. WordCamps around the globe have been going virtual, embracing the…
The team behind the Gutenberg plugin shipped version 8.0 yesterday. The update adds some nice user-facing changes, including a merged block and pattern inserter, new inline formatting options, and visual changes to the code editor. Over two dozen bug fixes were included in the release, along with several enhancements. Designers on the project updated the…
Laying out a webpage design and getting every element aligned perfectly can be a tough job. Even many developers rely on CSS grid frameworks. Granted, with the introduction of the flexbox and grid systems in the CSS language, such frameworks are becoming unnecessary. Whether it is getting the vertical and horizontal rhythm down or simply…
Gutenberg Hub launched the first version of its block template builder last week. The template builder allows users to select from the team’s existing library of nearly 200 templates. It is essentially an online builder that allows users to craft a full page layout by mixing and matching various sections. They can then copy the…
All of the recordings from the free WPBlockTalk virtual event are now available on WordPress.tv. In case you missed it, WPBlockTalk was a WordPress community event sponsored by Automattic, and produced by Brian Richards, creator of WPSessions. It took place earlier this month on April 2, though some of its momentum may have been lost…
The concept of digital gardens is not new. It predates the modern blog, but there may be a resurgence, albeit small, of the sort of curated content that grows within a digital garden. The term “digital garden” is not well-defined. In general, it is a collection of thoughts, unfinished projects, links, and much more. However,…
For Gutenberg junkies, the three-week wait between major releases has been rough, especially during this time when many are looking for new things to fill the gaps in our social calendars. Not to fret, the team dropped version 7.9 of the plugin earlier today. This release includes several goodies such as new typography-related controls for…
Version 7.8 of the Gutenberg plugin landed yesterday. The team continues to improve the editor with the refreshed interface work that began in version 7.7. The most useful feature with this update of the plugin is the inclusion of the Patterns API for plugin and theme developers. This release is not the massive feature release…
It was about a year ago. I was happily designing a theme for aspiring novelists. I wanted to get ahead of the competition and market a theme specifically to writers who would be attempting the National Novel Writing Month 2019 challenge. NaNoWriMo, for short, is a whirlwind of a month where 1,000s of people from…
The Gutenberg project and its eventual full-site editing feature is coming upon a major issue that will need to be solved. Block-based themes of the future are currently on a path toward a template system that will comprise of plain HTML files. While that will work for the majority of a theme’s output, the trouble…