Hi there,
I love the excitement of a major WordPress release! All the new features and update coming to WordPress. The theme building becomes easier and easier to provide great design solutions for content creators and site builders.
You’ll find lots of information in these editions and I also highlight a few upcoming events, two virtual one in-person. And recordings of previous events, so you can catch up on Developer Hours and Hallway Hangouts.
Yours, 💕
Birgit
In this week’s This Week in WordPress #299 “We have all the Birgit’s and Remkus”. It again was a fun show and great to catch up with Birgit Olzem, Remkus de Vries and Nathan Wrigley on WordCamp Europe, and the upcoming WordPress 6.6 release.
If you want to learn more about my non-WordPress self, Bud Kraus and I chatted on the Seriously, Bud? Podcast episode
Developing Gutenberg and WordPress
Upcoming Events
July 9th, 2024, 15:00 UTC – Developer Hours: Editor unification and extensibility in WordPress 6.6.
In this Developer Hours session, Nick Diego and Ryan Welcherwill explore how these updates can streamline your development process and enhance extensibility like never before. You will learn how to:
- Extend the Post and Site Editor using slots and why you might want to do so
- Display content only when specific conditions are met, such as when editing a custom post type
- Update existing extensions to work in both the Post and Site Editor
- Ensure updated extensions are backward compatible with WordPress 6.5 and lower”
WordCamp Canada will take place between July 11 and 13, 2024 Ottawa, ON Canada and they published their fabulous schedule. If you can join them in person, here are a few block related talks to attend. They will also be recorded and will make their way to WordPressTV and YouTube.
- Your WordPress, Your Way: Curating the Editor Experience with Nick Diego
- Working across timezones as a productive developer with Aurooba Ahmed
- Creating Blocks Faster Than a Cat Video Goes Viral: The Magic of create-block with Ryan Welcher
- State of Multilingualism in WordPress with Robert Windisch
July 23, 2024, at 15:00 UTC Developer Hours: Do you really need a custom block? Let’s explore alternatives. Nick Diego and JuanMa Garrido will discuss the following scenarios
- How to add new functionality to core blocks
- How to use content-only editing and the allowedBlocks attribute in patterns
- How to integrate block bindings and block variations
- How to effectively use block locking and naming
- How to create overrides in synced patterns
WordPress 6.6
This week, the release squad unleashed WordPress 6.6 RC 1. It’s now high time to test your themes, plugins, and sites for compatibility. If you want to explore what is new in WordPress 6.6, one way is outlined in the post to Help test WordPress 6.6.
Devnotes have been published together with the WordPress 6.6 Field Guide
- Editing custom fields from connected blocks
- Updates to the Interactivity API in 6.6
- Miscellaneous Editor changes in WordPress 6.6
- Section Styles
- WordPress 6.6 CSS Specificity
- Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition)
- Site-wide background images in WordPress 6.
- Theme.json version 3
- Grid layout type
- Editor: Unified Extensibility APIs in 6.6
- Preparation for React 19 Upgrade
- JSX in WordPress 6.6
Anne McCarthy also posted the Source of Truth on WordPress 6.6 features. It again is a great source to learn about every feature that is coming to a WordPress instance near you on July 16, 2024, tag for theme authors, plugin authors, end users, and enterprise.
🎙️ Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog #104 – Block Themes, Gutenberg 18.8, WordPress 6.6 with special guest Carolina Nymark
In his Design Share #58 (Jun 3-Jun 14), Joen Asmussen shared the work by the WordPress design team in the previous two weeks, among them
- A light Playground site update
- Color & Fill?
- Fix site editor frame artifacts
In Design Share 59 (Jun 17-Jun 28), Asmussen highlighted:
- Background/Image Tools
- Rename of Fill → Grow for the Flex layouts.
- Clean up of Dimension Tools
- Aligning Naming Modals
- Adding custom fields in data views
- Design tools exploration: Contextual color controls and new panels for Background, and Elements
- Lessons in Course page
- Open Graph images
- Theme preview
Asmussen also lists helpful links to Figma Design Library, GitHub tracking issues and issues that need design work and feedback. Check in if you’d like to contribute with feedback and PRs.
Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners
Did you know that there are now almost 800 block themes available in the WordPress Theme Directory? 796 is today’s number. The most themes were built by the designers at Automattic: 183 themes, of which the latest two are Sunderland and Otis. The designs from all theme designers become more and more interesting, for all kinds of use cases. If you haven’t done it recently, get our favorite beverage and start a browsing tour. You might be amazed what the Theme directory has to offer, especially after the refresh of the design and the new preview screens for patterns and style variations.
Bud Kraus explored the Block editor’s Command Palette and takes you along for the tour in his post Using the WordPress Command Palette to Work With Faster and Smarter. He commented on X: “Even after writing this for Hostinger I still hardly use it. Maybe I am waiting for a more mature tool that we should see once the entire WP Admin gets overhauled.” What do you think?
Jamie Marsland summarized the most important features in his video: WordPress 6.6 – Huge Changes Coming Soon!
WPBeginner‘s editorial staff posted What’s Coming in WordPress 6.6 (Features and Screenshots) as a quick overview what will make it into the new version.
Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks
Justin Tadlock and Nick Diego shared What’s new for theme developers in WordPress 6.6 in this week’s Developer Hours. The recording is available on YouTube and Presentation resources were shared in this Google Doc. “WordPress 6.6 will be released on July 16, 2024, bringing many exciting new features for theme developers. In this session, we explore how these updates can enhance your themes and streamline your development processes. Key highlights include:
- Major upgrades to the block style variations system –
- New color and typography-only style presets –
- Enhanced grid layout options in the Group block
- Specificity changes for Core styles “
Last week I already shared the short video by Beatrix Fialho, now you can follow the whole discussion via the Recap Hallway Hangout: Theme Building with Playground, Create-block-theme plugin, and GitHub with shared resources, step-by-step instructions, a recording of the full discussion and the transcript.
Carolina Nymark, core contributor and keeper of fullsiteediting.com updated lessons on her site to include the most recent changes in WordPress.
- Global Styles & theme.json
- Theme.json color options
- Theme.json typography: Font size
- Theme.json typography: Line height, font weight and more
- How to add shadows with theme.json
Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.
Bernie Reiter published a Proposal: Block Variation Aliases for WordPress 6.7 and request feedback on a new method to add Block variations specific class names in front end and database. It will have technical ramification regarding backwards compatibility.
Brian Coords just released a video on WordPress 6.6 is changing the game for Custom Fields in which he walks you through the power of block binding and locking down templates for editing. Later on, he also shows you how to Block Bindings with a block variation. Coords also provides example code.
Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.
Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience
Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.
For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com
