September 10, 2024 — WordPress 6.7 will include a new template registration API, letting you register custom block templates in your plugins. This long-needed feature lets you create default front-end output that plays nicely with themes while also being customizable from the Site Editor by users.

In this Developer Hours session, we looked at:

– The basics of registering templates for your plugin.
– Working with the template hierarchy and themes.
– Building custom templates for custom post types and taxonomies.
– Taking your templates to the next level by integrating them with custom fields, block variations, and more.
– Creating templates for entirely custom URLs built with the Rewrite API.

Presentation Slides »

September 6, 2024 — The WordPress Playground block is a way to load an instance of WordPress Playground inside your WordPress site.

It includes an interactive code editor, that currently only supports plugins.

Over the course of the next few live streams, I will be working on submitting a PR so that it can also support themes.

September 3, 2024 — This lesson introduces WordPress users to the basics of accessing their site files via FTP or cPanel’s File Manager. It covers the WordPress file structure, how to download and upload files, and an overview of the wp-config.php file for troubleshooting or setup purposes. By the end, you’ll gain confidence in navigating your site’s files and understanding how they fit into “the cloud.”

September 3, 2024 — This lesson introduces WordPress users to their site’s database, explaining the difference between site files and the database, and guiding users on how to access and explore it using phpMyAdmin. You’ll learn about key tables like wp_options and wp_posts and understand how data is structured.

September 2, 2024 — Many hosting options are available for WordPress, but one of the more popular options for developers is using a VPS or virtual private server. VPS services like Digital Ocean, Amazon EC2, and Google Cloud cost a fraction of more traditional managed hosting, with the benefit of controlling your server.

The downside is that you must know your way around server management, including keeping it secure. Fortunately, a wide variety of knowledge is available to guide you through the process.

Over the next couple of live streams, I’ll explain how to set up and manage your own WordPress VPS. We’ll cover the initial server configuration, installing WordPress in both single-site and multi-site installs, different web server software options and configurations, and some security and maintenance best practices.

We covered the initial server setup using Apache and Nginx in the first two streams. This stream will cover installing and configuring OpenLiteSpeed as the web server software.

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August 28, 2024 — In this lesson, we will explore the world of WordPress Multisite – a powerful feature that allows you to manage multiple WordPress sites from a single installation.

August 28, 2024 — The Grid block is a versatile container for organizing multiple blocks within it. It allows you to control the color, text style, height, width, and positioning of all the blocks inside. Essentially, it’s a variation of the Group block, offering enhanced layout options.

In this online workshop, we’ll dive into how to use and design with the Grid block.

August 27, 2024 — In this Developer Hours session, we explored how to use the Create Block Theme plugin to make block theme development easier. Tammie Lister, core committer, theme maintainer, and contributor to Gutenberg, joined us to explain how it works and talk about the new features. Whether you’ve used the plugin before or created your own block theme, you won’t want to miss this chance to see how it can improve your workflow.

The following topics are covered in this session:

– How to create a theme from scratch
– How to clone an existing block theme or create a child theme
– How to customize your theme in the Site Editor
– How media used in templates is managed for you
– How the plugin helps make themes translation-ready
– And more!

Presentation Slides »

August 21, 2024 — This lesson explains the importance of running a local WordPress site for safe development and testing. It highlights the benefits, such as experimenting without risk to your live site, and guides users through setting up local sites using tools like Local by Flywheel, Studio, and WordPress Playground.

August 21, 2024 — Do you or a client have a site using a classic theme? You may want to consider adding a theme.json file. Your project’s budget or lack of time might be preventing you from tackling a complete conversion of your classic theme to a block theme. By adding a theme.json file, you can simplify and streamline your Editor’s options and you will quickly see the benefits.

You might be looking to gain control of global settings and styles so you can create less overwhelm and confusion with too many user options in the Editor. For example, you could choose to remove the ability to select custom colors or the default color palette from WordPress core. Or, you may want to create a website with more consistent visual elements and maintain branding. For example, you could choose to disable color support for the heading block.

With this workshop, we will take a classic theme and walk you through the process of adding a theme.json file. We will also take a brief look at the current theme.json file that ships with WordPress core. At the end, we’ll have an open discussion on converting classic themes to either hybrid or block themes.

Presentation Slides »