July 26, 2023 — Styling blocks: empowering users with CSS custom properties

It’s important not to be too prescriptive when developing blocks, and to allow users to have as much control as possible over the look and feel of the blocks on their websites.

In this edition of WordPress Developer Hours we talk about CSS custom properties (also known as CSS variables) and look at how you can leverage them in blocks to give users more control over the styling and presentation of their sites.

First up, Michael Burridge presents a solution to a common problem, i.e. how to allow users to have control over the styling of inner elements in blocks which have complex markup. While it’s relatively simple to allow users to style a block at the root level, this presentation looks at how you can assign the values stored in block attributes to CSS custom properties and use them to apply user-defined styling to child-elements in both static and dynamic blocks.

Then, for the second presentation of the session, Justin Tadlock shows you how to integrate CSS custom properties into your block stylesheets that play nicely with themes. The technique used integrates block plugins and theme.json while still giving preference to user choice.

Whether you’re just starting out with block development or have built dozens of blocks already, this WordPress Developer Hours session is for you, and you’re sure to learn a ton.

July 18, 2023 — Reusable blocks are a powerful way to save and reuse content across your site. In WordPress 6.3, reusable blocks will be renamed to “synced patterns.” This change reflects the unification of reusable blocks and traditional block patterns (unsynced patterns) within the Editor, which will streamline workflows, enhance the content creation experience, and set the stage for future enhancements in WordPress 6.4.

In this online workshop, we explore this exciting change as well as new functionality for creating custom patterns and managing them in the Site Editor.

May 23, 2023 — In this presentation Adam Zielinski, a member of the development team that created WordPress Playground, introduces this exciting new implementation and demonstrates it. He will explains the technologies that make the magic happen, and run through a variety of scenarios and use cases.

March 9, 2023 — Several WordPress community theme developers and designers come together to discuss the Community Themes Initiative. The goal was to lay the groundwork and hash out ideas around building block themes collaboratively to submit to the official WordPress theme directory.

March 6, 2023 — Join us for a discussion about migrating a shortcode or widget based plugin to blocks. Learn from your peers and from experts. This is also an opportunity to share any hurdles or pain-points you’ve encountered and discover how to overcome them.

Perhaps you’ve already migrated your plugin to blocks, or have at least attempted to do so. If so we would like to learn about the difficulties and pain points that you encountered during the process.
Perhaps you’ve yet to attempt such a migration, in which case we’re interested in learning about what’s holding you back. Is the documentation confusing? Is the learning curve too steep?
Perhaps you have a plugin in the WordPress Plugin Directory that still relies on shortcodes or widgets to render content, and which has yet to be migrated to blocks. Plugins that render their content via a shortcode or widget are ideal candidates for conversion to blocks.
The block editor has been incorporated into core for nearly 5 years now and usage and uptake are growing day by day. It is therefore more important than ever that plugin developers embrace the block paradigm.

This is one of a series of AMA sessions to provide plugin developers with the opportunity to connect with one another. This is a chance to share the challenges you’ve faced, or are facing, in creating a block implementation of your plugins.

We also hope to share advice and guidance, and to be able to point you in the direction of the resources you need to help you move forward with your block development projects, whether it be documentation, tutorials, or information about best practices.

Anyone interested in plugin development is welcome to participate. You don’t need to be a professional developer or have a specific level of experience.

Let’s see how we can improve the developer experience for all those who come after us on their block development journey. We can’t wait to speak with you.

December 2, 2022 — In this Hallway Hangout, we’ll have a casual chat about some of the Block Theme development-related features that are under active development. This will be an open conversation via Zoom. Expect plenty of healthy conversation, question and answers, and maybe even a demo or two.

October 21, 2022 — Listen-in pm this casual chat about some of the Block Theme features that are planned to land in WordPress 6.1.

September 13, 2022 — Moderated by @greenshady, the walk-through began with a planned feature review by @matveb that included the TT3 default theme, a refined template experience, fluid typography, and locking tools, amongst other features. Following the demos, the participating release squad members @davidbaumwald, @jeffpaul, @ndiego, @richtabor, @mikachan, and @desrosj spoke about the scope of their respective team’s release work. Closing out the event, the panelists fielded questions from the 80+ live attendees.

Speakers: David Baumwald, Jeff Paul, Jonathan Desrosiers, Justin Tadlock, Matías Ventura, Nicholas Diego, Sarah Norris

Thank you to the panelists, the WordPress 6.1 release squad, and contributors, @dansoschin, @priethor, and @jpantani for making this a successful walk-through.