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.

June 30, 2023 — This Developer Hours session showcases extensibility methods that empower builders to extend and customize the WordPress editing experience.

– What is Editor extensibility and why is it important
– What extensibility methods are currently available in WordPress and how to use them
– What is missing in WordPress in terms of extensibility, particularly related to blocks and the Editor

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.

February 15, 2023 — Developer Hours are informal discussions where WordPress developers can talk about a variety of related topics with both peers and experts.

In this session 12 developers talk about adding a block implementation of a shortcode or widget to an existing plugin.

Presentation Slides »

July 22, 2022

July 21, 2022 — Content consistency is very important to site owners but implementing that is a complicated issue for developers to solve, with many reaching to third-party plugins.

In this workshop, geared towards developers, we will create a custom plugin that will define a configurable pre-publish checklist that must be met before content can be published.

Along the way, we’ll work with the `@wordpress/env`, and `@wordpress/scripts` packages to create a local development environment and create our build process. We’ll also learn how to extend the Block Editor UI using the SlotFill system and leverage the data layer to deeply integrate our plugin into the core publishing process.

March 29, 2022 — Have you always wanted to create your own Gutenberg block but didn’t know where to start? Or, maybe you tried and found the process daunting or confusing? If so, then this intermediate learn-up is for you! We are going to use Replit.com for this session to allow attendees to use their web browser to work in a pre-configured WordPress installation.

January 5, 2016 — My presentation will focus on sharing practical tips and advice based on my experiences in becoming a core contributor. While there will be some technical aspects of how to contribute, my intention is to share what I have learned along the road to getting my first props and to provide practical, real-world advice on how to get into core contribution. My audience would be developers of any level who want to start contributing to core.

Presentation Slides »