September 21, 2022 — Block development can be challenging, but getting started with block development has never been easier. In the past few years, WordPress contributors have created tools to simplify the process and make building blocks more accessible to those without advanced knowledge of JavaScript and React. Coupled with core components, native block supports, and a bit of guidance, every WordPress builder can add custom blocks to their toolset.

This online workshop is a follow-up to my WordCamp US presentation “Let’s Build a Custom Block in 15 Minutes”. We will walk through the process of building a custom block using the Create Block tool in more detail and add a few additional features. For our block example, we will be “blockifying” the original Hello Dolly plugin by Matt Mullenweg.

July 4, 2021 — This talk offers some recommendations for faster and easier block development.

June 25, 2020 — This talk examines the current status of theme development (in May 2020). Create stunning themes for the future by learning how to take advantage of blocks, block templates, and block patterns.

topics include:
– explaining the difference between block templates and patterns
– adding templates and patterns to your existing themes improves user experience
– building block templates and patterns for existing themes
– planning to take advantage of upcoming core enhancements like full site editing

Presentation Slides »

October 24, 2019

April 30, 2019 — New development workflows can be scary. Want to create your first custom block but don’t know where to start? This talk will help you get started on your journey to modern JavaScript WordPress development by sharing resources, tips, and lessons learned from developing custom WordPress blocks.

Presentation Slides »

January 11, 2019 — WordPress 5.0 introduces a new block editor called “Gutenberg” and if you’re a WordPress developer, you need to know how to build blocks. This talk is for developers who have already created basic blocks and are ready to build more complex blocks and to migrate legacy shortcodes as well as meta boxes to blocks.

This talk will cover using modern JavaScript development tools including webpack for WordPress block plugins. We will look at constructing block interfaces out of Gutenberg components, creating your own components that can be shared between the editor and the front-end and using WordPress’ Redux-like state management.

December 11, 2018 — WordPress 5.0 introduces a new block editor called “Gutenberg” and if you’re a WordPress developer, you need to know how to build blocks. This talk will get you started.

You will learn, what Gutenberg is and when you should create your own blocks. Then we will cover how to load CSS and JavaScript files for blocks, how to create blocks with static content and editable blocks. This talk is aimed at developers familiar with JavaScript.