This week: WordPress-themed podcasts, creating Gutenberg blocks, WordCamp US, and much more.
I am an active contributor to WordPress, where I maintain a couple of plugins, make small updates to documentation errors, and participate in WordCamp organization, and has been serving my clients through his business DesignFrame Solutions, or putting in sweat equity in my off grid life. He also spends a fair amount of time building WordPress development courses at WP Dev Academy.
Everyone is talking about full site editing, the future of blocks, and how this impacts WordPress theme development. The problem is, there’s not enough conversation around how these blocks work in the first place. I think that In-order to get a grasp on how to build your own blocks, it’s extremely helpful to start by simply understanding how they work in WordPress.
Once you get a grasp on how they work, you can use have that knowledge in the back of your mind when you build your own blocks. This will help inform your coding decisions and help to keep you on the right track when making custom blocks.
Most developers use Webpack to compile their JavaScript for their WordPress blocks, and you probably should be doing this too. Webpack is a bit of a bear to learn, but fortunately the WordPress community has done a lot of the heavy lifting for us – we just need to use what they’re using and extend it to suit our needs.
This post introduces the wordpress/scripts library, and talks about how you can use it to set up your own block plugin.
Once you learn how Gutenberg blocks work, and understand how to compile your script, there’s a handful of steps that are needed to build your own blocks. It can be a bit daunting to set up your JavaScript, and everything else needed to set one up, so I have built this tutorial that walks you through how to do everything.
This tutorial expands on the webpack configuration, and helps you set up your own block. It also makes use of the Underpin framework to help make it a little easier to set up.
If you’re interested in taking this knowledge further, I recommend that you take a look at my course on WP Dev Academy. It goes deep in how to customize the block editor, both by creating a custom block and by customizing the interface of a custom post type.
This knowledge can be applied to just about any block type, and will help you take your WordPress customization skills to the next level.
As Great as it is, the WordPress community is not as homogeneous as it seems, according to Chris Wiegman.
He specifies four groups as an example of this diversity which is a thought-provoking observation.
If you missed out on WordCamp US and would like to make up for it, Marcus Burnette’s website is the place to visit.
I highly recommend Rich Tabor’s and Helen Hou-Sandi’s presentations.
WordCamp US 2021
Alex Denning divulges the ins and outs of marketing at Awesome Motive, the recent acquirer of Sandhills Development.
LearnDash is taking cutting-edge e-learning methodology and infusing it into WordPress. Trusted to power the learning programs for major universities, small to mid-size companies, startups, entrepreneurs, and bloggers worldwide.
Are you a fan of WordPress-themed podcasts? Take a gander at WP Podcasts, HeroPress’ new creation.
Oana Filip from Pixelgrade describes how difficult team building is and the problems she had to face.
Juliette Reinders Folmer explains the changes that took place in the WordPress Core tests.
A block pattern a day is Tammie Lister’s new experiment.
Alex Denning in FlipWP analyzes the procedure for selling a WordPress business.
Anne McCarthy suggests the order of learning Gutenberg’s new abilities.
Wholesome Code is back with tutorials on Gutenberg with Matt Watson explaining how to format content using registerFormatType.
Brandon Roldan demonstrates how to start looking for vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins.
Late last month, the WPwatercooler podcast celebrated its 400th episode and its 9th anniversary. Congratulations are in order, and the count down to episode 500 has started.
Scott Kingsley Clark and Matt Gibbs shared a spreadsheet comparing various plugins for supporting custom fields in WordPress.
Shifter has finally gotten its own CLI. It presents numerous new possibilities in management and automation.
Jeremy Desvaux De Marigny showed a fascinating case of transforming shortcode-based components into Gutenberg blocks in his company.
Gravity Forms’ website has taken a new look, much to my delight.
Eric Karkovack considers whether we should worry when our favorite plugin changes owner.
The African WordPress community finally has its place on the internet.
Justin Ferriman justifies selling LearnDash.
There are two types of engineers, Swizec Teller explains. Some will do precisely what you tell them to do, and others will just solve your problem.
Upcoming Events:
2021 Holiday Ecommerce Summit by Nexcess will take place on October 6.
WP Engine Summit/2021 will take place on November 4.