Kjell Reigstad 6:16 pm on April 8, 2021  

Block Themes Meeting Notes — April 7, 2021

BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.-based theme updates in GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ 

  1. Gutenberg 10.3 (and its minor releaseMinor Release A set of releases or versions having the same minor version number may be collectively referred to as .x , for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.2.3, and all other versions in the 5.2 (five dot two) branch of that software. Minor Releases often make improvements to existing features and functionality. follow ups) have been released. This release included a couple cool block-based theme enhancements
  2. Block-based themes now get alignment styles automatically in the front and back end.
  3. Themes can now use any existing theme.json property for any block, even if the block doesn’t explicitly support it in the UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. yet.

TT1 Blocks update 

  1. Version 0.4.5 came out last week, in tandem with the Gutenberg release. This version supports the new alignments settings, and also restores the correct, lighter font-weight for all headings in the theme. Please update if you haven’t yet!
  2. The theme team been seeing a few GitHub issues roll in from the #fse-outreach-experiment call for testing, which is great. Keep your eyes out for those, and feel free to help fix and respond to them if anyone is able to!
  3. TT1 Blocks and the emptytheme migrated over to this approach in these PRs:
    • https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments/pull/236
    • https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments/pull/233

Discussion topics


New tools for transitioning to Block-based Themes.

A couple PRs that should help with transitioning existing themes to be block-based:

  • New gutenberg_block_template_part(), gutenberg_block_header_area(), and gutenberg_block_footer_area() functions to help pull block-based template parts into existing PHP templates: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/30345
  • Allowing people to create and use block-based page template for certain pages on their site, even while using a non-block-based theme: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/30438

These issues relate to some prior discussions the theme team had about bridging the gap between existing themes and block based themes.

@aristath Tried both of them. The first one will allow theme-authors to start transitioning parts of their themes (headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes./footer) using block-based templates. The second one allows users to create a completely custom template for any page on their website! So they can use any theme they want, and still be able to build a 100% custom frontpage

@poena said the first 30345 is ready to be merged but she thinks 30438 has UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it. issues and should get reviewed. For the issue 30438 she thinks after and coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. update users will suddenly see a new link with no explanation. Users are familiar with selecting templates in the page attribute section, but this is called “template” and it is in a completely different position. This makes user experience confusing

@kjellr also agrees on the UX part, and thinks this needs to be thought holistically, alongside the rest of the FSEFSE Short for Full Site Editing, a project for the Gutenberg plugin and the editor where a full page layout is created using only blocks. templating work.

How are the new alignments controls working so far? 

@youknowriad merged https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/29335 into Gutenberg 10.3. This means themes don’t have to provide front-end alignment CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. to match the alignments in the editor.

Open Floor / Q&A

@poena thinks more docs are needed to get more exposure and explanation for both users and theme authors.

@poena highlighted the margin settings issue: https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments/issues/244 

She also highlighted a review request for https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/30564