The WordPress coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development team builds WordPress! Follow this site for general updates, status reports, and the occasional code debate. There’s lots of ways to contribute:
Found a bugbugA bug is an error or unexpected result. Performance improvements, code optimization, and are considered enhancements, not defects. After feature freeze, only bugs are dealt with, with regressions (adverse changes from the previous version) being the highest priority.?Create a ticket in our bug tracker.
If you have ever added a custom link to an image blockBlockBlock 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. and then tried to do the same on a Gallery image, you will understand the frustration and confusion of not having consistency between different types of image blocks. This inconsistency is because the coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Gallery block stores the details of the included images as nested <img> elements within the block content. Therefore, the images within a gallery look and behave different from images within an individual image block. There are some long-standing open issues related to this:
The only way to fix this with the Gallery block in its current state is to try and replicate the additional functionality that the Image block has in the Gallery block, and vice versa. While this would be possible, it would lead to an additional maintenance overhead to keep the UIUIUser interface and underlying code in sync between the two blocks.
Changes made
To make the behavior of images consistent between the Image Block and Gallery, while avoiding code duplication, the core Gallery block has been refactored to save the individual images as nested core Image blocks using the standard core innerBlocks APIs. To make this work with the innerBlocksAPIAPIAn API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways., the gallery structure also had to change from an ordered list to a collection of figure elements within a figure. This structure change also brings the core Gallery block into line with the W3C WAI guidelines on the grouping of images.
The structure change means that Gallery images now have the ability to add custom links, or custom styles, for each image. An example of the flexible Gallery layouts this opens up can be seen below.
Gallery images will also automatically inherit new functionality that is added to the Image block, including those added by plugins. Below is an example of a Gallery block making us of the Image wave style and vintage filterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. option added by the CoBlocks pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party.
Other benefits include being able to use the standard move, drag and drop, copy, duplicate, and remove block functionalities. Keyboard navigation also benefits from the adoption of the standard block model by the Gallery block.
What theme and plugin authors need to do before 5.9
To support the new Gallery block format, plugin and theme authors should aim to do the following before the December release of this change in WordPress 5.9.
Add additional selectors to target the new nested image block in both the editor and front end (existing selectors must remain to support the existing gallery block content). The new structure can be seen below.
Test block transformations. Temporary transformation filters have been added to handle the transformation of 3rd party blocks to and from the new core gallery block format. However, block plugins with gallery transforms should still be tested with the GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ plugin to ensure these transformations work correctly.
In the future, the temporary transformation filters may be deprecated, and plugin authors will then need to update their transformations to handle the new Gallery format. Notice will be given ahead of this change being made.
Additional context and considerations
Other existing solutions
Third-party block developers are currently solving some of the problems caused by the limitations of the core Gallery block by implementing their custom Gallery blocks. These include some of the missing functionality, like the ability to add custom links to individual images. This can be problematic for site owners and content editors due to a large number of Gallery blocks that offer very similar functionality, but none of which appear to provide a close match to the functionality available with individual core Image blocks.
There do not appear to be any examples of plugins that already solve this problem in a way that utilizes Image blocks as inner blocks.
Backwards compatibility considerations
This is a breaking change due to the fundamental change in the underlying Gallery structure. Due to the large number of Gallery blocks already in use, along with themes and plugins that may rely on the existing structure, the following steps have been taken to mitigate the impact of this change on theme and plugin developers as much as possible:
For the initial release in the Gutenberg plugin, there will be no automatic migrationMigrationMoving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. of existing gallery content. This means that all existing gallery content will behave the same in the editor and front end as it does now, so will be compatible with existing plugins and themes. Only new gallery blocks added after this change will have the new structure in the editor and the front-end. The plan is to add automatic migration of existing gallery content when loaded in the editor to the 5.9 WordPress release.
Two temporary transformation filters have been added that will handle the transformation of 3rd party blocks to and from the new core gallery block format.
Possible edge cases
The refactored Gallery format has been tested against the following sample block libraries that have existing transforms to and from the core Gallery block:
While the refactored gallery works effectively with these plugins and themes, there may be edge cases in other plugins and themes that have not been accounted for. Themes that heavily modify the gallery CSS based on the existing <ul><li></li></ul> will definitely need to be updated if the same style changes need to be applied to the new gallery format. Therefore, it is recommended that theme and plugin authors test the changed gallery block well in advance of the 5.9 release.
We (the undersigned) believe that WordPress needs an official Performance team responsible for coordinating efforts to increase the performance (speed) of WordPress.
This proposal outlines why we believe that this is necessary, how we envision such a team might function, and some potential initial areas of focus. It is authored by contributors from Yoast and Google.
What problems are we trying to solve?
Users expect and prefer fast experiences (consciously or otherwise). Research shows that fast websites can provide a better user experience, increase engagement, benefit SEO, increase conversion, and be more economically and ecologically friendly.
The benefits of improving performance driving investment across the web [ref]. This further raises users’ expectations, and thus may comparatively ‘harm’ slow(er) things.
Compared to other platforms (e.g., Wix, Shopify, Squarespace), WordPress is falling behind. Other platforms are on average faster – and becoming increasingly faster – than WordPress websites (see The HTTP Archive’s Core Web Vitals report), and are actively investing in (and marketing) coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. performance-as-a-feature [1, 2].
We can see the impact of this investment in the widening gap between the proportion of WordPress sites which achieve ‘good’ Core Web Vitals scores, vs other platforms.
Performance graph for CMSs on desktop clients.Performance graph for CMSs on mobile clients.
This gap continues to widen, despite the availability of many performance plugins and performance-focused themes. This suggests that there’s a discovery and/or education problem, or an updating/staleness problem – neither of which the pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party ecosystem solves for.
In order to meet the increasing needs and expectations of site owners and end-users, WordPress needs to be actively investing in performance in WordPress Core and beyond (e.g., core code, themes & plugins requirements, setup and onboarding processes, adminadmin(and super admin)/editing experiences, education for content creators).
We believe that:
Performance is a fundamental part of user experience, and WordPress should aim to deliver a good user experience.
Achieving reasonable performance levels shouldn’t be plugin territory, but part of core (aka, “performance by default”), because;
All WordPress users (of all types) need a well lit path to good performance.
Average end-users can’t be expected to be performance experts.
Achieving high levels of performance requires technical considerations to be ‘built-in’ across the whole stack; and as this is often not the case with themes/plugins, performance solutions are limited to ‘brute-forcing’ performance solutions over non-performant behaviour (e.g., output buffering).
The plugin ecosystem doesn’t help users who don’t know that they need help, or who are poorly served by the plugin ecosystem.
Users determining which CMS to choose are / will be increasingly influenced by performance (and the associated UXUXUser experience/SEO/conversion factors), and we’ll lose ground to faster platforms.
‘Democratizing publishing’ requires that published content be discoverable; which will be less likely to occur via search engines (which influence or account for the majority of new content discovery) for slow(er) sites.
Web Vitals metrics provide a standardized and accepted mechanism for evaluating performance.
Plugin territory
Whilst we argue that some (perhaps most) performance considerations should be part of core, there are definitely areas that should remain firmly in ‘plugin territory’. For example, the following areas should be handled by plugins:
Integrations with specific CDNs
Template transformation processes (e.g., AMP)
Any non-standardized performance technology
Any experimental standards (e.g., browser APIs / capabilities with limited adoption)
These distinctions will need exploring and lines will need drawing (and maintaining) as part of the team’s activity.
A team gives more visibility to the effort: contributors that are not interested in working on Core as a whole can be attracted by working on performance specifically. It also opens up contributing to new types of contributors, like performance or data analysts.
A performance team could also attract contributions from different groups; browsers, hosting, SEO companies, etc.
Resources and efforts
In practical terms, the creation of a performance team requires the following:
A performance tagtagA directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.) on Make websites
Two team representatives for administrative purposes: they will be responsible for:
Giving a quarterly report to the project leadership
Assigning roles in the website
A team lead/product owner. They will be responsible to create a mission statement for the team, highlight the areas to tackle, outline the scope and the roadmap for the improvements that need to be made.
Representation in (and influence on) other Make verticals and processes (e.g., themes, plugins, etc)
Next steps
Next steps should be discussed and determined as part of the process of exploring and responding to this proposal.
In the case that there are no objections, the next major steps are likely to be:
Set up Slack channel and meeting schedule, and make.wordpress.orgWordPress.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ infrastructure.
Benchmark performance and define ongoing/future measurement & success criteria
Identify priority projects for CWV improvements with high-level timelines
Assign responsibilities for the projects identified
Props
Thanks to the following for this involvement in outlining this proposal.
Summary: Proposal for a new event: Every other week, invite WordPress developers to meet with 3 developers and discuss your GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ development questions, code, ideas, and approaches. Follow-up w/ video and resources.
I used to do in-person walk-in clinics for a volunteer internet service provider, where we answered all kinds of questions. If there was a moment with no questions, I would pull a topic out of my hat, talk for five minutes and get another 10 questions that triggered in people’s heads. The place was always packed. Not everyone is comfortable dealing with an unknown set of questions, but when done right, it’s quite fun and interesting. Of course, there were always questions that were too specific or too advanced. We would take note of it and answer them either the following week or via email directly to the attendee.
I would like to try this in a remote setting with a panel of three developers from the community, who are experienced with working with blocks, and call it Gutenberg Developer Hours.
Details on Gutenberg Developer Hours
I have heard from many in the community that although there is developer documentation available, it’s hard to get started. When developers hit roadblocks, it also takes a long time to troubleshoot errors and bugs.
This is an offering to developers new to Gutenberg, to get questions answered or obtain advice on architecture or approach. Having a panel helps with the broad set of topics, distributes the load and takes away the fear of being confronted alone with a question, one might not be able to answer.
Attendees could bring code issues and talk about those, “I’ve been working on this project, but I hit a roadblock and I have no idea where to go from here.”
As a moderator, I can jump in and ask questions to bridge the silence if we, attendees and panelists, run out of audience questions.
Furthermore, if a question gets too specific or too advanced, the moderator makes a note of it, discusses with the dev team and gets back to the attendee with a response after the event. That could be:
an invitation to office hours,
a set of documentation, or
a blogblog(versus network, site) post inspired by the question.
It’s certainly part of the trial to find out where the boundaries of this support offerings are.
At the beginning, I envision a frequency of every other week, once there is a pool of volunteer developer panelists available to schedule.
To get attendees interested, it might help to have a short educational segment that people are interested in for the first two or three shows.
The panelists could also pick a topic like:
How to tap into Gutenberg filters and hooksHooksIn WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same.?
How to add a button to the toolbar?
What is a store in ReactJS?
How to add BlockBlockBlock 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. Styles?
For promotion, social channels like Twitter and Facebook and make.wordpress.orgWordPress.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ will be used.
Each show will be recorded and transcribed. The moderator will communicate the recording part with the attendees and If an attendee rather wants to ask their question outside the recording, the moderator can hit the pause button.
In post-production, the recording can be cut into smaller educational units and publish it publicly on WordPress.tv. The producers can pull specific questions that stumped the panel and write a separate tutorial about it. The show is not a ‘webinar’ but a normal Zoom meeting, so people can see each other and share their screens and code.
At least for the trial, registration is required. The producers will, of course, respect the attendee’s privacy and use email addresses only for communication regarding the specific Gutenberg Developer Hour session.
I already approached a few developers to be our resident experts with the idea, they committed to want to try it. Depending on the feedback, this initiative can be started fairly soon. If you are a Gutenberg developer with some experience and would like to be part of this initiative, please let me know in the comments.
Administrative tasks:
Schedule the Gutenberg Developer Hours, one at a time.
Set-up Zoom space, with registration.
Announce the next session via social channels, Make/Project, Gutenberg Times, and other available channels.
Connect with the volunteers on a regular basis so they can schedule themselves.
Recruit volunteers as panelists, moderators and content producers.
Published post with resources and solutions.
If you want to be part of the team working on this initiative, let us know in the comments. I will connect with you via WordPress SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Please don’t hesitate to connect with me on WP Slack @bph if you have additional questions.
WordPress 5.8 introduces Global Settings and Global Styles. They allow theme authors to control and style the available features in the editor and the different blocks using a theme.jsonJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML..
By using a theme.json file, in addition to the Global styles and settings capabilities, theme authors opt-in into the layout feature for blockBlockBlock 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. containers.
Layout config
Historically, themes had the responsibility to provide CSSCSSCascading Style Sheets. styles in order to support aligning content (left, right). With the introduction of the block editor in WordPress 5.0, new alignments has been added to the mix (wide, full). In addition to that, the block editor allowed users to use container blocks (group, columns blocks) which potentially can change how their inner blocks are positioned and aligned. Taking all these variations into consideration has become a very difficult task for theme authors. To address these issues, WordPress 5.8 introduces the layout feature and config.
How do I migrate my theme
Themes that have a centered content area, need to define a layout setting in their `theme.json` file:
The block-editor will automatically read this config and provide the corresponding styles in the editor. It will allow all alignments to work properly without requiring the `add_theme_support( ‘align-wide’ )` call.
Themes are still required to provide the corresponding styles in the frontend of their sites, something like:
It’s not possible for WordPress to generate these styles automatically for all themes because the entry-content className in the example above is not mandatory and may not exist. In the future, with the introduction of the upcoming block themes, these styles won’t be needed anymore.
Nested Blocks
For themes with the layout config enabled, container blocks (like group blocks) do not automatically inherit the layout config. Meaning the blocks added inside the containers will by default take all the available space and not have any wide/full alignments options unless the user defines the wide and content sizes for that particular container block or “inherits” the config from the default layout.
This also means that themers can drop any alignment specific CSS that was added specifically to support nested blocks.
This post summarizes the weekly editor chat meeting (agenda here) held in Slack. Moderated by @annezazu.
Announcements
GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ 11.7 is set to be released today with some wrangling around any critical bug fixes.
It’s the last day to explore the current #fse-outreach-experiment call for testing. Share your feedback here!
Check out this post to get a peak of the future from @critterverse on design explorations for blockBlockBlock 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. theme switching.
Monthly Priorities & Key Project Updates
The overarching plan for October has not yet been shipped yet so we based today’s conversation on the Mid September Plan. As a reminder to those working on these projects, async updates are both welcomed if you can’t make the meeting and needed.
Mobile Team
Shipped
Use theme colors in htmlHTMLHyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers. mode
Fixes
Small fixes for embed block and help screen
In Progress
Embed block improvements
GSS Font size, line height, colors
Navigation Block & Navigation Editor
The crew working on these projects had a hallway hangout today to chat through the state of their work. There is a longer takeaway here from @spacedmonkey until notes are posted but for now, here’s a TLDR: Focus is on the navigation block / experience in FSE and the nav editor is blocked until the block lands.
Template editor
In 11.7, there are two changes impacting this general area of work:
A PR landed for 11.8 that changes the initial patterns shown to be from a featured list of patterns from the directory rather than an underwhelming alphabetical order. This should really help folks see the power of patterns more readily!
Feel free to add items to this post if you weren’t able to make the meeting. As a reminder, never be shy in sharing what you’re working on! It can sometimes be intimidating to see sponsored contributors share all they are doing but remember it all counts and is so appreciated.
I’m continuing exploration for remaining individual block locking items. Some decisions are needed before I can start building UIUIUser interface, and I would appreciate your feedback.
I created a small PR to hide the “Move to” option when the block is locked.
Also created PR to correctly use data for customTemplates from the theme.jsonJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML.
I will continue supporting folks working on WordPress components.
This week in particular, I believe we’re going to focus on improving the ColorPicker, FontSizePicker, ToggleGroupControl any other control components used in Global Styles sidebarSidebarA sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme., while coordinating the adoption of ToolsPanel in the Typography Tools
Just want to give a big thank you to everyone contributing so much. I’m finally getting back to theme development after years of neglect, and most of my to-do list is already being addressed by coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team. THANK YOU!
As noted by Fabian, this PR touches many areas and would be a huge win for pluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party developers, particularly because it would make building custom blocks with inner blocks so much easier.
Next step: @annezazu will follow up to see if we can get a review in place or figure out what the priority is.
For a while now, the open floor section of the meeting has been fairly quiet/uneventful, which feels a bit like a missed opportunity to connect and share ideas. We chatted about both re-sharing interesting discussions from the GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ Discussions section in the meeting and having a nice interplay where perhaps a discussion from Core Editor ends up there to continue async. Many folks don’t check that part of GitHub right now so it might help bring larger attention and use there. If other folks have ideas/suggestions, do share in future meeting since this seems to be a longstanding pattern.
On hallway hangouts, a PR ahead of 5.9, and speaking at WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Italia. Raised by @overclokk.
The topic of language barriers with hallway hangouts was brought up as not everyone is comfortable speaking in English but might still want to join hallway hangouts. This was a great chance to share that hallway hangouts don’t require speaking – you can join, listen in, and leave whenever you want. At the same time though, it would be neat to see them done in other languages and to have folks join who aren’t as comfortable with English in order to give feedback about how we can make them more inclusive.
WordPress 5.8 introduces a new blockBlockBlock 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 widgets editor to the Widgets screen (Appearance → Widgets) and CustomizerCustomizerTool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. (Appearance → Customize → Widgets). The new editor allows users to add blocks to their widgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. areas using the familiar block editor interface introduced in WordPress 5.0. This gives users powerful new ways to customise their sites using the rich library of coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and third party blocks. Existing widgets and third party widgets will continue to work and can be used alongside blocks.
Opting out of the block-based widgets editor
The block-based widgets editor is enabled in WordPress 5.8 by default. There are several ways to restore the classic editor:
A theme author may include remove_theme_support( 'widgets-block-editor' ). Learn more.
A site administrator may use the new use_widgets_block_editorfilterFilterFilters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output.. Learn more.
The widgets.phpadminadmin(and super admin) screen (Appearance → Widgets) now loads a block-based widgets editor which exists in the @wordpress/edit-widgets package.
The editor is built using ReactReactReact is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. and is similar to the editor used for posts and pages (@wordpress/edit-post) and uses many of the same subsystems: @wordpress/interface and @wordpress/components for UIUIUser interface, @wordpress/block-editor for block editing, @wordpress/data and @wordpress/core-data for persisting changes, and so on.
A new filterable function, wp_use_widgets_block_editor(), is used by widgets.php to determine whether to load the new block-based editor or the classic editor.
The Widgets screen is extendable via block editor APIs such as registerPlugin, registerBlockType, registerBlockVariation, and so on.
The Widgets screen uses new REST APIREST APIThe REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. endpoints which are detailed in a seperate dev note.
New Customizer control
The Widgets section in the Customizer (Appearance → Customize → Widgets) now loads a new control (WP_Sidebar_Block_Editor_Control) which contains an embedded block-based widgets editor that exists in the @wordpress/customize-widgets package.
The editor is built using React and uses @wordpress/block-editor and @wordpress/components to implement its block editing interface. It does not use @wordpress/data or @wordpress/core-data to persist changes. Instead, the existing Customizer JavaScript API is used.
A new filterable function, wp_use_widgets_block_editor(), is used by WP_Customize_Manager to determine whether or not to log the new block-based editor control or the classic editor control.
The block-based widgets editor in the Customizer is extendable via block editor APIs such as registerBlockType, registerBlockVariation, and so on.
New block: Legacy Widget
Existing widgets and third party widgets can be edited in the block-based widgets editor via the new Legacy Widget block. This block has an identifier of core/legacy-widget and exists in the @wordpress/widgets package. The Legacy Widget block is compatible with most third party widgets.
Broadly speaking, the Legacy Widget block has three states:
Select. When first inserted, the block displays a list of widgets available to choose from. The list can be customised using the widget_types_to_hide_from_legacy_widget_block filter.
Edit. When selected, the block displays the widget’s control form fields. This is determined by the widget’s WP_Widget::form() implementation.
Preview. When not selected, the block displays a preview of how the widget will look once saved. This is determined by the widget’s WP_Widget::widget() implementation. A “No preview available.” message is automatically shown when widget() does not output any meaningful HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language. The semantic scripting language primarily used for outputting content in web browsers.. Learn more.
The Legacy Widget block is not available in other block editors including the post editor, though this can be enabled for advanced use cases.
New widget: Block
Blocks added to widget areas are persisted using the same widget storage mechanism added in WordPress 2.8. Under the hood, each block is serialised into HTML and stored in a block widget. This is represented by a new WP_Widget_Block subclass that extends WP_Widget. A block widget is a specialised case of the HTML widget and works very similarly.
If blocks are added to a widget area, and then the block-based widgets editor is disabled, the blocks will remain visible on the frontend and in the classic widgets screen.
Tips to prepare for the new block-based widgets editor
( function ( $ ) {
$( document ).on( 'widget-added', function ( $control ) {
$control.find( '.change-password' ).on( 'change', function () {
var isChecked = $( this ).prop( 'checked' );
$control.find( '.password' ).toggleClass( 'hidden', ! isChecked );
} );
} );
} )( jQuery );
Use block_categories_all instead of block_categories
The block_categories filter has been deprecated and will only be called in the post and page block editor. PluginPluginA plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party developers that wish to support the widgets block editor should use the new block_categories_all filter which is called in all editors. See #52920 for more details.
Allow migrating from widgets to blocks
Many core and third party widgets have a functionally equivalent block. For example, core’s Recent Posts widget is analogous to core’s Latest Posts block.
In order to avoid duplicate functionality, is is recommended that plugin authors provide a way for users to convert their existing widgets to any equivalent block. WordPress 5.8 provides a mechanism for doing this using block transforms:
Configure your widget to display its instance in the REST API by setting show_instance_in_rest to true in $widget_options.
Add a block transform to your block from the core/legacy-widget block.
Hide your widget from the Legacy Widget block using the widget_types_to_hide_from_legacy_widget_block filter.
Many legacy widgets call the wp.editor.initialize()JavaScriptJavaScriptJavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. function to instantiate a TinyMCE editor. If a plugin or block uses the @wordpress/editor package and enqueues wp-editor as a script dependency, this will re-define the wp.editor global, often resulting in a wp.editor.initialize is undefined error.
Don’t use functions like is_admin() that won’t work in a REST API request
Because the Legacy Widget block makes REST API requests in order to render widgets, admin-only functions like is_admin() and is_plugin_available() are not available.
WordPress 5.9 will feature a brand new default theme named Twenty Twenty-Two. It arrives during an exciting time for WordPress themes. With the advent of Full Site Editing and Global Styles, themes are changing structurally and functionally to enable far more avenues for customization than users have come to expect in the past. To take advantage of these new abilities, Twenty Twenty-Two has been designed to be the most flexible default theme ever created for WordPress.
A reliable starting point
To find inspiration for this theme’s design, I did not have to look far. Thanks to a bird feeder attached to the outside of our kitchen window, my family’s daily breakfast routine involves a rotating cast of cardinals, doves, finches, jays, and tufted titmice. The birds are always up to something interesting: Sometimes they’re lining up patiently to take turns eating, other times they’re playfully performing aerial gymnastics.
While the birds’ exact behavior is unpredictable, they are remarkably reliable overall. The exact lineup changes somewhat, but every single morning there’s a group of birds eating breakfast with us. Throughout all of the tumult the world has seen in the past couple years, this consistent, entertaining routine has been a welcome starting point to my day.
That routine is the inspiration for this years’ default theme. Like the birds, Twenty Twenty-Two is designed to be light and resilient, with a hint of playfulness. The theme uses the lightweight Source Serif Pro for headlines, paired with a sensible sans-serif for support. Its color palette is drawn from nature, and layout elements sit gently on the page.
Above all, the theme is designed to be reliable. Its design choices are intentionally subtle, and its foundation will be built strong. It’s our hope that this theme will suit your site through many seasons.
Endlessly customizable
Twenty Twenty-Two will take advantage of a wide networknetwork(versus site, blog) of page templates, headers, footers, and other patterns so that users can easily make the theme their own. In another nod to the behavior of birds everywhere, these will offer a balance between fun and utility: some are irregular and unpredictable, while others are straightforward and traditional. Together, these patterns will act as a window into all of the possibilities that the theme enables.
In addition, Twenty Twenty-Two will ship with a range of alternate color schemes so that folks can drastically change the appearance of their site. Users will also be able to change fonts, image treatments, and more on a site-wide level. These new controls open up a wide array of drastically different customizations for the theme:
Twenty Twenty-Two is designed with the acknowledgement that its default appearance is not most people’s endpoint. Everyone deserves a truly unique website, built on a solid, well-designed foundation, and Twenty Twenty-Two aims to help them achieve that.
Built for Full Site Editing
To take advantage of these new customization features, Twenty Twenty-Two will be built for Full Site Editing first. The theme aims to use as little CSSCSSCascading Style Sheets. as possible: our goal is for all theme styles to be configured through theme.jsonJSONJSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML. and editable through Global Styles. The theme development team will work closely with GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ contributors to build design tools in the blockBlockBlock 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. editor that enable this goal.
As a block theme, Twenty Twenty-Two will likely require WordPress 5.9 to run. If the Twenty Twenty-Two and 5.9 release leads determine that there is need in the community for broader theme support, we will explore ways to bridge that gap.
Next steps
Kjell Reigstad (@kjellr) is leading design for Twenty Twenty-Two, and Jeff Ong (@jffng) is leading development. The two of us are looking forward to your involvement and support though the process! If you are interested in contributing to Twenty Twenty-Two, make sure you are following this blogblog(versus network, site).
Theme development will happen on GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/. Once the theme is stable, it will be merged into CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and its GitHub repo will be deprecated. An empty repository has been created here that you can follow if you’d like:
Starting on Monday October 11th at 3:00 PM UTC, there will be weekly SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. meetings in #core-themes to coordinate development of the theme.
The future of default themes
The community has produced a dozen best-in-class themes together, and we’ve come to look forward to a new one arriving at the close of each year. That said, themes are in a transition period today, and it seems like this may be a reasonable time to step back and to re-evaluate the annual cadence with which we build default themes.
Innovations like theme.json, block templates, and block patterns are making theme development far simpler, and are providing new ways for users to customize their sites. There’s reason to believe that the community can leverage all this to build more frequent and diverse theme and customization solutions for our users in the coming years.
We’re all still navigating these new opportunities (and in the meantime, we have a theme to build!) so let’s regroup after the 5.9 release to discuss future paths forward for default themes.
Learn more
For information about about previous default themes, you can read the following posts:
Next major releasemajor releaseA release, identified by the first two numbers (3.6), which is the focus of a full release cycle and feature development. WordPress uses decimaling count for major release versions, so 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, and 3.1 are sequential and comparable in scope.: WP 5.9 👉 WordPress 5.9 Planning Roundup 👉 Introducing Twenty Twenty-Two
Components check-in and status updates
Check-in with each component for status updates.
Poll for components that need assistance.
Open Floor
Do you have something to propose for the agenda, or a specific item relevant to the usual agenda items above?
Please leave a comment, and say whether or not you’ll be in the chat, so the group can either give you the floor or bring up your topic for you accordingly.
This meeting happens in the #core channel. To join the meeting, you’ll need an account on the Making WordPress Slack.
With the Go/No Go session happening this week ahead of WordPress 5.9’s release in December 2021, let’s use this time to dig into any general questions you all might have around Full Site Editing! As it’s possible, please focus questions specifically around WordPress 5.9 as those will be the most high impact to address and not on larger strategic decisions. You are welcome to submit questions using the form below or to leave them as a comment on this post by October 27th:
Keep in mind that because, depending on the questions it’s likely that some answers might take the form of “people are working to figure this out and feedback is welcome here,” rather than a definitive answer. This is especially true for features/milestones that are planned for future releases.
When and where will you share the answers?
I’ll share a recap post on this blogblog(versus network, site) (Make CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.) as soon as I possibly can and aim to do so no later than November 1st, 2021. If there are a ton of questions, they will be grouped with corresponding answers for easy review. You can see what the outcome will look like based on the first round and second round. I will work in the open as I go in a collaborative Google doc that will be shared in #fse-outreach-experiment for anyone who wants to collaborate or check in on the work.
Once the post is published, I will follow up via email with everyone who left their email and a question in the form. For anyone who leaves a question as a comment on this post, I will @ your username in the recap post so you don’t miss out too!
What else will this effort help with?
While the main outcome will be a lovely list of answers to grow community knowledge, this collective effort will also be useful for future documentation updates, potential tutorials, hallway hangout topics, and more.
For more information about the FSE outreach program, please review this FAQ for helpful details. To properly join the fun, please head to #fse-outreach-experiment in Make Slack for future testing announcements, helpful posts, and more will be shared there.
We discussed the approach to the theme’s development, which is developing this as a blockBlockBlock 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. theme and fixing as much in GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ as possible. One of the goals is for the theme to have as little CSSCSSCascading Style Sheets. and PHPPHPThe web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 5.6.20 or higher as possible.
Our current development focuses are two-fold:
Identifying the gaps / blockers in Gutenberg. There is an overview issue tracking what’s needed on the Gutenberg side: https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentytwo/issues/75 We could use help testing various blocks and filing issues whenever they’re not looking or working as expected.
Block patterns coming soon, @kjellr is leading that effort. We could use help with PR reviews and testing as those become available, follow along using this tagtagA directory in Subversion. WordPress uses tags to store a single snapshot of a version (3.6, 3.6.1, etc.), the common convention of tags in version control systems. (Not to be confused with post tags.).
Meeting Cadence
We plan to do meetings once a week at this time (Mondays, 15 UTC), aiming to keep them around 30 minutes as to be respectful of folks time and focus on async for inclusivity.
Open Floor Q&A
How do we decide what needs to be worked on?
Ideally everything that’s being worked on has an issue — so if you find something that needs fixing, please open an issue for it, and then work on a PR.
Is there a mechanism for collaborating on an issue?
Comment on the issue, so it’s clear you’re working on it and if folks want to collaborate, they can communicate in the issue and slackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. if needed
Are you looking for triagetriageThe act of evaluating and sorting bug reports, in order to decide priority, severity, and other factors. help?
You can pingPingThe act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.”@kjellr or me (@jffng) if you would like to help this way.
Will TT2 align with the accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) level AA like TT1 did? How do we make sure this gets addressed?
A lot of this lands on Gutenberg, and for what we can do on the theme side, we hope to make this as accessible as possible. For example, the color palettes have been designed to pass WCAGWCAGWCAG is an acronym for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. These guidelines are helping make sure the internet is accessible to all people no matter how they would need to access the internet (screen-reader, keyboard only, etc) https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/. AAA contrast.
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