Gutenberg Times: Field Guide, No-Code Theme, Pattern Library, why you might not need a Custom Block — Weekend Edition 323

Hi,

Spring is here. On the weekend I saw Forsythia bushes in full bloom all over the city. Yesterday, I passed the National Museum and saw their Magnolia trees blooming as well. The temperatures are still too low for my taste, but not for long.

“Isn’t this a WordPress newsletter”, you might think. I know, I know. Let’s get on with it, then. Carpe diem!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Yours,
Birgit

PS: The links for mentioned people are now going to their Blue Sky profile, and if I couldn’t find them, it’s till their X (formerly known as Twitter) profile.

Table of Contents

The Page Builder summit 2025 is on the calendar now: Anchen le Roux and Nathan Wrigley announced the eighth edition of the virtual conference will take place from 12th to 16th of May 2025. Save the date, and add your name to the Waitlist, to receive info, when registration opens. “The summit is a 5-day event that will help WordPress developers, designers, freelancers, and agencies to build better websites faster and more efficient. As well as learn more about the page builders and the awesome things you can do with them. “, they wrote.

Web Agency Summit 2025 will happen April 7-11, 2025. “Learn proven strategies top agencies are using today to scale sustainably, streamline operations, attract high-value clients, and stay ahead of the curve.”

WordSesh returns May 13–15, 2025. It is a virtual conference for WordPress professionals. Its host, Brian Richards, is a seasoned virtual conference producer and WordPress educator. His speaker and session curation is top-notch. Sign up to receive updates on the next event.

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

WordPress 6.8 Release Candidate 1 is now available for testing. Final release is scheduled for April 15, 2025

You can check out the post Help Test WordPress 6.8 with detailed instructions and videos on selected features.
The Field Guide holds relevant information for developers about the new version.
The Source of Truth compliments with detailed information on block editor features for end users, plugin, and theme developers.

The latest Dev Notes for WordPress 6.8

Gutenberg 20.6

George Mamadashvili released Gutenberg 20.6 RC 1 version, and it’s ready for testing. What to expect in this version?

The Table of contents block received a new option to control the level of heading included. (69063)
The Navigation block now sports a slider to control the transparency for submenu background. (69063)
The RSS block now has an option to allow opening the links in a new tab and set the rel attribute. (69641)

Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog 115 – Gutenberg Releases 20.2, 20.3, 20.4, WordPress 6.8 and WordCamp Asia with special guest Jessica Lyschik.

Jessica Lyschik and Birgit Pauli-Haack recording Gutenberg Changelog 115

Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners

Wes Theron created a video tutorial to teach you How to Build a WordPress Theme the No-Code Way. He shows you where to update your colors, choose your fonts, modify the Single page template and then use the Create block Theme plugin to save all the settings into a new theme’s file structure.

In this short video on X (former Twitter), Jamie Marsland shows us How to create a One-Pager website with WordPress, using the site editor, core blocks and some custom CSS.

MahdiAli Khanusiya, is the designer behind the PatternWP plugin that offers a big library of WordPress block patterns and full-page templates. Using it will instantly increase the range of designs and layout you can offer your customers, and streamline your production process. There is also a pro version available.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

Latest six block themes in the WordPress repository:

Digital Marketing Freelancer by Themes Cart, their seventh block theme
The Food Reviewer by Superb Addons, a child theme to another theme
Ecommerce Gadget Store by WP Radiant, the latest of 49 block themes
Fire Fighter by Peter Williams of Ovation Themes, the newest theme out of 48 block themes
Biz Flick by Themegrove, the latest of 39 block themes
Digital Creator by wpOpus Dev, their fourth block theme in the repository.

“Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2025”
A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.

In his post How to extend core WordPress blocks with Blocks API, Joel Olawanle, technical editor at Kinsta, introduced you to the basic extension methods like Block Styles and Block Variations with code examples and multiple ways to accomplish the tasks.

Alfredo Navas, web developer at WebDev Studios, wrote a tutorial on how to use the Block Bindings API and why you might not need a Custom Block. Navas walks you through registering a Custom Source, how to create a Block Variation with custom data and making it all work in the editor and on the front end.

In last week’s livestream, Ryan Welcher created a new WordPress block theme for the Block Developer Cookbook and gave it a new look. You can watch him turning change his color scheme and turn his existing theme into a style variation.

Brian Coords found a way to create Dynamic WordPress Playground Blueprints with Cloudflare Workers and shared in his video how he built a system to spin up demo WooCommerce stores. The code lives on GitHub

Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.

Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience