Gutenberg Times: Four Block Plugins, three events, two live streams, one course and more — Weekend Edition 328

Howdy,

Now is the time to skill up your block editor and theme knowledge and craft. The more quiet release cycle of WordPress gives everyone some breathing room. You can explore more opportunities, like attending the Page Builder Summit. You could invest in a course. You could join in free webinars. You could listen to successful experts in the field to learn how they approach their business.

What are your questions about core blocks, block themes etc.? You can ask via email, in the comments or join our new Discord space.

Below, again a great mixture of plugins, live streams, upcoming events and tutorials. I hope you also have a great weekend!

Yours,
Birgit

Table of Contents

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

On April 30, WordPress 6.8.1 Maintenance Release came out. Aaron Jorbin wrote in the release post that this minor release includes fixes for 15 bugs. These fixes span throughout Core and the Block Editor. They tackle issues affecting multiple areas of WordPress including the block editor, multi-site, and REST API. The top three fixes are:

A fix addresses the regression Meta boxes area showing unwanted resize handle. It also addresses the issue that breaks auto-scroll. This was discovered right after the release of 6.8.
The Edit Site link is restored to its earlier link behavior. It links to the respective template displayed on the front end. (#63358).
The REST API’s handling of sticky posts has also been fixed. (#63307, #63339

For a full list of bug fixes, please refer to the release candidate announcement.

Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog 116 – WordPress 6.8, Source of Truth, Field Guide, Gutenberg 20.5 and 20.6 with special guest JC Palmes, WebDev Studios

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

In his post, Building a Custom Image Gallery with the Image Gallery Block, Kyle Van Deusen provides guidance. He explains how to create a custom image gallery in WordPress. He uses the “Image Gallery Block” plugin by WP Developer. This plugin offers more features than the default WordPress Gallery block.

Van Deusen covers installing the plugin, adding a gallery, and selecting images. The plugin provides flexible styling like grid or masonry layouts, caption options, image sizing, responsive settings, and a lightbox. Extra adjustments include borders, rounded corners, and caption colors. The post emphasizes the plugin’s user-friendliness and concludes with a preview of its interactive features.

Wes Theron has some awesome tips to Speed Up Your Workflow in WordPress. He’s sharing his favorite hidden gems of the Block Editor. You’ll get to know the Command Palette, different editing modes, List view, scheduling posts, and so much more. It’s a super quick video, and you’ll pick it all up in under six minutes. You probably already know most of it. You’re a long-time subscriber. You got the scoop when these features first dropped in the Block Editor. But still, this video shows you how those features have evolved and how they all work together for creating content.

In the latest episode of Greyd Conversations #6 – Building upon WordPress, Mike McAlister, co-founder of Ollie, joined Jessica Lyschik. They discussed the advantages of their shared approach to developing products using WordPress’s Block & Site Editor. They also looked into the future direction of WordPress. They discussed features that product companies like Greyd and Ollie hope to see in the core.

Al Amin Ahamed‘s new plugin, Author Profile Blocks, in now available in the WordPress Plugin Repository. With this plugin you can show user profiles in different styles using Gutenberg blocks. You can use it to highlight team members. It can also highlight contributors, authors, or any WordPress users you want to feature on your site.

“Unlike other plugins, Author Profile Blocks leverages your existing WordPress users rather than creating a separate custom post type. This means you can showcase all your site contributors without duplicating content.” Ahamed wrote in his description.

Selim Rana and his team at BdThemes released the Advanced Heading for the Gutenberg Block Editor plugin. It provides various options to style headings like text highlighting, gradient, image masking, drop shadows, and background effects.

Bhargav (Bunty) Bhandari released a new plugin again: Thread Block with which you can publish Twitter-like Thread posts. It can also be used to do some live blogging of an event or a breaking news story. “Perfect for storytelling, debates, or breaking down ideas step by step” Bhandari wrote.

Upcoming events

On May 8, 2025, at 12:00 UTC, Anne-Mieke Bovelett will hold a free webinar for site builders and agencies. Discover how much power the WordPress Block Editor and Site Editor give you! She will walk you through what the WordPress Block Editor and Site Editor can do today. No custom code, no third-party builder, no bloated plugin stack. Just native WordPress, used to its full potential.

Bovelett will cover:

What the Block Editor and Site Editor actually are
How to build layouts and templates without code
How reusable patterns can simplify your workflow
Building post grids (query loops) and juggling dynamic data

Free registration is now open.

The Page Builder summit 2025 will take place from 12th to 16th of May 2025. Hosts Anchen le Roux and Nathan Wrigley published the schedule. It is packed with fabulous speakers. The topics are perfect for site builders to enhance their business acumen. They will also expand their technical knowledge.

Here is my watch list:

Alicia St. Rose: Loop, There It Is! The Magic of the Query Loop Block
Tony Cosentino: Supercharge Your WordPress Workflow: 10 AI Tools to Build Better Websites Faster
PK Son: Supercharge Your Builds with ACF Flexible/Repeater Fields
Luke Carbis: The Hidden Costs of Page Builders: Avoiding Technical Debt in No-Code Projects
Tammie Lister: Design Once, Build Everywhere: The Lego Principle for Page Builders
Benjamin Intal: Reimagine UX in the Block Editor with WP Interactions

The event is totally free, and the recordings will stay free for 48 hours after the last day. I will be traveling during the week. I am glad to pay for an extension of that watch time. $47 is quite affordable to get unlimited access to the recordings.

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 get updates on the next event.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

In his latest live stream, Ryan Welcher shared his process in real time. He refined features and experimented with block-based design. He also answered viewers’ questions as we went along. The recording is now online on YouTube: WordPress Block Theming: Chat, Connect, and Chill!

“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

I answered a listener question from the Gutenberg changelog. I published a short post on How to overwrite or remove core block styles. In a short video, you learn how to overwrite the styles through the Editor > Styles section. Another way is via the theme’s theme.json file. If you want to remove core block styles entirely, you’ll find a code snippet to put into your functions.php or plugin files.

Milica Aleksandric announces a new WordPress Development Course for the Modern Era on WPShout. The course, Modern WordPress Fast Track, is a “10-week program.” It is designed to take you from beginner to pro with the latest WordPress tech. Think block themes, Full Site Editing, AI tools, and modern workflows. It’s taught by Kaspars Dambis, a WordPress core contributor with tons of real-world experience. The course community on Discord connects you to other students. It starts on June 1, 2025. Until then, you can take advantage of the 40% discount for early birds.

In his latest recording of his twitch stream, AI Code Reviews | Jon learns to code, Jonathan Bossenger explored two AI code review tools. These tools hook right into your Git pull request workflow. He compared them to see how they work.

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