Gutenberg Times: WordCamp Europe, New Chart block, GitHub Deployment, and can AI fix my plugins? — Weekend Edition 324

Hi there,

How is your block theme knowledge coming along? The slower pace of Gutenberg development is a blessing in disguise. I will take the opportunity to dive deeper into block themes, styles, block and section styles, and block development. I definitely also see a need to skill up my CSS. What is it that you need to learn?

It sounds funny coming from me, as I’ve been knee-deep in Gutenberg development all this time. Still, if I don’t actually practice the skills I acquired, I lose them. That’s why I decided to tackle the migration of the Gutenberg Times website to a block theme. A step was long overdue. I’ll post about my progress.

And now it’s time to see what others created, and I discovered during the week.

Enjoy your weekend and get some rest.

Yours,
Birgit

Table of Contents

WordCamp Europe will take place June 5 – 7, 2025 in Basel, Switzerland. This week organizers announced that they already sold over 1,000 tickets, already. They also published the program schedule. It’s a great mixture of many topics and perspectives.

At first glance, here are my top sessions.

WordPress gems for devs: Interactivity API a workshop with Milana Cap
Bridging Design and Development: Figma Design Systems for WordPress Success with Ash Shaw
The Block Developer Cookbook: WCEU 2025 Edition a workshop with Ryan Welcher
Why Block Themes Make WooCommerce Stores Better with Ellen Bauer
Do you really need a custom block? a lightning talk with Robert O’Rourke

Bonus: Two Playground sessions:

Building Automated Tests with WordPress Playground with Berislav (Bero) Grgicak
From Zero to Demo: Mastering WordPress Playground Blueprints a workshop with yours truly.

Special treat: Mythbusting and Q&A about appearing in Google Search with Danny Sullivan, Google.

Want to meet me in Basel? Send me the link to your calendar or use mine bit.ly/WCEUMeetBirgit.

There is a new kid on the block. In his post, WPCoven: Introducing A New Voice Covering the WordPress Ecosystem, Alex de Borba, CEO at Atmostfear Entertainment, introduced a new WordPress and WooCommerce focused publication. WPCoven will cover developments and best practices related to the Block Editor and its applications within the WordPress & WooCommerce community. Sending a hearty “Welcome to the space” to WPCoven. I will certainly watch the feed.

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

Mary Hubbard posted the takeaways from a meeting with Core Committers and Matt Mullenweg. You can read the full meeting recap in Dotorg Core Committers Check In. The TL;DR regarding releases is:

WordPress 6.8 is the last major release for 2025,
Minor aka point releases will happen (6.8.x) as needed, with bug fixes, and small enhancements
Gutenberg plugin release cycle stays every other week.

I also expect, we will read more about canonical plugins in the future.

George Mamadashvili released Gutenberg 20.6 version.

The RSS block now offers an option to allow opening the links in a new tab. It can also set the rel attribute. (69641)
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)

JC Palmes, Principal Technical Manager at WebDev Studios, living in the Philippines, and I chatted about the Gutenberg releases 20.5 and 20.6. We covered WordPress 6.8 extensively, too and discussed the starter theme WebDev Studio has built. It was a great joy to chat with JC Palmes again. The Gutenberg Changelog episode 116 will drop into your favorite podcast app over the weekend.

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

The editorial team at Codeable published a tutorial titled Easy Ways to Edit Your WooCommerce Product Page Design. You learn how to modify the WooCommerce product page without altering core WordPress files by creating a new plugin. This method lets developers change the layout, design, and functionality using filters or hooks. Developers can make changes by focusing on specific parts like the product image, description, price, and currency. This approach avoids disrupting other sections of the page. This strategy keeps code clean and ensures functionality. It’s advised to use a child theme for WooCommerce plugin modifications to prevent conflicts.

Bud Kraus‘s latest tutorial teaches How to make block content hide or appear in WordPress. He helps website owners learn to use the Block Visibility plugin, which is often misunderstood and underused. By installing the plugin, Kraus demonstrates how to hide specific blocks in a page or post. This provides more flexibility. It also allows for further customization. This method allows website owners to create dynamic layouts, improve user experience, and boost performance.

Nick Schäferhoff walks you through the steps on How to Build a One-Page Website with WordPress . He explains how these single-page sites can be super effective for modern websites. They allow users to easily navigate. Users can find what they need quickly. Schäferhoff also shares some tips on how to make the site visually appealing. He advises on ensuring it is user-friendly. This makes it easy to get started with this trendy web design approach. The instructions detailed, and you also find excellent screenshots so you won’t get lost.

A new Chart block plugin has arrived at the WordPress plugin repository. It was created by the folks at BdThemes, a WordPress product company from Bangladesh. The plugin is called Advanced Charts for Gutenberg Blocks Editor. Give it your data via CSV file and it assists create a visualization for it. It has many customization and design tools.

If you only need basic chart tooling and designs, SB Chart Block by Herb Miller is ideal. From the block Inserter in the editor, search for “Chart” and you can install it right from within the editor.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

At the WordPress Meetup in London, Keith Devon and Mark Wilkinson, Highrise Digital, presented their theme building process. They demonstrated this process for a school project. I found it quite interesting to listen to the long-time theme builders. They approach building a theme with the site editor and offer the full range of editing tools to their clients. Here is the recording: Building a Block-Based WordPress Site with FSE

Benjamin Intal and his crew at Stackable are super excited to share the New Stackable Global Design System! This update is designed to make life easier for developers. It helps them create consistent and cool designs across different websites. You’ll find loads of ready-made components, typography, colors, and more to play with. It’s crafted to simplify the design process and cut down on the usual headaches for developers. Or so they claim.

“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

Jonathan Bossenger livestream about his question: Can AI fix Plugin Check issues? He recently adopted a WordPress plugin that was closed due to security flaws and other code issues. Can AI help him resolve these issues faster than I could myself? Let’s find out.

JuanMa Garrido continued his series Data in the Block Editor with @wordpress/data. He presented Part 3 of building the app. This part is from the course Using the WordPress Data Layer. This course aims to get you comfortable with the WordPress data layer. It’s a JavaScript library used throughout the WordPress editor to read and write data. You can catch up on Part 1 and Part 2 of the series via YouTube.

Ryan Welcher has been live-streaming on Twitch every Thursday at 14:30 UTC. Over the last two weeks, he focused on adding user profiles to the Block Developer Cookbook. He worked on Part 1 and Part 2. You’ll learn how to create an Author Archive template. You’ll also learn how to create an Author page layout while handling user metadata for display. Part of the experience of Welcher’s livestream is also method on debugging code and code review.

In his latest video, Nick Diego introduced you to an awesome developer tool: How to use GitHub Deployments on WordPress.com. “Whether you’re building custom themes, plugins, or managing full-site deployments, integrating GitHub with WordPress.com offers a powerful and efficient approach to code management. In this video, you’ll learn how to connect a GitHub repository to your WordPress.com site using GitHub Deployments.”

What’s new in Playground

For the latest episode of the WPTavern Jukebox podcast, 163 – Birgit Pauli-Haack on the Magic of the WordPress Playground, I joined Nathan Wrigley. We talked about my experiences with the WordPress Playground. I shared how I created complex and interactive demos using the Playground. I even brought them online as fully functional websites. We discussed the power of storytelling in web development. You can use the Playground to experiment and learn new things.

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