WordCamp blocks are live!

After a round of beta testing, four of our WordCampWordCamp WordCamps 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. blocks are now available on all WordCamp.org sites!

The four blocks are:

  • Speakers
  • Sessions
  • Sponsors
  • Organizers

Each of these blocks is an enhanced replacement of a WordCamp shortcodeShortcode A shortcode is a placeholder used within a WordPress post, page, or widget to insert a form or function generated by a plugin in a specific location on your site.. Most of the same functionality is available in these new 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. forms, along with many new options, while the block editor 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. makes customization much easier than wrangling shortcode parameters.

Documentation for the new blocks can be found on the WordCamp Organizer Handbook.

Going forward, newly created WordCamp sites will use the blocks in their default content. Existing WordCamp sites will still use the shortcodes, however, so no sites should have broken layouts as a result of this change.

A fifth shortcode replacement block, for WordCamp schedules, is still in development. In addition to providing a block editor UI for customizing the output of a camp’s schedule, the new Schedule block will change the HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. markup of the schedule to be CSS-grid-based instead of table-based. Stay tuned for more updates about this block.

Thanks to all the folks who worked to make these blocks happen: @coreymckrill, @vedjain, @iandunn, @ryelle, @melchoyce, @karmatosed, @andreamiddleton. Also thanks to everyone who gave us feedback during scoping and betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. testing!