Full Site Editing Go/No Go: Next steps

The Full Site Editing Go/No Go demo took place a few days ago, where project leadership determined what new features should be included in WordPress 5.8 based on their current status, feedback gathered in calls for testing, and the prospect of achieving a solid implementation before the feature freeze.

This post aims to provide a high-level overview of the focuses to attend to before the feature freeze; linked individual actionable GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that 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/ items further develop lower-level requirements to complete. Individual items are also being tracked in the WordPress 5.8 FSE Must Haves project board.

Schedule

According to the WordPress 5.8 pre-planning schedule, the feature freeze will take place on May 25th, leaving room for the following GutenbergGutenberg The 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/ pluginPlugin A 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 releases to be merged:

Gutenberg version	RCrelease candidate One of the final stages in the version release cycle, this version signals the potential to be a final release to the public. Also see alpha (beta). release date	Stable release date
10.5	April 21st	April 28th
10.6	May 5th	May 12th
10.7	May 19th	May 26th

To align with this schedule, the last version to be merged in coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. before the feature freeze will be 10.7-RC, with any future bugfix applied before or after the stable 10.7.0 being ported as well. Moreover, to ease new feature testing with more frequent merges, as suggested in a recent dev chat, Gutenberg 10.4 -without experimental features- is already available in WordPress core.

Next steps

Apart from all the incremental improvements included by merging up to 9 plugin releases, from Gutenberg 9.9 to 10.7, the following work-in-progress features are targeted for 5.8 and should become stable by Gutenberg 10.7. 

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. theme building

Block themes might arguably represent one of the biggest core theme-building paradigm changes in the last decade. As such, a huge effort is being done to achieve a future-proof, evolvable foundation. With most of the infrastructure ready, the focus remains on the theme.json configuration file, and the “block supports” mechanism:

• Refining the theme.json structure
• Version handling of the theme.json file.
• Iterating over the block supports mechanism.

A list of detailed requirements to meet before the feature freeze can be found at the Block Styles Breakdown overview issue.

Once released in 5.8, theme developers will be able to create block themes and provide quality feedback to iterate over these mechanisms.

Introducing Theme blocks

As part of the implementation of Full Site Editing, a number of theme blocks have been developed to cover theme/site features similar to how classic template tags worked. The next steps are to finish determining which of these blocks should be included in 5.8 and enabled for classic themes, and polish them, including:

• Query
• Navigation
• Site Title
• Site Logo
• Site Tagline

These blocks should display a badge in the inserter, denoting they are new blocks that, while completely stable and functional, might still need some UXUX User experience polishing and are meant to experiment and tinker around.

Template editing within the post editor

With one of the targets for 5.8 being to introduce block templates, users will be able to create custom block templates for posts and pages in classic themes. Although this feature mostly relies on the existing site editing infrastructure already available in the plugin, these improvements will be focused on to provide a great user experience. User testing is planned in coordination with @annezazu from the FSE Outreach program during the WordPress 5.8 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. phase. Users are encouraged to join this program as it provides invaluable feedback that helps drive the projects’ focus and determine feature usability.

Widgets Editor & Block Widgets in the CustomizerCustomizer Tool 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.

The Widgets Editor project aims to bring the power of blocks to classic theme with two major milestones:

• Adding support for blocks in widgetWidget A 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
• Embedding a block editor in the customizer

Once these milestones have been completed, the remaining efforts towards 5.8 focus on providing stellar stability and backward compatibility, with an upcoming call for testing to be launched in the near future; if this is of interest to you, please keep an eye out for a future post on this blogblog (versus network, site). A detailed list of the next actions can be found at the Widgets Editor tracking issue.

Persistent List view in the post editor

The Persistent List View provides an improved overview of the inserted blocks and has greatly enriched the way users navigate the block tree in the Site Editor. Therefore, the goal is to bring the Persistent List View to the post editor as well in 5.8.

Duotone block supports

WordPress 5.8 aims to introduce the new duotone design tool as a “block supports” feature, available by default in the core image and cover blocks. The PR introducing this feature is currently in its last polishing iterations and should be expected to land in the plugin soon.

Gallery block refactor

Last, but not least, work and a round of testing continue on the Gallery block refactor which seeks to be a wrapper around Image block rather than a separate block entirely. This will allow the Gallery block to benefit by default from all design tools and improvements made to the Image block. Feedback collected is addressed as part of the PR efforts; users are welcome to test and submit their feedback as early as possible so that it can be acted upon in the upcoming weeks.

#5-8, #core-editor, #gutenberg