Eileen Violini 12:41 pm on July 2, 2020
Tags:   

Block-based Theme Meeting Notes 1 July, 2020

This post summarizes the latest bi-weekly 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.-based Themes meeting (agenda, slack transcript). This meeting was held in the #themereview SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel on Wednesday, June 17, 2020, 12:00 PM EDT and was moderated by @kjellr.

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/ Update

Gutenberg 8.4 has been released. This is the second-last release before WordPress 5.5. The full-site editor now includes an “export theme” option. This will download all of the block templates and template-parts that you’ve created or edited in the full-site editor. It’s really useful for creating block-based themes. This can eliminate a lot of copying and pasting when created block-based themes.

Export Tool in Gutenberg 8.4

Issues for Comments

The following issues are open for comments. If you’re looking to contribute to the next generation of theme creation, this is a good place to provide input.

  • Issue 23324 Conditional logic within experimental-theme.jsonJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML.. This arose from a discussion in a previous meeting.
  • Issue 22759 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. output of all the full-site editing blocks (this is particularly useful for themes to cut down on CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site.).
  • Issue 23228 Feature requests for the site title block.

External Resources

During a recent online event in conjunction with the Gutenberg Times @kjellr, @poena and @itsjusteileen discussed Full Site editing and Block-based Themes and @kjellr gave a demo of creating a theme from within the editor.

Discussion: Documentation

This week’s discussion centered around improving existing documentation that is currently available at

The team agreed the existing documentation is adequate to allow users to get started testing and experimenting with Full Site Editing for Block-based themes.

Some improvements could be:

  • to add a list of available features and the development of the status of those items.
  • adding a getting started section to the experimental-theme.json docs
  • linking to the Experimental Theme repo.
  • providing more links or fleshing out of what is a block template.
  • it is not clear how to include a template part in a template or if it is not templates and parts that are saved will be used if you switch themes.
  • how to create and edit templates needs to reflect the new export theme button. At should also note that it is recommend that you can edit things directly in the full-site editor.
  • include when exporting what to do with the post IDs that are created
  • the wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=wp_template screens, there should also be a note that those don’t reflect any templates that are bundled with the actual theme.
  • the the “Theme Blocks” section could list currently available FSEFSE Short for Full Site Editing, a project for the Gutenberg plugin and the editor where a full page layout is created using only blocks. blocks but this will need to be updated. Everyone working in #core-editor should be notified to make sure PRs involving blocks for block-based themes are tagged in the repo.
  • an FSE tutorial can be added.

Open Floor

The theme experiments repo is open for submissions. Four themes are looking for feedback on open PRs that try implementing the theme.json

Two new issues were opened for creating and using templates in FSE: