


<ul><li>Tiles</li><li>Masonry</li><li>Justified</li><li>Square</li><li>Cascade</li><li>Carousel (pro only)</li><li>Map (pro only)</li></ul>



<p>The block also offers a handful of basic animations, link options, and more. However, the gutter setting provides more control over the output. The gutter is the horizontal and vertical space between images. Users can choose between 0 and 100. Gutter spacing is the one option from the plugin that WordPress should adopt, allowing theme authors to opt-into a default and users to customize.</p>



<img />Square-layout gallery with no gutter.



<p>The plugin also has <a href="https://meowapps.com/plugin/meow-gallery/">commercial features</a>, but they are value-added upsells instead of necessary functionality. The pro version includes extras like more layouts, new animations, and infinite scrolling for galleries with many images.</p>



<p>The one off-putting issue with Meow Gallery is that it creates a custom block. Having already seen solutions from other plugin authors that extend the default Gallery block, I was hoping this plugin would go in the same direction. Extending the core block makes it easier for end-users to switch gallery plugins at any point. However, users can transform Meow Gallery blocks into Gallery blocks and vice versa.</p>



<p>Keep in mind that the WordPress Gallery block is also undergoing drastic changes. Currently, the plan is to make it more of a container block that houses nested Image blocks. By not extending the core block, plugin users will miss out on some of the advantages this change brings. Of course, the plugin developer could follow suit and add the same features to the project.</p>



<p>Meow Gallery relies on the WordPress <code>gallery</code> shortcode. Therefore, it will continue working regardless of whether users deactivate the plugin in the future. As a fallback, it is not a perfect solution. Users of the block editor would likely rather have it revert to the core Gallery block &mdash; the shortcode and block are not remotely the same. However, it is a bit of a compromise between showing a working gallery or nothing at all.</p>



<p>I suspect the reliance on the shortcode is for historical reasons. Meow Gallery existed in the pre-block era. However, the developer has managed to keep up with the times, offering support for both the block and classic editor.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 29 Mar 2021 21:26:37 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Justin Tadlock";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: How WordPress Improves";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:52:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=9980";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"https://wordpress.org/news/2021/03/how-wordpress-improves/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10224:"<p>In this episode, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a> explores the WordPress release process. Tune in and learn the phases of a release and catch this week’s small list of big things.</p>



<p><em><strong>Have a question you&#8217;d like answered? You can submit them to <a href="mailto:wpbriefing@wordpress.org">wpbriefing@wordpress.org</a>, either written or as a voice recording.</strong></em></p>



<h2><strong>Credits</strong></h2>



<ul><li>Editor:<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/"> Dustin Hartzler</a></li><li>Logo:<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/beafialho/"> Beatriz Fialho</a></li><li>Production:<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mkaz/"> </a><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/">Chloé Bringmann</a></li><li>Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</li></ul>



<h2>References</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2021/03/esperanza/">WordPress 5.7 “Esperanza” </a></li><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanza_Spalding">Esperanza Spalding</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2021/02/gutenberg-tutorial-reusable-blocks/">Gutenberg Tutorial: Reusable Blocks</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/">make.wordpress.org/test</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/contribute/git/">GitHub repository </a></li></ul>



<h2>Transcript</h2>



<span id="more-9980"></span>



<p>Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of some of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project and the community around it, as well as get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!</p>



<p>All right, so last week, we wrapped up and shipped the WordPress 5.7 release. The release team this time around was smaller than we&#8217;ve had in the last couple of years. By the numbers, it looks really good: 66 enhancements or feature requests went in, 127 bugs were fixed, and seven versions of a Gutenberg plugin were merged and backported. If you use WordPress, you are probably aware that we have new releases throughout the year, but you probably don&#8217;t know much about the release process. There&#8217;s not really a reason to know unless you&#8217;re actively contributing to a release. For those interested in knowing more about how we improve WordPress, this week&#8217;s exploration is for you.</p>



<p>We&#8217;re gonna take a look at what goes into WordPress releases and just kind of zoom our way in from the highest level. At the highest level, there are three major WordPress releases a year, plus the minor releases, plus Gutenberg releases. So if you&#8217;re following current WordPress work and future WordPress work, that&#8217;s going to get you to probably around <strong>30 releases a year</strong>. If we zoom in one level to the release itself, a single release of WordPress takes four to five months from start to the day that we ship, and an additional four to six weeks on support and translations, and minor releases after that. If you&#8217;re looking from my vantage point, you&#8217;ll see that WordPress releases have essentially five parts, some of which happen kind of simultaneously.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The first part is planning and includes the project lead, lead developers, design; groups like that. The second phase is the creation phase when we&#8217;re actually building the things that have to go into the CMS that involves the design, core, editor, mobile, and other teams. Then there&#8217;s this phase that I like to refer to as the distribution phase. This is mostly done by the teams that make sure that WordPress is widely distributable; the polyglots team work on translations, accessibility does some work, docs make sure that everything is documented, and training, of course, gets things ready for when we have to be able to tell people how to use the release.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Then there is the fourth phase; I really don&#8217;t think they go sequentially or in a waterfall format. The fourth-ish phase that I include, and that I tend to see, is this extending and iteration phase. It&#8217;s the phase where we see our theme authors and our plugin authors, folks who are doing support, show up and help us to make sure that WordPress is available not only widely but broadly to ensure that their audiences as theme authors and plugin authors are covered in the features that they need based on what they are using WordPress for. The fifth phase is the part of our communication that involves the community team, especially marketing, WordPressTV, and learn.wordpress.org. Basically, anyone who&#8217;s showing up to make sure that we all share what happened in the release, the features that are coming, and how that affects the users is involved in that particular phase. So five big phases of what happens over those four to five months, and then for the month or month and a half afterward.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If we zoom in a bit more on the creation phase, each release has people who lead the work and coordinate contributor efforts during the course of the release. For any given release, hundreds of people contribute and receive credit for moving the WordPress project forward. Okay, hold on a second. Let&#8217;s pump the brakes and zoom in a bit on that. Hundreds of people work on every major release for a project that powers over 40% of the web that feels like a small number. But for the people who process the contributions in preparation for release, it&#8217;s actually pretty substantial. For every release, there is a small team of leaders who asked the hard questions. Is this a usable feature? Does this make WordPress better overall? And, of course, is this ready to ship?&nbsp; Some of those leaders, a smaller subset of even the leaders that we have already, are committers who actually prep and merge patches to the CMS; they don&#8217;t do all the work to create a design or write all the code. This tiny group of people processes hundreds and hundreds of bug fixes, improvements, and enhancements that have been submitted over the course of months and sometimes years. As a side note, that whole process is a little smaller, a little faster in the Gutenberg featured plugin, but the basic parts are still there. Alright, so we&#8217;ve zoomed from the big picture way into some of the finer details, and it really looks like any other project cycle. So now, I&#8217;m going to layer in the filter of open source to that process.</p>



<p>There are a couple of things that make building software in an open source environment so different. The first is that the code is readily available. If you have a basic understanding of the languages, you can see the code, learn from it, and make suggestions about improving it. Second, you consider the user a co-developer in the process, which means that as long as people use your product, they will have opinions on what you shipped. This way of iterating improves WordPress and ties back to one of my favorite open source principles. The idea that with many eyes, all bugs are shallow. To me, that means that with enough people looking at a problem, someone is bound to be able to see the solution.</p>



<p>This brings us to our community highlight, the segment where I share a note about contributors who have helped others along the way or a WordPress success story. This week&#8217;s highlight is from Nok in our Bangkok community. When asked to help her find her way into the WordPress community, she said, “@shinichiN who started the WordPress community in Bangkok and encouraged me to contribute, and also @mayukojpn has introduced me to the WP community team to join as a deputy. “ Thank you for sharing those two inspiring people with us. And if you, listener, have any stories that you would like to share of your own WordPress success or people that you have been so grateful to help you find your way in the project, you can feel free to email those to me at <a href="mailto:wpbriefing@wordpress.org">wpbriefing@wordpress.org</a>.</p>



<p>That brings us to our final segment of the WP Briefing, the small list of big things. I only have three things to share with you this week. The first one is that about a week ago, we had our first release of 2021. It was the WordPress 5.7 release, titled Esperanza. If you have not yet seen it, go ahead and update your website or check with your host and make sure that they have updated you if you&#8217;re on a managed host. And then take a listen to the artists that it&#8217;s named after.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The second thing that I want you to keep an eye out for is wordpress.org/news. We are starting a new series of content that gets at the heart of some of Gutenberg’s basic parts; there’s a lot of change coming up in the next few releases of WordPress. And the most important thing to me is that you understand what we&#8217;re trying to change and where those changes are primarily taking place. There will be a couple of tutorials that go up there over the course of the of the next few weeks. The third item on the small list of big things is to remind you of our call for testing. As I mentioned earlier in the podcast, the users of any open source software are the code developers; the software built is supposed to make your life and work easier. When you test things and find interactions that can use a little bit of refinement or features that are not working exactly as expected, it&#8217;s incredibly helpful for us to have that information to always make sure that we&#8217;re solving problems instead of accidentally creating them. If you want to participate in the Current call for testing, you can head over to make.wordpress.org/test. Or, if you&#8217;ve been doing your own testing, you can also submit any bugs you have found in the GitHub repo, which I will share in the show notes below. So that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks!</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 29 Mar 2021 15:15:03 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7:"Josepha";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Talking Full Site Editing with Matías Ventura";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=10013";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"https://wordpress.org/news/2021/03/talking-full-site-editing-with-matias-ventura/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31292:"<p>In this episode, Josepha is joined by Matías Ventura, also known as “the spark behind the vision of Gutenberg.” Josepha and Matías discuss full site editing and answer your questions, from “is full site editing a standalone plugin?” to “will full site editing break my current site?”</p>



<p><em><strong>Have a question you&#8217;d like answered? You can submit them to <a href="mailto:wpbriefing@wordpress.org">wpbriefing@wordpress.org</a>, either written or as a voice recording.</strong></em></p>



<h2><strong>Credits</strong></h2>



<ul><li>Editor:<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/"> Dustin Hartzler</a></li><li>Logo:<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/beafialho/"> Beatriz Fialho</a></li><li>Production:<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mkaz/"> </a><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/">Chloé Bringmann</a></li><li>Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</li></ul>



<h2>References</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/tt1-blocks/">Twenty Twenty One theme</a></li><li><a href="https://centroamerica.wordcamp.org/2021/">Word Camp Central America </a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/12/q2-listening-hours-april-7th-2021/">2021 Second Quarter Listening Hours with Matt Mullenweg and Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a></li></ul>



<h2>Transcript</h2>



<span id="more-10013"></span>



<p>Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of some of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project and the community around it, as well as get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!</p>



<p>Josepha [0:41]: This month, we have a bonus briefing, so I&#8217;ve asked my dear friend and colleague <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/matveb/">Matías Ventura</a> to join me. Matías was recently called “the spark behind the vision of Gutenberg.” With full site editing coming our way in 202, I asked if he would join me for a quick Q&amp;A. Welcome, Matías.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Matías [0:56]: Hello, hello! Thanks for inviting me. It&#8217;s a pleasure to be here.</p>



<p>Josepha [1:00]: Well, I&#8217;m delighted to have you. And I think that we have a lot of excellent questions. All right, so Matías, we actually ended up with questions in about three different groupings. And so I&#8217;m going to start with the “what is it about full site editing,” sorts of questions that people had. We&#8217;re gonna work our way into “what are we doing with it?” and then “how are we planning on getting this out the door?” Then, a couple of big picture questions that people asked. We&#8217;re just gonna leap right in this full site editing part of the Gutenberg plugin, or is it a standalone plugin?</p>



<p>Matías [1:39]: Okay, we&#8217;ll start with the basics. Full site editing is part of the Gutenberg plugin right now. I think it&#8217;s important to mention that full site editing is like an umbrella for several projects that we&#8217;re working on. They are all aiming to bring blocks into more parts of your site so that editing becomes easier and more expressive, and so on. So full site editing right now encompasses adding a ton of new blocks. I think we have around 20 new blocks coming in, including navigation query, site, title, logo, etc. There&#8217;s also the interface to interact with templates outside of the content; that&#8217;s another big part of the full site editing project. We also have a lot of new design tools included, many of these have been released in previous major releases, but they still comprise a strong part of what full site editing is. We also have something called Global Styles, which aims to allow people to configure the visual aspects of blogs across the entire site, not just on any individual blog. And of course, then there&#8217;s a whole layer of how we utilize these tools. It can get complex because there are many layers and projects that need to come together. So yeah, all of these are accessible through the Gutenberg plugin right now.</p>



<p>Josepha [3:07]: Yeah. So it&#8217;s not a standalone plugin. If you wanted to check out full site editing the site editor experience as it is now, you would just have to make sure you had the Gutenberg plugin on your site. Right?</p>



<p>Matías: Yes, correct.</p>



<p>Josepha:&nbsp; So a couple of the questions related to this are how exactly do I enable it on my site? And what is the easiest and safest way to try this on my site? And I think the answer is, is right in there. It&#8217;s in the Gutenberg plugin. And so if you have that plugin, you don&#8217;t need the testing plugin or anything else to make that work, right?</p>



<p>Matías [3:51]:&nbsp; No, you like, you might need to install a theme like Twenty Twenty One blocks that unlock some of these new interfaces that we just talked about. Like other of these pieces are available for anything. But some of these, like the interface to edit templates, right now only talk with things that know how to express their desire.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Josepha [4:14]: And I think we have less than 10 themes right now that do that, but I&#8217;ll leave some links to at least 2021 blocks in the show notes. And then, if there are another one or two themes that I can find, I can add those in there as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So you have to have the Gutenberg plugin; you have to have a theme that works with that site editor kind of experience. And then you&#8217;re safe to try everything out. It shows up in your left toolbar just like any other thing, like if you were working with plugins, or if you were adding a post or anything else, right?</p>



<p>Matías [4:51]: Yes, correct. And so, some of these details are being worked on right now. Like how and where you access things, and so on. These things are subject to change, but right now, you have this site editor beta in the sidebar when both you have the plugin running and a theme that&#8217;s capable.</p>



<p>Josepha [5:10]: Yeah. Excellent note. If you are running this on a production website, I would recommend you not do that unless you are very, very good with WordPress. It&#8217;s a really safe and easy thing to test and try out. But because it is still in beta, I recommend always putting it on a test site. I have a couple of different test sites that I run on myself. Another question that I had was, “will full site editing slow down my site?” And I think we have some refreshed performance tests coming out about that. And maybe they&#8217;ll be out by the time we publish this podcast.</p>



<p>Matías [5:49]: Yeah, I mean, like the performance has been one of the major focuses for the whole project. In many cases, it should speed up things because we&#8217;re like, I think one of the big pieces that these projects bring into the picture, especially for themes, is that it allows only the necessary assets to be loaded on the front end. For example, if for a given page, there are, I don&#8217;t know, 10-15 blocks being used, you would only get the CSS and scrapes and so on related to those blocks. This can cut down on a lot a ton of CSS that themes used to end queue on a side, particularly if you were trying to customize many widgets and so on, like a lot of themes have the full styles or multiple widgets, even third party plugins, and so on. So one of the advantages of having this blog system is that we can know at the time of rendering what blogs are being used and only load those assets.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Josepha [6:50]: Excellent. Another big question that we have is, “does full site editing work with the classic editor? And does it work with other builders?” I think that&#8217;s a really big answer if you&#8217;re going to get super deep into it. But I think that the short answer is yes, it does. Is that fair?</p>



<p>Matías [7:08]: Yeah, I don&#8217;t think it touches a bit on that full site editing is not like a single thing. There are multiple projects around it. So again, like the template editor that only deals with blogs, it doesn&#8217;t have a lot to do with a classic editor. But the classic editor use for both doesn&#8217;t change anything at all; like the same way that when the block editor was introduced, it didn&#8217;t change how you could still write posts in the classic editor. You will still be able to do that.</p>



<p>Josepha [7:41]: And if you are brand new to WordPress person, or, I mean, I guess at this point, you don&#8217;t have to be super brand new. If you&#8217;re fairly new to WordPress person and have no idea what we&#8217;re talking about when we say the classic editor, you don&#8217;t really have to worry about it either. You don&#8217;t have to go and find out what that is; the block editor that you have right now works perfectly for what you&#8217;re trying to do. So if you don&#8217;t know what I mean when I say classic editor, don&#8217;t worry about chasing it down either.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I think that this last question we accidentally answered earlier, but I&#8217;m going to go ahead and ask it anyway since I received it. “I keep hearing that you can use the site editor with the 2021 theme. But I don&#8217;t seem to be able to. What am I missing?” I think the answer is that there&#8217;s the Twenty Twenty One theme shipped with the WordPress release 5.6. And then there is the Twenty Twenty One blocks theme; those are two different themes. The link to the Twenty Twenty One block theme is going to be in our show notes this time around. And so, if you have been trying to use the full site editor with Twenty Twenty One and not succeeding, try the link to the one below. And I bet that that will work for you.</p>



<p>Matías [8:50]: Yes, that&#8217;s correct.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Josepha [8:51]: All right, excellent. Well, that brings us kind of into our second set of questions, which is about how we are doing it. The first one that folks have is “will full site editing be on by default in the next release. In this context, the next release is WordPress 5.8. But I think it&#8217;s a safe question to ask if full site editing will be on by default in the release that it&#8217;s planned for.</p>



<p>Matías [9:15]: Yeah, and for this, I need to go back to the same principle of many projects because there are many pieces of full site editing, and we have been merging them in major releases, particularly like the blocks and the design tools. There are more coming in that we want to make accessible as soon as possible. The full experience that requires a theme to opt-in to templates using blogs won’t be by default; it requires a specific theme running. A lot of these details we&#8217;re still like determining exactly what projects are ready to be merged and so on. But yeah, if you have a theme right now that works the way you want, it doesn&#8217;t change anything there. If anything, it adds some more capabilities and more customization tools, and so on. And the theme can also regulate how much they want to incorporate.</p>



<p>Josepha [10:13]: Matías, you&#8217;ve mentioned a couple of times in this podcast so far like this is a really complex and really complicated part of this work. And just for anyone out there who&#8217;s either encountering Gutenberg or full site editing or this podcast for the first time, I think a tiny bit of context that&#8217;s worth having here is that Matías and I have been working on this together in various capacities for like, five years. And Matías has probably been working on this for practically a decade. So, when we say that this is a really complicated problem, and when we say that this is a complex set of issues that we&#8217;re working with like, it is all that we have been thinking about for I want to say at least the last three or four years, but certainly it&#8217;s all that we have been trying to untangle for quite a bit of time before that as well. So we don&#8217;t take it lightly when we&#8217;re like, “this is complicated;” we mean it. It&#8217;s really complicated. And we&#8217;re trying our hardest over here as WordPress.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The next big question, since we&#8217;re all stuck in the “it&#8217;s very complicated,” part of things is the question, “will this update break my current site?” Like, if I have a site that is updated and ready, and it&#8217;s exactly as I wanted it to be, and it took me two years to get there will full site editing, whichever release it&#8217;s in. Currently, 5.8 is what we&#8217;re planning for. Will that break anything on my site as I know it right now?</p>



<p>Matías [11:44]: No, not at all. One of the major things that the WordPress team, the WordPress community, always cares so much about, never to break things. Many of these things are stepping stones that you can adopt, as we&#8217;ve talked about full site editing. But for example, we also have a few concurrent projects around the widget screen and the navigation screen that are meant to bring blocks into existing interfaces. So again, the theme doesn&#8217;t need to change, and a lot of care is being put into making this more like you&#8217;re unlocking new features, and nothing really breaks or falls apart.</p>



<p>Josepha [12:23]: This update, like all the other updates, should have minimal, minimal impact on what you have to actively fix on your site. Every once in a while, a bug is gonna get by. We can&#8217;t say that we&#8217;re 100% perfect with not breaking things. But also, we always and I and I know that we&#8217;re planning on this for our remaining releases for the rest of the year. At the very least, I can&#8217;t imagine we&#8217;d ever change it. But after every major release, we always make a plan to have a minor release within the next one or two weeks. Because we know that a broken thing on a site is really incredibly impactful, even if you&#8217;re only 1% of the sites that had that happen to it. And so I think that&#8217;s true in this case, too. And getting that feedback back from all of the people who are actually using WordPress is the thing that makes us be able to kind of move quickly when we do see those problems.&nbsp;</p>



<p>One of the questions that we have been getting is, “can I see a live preview without saving the changes that I made?” When I got this question, I didn&#8217;t actually understand it. And so I went and looked at a site without the Gutenberg plugin on it, and then a site with the Gutenberg plugin on it. And of course, on sites without Gutenberg, without the block editor, without full site editing, when you are looking to preview, you have the option to open up your preview in a new window. And you don&#8217;t have that with Gutenberg because it&#8217;s supposed to be a true WYSIWYG editor. A true what you see is what you get, editor. I think that the answer to this is, yes, you can see a live preview without actually saving the changes on the front end of your site. But you don&#8217;t actually have to reload anything. You don&#8217;t have to open it up in a new window. You don&#8217;t have to, like, actively click “please show me a preview” because what you see in your editing screen should be what you see at the end of your app as an end-user.</p>



<p>Matías [14:28]: Yeah, that&#8217;s the sort of the main gist to it. Yes, the site editor is built so that it always reflects the front end as truly as possible, so that&#8217;s one layer. Also, the preview tools should allow you to see in different devices like mobile breakpoints, and I don&#8217;t know if they will have breakpoints and stuff like that. There are a lot of things in the current interface that is just not enabled. There are some challenges in the sidebar. Because the site editor is not just focused on a single post, it&#8217;s focused on the entire site. So, there can be many, many changes that need to be shadowed for the site.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re changing the site title, some of the global styles, aspects, and so on need to be orchestrated. So, to see in the previewing new window, there are some challenges there to integrate. Again, the interface is not final yet; a lot of these things are still being tweaked and improved. There are many things from the regular post editor that are not enabled yet. But they will be enabled. So yeah, it&#8217;s a, I guess, it&#8217;s not a simple thing to answer. Because, again, the idea of previewing the site that&#8217;s core to the whole project is that you&#8217;re always interacting in the same way that when you&#8217;re in the customizer, you&#8217;re seeing the preview all the time. That&#8217;s the main scope of this project,</p>



<p>Josepha [15:54]: Excellent. Changes like that changes to your workflow can be really hard to get your mind around, especially if part of that existing workflow was there to create some confidence in what you&#8217;re seeing with your users. And so I understand. Now that I&#8217;ve researched that question a bit, I see where that&#8217;s coming from. Based on existing workflows and existing patterns that we have for ourselves in WordPress, will we need to have a theme to use the full site editor?</p>



<p>Matías [16:33]: I think we&#8217;ve already covered some of these. And again, they are tools that can work on any existing theme. There is other stuff that needs space-specific themes to opt-in into these tools, like blog templates and so on.</p>



<p>Josepha [16:50]: Yes, I think the question that we have next, because I see that the literal next question I have is actually something we have covered; just because we&#8217;re being pretty conversational about it, not because anyone already asked the question. So I&#8217;m actually going to skip to the last question of this section that I received. I got this next one via Twitter. The question is, “how do you view the role of themes once full site editing is fully rolled out and all the page elements (content, headers, widgets, footers, etc.) and all the views are managed via blocks and block patterns? Will things become typographic and block styles?”</p>



<p>Matías [17:28]: I think this is a great question because it goes to the heart of, why are we doing all this. One of the main reasons is to empower users more. WordPress has been democratizing publishing for a while; this is another step into allowing themes to get more customization tools and more control over their site if they want to. I think the recent call for testing has focused on the 404 page, for example. That&#8217;s something that forever has been locked away from users. And it&#8217;s also something that, as a theme developer, and I used to develop themes a long time ago, that was one of the things where you decide what sort of approach you take for the 404 page. Maybe sometimes you want to have something more whimsical. Sometimes you need something more serious. And committing to one when you can have such a diverse and broad user base can be challenging. With these, it becomes as easy as offering a few different patterns for that template. Then the user will always be able to change the copy and modify something. So again, it opens up a lot of these things that used to be locked down. However, from a theme perspective, I think this doesn&#8217;t reduce the theme at all. If anything, it allows the theme to focus less on coding and functions and more on design expression and aesthetics. I don&#8217;t think that would ever be exhausted. That will always remain as diverse as humans are interacting with WordPress. And so it&#8217;s not that I don&#8217;t see it&#8217;s just as like, typographic and block styles. How do you express a template, how do you express the structure, what choices you quote, what choices you make as a theme builder? And of course, there are many degrees of control there. Because a site maintainer may not want the 404 template to be editable, that sort of control will always be present.</p>



<p>Josepha [19:38]: Yeah. And really fast. I have to add a caveat to a thing that you said in there. For anyone who&#8217;s listening keenly, you may have heard Matías say that the users can update any of the content there &#8211; any of the copy. In this context, we&#8217;re talking about users as in the people who are maintaining the site, not people who are visiting your site. Visitors to your site will not be able to change any copy on your page unless you&#8217;ve done something very interesting with your WordPress site, which is also fine if that&#8217;s what you prefer to do. By default, your visitors can&#8217;t change everything on your website, which is good news, frankly.</p>



<p>So I&#8217;ve got one logistics question, which I&#8217;m happy to take. And then one is kind of a big picture question that I also got from Twitter. “What about the classic editor block; what is going to happen to that? And when will we know?” So ages and ages ago, before COVID? I think so. Probably maybe a couple of years ago, Matt said that the classic editor plugin would be supported through the end of 2021. And that is still the case; there will be active support on that through the end of 2021. After that, it will not be actively supported anymore. It won&#8217;t be removed from any place that you can get access to right now. In a “this is the end of its lifecycle” sort of way, we just won&#8217;t have anyone who is currently committed to maintaining that plugin anymore. So that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening at the end of the year. And yeah, at the end of 2021. The big question that we have is, “why is full site editing being so rushed?” I think this is a bit of a loaded question.</p>



<p>Matías [21:32]: Yeah, I think I think it&#8217;s still a fair question, though. I think we&#8217;re dealing with two things here. And one is ensuring that we release things in the best state possible. And also, some of the urgency is to offer tools that we know that people lack right now and that could really benefit from. Making that determination is very tricky. The full site editing project has been in the works for the last couple of years. If we count the initial phase of Gutenberg, that&#8217;s four to five years. We&#8217;ve been doing many calls for testing, which I think have been super useful to catch issues and reflect as a community on where things are going; how do we integrate with these? How do we use it? What are the shortcomings? What do we need to do? Based on all of these, we&#8217;ll continue to make decisions on when things become ready. We&#8217;re not committed to releasing something that&#8217;s not in a good state. And I think we will always be very careful about that. There are these two competing senses of the urgency &#8211; of getting some of these tools out, and because it also benefits from the feedback loops. I always say that, in many ways, the initial phase of Gutenberg, to me, is not finished. We took the initial two years to do the 5.0 release, the initial block editor, and so on. But, it&#8217;s still being improved at a very fast pace, among all the recent major releases improvements to the editor were included; that will continue to be the case. In many ways, phase one is not finished. And the moment we choose to release some of these tools or editing tools, it won&#8217;t be finished either. They will need to continue to grow, mature, and incorporate a lot of the feedback. Even the things that the ecosystem is building around. I&#8217;ve seen a few themes already that are incorporating a blank canvas template so that you can use them in some pages and take over and do everything with blocks. So even the community and ecosystem as a whole is also sort of paving the way for what needs to come.</p>



<p>Josepha [24:06]: I think from my perspective, and of course, I&#8217;m on the people side of things, the communication side of things, the logistics side of things; I have a frequently a very different view from what a lot of other folks are seeing. And so from my side of things, I have to say, I&#8217;m communicating about this change in a really broad way, which has not been happening since 2019 when we started the work. We&#8217;ve been communicating broadly with the WordPress community, but not with everybody who uses WordPress. So, I think that for a lot of people, this looks like a project that we started really actively working on in the last six months or so. And now we&#8217;re just racing toward a finish line. I think that there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s not been a lot of awareness of everything that&#8217;s gone into it. And so, on the one hand, it feels a little less rushed to me knowing the full length of the history on this. But also, as you said, I really think that this gets a bunch of tools to people who otherwise have not been able to accomplish these things in WordPress or otherwise. I am so anxious to get something to people who really can benefit from this change the most. And it&#8217;s the nature of the open source, right that like, one, as long as you have users, you&#8217;re going to have stuff you have to fix in your software. So we&#8217;re never really, really going to be done with this; there&#8217;s not going to be like a done point of WordPress. And the second thing is, I think it&#8217;s generally true that you don&#8217;t really start getting full user feedback until after you have launched your major release. I think that we see that a lot in open source software; you can bring in as many people as you think you can in your user tests heading up to it. And in your accessibility tests. And, in general, quality assurance tests. You can bring in a lot of people and still not have gotten the full understanding of the various niche use cases that your users will bring to you. Because at this point, we&#8217;re like 40% of the web. And that means that we&#8217;re serving this majority collection of increasingly minority voices and niche voices in the space. And so, a little bit I feel a sense of urgency; I feel a bit of anxiousness about trying to get this out there for one, to get the tools in the hands of the people who can benefit the most from them, but also so that we can start really getting the full stress test of this software out and get that feedback in so that we can really build something responsive to what our users need our long tail, “anyone who ever uses WordPress ever,” definition of users. And so, that&#8217;s why I feel a sense of urgency around it. Even though you know, as I said, you and I have been working on this for like five years, and you&#8217;ve been working on it for a decade or something. I actually don&#8217;t know how long it&#8217;s been worked on.</p>



<p>Matías [27:35]: Now that makes me feel a bit old.</p>



<p>Josepha [27:40]: Nobody makes Matías feel old. He is a lovely, wonderful colleague. Sorry, Matías, If I made you feel old.</p>



<p>Matías [27:46]: No, that&#8217;s totally fine. I also want to add that full site editing is not like a single toggle that&#8217;s going to drop into a major release. So I think that&#8217;s important to consider, I think this entire year is going to see a lot of these tools being, and sometimes the sort of the end-user is not the, again, the site maintainer. Still, you can also be the theme developer; I think there are many tools that would be empowering for theme developers to use. Again, we mentioned there are like five to ten themes, block themes right now. That needs to grow a lot, and that only grows through these sorts of feedback loops. And the theme community pushing things forward and seeing where things can lead to. I&#8217;m very excited about the pattern directory integration because I think that can also combine with blog themes in very powerful ways. Imagine if, I don&#8217;t know many of these patterns that are very common on the web and very needed, that if we can refine them together with a second community and make them available across themes, you can combine a header from one theme with a content of another; all these sorts of mixtures could happen. All of this needs exploration, the creativity of the entire community, and so on. In that sense, getting all these tools, even if it doesn&#8217;t immediately change anything for like the site itself, starts to unlock a lot of things.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Josepha [29:27]: I&#8217;m going to take a bit of your answer from there and tie it all the way back to your first answer that we had when you joined me today. And say, I think you&#8217;re absolutely right. We have a set of users in our theme authors and our plugin developers as well that we desperately need to get looking at this set of tools. I hope that what we are shipping in the first iteration of this serves as an opportunity for all of those theme authors and agency owners, plugin authors, WordPress site configurers freelancers. Like, I really hope that this puts it into a really accessible, easy-to-access space for them so that they can do those experiments based on what they know their users need the most. They are the group that has the closest access to site maintainers. And what they need compared to, for instance, me or a potential you like we have a lot of information, you and I, we do a lot of tests, we have a strong sense of what is needed at the moment, but we don&#8217;t have as a close connection that our theme and agency and plugin folks all have. And so that&#8217;s another part of why I&#8217;m so excited to get this out in the current iteration of it.</p>



<p>Josepha [31:04]: That was a lot of questions in a little bit of time. This is going to be officially my longest WordPress briefing. Matías, I am so glad that you were able to join me today. And I think that everyone&#8217;s going to be really, really excited to hear your answers to these questions.</p>



<p>Matías [31:23]: Thank you for having me.</p>



<p>Josepha [31:25]: All right, my friends. That brings us into our small list of big things. I&#8217;m going to skip our community highlight today just because we had a slightly longer word press briefing in our bonus iteration today. But the small list of big things. The first thing is WordCamp Central America is coming up on April 15; there is a registration link in the show notes that you can access your tickets with. I recommend that you go; we&#8217;ve got a lot of excellent speakers coming up there and a lot of good content and good training and learning for y&#8217;all. The second thing is that Matt Mullenweg and I have listening hours coming up with the community in the first week of April. I&#8217;ll add the link to register for those in the show notes as well; it&#8217;s just a few minutes for you all to stop by, check-in, see what&#8217;s going on, and share some celebrations or concerns with us. And I hope that I see you there.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So that my friends is your small list of big things. Thank you for joining in today for the WordPress briefing. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks!</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 29 Mar 2021 15:05:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"Chloe Bringmann";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:96:"Gutenberg Times: New Gallery Block, Convert Blocks, Business News and more  Weekend Edition #164";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=17347";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/gallery-block-convert-blocks-business-weekend-edition-164/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21372:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>Despite the new spread of the coronavirus in Europe and the problems around vaccinations, I am  quite hopeful to be able to travel again in the second half of the year and visit the homeland after two years. Patience is a virtue. </p>



<p>Today, we have a full roster of content for developers, content creators, theme authors, implementers and contributors.  Again I am awed by the astonishing creativity in the WordPress space! </p>



<p>Remember, you don&#8217;t need to read it all in one sitting. It&#8217;ll keep the whole week!  </p>



<p><strong>Yours ?<br />Birgit </strong></p>





<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-full-site-editing-themes">Full-Site Editing + Themes</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-refactor-of-the-gallery-block-using-image-blocks">Refactor of the Gallery Block, using image blocks. </a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-block-editor-for-content-creators">Block editor for content creators</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-should-you-switch-to-the-block-editor">Should you switch to the block editor? </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#4-business-news-around-gutenberg">Business News around Gutenberg</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#5-extendify">Extendify</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#6-plugins-now-owned-by-extendify">Plugins now owned by Extendify: </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#7-people-behind-extendify">People behind Extendify</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#8-go-daddy">GoDaddy</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#9-developing-for-the-block-editor">Developing for the block editor</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#10-meta-charset-utf-8-word-press-events">&lt;meta charset=&#8221;utf-8&#8243;>WordPress Events</a></li></ul></div>



<h2 id="0-full-site-editing-themes">Full-Site Editing + Themes</h2>



<p>WPTavern has a podcast again! The WordPress Juke Box. For the inaugural episode host Nathan Wrigley interviewed. Among other things, <strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy</strong> talked about her benchmark for the Go/NoGo decision to merge Full-Site Editing into core for the 5.8 release in July. Find additional thoughts in my post: <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/full-site-editing-mvp-can-i-build-a-landing-page/"><strong>Full-site Editing MVP: Can I Build a Landing Page?</strong></a></p>



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<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> posted the fourth call for testing: <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/03/25/fse-program-testing-call-4-building-a-restaurant-themed-header/">Building a restaurant themed header</a></strong>, with instructions to use columns, navigation block and other features for the header template part. </p>



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<p>There is a lot of movement on the Gutenberg Repo and the Themes Team keeps a list of relevant issues and discussions for theme developers. <a href="https://twitter.com/one_maggie"><strong>Maggie Cabrera</strong></a> published the round-up post <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2021/03/26/gutenberg-themes-week-of-march-25-2021/">Gutenberg + Themes: Week of March 25, 2021</a></strong>. It&#8217;s an excellent reading list if you need to dive deeper in the upcoming changes for your theme or your customer. One of the issues caught my eye: the discussion and work around block alignment settings for themes. The current way predates the revamp of the Inner Blocks. There is some work to be done, streamlining the styling for themes. <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/29506">Join the discussion on GitHub</a>. </p>




<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />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. 2021 on. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/">The index 2020 is here</a></p>




<h3 id="1-refactor-of-the-gallery-block-using-image-blocks">Refactor of the Gallery Block, using image blocks. </h3>



<p>If you love to take a sneak peek at the new version of the Gallery block, heed the call for testing by <a href="https://twitter.com/glendaviesnz"><strong>Glen</strong></a><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/glendaviesnz"> </a></strong><a href="https://twitter.com/glendaviesnz"><strong>Davies</strong>:</a> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/23/gallery-block-update-call-for-testing/"><strong>Gallery Block Update – Call for Testing</strong></a>. The refactored version is now using single image blocks inside the Gallery block. You can us all the great features: individual links per image, block styles, choices for size and editing capabilities. If you also use a plugin with your site, like CoBlocks, you can still apply the great filters and animations to your gallery block. In his post, Davies walks you through the few features and asked to test all the many facets of the new Gallery block. </p>



<p>On the WPTavern, <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> explains how this new change can make a lot of difference on how gallery layouts will be built. Among other ideas, he pictures that among images, a Pull Quote block could be added. <a href="https://wptavern.com/refactoring-gutenbergs-gallery-block-to-support-nested-images">Refactoring Gutenberg’s Gallery Block To Support Nested Images</a>.</p>



<p>I posted <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/23/gallery-block-update-call-for-testing/#comment-40962">my first impression as a comment</a> and created <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/30250">a bug report on GitHub</a> when my images lost all their styling when I added the gallery block to a group. I suggested making it possible to apply block styles to more than one image at a time, and that the gallery block / image block copies the respective Alt texts from the media library. Both suggestions made it into the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/projects/56#card-57737540">project board.</a></p>



<h2 id="2-block-editor-for-content-creators">Block editor for content creators</h2>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/liamdempsey"><strong>Liam Dempsey</strong></a> asked his Twitter followers for recommendation of Block plugins. He collected all the suggestions in this blog post: <strong><a href="https://liamdempsey.com/community-recommendations-for-gutenberg-blocks-in-wordpress/">Community Recommendations for Gutenberg Blocks in WordPress</a>.</strong> </p>



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<p><strong>Amie Suzan</strong> at at <a href="https://twitter.com/virfice"><strong>Virfice</strong></a> reviewed the <strong>Blocksy Theme and gives 18 <a href="https://www.virfice.com/blocksy-wordpress-theme-review/">Unavoidable Reasons to Build Sites With It</a></strong>. The theme received some attention after Chris Lema revamped his site using the block editor it <a href="https://chrislema.com/this-site-now-runs-on-the-blocksy-theme/">now runs on the Blocksy theme</a>. Justin Tadlock at the WPTavern also found the <a href="https://wptavern.com/blocksy-wordpress-theme-provides-a-solid-block-editor-experience">Blocksy theme to provide a solid block editor experience</a></p>



<p>?  <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/blocksy/">WPRepo</a> | <a href="https://creativethemes.com/blocksy/">Website</a></p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/andersnoren">Anders&nbsp;Norén</a></strong> published a new free theme in the WordPress Repository, named <strong>Eskell</strong>, inspired by the Swedish graphic designer&nbsp;Olle Eksell. In his <strong>introduction to the theme</strong>, Andres wrote: &#8220;(&#8230;) <em>the star of the show in Eksell is the archive page, which features a masonry grid of posts and a category filter that updates the grid with posts from the selected category without a hard reload.&#8221;</em> In includes full color settings and dark mode for devices that support it. He continues: <em>&#8220;The Blank Canvas Template hides everything on the page except the blocks you add to the Block Editor content. That gives users the freedom to create entirely custom pages, with whatever blocks they want. It feels like a little preview of what we’ll be able to do once Full Site Editing is merged into WordPress Core.&#8221;</em></p>



<p> <strong>Justin Tadlock </strong>published a review <a href="https://wptavern.com/compatibility-is-not-enough-the-eksell-wordpress-theme-creates-art-with-blocks">Eksell theme creates art with blocks</a> and <a href="https://wptavern.com/eksell-portfolio-theme-now-available-in-wordpress-themes-directory">a follow-up article</a> on the WPTavern. </p>



<p>? <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/eksell/">WPRepo</a> | <a href="https://www.andersnoren.se/teman/eksell-wordpress-theme/">Website</a> | <a href="https://andersnoren.se/themes/eksell/">Demo</a></p>



<h2 id="3-should-you-switch-to-the-block-editor">Should you switch to the block editor? </h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/bfintal">Benjamin Intal</a></strong> from Stackable posted <strong><a href="https://wpstackable.com/blog/why-you-should-switch-to-the-gutenberg-wordpress-editor/">Why You Should Switch to the Gutenberg WordPress Editor</a></strong>. He wrote: <em>&#8220;In this article, we enumerate some reasons why the Gutenberg WordPress editor might be your new primary choice for page building. Read on, and we might just convince you to give Gutenberg another shot.&#8221;</em></p>



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<p>WordPressVIP post takes us <strong><a href="https://wpvip.com/case-studies/behind-the-scenes-of-news-uks-rampant-speed-to-value/">Behind the scenes of News UK’s rampant speed to value</a></strong>. News UK is the powerhouse behind some of the UK’s most famous news, media, and lifestyle brands. Its reach ranges from the highly respected the London Times to the hugely popular Sun. In the more detailed case study, you&#8217;ll learn from the editor&#8217;s perspective how the usage of the block editor has streamlined content production, increased productivity and fosters a culture of innovation between teams. </p>



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<p>On the WPBuild podcast <strong>A-Z of WordPress</strong> this week, <strong>Nathan Wrigley </strong>and <strong>David Walmsley</strong> tackled the letter  <a href="https://wpbuilds.com/2021/03/25/222-g-is-for-gutenberg/"><strong>G &#8211; Gutenberg</strong></a>. If the early controversy in 2018 had you shy away from trying it out,  but now you heard so much positive about it, this episode will give you an update on how people are using the block-editor now and what&#8217;s in store for 2021. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>Let <a href="https://twitter.com/allie_nimmons"><strong>Allie Nimmons</strong></a> of WPBuffs tell you <strong><a href="https://wpbuffs.com/why-and-how-to-use-the-wordpress-block-editor/">Why and How to use the WordPress block editor.</a> </strong> It&#8217;s an excellent introduction and tutorial with dozens of links to learn more. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>For those of us who are worried about migrating a ton of content from classic editor and short codes to block editor, <a href="https://twitter.com/_dsawardekar"><strong>Darshan Sawardekar</strong></a>, lead web engineer at the web agency 10up, has good news. This week, he announced <a href="https://10up.com/blog/2021/convert-to-blocks/"><strong>the release of the Convert to Blocks plugin.</strong></a> Convert to Blocks converts your content to blocks on the fly and those changes will be saved when you update the post. It&#8217;s not a Bulk Converter, it only converts content once it is opened in the block editor. </p>



<p>? <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/convert-to-blocks/">WPRepo</a> | <a href="https://github.com/10up/convert-to-blocks">GitHub</a></p>



<p>A couple of months ago, the WPTavern published the article <strong><a href="https://wptavern.com/ask-the-bartender-how-to-bulk-convert-classic-wordpress-posts-to-blocks">How To Bulk Convert Classic WordPress Posts To Blocks?</a></strong>. Justin Tadlock listed two more plugins for the purpose: <a href="https://bulkconverttoblocks.com/">Bulk Convert to Blocks</a> (still in development) and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/bulk-block-converter/">Bulk Block Converter</a>, last updated a year ago. We used it at a recent project and it worked very well. </p>



<h2 id="4-business-news-around-gutenberg">Business News around Gutenberg</h2>



<h3 id="5-extendify">Extendify</h3>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/extendify-acquires-editor-plus-introduces-commercial-templates-in-its-plan-to-improve-block-editing">WPTavern has the scoop:  <em>Extendify</em> recently aquired plugin EditorPlus</a> and joined forces with Munir Kamal and his team around Gutenberg Hub. Back in November 2020, they also acquired Redux Framework, and hired its creator, <a href="https://twitter.com/dovyp">Dōvy Paukstys</a>, part-time. </p>



<h4 id="6-plugins-now-owned-by-extendify">Plugins now owned by Extendify: </h4>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/editorplus/">Editor Plus,</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/acf-blocks/">ACF Blocks</a>,</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/forms-gutenberg/">Gutenberg Forms</a>,</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/redux-framework/">Redux Framework</a>,</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/ml-slider/">MetaSlider</a>,&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-slider/">Block Slider</a>. </li></ul>



<h4 id="7-people-behind-extendify">People behind Extendify</h4>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/chrislubkert"><strong>Chris Lukbert</strong></a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/arturgrabo"><strong>Artur Grabowski</strong></a>, co-founders of <a href="https://extendify.com/">Extendify</a>, are former Automattic employees. So is <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/karmatosed">Tammie Lister,</a></strong> Extendify&#8217;s Head of Design. Lister has been a major WordPress contributor on the Gutenberg block-editor as co-lead since  the beginning in 2017. She participated in one of our first Live Q &amp; As in  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/episode-6-creating-gutenberg-live-q-a-w-leads-tammie-lister-joen-asmussen-and-matias-ventura/">November 2018 </a>with her Gutenberg co-leads  Joen Asmussen and Matias Ventura. You can also read more about Lister on <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/discovering-your-place/">HeroPress: Discovering Your Place</a>. </p>



<h3 id="8-go-daddy">GoDaddy</h3>



<p>GoDaddy is sponsoring <a href="https://twitter.com/Mamaduka"><strong>George Mamadashvili</strong></a> to contribute on the WordPress Gutenberg project full-time. Mamadashvili was one of the developers behind the cool blocks published under the brand of SortaBrilliant in 2018 and 2019. Recently, he released <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/toggles/">Toggles</a>, an accordion block for FAQs, and other use cases. You can also use it to hide spoilers in Movie or Book reviews. </p>



<h2 id="9-developing-for-the-block-editor">Developing for the block editor</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/mattwatsoncodes">Matt Watson</a></strong> published his 5th tutorial <a href="https://wholesomecode.ltd/guides/create-customizer-panel-wordpress-gutenberg-components/">Create a Customizer Panel using Gutenberg Components</a> for developers. You should read his previous posts before tackling this one. </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://wholesomecode.ltd/guides/creating-plugin-wordpress-gutenberg/">Creating a Plugin for the Block Editor</a></li><li><a href="https://wholesomecode.ltd/guides/options-settings-data-wordpress-gutenberg/">Using Options to Store Data in the Block Editor</a>&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://wholesomecode.ltd/guides/entry-points-wordpress-create-block-script/">Add Entry Points to the Create-Block Script</a></li><li><a href="https://wholesomecode.ltd/guides/create-settings-page-wordpress-gutenberg-components/">Create a Settings Page using Gutenberg Components</a></li></ul>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>On <strong>WordPressTV</strong> you&#8217;ll find <strong>Chris van Patten</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2020/04/02/chris-van-patten-the-ultimate-beginners-guide-to-the-gutenberg-data-api/">The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to the Gutenberg Data&nbsp;API</a>. The Data API is how you get data in and out of Gutenberg, track changes across blocks, and execute events around the editor.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>The <strong>WordCamp India</strong> presentation by <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/gziolo">Grzegorz &#8220;Greg&#8221; Ziółkowski</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQwHsk27HMQ">Block</a></strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQwHsk27HMQ"><strong> Development with scaffolding</strong></a> helps you get started building a single block plugin with the <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@wordpress/create-block">create-block-script</a>. </p>



<p></p>




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<h2 id="10-meta-charset-utf-8-word-press-events">WordPress Events</h2>



<p><strong>April 6, 2021 9 am EDT / 14:00 UTC</strong><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAIlY3lTAos"><strong>WPCafe: Building the Twenty Twenty-One</strong> </a>with Caroline Nymark and Mel Dwan-Choyce, live on YouTube</p>



<p><strong>April 6, 2021 9 am EDT / 14:00 UTC</strong><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAIlY3lTAos"><strong>WPCafe: Building the Twenty Twenty-One</strong> </a>with Caroline Nymark and Mel Dwan-Choyce, live on YouTube</p>



<p><strong>April 15, 2021 6:30 pm EDT / 23:30 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/SF-WordPress-Users/events/277019024/">South Florida Mega Meetup</a></strong> &#8220;New Site Builder Edition&#8221;</p>



<p><strong>April 15 &#8211; 17, 2021</strong><br /><a href="https://centroamerica.wordcamp.org/2021/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordCamp Centroamérica 2021</a></p>



<p><strong>April 27 and 28th</strong><br /><a href="https://www.godaddy.com/pro/expand"><strong>Expand 2021</strong></a> &#8211;&nbsp;a virtual event hosted by GoDaddy that brings the web design and developer community together to share ideas and experiences, make connections and support each other.</p>



<p><strong>May 24 &#8211; 27. 2021</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://wordsesh.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordSesh 2021</a> </strong><br /><a href="https://wordsesh.com/speak/">Speaker submissions are </a>due on Monday! (March 29th)! </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" id="block-828c0dab-dbd1-4313-9d2c-1d1d3aa9bc87" />



<p id="block-7cb87457-965b-4235-ab43-168b3a78f4ee">On the<a href="https://wpcalendar.io/online/">&nbsp;<strong>Calendar for WordPress Online Events</strong></a> you&#8217;ll find a list of the upcoming WordPress Meetups, around the world, including WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups.</p>






<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>



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<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 27 Mar 2021 20:30:55 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:75:"WPTavern: WordPress to Drop Support for IE11 in Upcoming 5.8 or 5.9 Release";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=114416";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:195:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-to-drop-support-for-ie11-in-upcoming-5-8-or-5-9-release?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-to-drop-support-for-ie11-in-upcoming-5-8-or-5-9-release";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3258:"<p>In early March, WordPress contributors began discussing the possibility of <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-considers-dropping-support-for-ie-11-after-usage-falls-below-1">dropping support for IE11</a> in the near future after usage fell below ~1%. This week, the discussion&rsquo;s facilitator, H&eacute;ctor Prieto, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/25/discussion-summary-dropping-support-for-ie11/">confirmed</a> the majority of participants are in agreement to move forward and set a timeline for discontinuing support. Contributors are now considering either the 5.8. or 5.9 release.</p>



<p>&ldquo;The argument for dropping in 5.8 is to realize the change and improvement quicker, while others are inclined to wait until 5.9 to provide a longer window between the official announcement and the effective date,&rdquo; Prieto said. The final call is up the the 5.8 release team, which has not yet been identified.</p>



<p>The release scope and schedule hinges on whether or not the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2021/03/12/full-site-editing-pre-merge-overview/">April go/no-go conditions</a> are met for including full-site editing in the merge for 5.8 (July 2021) or 5.9 (December 2021). Teams for 5.8 will be finalized in April/May, and they will decide how to proceed for discontinuing IE11.</p>



<p>Jb Audras suggested that if 5.8 release leads elect to drop support for IE11,  he could work with other contributors to update the BrowseHappy notice in one of the upcoming minor versions.</p>



<p>&ldquo;Even if the BrowseHappy notice can be updated independently from&nbsp;Core&nbsp;releases, I think it&rsquo;s better to update alongside a release, to give better visibility to this change,&rdquo; Audras said.</p>



<p>Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support IE11 <a href="https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/microsoft-365-apps-say-farewell-to-internet-explorer-11-and/ba-p/1591666">beginning August 17, 2021</a>. Drupal recently went through a similar process of deciding to drop IE11 support with the upcoming Drupal 10 release, anticipated in June 2022. Those who have to use IE11 retain the option to remain on Drupal 9&rsquo;s LTS release until the end of 2023. Participants in the <a href="https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3155358">discussion</a> cited many of the same considerations now facing WordPress contributors.</p>



<p>Matt Mullenweg <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/03/04/discussion-dropping-support-for-ie11/#comment-40870">commented</a> on the preliminary discussion to suggest giving IE11 users a path forward if they land on wp-admin using an unsupported browser: </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Supportive of dropping support, and if someone visits on an explicitly dropped browser like IE11 showing them a friendly message saying why wp-admin&nbsp;is not accessible and next steps they can take.</p></blockquote>



<p>The technical implementation is being discussed in the <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/48743">ticket</a> Riad Benguella created to discourage IE11 usage and WordPress&rsquo; projects and teams will begin examining the practical implications of dropping support.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 26 Mar 2021 23:32:33 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:"type";i:128;s:7:"headers";O:42:"Requests_Utility_CaseInsensitiveDictionary":1:{s:7:"*data";a:8:{s:6:"server";s:5:"nginx";s:4:"date";s:29:"Wed, 21 Apr 2021 17:19:25 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Wed, 21 Apr 2021 17:00:08 GMT";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:4:"x-nc";s:9:"HIT ord 1";s:16:"content-encoding";s:2:"br";}}s:5:"build";s:14:"20210416190523";}