New Bi-weekly Block-based Themes Meeting

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At yesterday’s Theme Review Team meeting, the group decided to hold a brand new bi-weekly meeting in the #themereview channel devoted to discussing 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. This meeting will be an opportunity for everyone to discuss themes in the context of 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/’s full-site editing work, to work through potential issues, and to make decisions that will impact the future of themes.

This meeting will be an important link in the communication loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. between the theme community and those working directly on Gutenberg. The combined technical and visionary knowledge of all these experts is necessary to build a future that works well for all parties — and ultimately for end-users. Numerous folks on the CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Editor and Design teams have already expressed interest in being involved in the new meeting, so we’re off to a great start.

On a personal level, I’m truly excited to share the potential of block-based themes. As I’ve started to explore these, it’s clear to me that the customization opportunities present in the new editor can be revolutionary for users. I can’t wait for us to use this meeting as a way to discuss and define the role themes play in this new future.

The first meeting will be held on Wednesday February 5th, at 16:00 UTC. Agendas and notes will be posted to this blog. If anyone has questions or general topics they’d like to see covered, please add a comment here or on of the upcoming Agenda posts.

+make.wordpress.org/core/
+make.wordpress.org/design/

Joy 8:34 pm on January 29, 2020

When you brought up the idea of a new meeting, it was with the intent to give and take feedback, not to dictate what the “new way” would be.
But the above description and even the name of the meeting goes against what the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. concept of a theme is.
By calling it “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 theme”, it implies that the theme must know something about content and how the editor works. But that is out of scope for a theme. The theme should be able to present the user’s content regardless of which editor is used or which page builder or even content from an external feed.

WP already has full site editing, 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., and themes have enhanced this for years. The new use of that term is biased toward the block editor since that’s all the rage. Why is the current Full Site Editing code outside the scope of the Customizer? What is the goal? Is it even something that makes sense for themes? (themes usually provide consistency across pages, but this new way is opposite of that)
Don’t we need a merge proposal? Or even a consensus on design before forcing these changes into core and having meetings about using experimental code as if it’s the only choice?
I’ve never seen a good description of the problem being solved by these “experiments”.
- Kjell Reigstad 10:50 pm on January 29, 2020
  
  Hi Joy! To be clear, the purpose of this meeting is to provide a venue for sharing thoughts, concerns, and ideas around the future of themes. Your perspective is absolutely appreciated.
  
  While the “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” title does mirror the experimental theme specification in 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/’s handbook, I’d like to stress that it’s meant to refer more generally to the role that themes play as WordPress becomes more infused with blocks. That experiment is just one potential starting point: One which I hope we will all try out, evaluate, and iterate on together during this meeting.
  
  On a high level, full-site editing is meant to provide more flexibility to users than 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. affords today. You may find more details in this initial post + video about expanding Gutenberg beyond the editor, in case you haven’t read it:
  
  https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/09/05/defining-content-block-areas/
  
  Thank you for sharing your perspective, and I hope to discuss more in the meetings.
Mel Choyce-Dwan 9:21 pm on January 29, 2020

Stoked for this 🙌 Super excited to see how far the community can push the next generation of themes!
Dmitry Dinev 3:36 am on February 3, 2020

Hi guys,
I’ll be there. There are too many questions, so at first I want to somehow orient myself and then precisely formulated questions will surely appear.

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