Note that we are having a summer break for the bi- weekly Theme Review meeting.
Next review meeting is on July 7 17:00 UTC.
Twice monthly at Tuesday @ 17:00 UTC Second Tuesday in the month is open floor and the fourth Tuesday is with a fixed agenda.
BlockBlockBlock 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 twice monthly at Wednesday @ 16:00 UTC
Triage Meeting twice monthly at Wednesday @ 18:00 UTC
This year we tried something new: Not only was the contributor day run online, via Zoom and SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., but we also tried a new format for how we introduce new contributors.
In previous contributor days, the contributors were given a short introduction and then they were assigned a theme each to review.
The results were always varied and it was hard for new contributors to get started because there are lots of requirements, a new process that is new to them and the TracTracTrac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticket system to learn. It also created extra administration overheads following up after the contributor day.
One feedback that we often receive is that learning how to do a review is not the primary reason for why contributors choose to contribute to the Themes team. The drive is to become a better theme developer – to learn and share thoughts and ideas with others.
That is why we had set a goal to both have a quick introduction on how to do a theme review, and build a basic full site editing theme together.
The goal of building a FSE compatible theme together was lofty and we were unable to reach that goal, but I hope that you still found the afternoon useful.
We had 6 contributors who attended a contributor day for the first time, and 3 contributors who had done theme reviews before. None of the new contributors had submitted a theme to WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/.
Unfortunately, due to internet issues, we were only able to have one host on Zoom. We started an hour into the contributor day – as we all waited for people to find their way to the Slack channel and Zoom.
At most, we had 19 people on Zoom, and my experience as a host was that it was difficult to make everyone heard and engaged.
– If you have questions that I missed, please take the opportunity to ask them on Slack or as a comment to this post.
We did a quick walkthrough of the Trac ticket system and how to select a ticket to work on.
We downloaded and reviewed one theme that we tested with the Theme Check plugin.
We looked through the files of the theme and tested the theme options in the customizerCustomizerTool 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..
Some questions that were asked was:
Q – How long does a review take? A – It depends, it is faster to find errors in a theme with lots of issues, than to confirm that a theme has no errors.
Q – How do I get assigned to a theme? A – You need to login to your WordPress.org account and add a comment to the Trac ticket that you want to review. You can start the review right away, and a moderator will go through the Tac list and assign it to you when they see your comment.
Q – How do we confirm if the license is compatible with GPLGPLGPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples.? A – We follow an official list of compatible license from the Free Software Foundation: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses
The most common license issue is that theme authors forget to include license information.
Q – How can we spot a theme copy? A – Sometimes, people submit themes and only change a letter or two in the theme name, and that is easy to spot. Other times, people change the screenshot and the name of the theme, but we can recognize that the code is a copy of a different theme. A common sign is that the theme description is copied from a different theme. We use https://wpdirectory.net/ to compare code snippets, and Trac diff to see the difference between two themes.
Second part -full site editing
I also did an introduction to full site editing on zoom for the 11 patient contributors who stayed with us until the end of the day.
We talked about designing sites with blocks and I showed what the structure of a full site editing theme can look like, with blockBlockBlock 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. templates and template parts. We looked at the block grammar used inside the .htmlHTMLHTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. files, and how to include template parts inside templates.
We talked about the new full site editing blocks, block patterns, and block pattern categories.
I showed how to find theme related issues and pull requests in the Gutenberg Github repo, and talked briefly about what kind of bugs it would be good to open issues for when testing full site editing.
The contributors had questions about the time frame (when full site editing will be available), how to support plugins in templates and block patterns, and how to build more complex websites like eCommerce sites using blocks.
This post summarizes the latest biweekly BlockBlockBlock 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, held in the #themereviewSlackSlackSlack 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 3, 2020, 16:00 UTC . See the agenda.
Key take-aways
GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ 8.2.1 was released. It brings:
The Query Block is live! Now is the time to start testing it and sharing your feedback.
Updates to the Navigation screen and to Global Styles (more below).
Navigation has seen big updates in 8.3.1. As well as an improved Navigation block, a new Navigation screen is ready to try. Learn how to test it and share feedback below.
The experimental-theme.jsonJSONJSON, 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. behind Global Styles has been reworked with global and per-block settings categorized as styles, presets, and features. Learn more below.
Carolina Nymark’s Full-site Editing course is in-progress. It’s a promising primer for those new to full site editing, and is free until January 2021. Tell your friends!
A reminder that you can stay up to date with the latest on Gutenberg and themes in the weekly Gutenberg roundups.
Features ready for your feedback
These pull requests and features in preview stages would benefit from your feedback:
Share snags, wishlist items, and ideas and suggestions in the #design or #core-editor WordPress Slack channels.
Template part previews
PR 22760 Addison Stavlo has an implementation of template part previews for the placeholder block.
A warning notice for block-based themes running without Gutenberg
PR 40 Ari Stathopoulos created a class for block-based themes to show a warning in the admin area if they’re active without the Gutenberg pluginPluginA 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.
Help to improve the Query Block
The Query Block is ready to test. It serves as a replacement for the WordPress post loopLoopThe 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., and will be essential to all block-based themes. Start testing it today.
Navigation needs your feedback
The navigation block and Navigation screen are ready for feedback.
General navigation block updates
The latest includes work to improve sub-navigation, along with some gentle iteration:
Adding sub-navigation in the revised Navigation block.
Navigation block in the WP admin menus screen
Now that the block is a little more stable, it’s time to bring this into the menu screen.
Visit Gutenberg → Experiments, tick “Enable Navigation screen”, then go to Gutenberg → Navigation (betaBetaA 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.) to try it out.
Although it’s experimental, you can start to see the possibilities.
The new flow for creating and previewing navigation menus.
Known Navigation issues
One thing to keep in mind as you test is that this is still being worked on, so some things (in particular drag & drop) aren’t quite working yet.
And also, while testing, consider that the goal is the minimum needed for the initial releaseReleaseA release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software.. So think about what must be there for release, and what could be added later.
Follow along and find all the associated issues for Navigation work on the Navigation Project board (labels: Feature navigation screen, Block navigation).
Global styles are revised and ready for your thoughts
There are now global and per-block settings. Settings include styles, presets, and features:
Presets are transformed to predictably named CSSCSSCSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. variables.
Styles are how you define groups of CSS properties.
Features give authors the ability to configure block settings. (e.g. should the drop cap be enabled?)
See the block style attributes issue to learn what features block plugins can declare and how themes would override block styling defaults. This issue will be kept up to date as work continues.
Open discussion
Navigation screen feedback
For the navigation screen, it looks like there are 2 different ways of creating menus on that screen, yeah?
My personal preference would be to have 1 way to do something, as following/writing/maintaining documentation is much easier. But that’s just me. I personally really like the flow on the left over the flow on the right. It feels much clearer to me. Is reducing the number of ways to create a menu down from 2 to 1 a possibility? Or is having both flows pretty nailed-down at this point?
Phil Johnston
Discussion between Andrei Draganescu, Paal Joachim Romdahl, Kjell Reigstad, William Patton, Mel Choyce, and Themebeez seemed to reach a consensus that offering one path for menu creation instead of many was worth exploring.
William Patton noted that Tammie Lister had already acknowledged that there were too many ways to create menus, and that we needed to “untangle the yarn”.
One thing I’m still not clear on is how this block will get to a point where it can support the wide variety of menus used in various themes — horizontal, vertical, hidden behind a hamburger icon, etc.
That’s not necessarily a V1 issue, but I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around a great solution.
Kjell Reigstad
William Patton offered a potential solution:
I have not looked at the code for a while however I think custom walkers for it could be good if that’s able to be supported. Developers can handle vertical vs horizontal vs center logo with their own walker choice.
And Themebeez another:
Yes the ability to toggle left side menu items container to make it 100% would work. It would look exactly like a traditional menu with few UIUIUI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. changes.
Global styles feedback
Are the global style controls also in their panel now?
Carolina Nymark
The UI controls are not yet in. Current work status is unknown.
Am I right in assuming that blocks will be able to define which presets they want to utilize?
Is the idea that the user then overrides that preset by choosing another preset?
Phil Johnston
Jeff Ong replies that, “themes provide presets (transformed to CSS variables) that overwrite the block’s defaults”, and linked to PR 22698. He notes that:
My overall impression is that it feels a bit clumsy to declare styles this way, and hard to wrap the mind around the relationship between a feature and a preset without more support
Say I want to fully disable gradients via the theme.
In the global presets, do I have to supply an empty array to gradients , in addition to features, set gradients to disabled?
BUT if the system can guarantee that blocks are styled predictably and consistently, it’s a worthwhile tradeoff.
There is general consensus that the new global styles system will require more exploration and play to generate further feedback.
1 more was approved but are waiting to be made live
12 tickets were not-approved
0 tickets were closed-newer-version-uploaded
Thanks to all reviewers who did hard work and contribution last week.
Making an exception to the “no required pluginPluginA 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” requirement for full site editing themes.
We had a long discussion on the alternative options to allowing FSE and arrived at the conclusion that Full site editing themes will be allowed to require GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/, while it is needed.
Status updates for BlockBlockBlock 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 efforts in GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/:
Features and fixes in Gutenberg v8.2
In-progress issues and PRs to keep an eye on
Notes on the new experimental-block.json changes + documentation, from @jffng
Update on Navigation Block efforts, from @karmatosed
Q&A / Open Floor
As always, if you have any topics or demos you’d like to see in future meetings, please share below.
Hi everyone! Here’s the third weekly roundup of theme-related discussions, fixes, and developments in GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/. We’re going to try something new out this week, and highlight one issue/thread in particular. If you’re only going to look at one issue today, we recommend this one:
🌟 A new iteration of experimental-theme.json, complete with draft documentation. This merged PR establishes a new baseline for how blockBlockBlock 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 might end up defining styles in the context of Global Styles. 20290 (Documentation)
Since conversations are ongoing, some of the issues & PRs mentioned were also present in previous weeks. We’ve tried to put brand new ones at the top of each of the bulleted lists.
Please weigh in on the tickets below — your voice and feedback are welcome!
In progress / Discussions:
General
PR to remove form control resets and include in components instead. 22596
PR to adjust max-width setting for reusable blocks. 22632
PR for adding color controls to the list block. 21387
PR to change CSSCSSCSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. specificity of default font-size rules. 22671
New issue to discuss themes setting font-styles rules for the heading block. 22641
Issue & PR to fix the appearance of Group block children in the editor. 2274222746
Fixes for the issue where custom theme colors don’t work in the editor after Gutenberg 7.9.1. 22356
An attempt to remove some of the extra canvas padding in the editor. 22213
A conceptual discussion about removing all default margins for blocks in the editor. 22208
A discussion around standardizing classnames for blocks with backgrounds. 21439
A PR to add darker colors to the blockquote + pullquote blocks when a theme opts into default block styles and dark mode. 22451
Block-based Themes
Tracking issue for Template Tags in Full Site Editing 22724
Issue noting that the featured imageFeatured imageA featured image is the main image used on your blog archive page and is pulled when the post or page is shared on social media. The image can be used to display in widget areas on your site or in a summary list of posts. block is available in the full-site editor, even when a theme does not declare support for featured images. 22313
Issue discussing the ability for theme files to be edited externally and synced with the full-site editor. 22469
