Today’s roundup focuses on some theme related news items, as well as some tutorials and a lot of ACF goodies. But, don’t worry, I’m also bringing you up to speed on WordPress 5.2 and the new Gutenberg update. Would be weird if I didn’t, right? 😏
Genesis 2.10
The Genesis framework saw a nice update to version 2.10 last week. The most important features that were added in this update were WP-CLI commands, improved navigation, increased visibility into Genesis plugins, and easier access to the settings and features. Check out the 2.10 release post for more in-depth information about this release.
Disable Genesis schema markup
If you’ve been using Genesis because of its rich schema markup alongside our Yoast SEO plugin, you may now want to disable Genesis’ schema markup altogether so Yoast SEO can provide everything instead (see the Yoast SEO 11.0 update post for more information about why). To disable Genesis schema, Bill Erickson released a small but effective plugin that does exactly this for you. You can learn all about it in Bill’s post.
Exhale with Justin Tadlock
Justin Tadlock is probably the one I learned from the most about building themes. He’s been around since 2008 and has always produced solid content in the shape of tutorials. Justin recently released a new theme called Exhale which he is using to base a couple of child themes on.
What I really like about Justin’s approach is that he immediately teaches you what he has learned through his blog posts. He has already posted a couple of tutorials on ThemeHybrid’s blog that show you what you can do with a theme that’s making good use of Gutenberg. For instance, how to create an app sales landing page, a cafe landing page, or a business landing page.
Justin’s looking for inspiration to create more of these kinds of landing pages, so if you have an idea, go and respond to his tweet:
If you’re interested in seeing me do any more tutorials building page designs with Gutenberg (particularly with my Exhale theme), just let me know what you have in mind. I’m interested in pushing the limits of the block editor and helping others do the same.
— Justin Tadlock (@justintadlock) April 18, 2019
ACF and flexible content
Speaking of landing pages. Bill Erickson, yes, the same guy I mentioned earlier in this post, wrote a nice tutorial on how to use ACF to create more flexible landing pages when Gutenberg blocks just don’t cut it.
Bill does a great job explaining in great detail how to approach this. I’m a big fan of Bill’s tutorials as he (just like Justin Tadlock) really takes the time to explain everything step by step.
But there are even more options with ACF.
ACF Blocks
ACF makes it super easy for you to create blocks, and if you prefer not to touch code, you’re in luck. ACF just released ACF Blocks, which is a collection of Gutenberg Blocks. It helps you speed up website creation in the Gutenberg editor. ACF Blocks is built on-top of Advanced Custom Fields Pro. Do note, that this plugin requires the ACF Pro version of the ACF plugin to function correctly.
WordPress 5.2 RC2
If everything goes according to plan, the WordPress Core Team will release WordPress 5.2 this week. They’ve already released the second Release Candidate, so if there are no more blockers, it will be released this week.
Gutenberg 5.6
The work on improving the Gutenberg editor is continuing relentlessly. We saw the release of version 5.6 last week. With the most important updates being a number of improvements, including to the button block focus states, theming, and block mover controls with full- and wide-aligned blocks. Per usual, you can learn more about it here.