A new week, a new WordPress Watch. We saw work for WordPress 5.3 getting properly underway. There was also news about some exciting integrations built to for the Block Editor. And, of course, we have a few bonus links for you as well again today. Let’s see what happened this week in the world of WordPress!
WordPress 5.3 work is underway
Francesca Marano, the release coordinator for WordPress 5.3, published the WordPress 5.3 Schedule and Scope on Make WordPress Core blog last week.
The focus of WordPress 5.3 is on polishing current interactions and making the UIs more user-friendly. And, as I’ve mentioned previously here, there will be a new default theme again; Twenty Twenty. The general idea is that Twenty Twenty will be based on an existing theme that already does cool stuff with the Block Editor and modifying it to fit with the 5.3 release.
If you’d like to see a list of tickets that are slated to be fixed for WordPress 5.3, have a look at this list on Trac.
Block Lab
When it comes to creating blocks for the Gutenberg block editor, I’ve mentioned ACF Blocks a couple of times before. It’s a wonderful solution that allows you to create blocks relatively easy. However, as of last week, I learned there to be another contender for best block creating facilitator. Namely, Block Lab.
A tweet by Steven Cronin alerted me of a talk Luke Carbis, the creator of Block Lab, was giving at WordCamp Brisbane:
Blocks for beginners by @lukecarbis from @getblocklab at #WCBNE. Luke asked the audience what custom block to build, then actually hand drew the design before buildng it. pic.twitter.com/e0d2dg2lss
— Stephen Cronin (@StephenCronin) August 25, 2019
To demonstrate the power of his Block Lab solution, Luke asked the audience what custom block he should build. Which he then created during the rest of his presentation. That’s a powerful solution if you ask me. Go check out Block Lab or go straight to the plugin repository and start playing around with it.
Block Permissions add-on for Members plugin
One of the earliest plugins I can remember – and I’ve been using WordPress since 2005 – that extends WordPress’ user management perfectly is Members by Justin Tadlock. Justin mentioned on Twitter that he’s working on an add-on for the plugin that will add block permissions based on the capabilities of the logged-in user.
Meaning, if you’d like to publish content but have certain paragraphs, images, or any block you like, really, only be visible for logged in users, you could do that with that add-on. You can read more about this add-on here.
Bonus links
- An overview of common APIs in use in WordPress and the WordPress.org ecosystem was launched last week.
- WP Tavern published an article about how popular WordPress Themes removed obtrusive Admin Notices to conform to new theme directory requirement
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