• How I built the Featured Content Block plugin

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    In November I released my first dedicated block plugin to the WordPress Plugin Directory. This plugin allows someone to select a specific post or other post type item to show on a page and customize how it looks. Here’s how I built it.

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    The Featured Content Block in the block editor in WordPress
  • Creating a WordPress Block Theme — Uploading it to the Theme Directory

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    We are now basically done with creating our WordPress block theme! All that’s left is to give it a few more tests, bundle it up and submit it to the WordPress theme directory for review. So in today’s video we’ll do just that. And I’ll give just a few pointers for how to make your review process quicker (by NOT making the same mistakes I made a number of years ago). And now it’s time for you to create your own block theme for others to use. Be sure to leave links to your work in the comments below. I would love to see what you come up with!

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  • Creating a WordPress Block Theme — Creating Theme Style Variations

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    We’re almost done with creating our full site editing theme. But before we get it ready to submit to the WordPress theme directory, we first need to add one more thing: style variations. Style variations allow theme developers to quickly create variations of their themes with different colors, fonts and other elements. We used to have to code this ourselves using the Customizer and custom code. Now it’s built in to WordPress’ functionality. So let’s take a look at how you can add style variations to your new block theme.

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  • Creating a WordPress Block Theme — Creating the Archive and 404 Templates

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    Next up in our path to building a new WordPress block theme, we need to create our archive template and our 404 template. And believe it or not, both of these will take us almost no time to build. So join me as we start to wrap up building Semplice Monospazio and learn how you can create archive, category and 404 templates for your new block theme!

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  • Creating a WordPress Block Theme — Creating the Page and Post Templates

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    So we’re continuing on with creating our new block theme, Semplice Monospazio. So far we have set up the theme.json file, created various block patterns and built out a few template parts. In today’s video we’re moving on to create our page and post templates. We’ll create simple templates for each at first, before moving on to adding a sidebar version for both. It can be a bit complicated and confusing at first, but once we walk through how to do it, you’ll be able to add it to your theme. So let’s dive in and continue to build out our new block theme!

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  • Creating a WordPress Block Theme — Creating the Template Parts

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    So we are continuing on in our efforts to create a WordPress block theme. This time we’re getting starting to create our template parts, including the header, footer and sidebar. Creating the template parts is super easy. It’s a lot like creating a block pattern, and in many cases, you’re probably going to be using block patterns to make up your template parts. And it’s way easier to create something like the header with an FSE theme than it was with the traditional PHP themes. So today let’s walk through how I created the template parts for this WordPress block theme.

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  • Creating a WordPress Block Theme — Creating Block Patterns

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    So we are continuing on in our efforts to create a WordPress block theme. This time we’re getting starting to create block patterns. If you’re new to block patterns, they are essentially groups of blocks that you can save in a file in your theme or plugin and then quickly add to any post, page, template or custom post type in the block editor. And as you’ll see, they are really simple and easy to create and use. So today let’s walk through how I created block patterns for this WordPress block theme.

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  • Creating a WordPress Block Theme — Theme JSON and Styling

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    So we are continuing on in our efforts to create a WordPress block theme. This time we’re getting started with the theme.json file. This is a pretty powerful tool that does a lot of the styling for us. And it removes a lot of the CSS that us theme developers used to have to write on our own. But it can be a bit tricky to get started, especially if you’re building your first block theme. In this video we’re going to walk through the theme.json file for the theme so you can understand what’s going on in this file.

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  • How to make the navigation menu creation experience better in your WordPress block theme

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    Creating blocks themes is great and pretty easy. But creating navigation menus is not quite as fun. This one line of code will help you get the old menus screen back to make it easier to manage your menus.

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  • Creating a WordPress Block Theme — Intro and Design

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    In this series, I’m going to walk through how I created my first block theme, Semplice Monospazio. In this introductory video, we’re going to walk through the designs I created for the theme and I’ll explain more about what I’m trying to do with this theme.

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