Hi everyone!
For the past week I have been writing, recording and editing a new course about full site editing and block based themes.
I have never created a complete course before so I am super excited and a little nervous. Will my voice last? Will the course material be easy to understand and follow? Did I miss anything, and how do I add it later?
Why this course is needed
Full site editing is targeted for release with WordPress version 5.6 in december 2020.
A stable version of full site editing in the Gutenberg Plugin, without the experimental flag, is targeted for WordPress 5.5 in august 2020.
As a themer, I have struggled to stay up to date with changes to the block editor. And I have done my best to support clients who use a wide range of WordPress and plugin versions as well as the classic editor.
As a volunteer reviewer on the WordPress.org Theme’s team, I spend hours every week testing themes and reading theme code. I know underscores better than my favorite books and I read it more often than I read the newspaper.
And I have voiced my concern about the lack of support for blocks in the themes that I review.
The team that I am part of at WordPress.org has recognized this.
But it is not until recently, with great help from members of the core teams and the Gutenberg developers that we have been able to shift focus more towards themes that has support for the block editor.
I have done hours of testing, poking, breaking, reading and asking questions about full site editing to be able to get a better picture of what full site editing and block-based themes are, and what they will be.
–What I need to learn, and how I need to change my mindset about themes.
Why I have created this course now
A few weeks ago, I watched my friend and team member struggle with learning about block-based themes and the site editor, and a spark was lit:
I had already done that. I knew why this was problematic,
and I knew the answer.
So, I started writing the outline for this course. Even though full site editing is not complete. Even though everything is not stable.
As theme developers and site creators, we can not wait six months and then find out what’s in store for themes.
If we want to be able to continue creating themes, we need to learn about the new block based themes. We need to find new niches for designs and block patterns.
We need to test the new site editor now, and we need to engage and come up with suggestions for improvements, if we want full site editing to work for us and for our clients.
About the course
It is not going to be perfect.
Gutenberg changes fast with nearly daily updates.
The basics of full site editing theme are somewhat stable, and that is what I am including in the first version of the course.
Gutenberg is on a two week release schedule. I am not aiming for, and I can not promise, updates as frequent as that. But I will do may best to create updates when significant changes are made.
It is going to be free until January 2021.
I want to do more in depth lessons as full site editing becomes stable, and if I am able to, those will be free too.
If you have the means to sponsor me, please consider it. You can email me on carolina@fullsiteediting.com. If you have an interesting remote, part time job opportunity for a junior dev, I am also looking for work or an internship.
Here are some of the topics covered in the course:
- Block attributes, block styles and block patterns.
- The new full site editing blocks.
- Theme structure and theme files.
- Creating templates and template parts.
- Working with templates in the site editor.
I have not set a date for when the first parts of the course will be published. First, I want the lessons to be reviewed for correctness.