553 - WordPress Happenings
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Dustin: [00:00:00] On today's episode, we're going to talk about the WordPress happenings over the last couple months. I'm back from sabbatical reading through all types of different WordPress things.

And here's a bunch of tabs and items that I have open that I think might be interesting. Right here on Your Website Engineer Podcast, episode number 553.

Hello and welcome to another episode of your website engineer podcast. My name is Dustin Hartzler. Today we're going to be talking about some news things. We're going to be talking about some, some articles that I found, and even some YouTube videos that I found that were just really interesting. And I thought that it'd be very good to point these out when it comes to things that are going on in the WordPress space.

Again, we're going to keep all away from the happenings with WP engine and the WordPress community and all that kind of stuff. But these are just interesting things and things that I found that happened in the news while I was off and kind of unplugged from WordPress, if you will.

The first item on my list today is about WordPress.com. On their blog, they're talking about how to build locally and deploy globally and meet Studio Sync. So this is kind [00:01:00] of a competitor to Local by Flywheel and its ability to sync to Flywheel and to WP Engine sites.

But if you are using if you have one of the WordPress.com hosted plans, you can now develop locally on your machine and then push those changes automatically live. If that is you, you can go ahead and look into that. I've also spent a little bit of time playing with WP Studio or WordPress Studio, if you will.

And while it is just in a standalone mode, because I don't have any WordPress.com sites, it does work very well. And it is very, very snappy. The only thing that I don't like, and I'm still trying to work with the developers to add this feature is that You cannot have local URLs to work. So like, for example, when I use Local, I have YWE for your website engineer dot, I think it's not local.

And then if I can type that URL in and it'll automatically go to my local version of that site. With studio by WordPress.com. You have to go to the, the admin bar. You have to put in localhost. colon, and then four digits. It's usually like 8888 or [00:02:00] 8889 for a port number. And so it's really hard to keep track of which site is using what, especially if you have multiple sites that you're using.

So we're still working on that, trying to figure out if we can get that into, and that's pretty much the limiting factor of what's holding me back from switching all of my sites over to Studio. I'll keep you updated with things that are happening over the course of the year there. The next article was a really neat article and it was on the developer blog.

And this is called Bridging the Gap Hybrid Themes. And it's a long article, so if you're interested in not quite moving to a block theme yet. Still having some of that legacy theme and some of that functions dot PHP and some of that custom code work like that, head on over to this article. It's going to be the second one in the show notes, but it's basically talking about how you can still use the theme.json file to build a builder block type theme, but you also have the ability to use some of those classic theme elements.

And so I think it's a neat article if you're not quite ready to go all in on the block editor themes, but this is a way, and again, it is a long article and it has some code examples of [00:03:00] how you can go in and How you can add. Basically, you're adding a function inside of your functions that PHP file called hybrid theme supports, and then it's adding the different things that you can add.

So if you want to add theme support for custom colors or custom gradients, custom fonts and things along those lines, you can do all of that again. Not gonna summarize the whole article, but you can go and find out more there.

There was another article on the WordPress.com blog about why alt text matters. And this is how to boost accessibility and SEO with every image. And essentially alt text, it's just what it says, it's a description of an image that appears on a page.

And there's more to it though, like if you write truly effective alt text. It's important to understand that it helps not only screen readers, but it helps SEO and it helps Google know what these images are. So there's a whole article again, I'm not going to summarize the whole thing, but there's a good article talking about what what this means and how we can implement it on our sites.

So that is another article to, to look at the next thing that was on my list here is something [00:04:00] called. Personalize WP. This is a website PersonalizedWP.com and it will allow you to, it's a no code version of WordPress and it's a plugin that helps you deliver unique, interesting content to the right audience at the right place at the right time.

Think if somebody is on your email list and then they click on a link inside of one of your email messages and then they come to the site, then you can give them a personalized experience like you can get rid of the pop up box or you can get rid of this or you could, you basically have all kinds of different conditions that you can think about and you can, you can program against those.

So you can say like if they're coming from a specific device, I want them to see this or if they're coming from this location or if it's on a Sunday, let's tell them that we're closed today or things along those lines. So they have device, location, refer, if they're returning visitor or a new visitor, date, time, how long they've been on the site, day of week, logged in, logged out, and a query string, and then you can build your own custom things.

And there's some testimonials on the home page from some pretty big name people in the [00:05:00] WordPress space. So I think that this would be something to check out. They do have some pro features that if you're interested in pro, they have that as well.

But the pricing does start at 0. For somebody that can just get started. It's for one site only. And then if you go to the pro it's 200 bucks per year, still only one site, but it also gives you the ability to have visitor profiles, custom profile field segmentation. And then if you want to do multiple sites, it's going to be $499 per year.

I haven't tried it at all, but it is on my list of something to check out in the. In the near future.

Next to my list are two YouTube videos. I want to give a little bit of shout out to the first one is about how to create overlapping sections with the block editor.

And so this is on the WordPress YouTube channel and it basically shows how you can create a group and then you can use a gradient for the top and the bottom. So think about like if you go to a section on a website and the top half of maybe use maybe you see in the middle. It's like a pet. A testimonial, and it's got rounded corners and maybe it's shaded gray and then all the text is [00:06:00] there, but you want it to kind of look like it's appearing between two sections.

Maybe the top section has a background of green and maybe the bottom has a background section of white. And so in order to do this with the gradient, it's a and this is a very short video. It is. It's only a four minutes long, so it won't take any time at all to watch. But basically it's creating a group and then it's setting the background of that group to be the top half be the same green color and the bottom have to be the same white color and then you can it shows how you can make that line just perfect and you can make it a straight line or you can add like maybe you can even add a stripe inside that line or you can make it kind of a fuzzy like it blends from one color to the other.

So this is very good and it is something that I was missing when I was building and rebuilding one of our sites. I was like, how do I do this in the block theme? And this is exactly How to do it with a block theme. All right.

The second YouTube video rolls into the next article that I found, but this is by Matt Medeiros over at the WP Minute. And again, in another short video under 10 minutes, how to use Gravatar as the Link [00:07:00] Tree alternative. So it is a way that you can use Gravatar, the free Gravatar profile, and then you can use that as your Link in Bio.

Think about link in bio as a place where you can put a bunch of links if people are looking at your Instagram bio or your Facebook bio or even Blue Sky or any of those things. And this is a way that you can add different websites, you you can connect your different social profiles, you can make the colors different and whatnot.

So Matt does a pretty neat idea and how you can customize some of this stuff in a 10 minute video. And then there was article over on Gravatar's blog about how you can add your name with a new free domain and adds blue sky integration.

And so you can own your own domain name and you can get a few different ways. There's a few different, type URLs that you can get for free that you can connect to your Blue Sky account. So there's a link there that you can check out there if you're interested in connecting and making Gravatar part of your, your social platform or your, your Link in Bio or whatnot.

All right. A few more articles here that I have and trying to clean up my computer here, but we've got a detailed step by [00:08:00] step guide on how to create. a personal website. This is coming from the WordPress.com blog and essentially you can use a personal website as a more of a About Me.

You can introduce yourself. You can point to different places that you work on the web or whatnot. You can use it as a blog. You can use it as a newsletter. So you can use a personal website to build a newsletter and you can have people come and subscribe there. Or you can also use it as a portfolio. And so if you're an artist or you know, you're a website developer or whatnot, you can show some of your work off with a personal website.

So this article is a very long article. It does talk about how you could use WordPress.com. Of course, we all know that you can use a self hosted version of WordPress with whichever theme that you like, but basically talks about the different types of themes and how to pick a color palette, how to set up pages, what kind of pages to use and whatnot.

So if you're looking for some inspiration, maybe you want to revitalize one of your sites. So you have your domain name and you just haven't done much with it. This is a good article for there.

And then right along with that, there's an article that says 11 [00:09:00] website layout examples for every type of page. And so it talks about the Z pattern, the F pattern, the magazine, grid, modular, single column, content focus, Full screen hero split screen and asymmetrical.

And so again, another really large article that talks about all these different types of layouts of how they work and how to set them up with the block editor and just really some cool examples on how you can do this. So there was some examples at the top. You keep scrolling down to the bottom of the page and then it talks about how you can do some of these different things.

So that was another article there on the WordPress.com blog. And then the last one on the WordPress.com blog for today was all the way back from October, but I think it's still really, really beneficial. It talks about five powerful Gutenberg blocks for developers to create custom layouts, so that is the group block, the columns block, the cover block, the spacer block in the query loop block.

So it talks about each one of them, why each block is powerful, how you can use them and what you can do with them and how you can create stunning visual impacts with the different blocks, how they can [00:10:00] work and all of those things. And so these are ones that developers rely on regularly.

I know that with rebuilding a site, I've spent a lot of time, especially with the group block. The group box is very powerful in the fact that if you have four or five different elements, but you want to control the background, you put them all in a group and you could actually even rename the group.

Group. So when you're looking in the sidebar with the list view, you can see what block is what if you need to copy a block, you can copy those. It makes it really, really handy. And of course, the spacer block is one of them. The easiest tools to use. You drop it in. You drag it. How high of and how much space do you want around certain things?

And so that is there as well. So those are the articles, the things that I wanted to share. Make sure that you knew about it. There's also a couple of things that were happening over on the WP tavern. If you're interested in reading those, I'm just talking about, there was one by Nick Hamze has called to make WordPress themes weird and exciting.

It started some, some discussions about accessibility and whatnot. And so it just talks about great themes should have a distinct point of view. They should embrace specific aesthetics boldly. They should design for [00:11:00] specific use cases, and then they should break some rules thoughtfully. So there's a whole list of different things that we're talking about here when it comes to theme design and whatnot.

And I think this is just kind of in the forefront of my mind as I've spent a lot of time in 2024 rebuilding themes and looking at the power of the block themes and and things along those lines. There's some new stuff coming in 2025, which I'm excited about to do more customizations of this is how it should operate on mobile.

This is how we want to work on a tablet and things like that. And so that's really the news, if you will, that's happening. Again I'm trying to stay away from all the drama and all the things that are happening elsewhere in the new space. But those are some of the things that I wanted to share with you today.

I still have lots of plans for the 2025, especially here, January, February, March, I'm getting through some of these different plugins. I don't want to talk about some of the integrations I've been using. And of course, working through setting up more of those WordPress sites, you know, the work. YourWebsiteEngineer.com still needs probably tens of hours of work and PharmToTable, my wife's site needs probably another 30 hours of work to get it ready to be in a block [00:12:00] theme.

I'm trying to bring all of those lessons, all those things that I'm learning about. I'm just trying to figure out how the best way is to provide education on switching to block themes. And I know that and the block theme editor is not the most perfect thing.

It, there's a lots of places for improvement. There's a lot of places that it's like, Oh man, this isn't the best, but I feel like it has done so much and I've learned so much. And I don't remember if I said this earlier in the year or in an earlier podcast, but when I switched from a legacy theme with custom code and the functions.php file and all the plugins I needed to do what I wanted on a site, I moved to the block theme.

And I ended up, I think I cut down and I lost, and I stopped using like 15 or 18 different plugins. And then the speed score went from about an E to a B, a low B based on there's some stuff that I still need to work on on mobile. Just switching a few things just made a huge impact.

And I'm going to be sharing those lessons and those learnings as I go. So again, not a all inclusive list of everything that's happened in the news. But here's some things that I stumbled upon that I [00:13:00] thought would be really interesting to talk about, especially trying to use a gravatar as a Link in Bio.

I'm going to look at that. And then also the video, the short video on how to create that split background to make it look like you've got a floating bubble, I think was really, really powerful. You can probably do that with all the block editors out there, but now you, and you know exactly how to do it with the, the block editor.

So that's what I want to share with you this week. And Yeah. Take care and try to stay warm. It's cold in Ohio this week. And I'm just trying to stay warm and create amazing WordPress content and get back into the swing of work and get through all of the, all the messages that I've missed over the last three months.

So that's what I want to share with you this week. Take care. And we'll talk again soon. Bye bye. For more great WordPress information, head on over to your website, engineer. com.