WORDPRESS GUTENBERG BLOCK NEWS – 6th January 2023: Are WordPress Killing themes?

I have to say I still don’t like Gutenburg at all, still luv WPBakery (Salient never more amazing) and Elementor

Just want to say thank you so much for keeping us up to date on WP news.

so damn complex wp. give me 2009 again. simple editor. now you can't even change background color.

Inspired by your videos I have been redesigning some of my WP sites with FSE and 2023 theme….it's rough, and I have had some real problems with lack of some of the PHP/comditional tweakability of traditional themes (and found bugs in Block Logic and a few other things – it seems that cos the Query Blocks are different some of the old PHP doesn't work?)

I have had to use some PHP Shortcode Plugin hacks I am not happy about – and had some real strangeness where editing the Theme.json for typefaces those changes showed in the first theme I did, but refused to show in the second?). I think it is the future but there are some massive caveats atm. I think designing as a newcomer to WP you'd love it, but existing WP sites have a lot of rich content that needs blocks creating or options to make those.

Like audio – I want to put a podcast player on my posts in the Query Loop and at the moment it doesn't look like that is possible, but I have the code to do that on my existing theme and that works fine on my old site but refuses to work with FSE….it seems they changed how the attachments are accessed somehow? Or the loop is totally different?

Stuff like that, we need more attachments or hooks into blocks to get around the limitations…. And I hope like Matt said here, that the Google Font integration gets a lot better – it's crazy that plugins have had those fonts available by easy drop down for years but WordPress doesn't have that sort of access as standard, I shouldn't have to hack PHP or CSS anymore, or add another load-delaying plugin to add a Google Font!

Matt sure does make it look easy and simple with plenty of room for creativity!
Can't wait to see what design will look like going forward.

WordPress killing itself.

I really want to depend only on gutenberg without using any other builder. But the problem is I cannot find how to reduce margin (I have to set the global blocking space to 0) and I cannot create different layout between mobile and desktop mode, which other plugins such as generateblocks are able to do.

I think the answer to the question is what you consider "themes". Most current "classic" themes really are a bundles of functionalities with design options that people can remix in specific ways. So, when you unbundle that you get global styles and patterns and a functionality plugin. And b/c it's still more complicated to write custom blocks than, say, custom shortcodes without having to take care of the editor experience, custom functionalities are likely going to be more complex to code. Imho, the infrastructure that is in place with Gutenberg and Blocks in terms of features and stability is actually what it should been like in 2018 for 5.0, then you would not see as many bad reviews.

I suspect that the statement of the last theme is related to their series 2010-2023. Doubtful there will be a 2024 theme but an import of a json file that gves you their vision of 2024 and the same in subsequent years. I do suspect that as more features are added to core, design-focused plugins will become the new norm to enhance the themeing capabilities making the need for traditional themes far less necessary. If you think about it, we are almost there anyway – Kadence, GeneratePress, Bricks, etc., really only use the theme as a way to extend the capabilities of core so it is probably a relatively light lift to transition the theme to a plugin that extends the core. The days of 10000 themes that only let you do one thing are coming to an end and that is not a bad thing for the web, not so great for Theme Forest and others.

WordPress* Please

Hi, Jamie. Happy New Year. Great video, mate. I have a question regarding the Contact form. If I do downloaded the plug-in or Block that you’ve mentioned, would it automatically transfer my current form onto the new block? Or would I need to create a new form with all my info all over again? Also, does this block allow one to play around with images? I mean having a small one instead of a large image? I’m quite new at all of this so my questions might not make any sense. Cheers

Happy New Year, Jamie and to all here. Thanks for the latest update, Jamie. Fascinating days ahead for Gutenberg.

Jamie, great video as always. I think that there are some big dogs that build themes and builders for a long time to come, just because there are so many people that don't want to learn something else. I think they will still make themes because it's sometimes easier to not think about design than it is to have to think. Who knows. Thanks for the great content, and I'm glad the cats are fat and sassy!

Thousands of themes used to make sense, before wysiwyg page builders came onto the scene. Personally, I think over 99% of themes have been useless since then.

The Breakdance plugin also uses a blank theme to build completely customized themes. However, the drawback is the inability to use anything related to Gutenberg with it.

I think you're spot on and I'll say one more: I believe that in maximum six months someone will create an AI tool where you tell the AI to create it for you.

Please help, all I need to do is add a custom font. This is a basic function of any website build and yet WP has steadily made this gated by convoluted coding. I've tried plugins but there's no way to set the custom font as default or have it appear in the dropdown for font family in the block editor. I just need to make a webfont that I've uploaded into the default font for body copy. Ideally the ability to set different fonts for Body/Headings… but I'll take what I can get at this point…

Happy new year man

Jamie, If I want to make theme option for user of my theme, example: like toggle between display post as grid or flex, do I still must use redux framework? Please show us some tutorial how to produce block theme without any dependencies to any plugin but still cool!! 😀

I have wondered in the recent past if themes were going to fade away given the development of templets. I guess I have my answer.

I was wondering when themes would be killed off. I’ve been wondering this before blocks, but now themes make no sense.

Also, I love your videos!!!

How is WordPress editor updated, automatically?

Thanks for this great info Jamie! I have a question on something you said about running the Gutenberg plugin. Does running it as a plugin enable additional features not in the "stock" plugin with WP?

We've started using Gutenberg Pro on our sites and absolutely love it!

Great video Jamie, thanks!

Thanks for your great videos! They are super interesting for a wordrpess frontend webdev like me.
Question about futur of themes in WordPress? : I tend to think that there will soon be no need for so many themes. For example, I used to make child themes out of astra theme, or twentytwenty family. But nowadays, I code themes from scratch (no parent theme). Thanks to FSE, a real (r)evolution.