#block editor

A week or so ago I put out a post about not being able to find the classic editor option in the block editor on WordPress. Little did I know they had changed that again and this time for the better. All one has to do now is click the option on the sidebar that allows you to see all posts and at the top of the page there is an option to make a new post. Attached to this option is a pull down bar…

I recently learned that there’s a built-in “lightbox” function for the block editor, where you can click on images to expand them. Go ahead, try it on the picture below: Isn’t that wild?! Who knew! This should be the default: Through the magic of the Internet, now it can be! https://github.com/emrikol/default-image-expand I took the lazy way and vibe coded this with Claude Code, so now all…

Midjourney AI-generated image of a “simplified dashboard”. WARNING: the following deals with the options for the WordPress Dashboard Interface. Unless you have an interest in getting confused, I would skip reading this post. Last week, WordPress sent out an announcement regarding the change to the WordPress.com Dashboard (LINK). I will be the first to admit the announcement left me confused,…

From brainstorming topic ideas to research to content briefs to the initial drafts, writing is hard enough. Don’t make it harder on yourself by writing in a distraction or clutter editor.  The more cluttered your writing program interface, the harder it is to focus and complete writing on time.  If you blog on WordPress, chances are, you find yourself clicking between the editor and other side…

Yeah, I know I've been silent again the past few months. To be fair to myself, however, not only am I still dealing with the fallout of my dad's death, but also working on all the legal shenanigans involved.

Have you ever found yourself in this common situation? “I’ve got this lovely WordPress Multisite, but I’d like to list every site on it in a post or page!” Of course you have–we’ve all been there. Well, let me introduce you to my newest plugin: site-list https://github.com/emrikol/site-list Installing the Plugin Installing it is a breeze, and using it is as easy as pie—assuming you find pie…

So, as I'm looking for a new gig, I took the opportunity to freshen up my portfolio site, which uses WordPress.

For the longest time I didn't want to get on board with Gutenberg, the blocks-based editing system introduced in 2018. (In a more limited way, this also powers the post editor on Tumblr.)

I had installed the Classic Editor option so all I would see was the pre-Gutenberg UI.

Aaaaaannnnd... i turned it off.

And ditched my old theme for this year's stock theme, Twenty Twenty-Three.

I have to say the new editing experience is pretty sweet.

Instead of a forms-based editor where you need to fill in each item of metadata manually - title, subtitle, preferred permalink, etc etc, and for each of these things to be hard-coded to elements in your theme, now it's more or less completely freeform. Just enter a title, and then start typing.

The block-based layout is super flexible, if a little obtuse at times. You can add blocks from a standard library of items or install new custom ones, and then insert or drag and drop them where you wish. You can group items together to create "patterns" for reuse elsewhere.

It's also easy to go from editing a post, straight into editing the actual underlying post template with the same blocks-based UI. (This confused me a bit at first, but I got the hang of it.)

Plus, they include all sorts of interesting blocks that are useful, like e-commerce widgets (for instance, selling tickets through Eventbrite, etc.).

The only third-party plugin I'm running right now is FooGallery which turns the built-in image galleries into expandable slideshows to view images full-size (I'm a bit puzzled as to why this isn't part of the default WP Gallery block tbh).