There’s something special about WordCamps, big and small. Meeting up with WordPressers in real life is always a rewarding communal experience. So much better than Twitter. This past week at WordCamp Phoenix all the labels of competing hosting companies and competing plugins disappeared and the vibes were harmonious. As soon as I have my hands on the video of my session (Custom Block Development… Using Other Blocks), I’ll be sure to share.

But there is tribalism in WordPress, as in any community. Last issue I wrote about the Bricks Builder crowd’s latest anti-Gutenberg shots fired (including some I can sympathize with). Well… Yada yada yada… and that led to this amazing conversation between myself, Matt Medeiros (WP Minute), and Paul Charlton (WPTuts). The feedback from both tribes has been amazing, mostly because we all want the same thing: the future success of the WordPress project.

Watch the full conversation:

🎥 Bricks or Blocks for WordPress? With Paul Charlton & Brian Coords

Building in Public

If you’ve ever tried to add custom CSS to a modern WordPress site, you’ll know that it’s not a task for the faint of heart. Combine that with the fact that many of Gutenberg’s tools for styling (Style Engine, Block Styles API) are unfinished and you end up wanting to throw your laptop against the wall.

I’m trying to solve that for myself, and in the process I’m working on a new YouTube series. The product is called the Block Styles Manager and currently I’m “Building in Public.” Check out the first four videos to see the behind the scenes as I try to solve this little CSS problem in the block editor.

🎥 Build in Public YouTube Playlist

And along the way, I’ve uploaded a few new developer tutorials to YouTube:

• Using Core Data and Sharing Context across WordPress Blocks
• WP REST API and Postman – Using Application Passwords
• How to Build Dynamic (PHP) Blocks in WordPress

Links from around the web

• Who’s ready for WordPress plugin dependencies? I sure am.
• Great intro to weird modern JavaScript features you might see in WordPress like destructuring, arrow functions, imports, and more.
• Jamie Marsland (Pootlepress) and I are gearing up for our collaboration video. What’s on your WordPress wishlist?
• Keanan Koppenhaver gave a great talk on AI at WordCamp Phoenix. The videos aren’t up but he wrote his up as a blog post.
• The WPTavern is about to start pumping out content. I know I’ll be keeping a close eye on it.
• I’m getting a lot of use out of the Block Visibility plugin from Nick Diego. It’s a real must-have.
• In Season 2 of ViewSource, Aurooba is teaching me how to build an application in Next.js, and I’m pretending like I can keep up.

Anything else exciting in the world of WordPress? Reply and let me know!