28 — Writing Block Themes With Justin Tadlock  ## Metadata - Author: [[In The Loop: A WordPress Podcast by Blackbird Digital]] - Full Title: 28 — Writing Block Themes With Justin Tadlock - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/7c82c8c2-1f16-42c0-aca6-6fc85e350954 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - Episode AI notes 1. In a series of three articles, the author teaches theme developers how to extend blocks with custom controls, covering practical use cases like text shadows and missing CSS features. 2. The articles emphasize the importance of understanding WP scripts and block styles, providing step-by-step instructions on how to use them. 3. The process of extending blocks with custom controls involved extensive testing, feedback, and review. 4. The goal of the articles is to encourage theme authors to think outside the box and explore new possibilities in block theming. ([Time 0:00:00](https://share.snipd.com/episode-takeaways/5f442a1b-0148-46a2-b24e-e205e37d2c69)) - Extending WordPress blocks with custom controls Summary: In a series of three articles, the author teaches theme developers how to extend blocks with custom controls. The articles cover topics such as adding an emoji icon ticker and other practical CSS features. The author emphasizes the importance of understanding WP scripts and block styles. They acknowledge the behind-the-scenes work, including testing, feedback, and the review process. The author encourages theme authors to think outside the box and have fun exploring new possibilities. Transcript: Speaker 2 Okay, makes sense why it feels a bit enigmatic, but also necessary. So as part as part of that, I assume you wrote that series of articles that I mentioned previously. I don't know if you're calling it the beyond block styles series, but that's kind of what it what I have it as here. I'm going to put a link to all three of those articles in the description of this. But and I have some very specific questions about it, but the the reason I'm most interested in this series of article, it's a little maybe selfish honestly. You know, as an agency developer, I've run across this situation often where, you know, we want to use core blocks as often as possible, because it's what's already there. We don't want to confuse the clients with a bunch of different blocks that are all image blocks, you know, for say, or, you know, that sort of thing and which one do they use and etc, etc. And, you know, so back even in the early days, I want to say 2020 ish at least, you know, having to add custom controls to the core block and have those controls show up not just in or the the Effects of those controls show up, not just on the front end, but also in editor, because that's kind of the whole point of the editor, right, is to see what you're making and have it be Pretty much exactly the same, or as close as possible to what's on the front end. So, but but before I before I go on and on, can you just give us another brief overview of what those, you know, articles, there's three of them, so what each of them kind of covers? Speaker 1 Yeah, so first I'll say that this actually this is part of like the work our team was doing. So in this quarter, it was all about standing blocks. And this was kind of my contribution to like, here's how to extend blocks in some way. This series, which is three posts, was primarily about teaching developers or specifically theme developers how to extend a block with custom control. We can be anything. I choose an emoji icon ticker. Just mostly because it was fun. Yeah. And but more, there are more practical use cases like text shadows, just missing CSS features that you might want to have as part of the design tools for a block. So that was like the like where I started with that idea, like I want to teach how to extend. But first, I have to go back to the beginning, you have to teach how to use the WP scripts back. Because nobody knows how to do that themes. And then there's like a second post that like, okay, here's like, let me take a step further back. Here's how you do block styles. Like, here's how I came to this idea. And I've actually like, I think the first code I wrote for all this was all the way back in May. And not, you know, we didn't publish until like sometime in July. I think a lot of people don't see like the thing like what goes on behind the scenes, sometimes like all the testing and just yeah. And then like feedback from teammates and or people on the developer blog, the review process, this a lot. But I think we came like, I don't want it like I don't really take credit for the entire series, because we had, you know, great feedback from everybody, people testing it, especially If I could name drop Mary bomb, who was the copy editor on all three. I don't know what I would have gotten through it without like her feedback, because it was quite a long series. There's a lot to it. And but I'm glad it's out. And I've actually had a conversation with someone this morning who had run into an issue where they were using this process to build their own, you know, extension to a block. And it was real simple fix. It was just a mistake with a class, the class system. Yeah, I'm getting feedback on it a lot. And I think, yeah, that part is tricky. Yeah, I just want to I basically want to open theme authors up to like here, try these new things like think outside the box a little bit. You don't necessarily have to follow everything I'm doing here. Just explore, have fun with it. ([Time 0:12:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/036492dc-ed35-4895-9745-7ea9860bca29)) - Tags: mary_baum, wordpress