Ganesh Dahal – CSS-Tricks https://css-tricks.com Tips, Tricks, and Techniques on using Cascading Style Sheets. Mon, 06 Mar 2023 15:26:41 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://i0.wp.com/css-tricks.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/star.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Ganesh Dahal – CSS-Tricks https://css-tricks.com 32 32 45537868 Managing Fonts in WordPress Block Themes https://css-tricks.com/managing-fonts-in-wordpress-block-themes/ https://css-tricks.com/managing-fonts-in-wordpress-block-themes/#comments Mon, 06 Mar 2023 15:26:31 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=377123 Fonts are a defining characteristic of the design of any site. That includes WordPress themes, where it’s common for theme developers to integrate a service like Google Fonts into the WordPress Customizer settings for a “classic” PHP-based theme. That hasn’t …


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Fonts are a defining characteristic of the design of any site. That includes WordPress themes, where it’s common for theme developers to integrate a service like Google Fonts into the WordPress Customizer settings for a “classic” PHP-based theme. That hasn’t quite been the case for WordPress block themes. While integrating Google Fonts into classic themes is well-documented, there’s nothing currently available for block themes in the WordPress Theme Handbook.

That’s what we’re going to look at in this article. Block themes can indeed use Google Fonts, but the process for registering them is way different than what you might have done before in classic themes.

What we already know

As I said, there’s little for us to go on as far as getting started. The Twenty Twenty-Two theme is the first block-based default WordPress theme, and it demonstrates how we can use downloaded font files as assets in the theme. But it’s pretty unwieldy because it involves a couple of steps: (1) register the files in the functions.php file and (2) define the bundled fonts in the theme.json file.

Since Twenty Twenty-Two was released, though, the process has gotten simpler. Bundled fonts can now be defined without registering them, as shown in the Twenty Twenty-Three theme. However, the process still requires us to manually download font files and bundle them into the themes. That’s a hindrance that sort of defeats the purpose of simple, drop-in, hosted fonts that are served on a speedy CDN.

What’s new

If you didn’t already know, the Gutenberg project is an experimental plugin where features being developed for the WordPress Block and Site Editor are available for early use and testing. In a recent Theme Shaper article, Gutenberg project lead architect Matias Ventura discusses how Google Fonts — or any other downloaded fonts, for that matter — can be added to block themes using the Create Block Theme plugin.

This short video at Learn WordPress provides a good overview of the Create Block Theme plugin and how it works. But the bottom line is that it does what it says on the tin: it creates block themes. But it does it by providing controls in the WordPress UI that allow you to create an entire theme, child theme, or a theme style variation without writing any code or ever having to touch template files.

I’ve given it a try! And since Create Block Theme is authored and maintained by the WordPress.org team, I’d say it’s the best direction we have for integrating Google Fonts into a theme. That said, it’s definitely worth noting that the plugin is in active development. That means things could change pretty quickly.

Before I get to how it all works, let’s first briefly refresh ourselves with the “traditional” process for adding Google Fonts to classic WordPress themes.

How it used to be done

This ThemeShaper article from 2014 provides an excellent example of how we used to do this in classic PHP themes, as is this newer Cloudways article by Ibad Ur Rehman.

To refresh our memory, here is an example from the default Twenty Seventeen theme showing how Google fonts are enqueued in the functions.php file.

function twentyseventeen_fonts_url() {
  $fonts_url = '';
  /**
   * Translators: If there are characters in your language that are not
   * supported by Libre Franklin, translate this to 'off'. Do not translate
   * into your own language.
   */
  $libre_franklin = _x( 'on', 'libre_franklin font: on or off', 'twentyseventeen' );
  if ( 'off' !== $libre_franklin ) {
    $font_families = array();
    $font_families[] = 'Libre Franklin:300,300i,400,400i,600,600i,800,800i';
    $query_args = array(
      'family' => urlencode( implode( '|', $font_families ) ),
      'subset' => urlencode( 'latin,latin-ext' ),
    );
    $fonts_url = add_query_arg( $query_args, 'https://fonts.googleapis.com/css' );
  }
  return esc_url_raw( $fonts_url );
}

Then Google Fonts is pre-connected to the theme like this:

function twentyseventeen_resource_hints( $urls, $relation_type ) {
  if ( wp_style_is( 'twentyseventeen-fonts', 'queue' ) && 'preconnect' === $relation_type ) {
    $urls[] = array(
      'href' => 'https://fonts.gstatic.com',
      'crossorigin',
    );
  }
  return $urls;
}
add_filter( 'wp_resource_hints', 'twentyseventeen_resource_hints', 10, 2 );

What’s wrong with the traditional way

Great, right? There’s a hitch, however. In January 2022, a German regional court imposed a fine on a website owner for violating Europe’s GDPR requirements. The issue? Enqueuing Google Fonts on the site exposed a visitor’s IP address, jeopardizing user privacy. CSS-Tricks covered this a while back.

The Create Block Theme plugin satisfies GDPR privacy requirements, as it leverages the Google Fonts API to serve solely as a proxy for the local vendor. The fonts are served to the user on the same website rather than on Google’s servers, protecting privacy. WP Tavern discusses the German court ruling and includes links to guides for self-hosting Google Fonts.

How to use Google Fonts with block themes

This brings us to today’s “modern” way of using Google Fonts with WordPress block themes. First, let’s set up a local test site. I use Flywheel’s Local app for local development. You can use that or whatever you prefer, then use the Theme Test Data plugin by the WordPress Themes Team to work with dummy content. And, of course, you’ll want the Create Block Theme plugin in there as well.

Have you installed and activated those plugins? If so, navigate to AppearanceManage theme fonts from the WordPress admin menu.

Manage Theme Fonts screen with type samples for Space Mono.
Source: WordPress Theme Directory

The “Manage theme fonts” screen displays a list of any fonts already defined in the theme’s theme.json file. There are also two options at the top of the screen:

  • Add Google fonts. This option adds Google Fonts directly to the theme from the Google fonts API.
  • Add local fonts. This option adds downloaded font files to the theme.

I’m using a completely blank theme by WordPress called Emptytheme. You’re welcome to roll along with your own theme, but I wanted to call out that I’ve renamed Emptytheme to “EMPTY-BLANK” and modified it, so there are no predefined fonts and styles at all.

Themes screen showing Empty Theme as the active selection with no screenshot preview.

I thought I’d share a screenshot of my theme’s file structure and theme.json file to show that there are literally no styles or configurations going on.

VS Code file explorer on the left and an open theme.json file on the right.
File structure of Emptytheme (left) and theme.json file (right)

Let’s click the “Add Google Fonts” button. It takes us to a new page with options to choose any available font from the current Google Fonts API.

Add Google Fonts to your theme screen with the select font menu open showing a list of available fonts.

For this demo, I selected Inter from the menu of options and selected the 300, Regular, and 900 weights from the preview screen:

Add Google Fonts to your theme screen with Inter selected and type samples below it of the various weight variations.

Once I’ve saved my selections, the Inter font styles I selected are automatically downloaded and stored in the theme’s assets/fonts folder:

VS Code file explorer on the left showing Inter font files; theme.json on the right showing Inter references.

Notice, too, how those selections have been automatically written to the theme.json file in that screenshot. The Create Block Theme plugin even adds the path to the font files.

View the entire theme.json code
{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {
    "appearanceTools": true,
    "layout": {
      "contentSize": "840px",
      "wideSize": "1100px"
    },
    "typography": {
      "fontFamilies": [
        {
          "fontFamily": "Inter",
          "slug": "inter",
          "fontFace": [
            {
              "fontFamily": "Inter",
              "fontStyle": "normal",
              "fontWeight": "300",
              "src": [
                "file:./assets/fonts/inter_300.ttf"
              ]
            },
            {
              "fontFamily": "Inter",
              "fontStyle": "normal",
              "fontWeight": "900",
              "src": [
                "file:./assets/fonts/inter_900.ttf"
              ]
            },
            {
              "fontFamily": "Inter",
              "fontStyle": "normal",
              "fontWeight": "400",
              "src": [
                "file:./assets/fonts/inter_regular.ttf"
              ]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

If we go to the Create Block Theme’s main screen and click the Manage theme fonts button again, we will see Inter’s 300, 400 (Regular), and 900 weight variants displayed in the preview panel.

Manage Theme Fonts screen with a button to Add Google Font highlighted in red.

A demo text preview box at the top even allows you to preview the selected fonts within the sentence, header, and paragraph with the font size selection slider. You can check out this new feature in action in this GitHub video.

The selected font(s) are also available in the Site Editor Global Styles (AppearanceEditor), specifically in the Design panel.

Wordpress Site Editor screen with navigation panel open and highlighting the Edit button.

From here, navigate to TemplatesIndex and click the blue Edit button to edit the index.html template. We want to open the Global Styles settings, which are represented as a contrast icon located at the top-right of the screen. When we click the Text settings and open the Font menu in the Typography section… we see Inter!

Open template file in the Site Editor with an arrow pointing out the Global Styles settings button.

Same thing, but with local fonts

We may as well look at adding local fonts to a theme since the Create Block Theme plugin provides that option. The benefit is that you can use any font file you want from whatever font service you prefer.

Without the plugin, we’d have to grab our font files, drop them somewhere in the theme folder, then resort to the traditional PHP route of enqueuing them in the functions.php file. But we can let WordPress carry that burden for us by uploading the font file on the Add local fonts screen using the Create Block Theme interface. Once a file is selected to upload, font face definitions boxes are filled automatically.

Add local fonts to your theme screen with options to upload a font file and set its name, style, and weight.

Even though we can use any .ttf, .woff, or .woff2 file, I simply downloaded Open Sans font files from Google Fonts for this exercise. I snatched two weight variations, regular and 800.

The same auto-magical file management and theme.json update we saw with the Google Fonts option happens once again when we upload the font files (which are done one at a time). Check out where the fonts landed in my theme folder and how they are added to theme.json:

VS Code showing the font files and the theme.json file references to the font.

Removing fonts

The plugin also allows us to remove font files from a block theme from the WordPress admin. Let’s delete one of the Open Sans variants we installed in the last section to see how that works.

The interface for removing a font from the theme.

Clicking the Remove links triggers a warning for you to confirm the deletion. We’ll click OK to continue.

Modal confirming the font deletion.

Let’s open our theme folder and check the theme.json file. Sure enough, the Open Sans 800 file we deleted on the plugin screen removed the font file from the theme folder, and the reference to it is long gone in theme.json.

Updated theme.json file showing the font references have been removed.

There’s ongoing work happening

There’s talk going on adding this “Font Manager” feature to WordPress Core rather than needing a separate plugin.

An initial iteration of the feature is available in the repo, and it uses the exact same approach we used in this article. It should be GDPR-compliant, too. The feature is scheduled to land with WordPress 6.3 release later this year.

Wrapping up

The Create Block Theme plugin significantly enhances the user experience when it comes to handling fonts in WordPress block themes. The plugin allows us to add or delete any fonts while respecting GDPR requirements.

We saw how selecting a Google Font or uploading a local font file automatically places the font in the theme folder and registers it in the theme.json file. We also saw how the font is an available option in the Global Styles settings in the Site Editor. And if we need to remove a font? The plugin totally takes care of that as well — without touching theme files or code.

Thanks for reading! If you have any comments or suggestions, share them in the comments. I’d love to know what you think of this possible direction for font management in WordPress.

Additional resources

I relied on a lot of research to write this article and thought I’d share the articles and resources I used to provide you with additional context.

WordPress font management

GitHub issues

European GDPR requirements


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Adding Box Shadows to WordPress Blocks and Elements https://css-tricks.com/adding-box-shadows-to-wordpress-blocks-and-elements/ https://css-tricks.com/adding-box-shadows-to-wordpress-blocks-and-elements/#respond Wed, 07 Dec 2022 13:59:50 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=375412 The CSS box-shadow and outline properties gained theme.json support in WordPress 6.1. Let's look at a few examples of how it works in real themes, and what options we have to apply these styles to WordPress blocks and elements.


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I stumbled across this tweet from Ana Segota looking for a way to add a CSS box-shadow to a button’s hover state in WordPress in the theme.json file.

She’s asking because theme.json is where WordPress wants us to start moving basic styles for block themes. Traditionally, we’d do any and all styling in style.css when working in a “classic” theme. But with the default Twenty Twenty-Three (TT3) theme that recently shipped with WordPress 6.1 moving all of its styles to theme.json, we’re getting closer and closer to being able to do the same with our own themes. I covered this in great detail in a recent article.

I say “closer and closer” because there are still plenty of CSS properties and selectors that are unsupported in theme.json. For example, if you’re hoping to style something with like perspective-origin in theme.json, it just won’t happen — at least as I’m writing this today.

Ana is looking at box-shadow and, luckily for her, that CSS property is supported by theme.json as of WordPress 6.1. Her tweet is dated Nov. 1, the same exact day that 6.1 released. It’s not like support for the property was a headline feature in the release. The bigger headlines were more related to spacing and layout techniques for blocks and block themes.

Here’s how we can apply a box-shadow to a specific block — say the Featured Image block — in theme.json:

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {},
  // etc.
  "styles": {
    "blocks" :{
      "core/post-featured-image": {
        "shadow": "10px 10px 5px 0px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.66)"
      }
    }
  }
}

Wondering if the new color syntax works? Me too! But when I tried — rgb(0 0 0 / 0.66) — I got nothing. Perhaps that’s already in the works or could use a pull request.

Easy, right? Sure, it’s way different than writing vanilla CSS in style.css and takes some getting used to. But it is indeed possible as of the most recent WordPress release.

And, hey, we can do the same thing to individual “elements”, like a button. A button is a block in and of itself, but it can also be a nested block within another block. So, to apply a box-shadow globally to all buttons, we’d do something like this in theme.json:

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {},
  // etc.
  "styles": {
    "elements": {
      "button": {
        "shadow": "10px 10px 5px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.66)"
      }
    }
  }
}

But Ana wants to add the shadow to the button’s :hover state. Thankfully, support for styling interactive states for certain elements, like buttons and links, using pseudo-classes — including :hover, :focus, :active, and :visited — also gained theme.json support in WordPress 6.1.

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {},
  // etc.
  "styles": {
    "elements": {
      "button": {
        ":hover": {
          "shadow": "10px 10px 5px 0px rgba(0,0,0,0.66)"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

If you’re using a parent theme, you can certainly override a theme’s styles in a child theme. Here, I am completely overriding TT3’s button styles.

View full code
{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {},
  // etc.
  "styles": {
    "elements": {
      "button": {
        "border": {
          "radius": "0"
        },
        "color": {
          "background": "var(--wp--preset--color--tertiary)",
          "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--contrast)"
        },
        "outline": {
          "offset": "3px",
          "width": "3px",
          "style": "dashed",
          "color": "red"
        },
        "typography": {
          "fontSize": "var(--wp--preset--font-size--medium)"
        },
        "shadow": "5px 5px 5px 0px rgba(9, 30, 66, 0.25), 5px 5px 5px 1px rgba(9, 30, 66, 0.08)",
        ":hover": {
          "color": {
            "background": "var(--wp--preset--color--contrast)",
            "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--base)"
          },
          "outline": {
            "offset": "3px",
            "width": "3px",
            "style": "solid",
            "color": "blue"
          }
        },
        ":focus": {
          "color": {
            "background": "var(--wp--preset--color--contrast)",
            "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--base)"
          }
        },
        ":active": {
          "color": {
            "background": "var(--wp--preset--color--secondary)",
            "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--base)"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Here’s how that renders:

Showing two red buttons with box shadows.
The button’s natural state (left) and it’s hovered state (right)

Another way to do it: custom styles

The recently released Pixl block theme provides another example of real-world usage of the box-shadow property in theme.json using an alternative method that defines custom values. In the theme, a custom box-shadow property is defined as .settings.custom.shadow:

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {
    // etc. 
    "custom": {
      // etc.
      "shadow": "5px 5px 0px -2px var(--wp--preset--color--background), 5px 5px var(--wp--preset--color--foreground)"
    },
    // etc.
  }
}

Then, later in the file, the custom shadow property is called on a button element:

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {
    // etc.
  },
  "styles": {
    "elements": {
      "button": {
        // etc.
        "shadow": "var(--wp--custom--shadow) !important",
        // etc.
        ":active": {
          // etc.
          "shadow": "2px 2px var(--wp--preset--color--primary) !important"
        }
      },
    // etc.
  }
}

I’m not totally sure about the use of !important in this context. My hunch is that it’s an attempt to prevent overriding those styles using the Global Styles UI in the Site Editor, which has high specificity than styles defined in theme.json. Here’s an anchored link to more information from my previous article on managing block theme styles.

Update: Turns out there was a whole discussion about this in Pull Request #34689, which notes that it was addressed in WordPress 5.9.

And there’s more…

In addition to shadows, the CSS outline property also gained theme.json support in WordPress 6.1 and can be applied to buttons and their interactive states. This GitHub PR shows a good example.

"elements": {
  "button": {
    "outline": {
      "offset": "3px",
      "width": "3px",
      "style": "dashed",
      "color": "red"
    },
    ":hover": {
      "outline": {
        "offset": "3px",
        "width": "3px",
        "style": "solid",
        "color": "blue"
      }
    }
  }
}

You can also find the real examples of how the outline property works in other themes, including Loudness, Block Canvas, and Blockbase.

Wrapping up

Who knew there was so much to talk about with a single CSS property when it comes to block theming in WordPress 6.1? We saw the officially supported methods for setting a box-shadow on blocks and individual elements, including the interactive states of a button element. We also checked out how we could override shadows in a child theme. And, finally, we cracked open a real-world example that defines and sets shadows in a custom property.

You can find more detailed in-depth discussions about the WordPress and it’s box-shadow implementation in this GitHub PR. There is also a GitHub proposal for adding UI directly in WordPress to set shadow values on blocks — you can jump directly to an animated GIF showing how that would work.

Speaking of which, Justin Tadlock recently developed a block that renders a progress bar and integrated box shadow controls into it. He shows it off in this video:

More information

If you’d like to dig deeper into the box-shadow and other CSS properties that are supported by the theme.json file in a block theme, here are a couple of resources you can use:


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Using The New Constrained Layout In WordPress Block Themes https://css-tricks.com/using-the-new-constrained-layout-in-wordpress-block-themes/ https://css-tricks.com/using-the-new-constrained-layout-in-wordpress-block-themes/#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2022 14:11:10 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=375278 One of the main goals of the WordPress Site Editor (and, yes, that is now the “official” name) is to move basic block styling from CSS to structured JSON. JSON files are machine-readable, which makes it consumable by …


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One of the main goals of the WordPress Site Editor (and, yes, that is now the “official” name) is to move basic block styling from CSS to structured JSON. JSON files are machine-readable, which makes it consumable by the JavaScript-based Site Editor for configuring a theme’s global styles directly in WordPress.

It’s not all the way there yet! If we look at the Twenty Twenty-Two (TT2) default theme, there were two main unresolved issues: styling interactions (like :hover, :active, :focus), and the margins and padding of layout containers. You can see how those were temporarily fixed in the TT2 style.css file rather than making it into the theme.json file.

WordPress 6.1 fixed those issues and what I want to do is look specifically at the latter. Now that we have JSON-ified styles for the margins and padding of layout containers, that opens us up to more flexible and robust ways to define spacing in our theme layouts.

What kind of spacing are we talking about?

First off, we already have root-level padding which is a fancy way of describing padding on the <body> element. That’s nice because it ensures consistent spacing on an element that is shared on all pages and posts.

But there’s more to it because now we have a way for blocks to bypass that padding and align themselves full-width. That’s thanks to padding-aware alignments which is a new opt-in feature in theme.json. So, even if you have root-level padding, you can still allow, say, an image (or some other block) to break out and go full-width.

That gets us to another thing we get: constrained layouts. The idea here is that any blocks nested in the layout respect the layout’s content width — which is a global setting — and do not flow outside of it. We can override that behavior on a block-by-block basis with alignments, but we’ll get to that.

Let’s start with…

Root-level padding

Again, this isn’t new. We’ve had the ability to set padding on the <body> element in theme.json since the experimental Gutenberg plugin introduced it in version 11.7. We set it on the styles.spacing object, where we have margin and padding objects to define the top, right, bottom, and left spacing on the body:

{
  "version": 2,
  "styles": {
    "spacing": {
      "margin": {
        "top": "60px",
        "right": "30px",
        "bottom": "60px",
        "left": "30px"
      },
      "padding": {
        "top": "30px",
        "right": "30px",
        "bottom": "30px",
        "left": "30px"
      }
    }
  }
}

This is a global setting. So, if we were to crack open DevTools and inspect the <body> element, we would see these CSS styles:

body {
  margin-top: 60px;
  margin-right: 30px;
  margin-bottom: 60px;
  margin-left: 30px;
  padding-top: 30px;
  padding-right: 30px;
  padding-bottom: 30px;
  padding-left: 30px;
}

Cool. But herein lies the issue of how in the world we can allow some blocks to break out of that spacing to fill the full screen, edge-to-edge. That’s why the spacing is there, right? It helps prevent that from happening!

But there are indeed plenty of cases where you might want to break out of that spacing on a one-off instance when working in the Block Editor. Say we plop an Image block on a page and we want it to go full-width while the rest of the content respects the root-level padding?

Enter…

Padding-aware alignments

While attempting to create the first default WordPress theme that defines all styles in the theme.json file, lead designer Kjell Reigstad illustrates the challenging aspects of breaking out of root-level padding in this GitHub issue.

Root-level padding prevents blocks from taking up the full viewport width (left). But with padding-aware alignments, some blocks can “opt-out” of that spacing and take up the full viewport width (right). (Image credit: Kjell Reigstad)

New features in WordPress 6.1 were created to address this issue. Let’s dig into those next.

useRootPaddingAwareAlignments

A new useRootPaddingAwareAlignments property was created to address the problem. It was actually first introduced in the Gutenberg plugin v13.8. The original pull request is a nice primer on how it works.

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {
    "appearanceTools": true,
    "useRootPaddingAwareAlignments": true,
    // etc.
  },

Right off the bat, notice that this is a feature we have to opt into. The property is set to false by default and we have to explicitly set it to true in order to enable it. Also notice that we have appearanceTools set to true as well. That opts us into UI controls in the Site Editor for styling borders, link colors, typography, and, yes, spacing which includes margin and padding.

Setting appearanceTools set to true automatically opts blocks into margin and padding without having to set either settings.spacing.padding or setting.spacing.margin to true.

When we do enable useRootPaddingAwareAlignments, we are provided with custom properties with root padding values that are set on the <body> element on the front end. Interestingly, it also applies the padding to the .editor-styles-wrapper class so the spacing is displayed when working in the back-end Block Editor. Pretty cool!

I was able to confirm those CSS custom properties in DevTools while digging around.

Enabling useRootPaddingAwareAlignments also applies left and right padding to any block that supports the “content” width and “wide” width values in the Global Styles image above. We can also define those values in theme.json:

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {
    "layout": {
      "contentSize": "640px",
      "wideSize": "1000px"
    }
  }
}

If the Global Styles settings are different than what is defined in theme.json, then the Global Styles take precedence. You can learn all about managing block theme styles in my last article.

  • contentSize is the default width for blocks.
  • wideSize provides a “wide” layout option and establishes a wider column for blocks to stretch out.

So, that last code example will give us the following CSS:

/* The default content container */
.wp-container-[id] > * {
  max-width: 640px;
  margin-left: auto !important;
  margin-right: auto !important;
}

/* The wider content container */
.wp-container-[id] > .alignwide {
  max-width: 1000px;
}

[id] indicates a unique number automatically generated by WordPress.

But guess what else we get? Full alignment as well!

.wp-container-[id] .alignfull {
  max-width: none;
}

See that? By enabling useRootPaddingAwareAlignments and defining contentSize and wideSize, we also get a full alignment CSS class for a total of three container configurations for controlling the width of blocks that are added to pages and posts.

This applies to the following layout-specific blocks: Columns, Group, Post Content, and Query Loop.

Block layout controls

Let’s say we add any of those aforementioned layout-specific blocks to a page. When we select the block, the block settings UI offers us new layout settings based on the settings.layout values we defined in theme.json (or the Global Styles UI).

We’re dealing with very specific blocks here — ones that can have other blocks nested inside. So, these Layout settings are really about controlling the width and alignment of those nested blocks. The “Inner blocks use content width” setting is enabled by default. If we toggle it off, then we have no max-width on the container and the blocks inside it go edge-to-edge.

If we leave the toggle on, then nested blocks will adhere to either the contentWidth or wideWidth values (more on that in a bit). Or we can use the numeric inputs to define custom contentWidth and wideWidth values in this one-off instance. That’s great flexibility!

Wide blocks

The settings we just looked are set on the parent block. Once we’ve nested a block inside and select it, we have additional options in that block to use the contentWidth, wideWidth, or go full-width.

This Image block is set to respect the contentWidth setting, labeled “None” in the contextual menu, but can also be set to wideWidth (labeled “Wide width”) or “Full width”.

Notice how WordPress multiplies the root-level padding CSS custom properties by -1 to create negative margins when selecting the “Full width” option.

The .alignfull class sets negative margins on a nested block to ensure it takes up the full viewport width without conflicting with the root-level padding settings.

Using a constrained layout

We just covered the new spacing and alignments we get with WordPress 6.1. Those are specific to blocks and any nested blocks within blocks. But WordPress 6.1 also introduces new layout features for even more flexibility and consistency in a theme’s templates.

Case in point: WordPress has completely restructured its Flex and Flow layout types and gave us a constrained layout type that makes it easier to align block layouts in themes using the content width settings in the Site Editor’s Global Styles UI.

Flex, Flow, and Constrained layouts

The difference between these three layout types is the styles that they output. Isabel Brison has an excellent write-up that nicely outlines the differences, but let’s paraphrase them here for reference:

  • Flow layout: Adds vertical spacing between nested blocks in the margin-block direction. Those nested blocks can also be aligned to the left, right, or center.
  • Constrained layout: Same exact deal as a Flow layout, but with width constraints on nested blocks that are based on the contentWidth and wideWidth settings (either in theme.json or Global Styles).
  • Flex layout: This was unchanged in WordPress 6.1. It uses CSS Flexbox to create a layout that flows horizontally (in a row) by default, but can flow vertically as well so blocks stack one on top of another. Spacing is applied using the CSS gap property.

This new slate of layout types creates semantic class names for each layout:

Semantic layout classLayout typeSupported blocks
.is-layout-flowFlow layoutColumns, Group, Post Content, and Query Loop.
.is-layout-constrainedConstrained layoutColumns, Group, Post Content, and Query Loop.
.is-layout-flexFlex layoutColumns, Buttons, Social Icons

Justin Tadlock has an extensive write-up on the different layout types and semantic classes, including use cases and examples.

Updating your theme to support constrained layouts

If you’re already using a block theme of your own making, you’re going to want to update it to support constrained layouts. All it takes is swapping out a couple of things in theme.json:

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {
    "layout": {
      "type": "constrained", // replaces `"inherit": true`
      "type": "default", // replaces `"inherit": false`
    }
  }
}

These are recently released block themes that have enabled spacing settings with useRootPaddingAwareAlignments and have an updated theme.json file that defines a constrained layout:

ThemeRoot-level paddingConstrained layout features
TT3Source codeSource codeTemplates
ProWPSource codeSource codeTemplates
TriangulateSource codeSource codeTemplates
OaknutSource codeSource codeTemplates
LoudnessSource codeSource codeTemplates
PixlSource codeSource codeTemplates
Block CanvasSource codeSource code, Templates
RainfallSource codeSource codeTemplates

Disabling layout styles

The base layout styles are default features that ship in WordPress 6.1 Core. In other words, they’re enabled right out of the box. But we can disable them if we need to with this little snippet in functions.php:

// Remove layout styles.
add_theme_support( 'disable-layout-styles' );

Big warning here: disabling support for the default layout types also removes all of the base styling for those layouts. That means you’ll need to roll your own styles for spacing, alignments, and anything else needed to display content in different template and block contexts.

Wrapping up

As a great fan of full-width images, the new contained WordPress 6.1 layout and padding aware alignment features are two of my most favorites yet. Taken together with other tools including, better margin and padding control, fluid typography, and updated List and Quote blocks, among others, is solid proof that WordPress is moving towards a better content creation experience.

Now, we have to wait and look at how the imagination and creativity of ordinary designers and content creators use these incredible tools and take it to a new level.

Because of the site editor development iterations in progress, we should always anticipate a difficult path ahead. However, as an optimist, I am eager to see what will happen in the upcoming version of WordPress 6.2. Some of the thing, that I am keeping a close eye on are things like features being considered for inclusion, support for sticky positioning, new layout class names for inner block wrappers, updated footer alignment options, and adding constrained and flow layout options to Cover blocks.

This GitHub issues #44720 lists the layout related discussions slated for WordPress 6.2.

Additional resources

I consulted and referenced a lot of sources while digging into all of this. Here’s a big ol’ list of things I found helpful and think you might enjoy as well.

Tutorials

WordPress posts

GitHub pull requests and issues


Using The New Constrained Layout In WordPress Block Themes originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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Managing CSS Styles in a WordPress Block Theme https://css-tricks.com/managing-css-styles-in-a-wordpress-block-theme/ https://css-tricks.com/managing-css-styles-in-a-wordpress-block-theme/#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2022 14:05:11 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=374910 The way we write CSS for WordPress themes is in the midst of sweeping changes. I recently shared a technique for adding fluid type support in WordPress by way of theme.json, a new file that WordPress has been pushing


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The way we write CSS for WordPress themes is in the midst of sweeping changes. I recently shared a technique for adding fluid type support in WordPress by way of theme.json, a new file that WordPress has been pushing hard to become a central source of truth for defining styles in WordPress themes that support full-site editing (FSE) features.

Wait, no style.css file? We still have that. In fact, style.css is still a required file in block themes, though its role is greatly reduced to meta information used for registering the theme. That said, the fact is that theme.json is still in active development, meaning we’re in a transitional period where you might find styles defined there, in styles.css or even at the block level.

So, what does styling actually look like in these WordPress FSE days? That’s what I want to cover in this article. There’s a lack of documentation for styling block themes in the WordPress Theme Developer Handbook, so everything we’re covering here is what I’ve gathered about where things currently are as well as discussions about the future of WordPress theming.

The evolution of WordPress styles

The new developmental features that are included in WordPress 6.1 get us closer to a system of styles that are completely defined in theme.json, but there is still be plenty of work to do before we can fully lean on it. One way we can get an idea of what’s coming in future releases is by using the Gutenberg plugin. This is where experimental features are often given a dry run.

Another way we can get a feel for where we are is by looking at the evolution of default WordPress themes. To date, there are three default themes that support full-site editing:

But don’t start trading the CSS in style.css for JSON property-value pairs in theme.json just yet. There are still CSS styling rules that need to be supported in theme.json before we think about doing that. The remaining significant issues are currently being discussed with an aim to fully move all the CSS style rules into theme.json and consolidate different sources of theme.json into a UI for for setting global styles directly in the WordPress Site Editor.

The Global Styles UI is integrated with the right panel in the Site Editor. (Credit: Learn WordPress)

That leaves us in a relatively tough spot. Not only is there no clear path for overriding theme styles, but it’s unclear where the source of those styles even come from — is it from different layers of theme.json files, style.css, the Gutenberg plugin, or somewhere else?

Why theme.json instead of style.css?

You might be wondering why WordPress is moving toward a JSON-based definition of styles instead of a traditional CSS file. Ben Dwyer from the Gutenberg development team eloquently articulates why the theme.json approach is a benefit for theme developers.

It’s worth reading Ben’s post, but the meat is in this quote:

Overriding CSS, whether layout, preset, or block styles, presents an obstacle to integration and interoperability: visual parity between the frontend and editor becomes more difficult to maintain, upgrades to block internals may conflict with overrides. Custom CSS is, furthermore, less portable across other block themes.

By encouraging theme authors to use theme.json API where possible, the hierarchy of “base > theme > user” defined styles can be resolved correctly.

One of the major benefits of moving CSS to JSON is that JSON is a machine-readable format, which means it can be exposed in the WordPress Site Editor UI by fetching an API, thus allowing users to modify default values and customize a site’s appearance without writing any CSS at all. It also provides a way to style blocks consistently, while providing a structure that creates layers of specificity such that the user settings take the highest priority over those defined in theme.json. That interplay between theme-level styles in theme.json and the user-defined styles in the Global Styles UI is what makes the JSON approach so appealing.

Developers maintain consistency in JSON, and users gain flexibility with code-less customizations. That’s a win-win.

There are other benefits, for sure, and Mike McAlister from WP Engine lists several in this Twitter thread. You can find even more benefits in this in-depth discussion over at the Make WordPress Core blog. And once you’ve given that a read, compare the benefits of the JSON approach with the available ways to define and override styles in classic themes.

Defining styles with JSON elements

We’ve already seen a lot of progress as far as what parts of a theme theme.json is capable of styling. Prior to WordPress 6.1, all we could really do was style headings and links. Now, with WordPress 6.1, we can add buttons, captions, citations, and headings to the mix.

And we do that by defining JSON elements. Think of elements as individual components that live in a WordPress block. Say we have a block that contains a heading, a paragraph, and a button. Those individual pieces are elements, and there’s an elements object in theme.json where we define their styles:

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {},
  // etc.
  "styles": {
    // etc.
    "elements": {
        "button": { ... },
        "h1": { ... },
        "heading": { ... },
    },
  },
  "templateParts": {}
}

A better way to describe JSON elements is as low-level components for themes and blocks that do not need the complexity of blocks. They are representations of HTML primitives that are not defined in a block but can be used across blocks. How they are supported in WordPress (and the Gutenberg plugin) is described in the Block Editor Handbook and this Full Site Editing tutorial by Carolina Nymark.

For example, links are styled in the elements object but are not a block in their own right. But a link can be used in a block and it will inherit the styles defined on the elements.link object in theme.json. This doesn’t fully encapsulate the definition of an element, though, as some elements are also registered as blocks, such as the Heading and Button blocks — but those blocks can still be used within other blocks.

Here is a table of the elements that are currently available to style in theme.json prior to WordPress 6.1, courtesy of Carolina:

ElementSelectorWhere it’s supported
link<a>WordPress Core
h1 – h6The HTML tag for each heading level: <h1><h2><h3><h4><h5> and <h6>WordPress Core
headingStyles all headings globally by individual HTML tag: <h1><h2><h3><h4><h5> and <h6>Gutenberg plugin
button.wp-element-button.wp-block-button__linkGutenberg plugin
caption.wp-element-caption,
.wp-block-audio figcaption,
.wp-block-embed figcaption,
.wp-block-gallery figcaption,
.wp-block-image figcaption,
.wp-block-table figcaption,
.wp-block-video figcaption
Gutenberg plugin
cite.wp-block-pullquote citeGutenberg plugin

As you can see, it’s still early days and plenty still needs to move from the Gutenberg plugin into WordPress Core. But you can see how quick it would be to do something like style all headings in a theme globally without hunting for selectors in CSS files or DevTools.

Further, you can also start to see how the structure of theme.json sort of forms layers of specificity, going from global elements (e.g. headings) to individual elements (e.g. h1), and block-level styles (e.g. h1 contained in a block).

Additional information on JSON elements is available in this Make WordPress proposal and this open ticket in the Gutenberg plugin’s GitHub repo.

JSON and CSS specificity

Let’s keep talking about CSS specificity. I mentioned earlier that the JSON approach to styling establishes a hierarchy. And it’s true. Styles that are defined on JSON elements in theme.json are considered default theme styles. And anything that is set by the user in the Global Styles UI will override the defaults.

In other words: user styles carry more specificity than default theme styles. Let’s take a look at the Button block to get a feel for how this works.

I’m using Emptytheme, a blank WordPress theme with no CSS styling. I’m going to add a Button block on a new page.

The background color, text color, and rounded borders come from the block editor’s default settings.

OK, we know that WordPress Core ships with some light styling. Now, I’m going to switch to the default TT3 theme from WordPress 6.1 and activate it. If I refresh my page with the button, the button changes styles.

The background color, text color, and rounded corner styles have changed.

You can see exactly where those new styles are coming from in TT3’s theme.json file. This tells us that the JSON element styles take precedence over WordPress Core styles.

Now I am going to modify TT3 by overriding it with a theme.json file in a child theme, where the default background color of the Button block is set to red.

The default style for the Button block has been updated to red.

But notice the search button in that last screenshot. It should be red, too, right? That must mean it is styled at another level if the change I made is at the global level. If we want to change both buttons, we could do it at the user level using the Global Styles UI in the site editor.

We changed the background color of both buttons to blue and modified the text as well using the Global styles UI. Notice that the blue from there took precedence over the theme styles!

The Style Engine

That’s a very quick, but good, idea of how CSS specificity is managed in WordPress block themes. But it’s not the complete picture because it’s still unclear where those styles are generated. WordPress has its own default styles that come from somewhere, consumes the data in theme.json for more style rules, and overrides those with anything set in Global Styles.

Are those styles inline? Are they in a separate stylesheet? Maybe they’re injected on the page in a <script>?

That’s what the new Style Engine is hopefully going to solve. The Style Engine is a new API in WordPress 6.1 that is meant to bring consistency to how styles are generated and where styles are applied. In other words, it takes all of the possible sources of styling and is singularly responsible for properly generating block styles. I know, I know. Yet another abstraction on top of other abstractions just to author some styles. But having a centralized API for styles is probably the most elegant solution given that styles can come from a number of places.

We’re only getting a first look at the Style Engine. In fact, here’s what has been completed so far, according to the ticket:

  • Audit and consolidate where the code generates block support CSS in the back end so that they are delivered from the same place (as opposed to multiple places). This covers CSS rules such as margin, padding, typography, colors, and borders.
  • Remove repetitive layout-specific styles and generate semantic class names.
  • Reduce the number of inline style tags we print to the page for block, layout, and element support.

Basically, this is the foundation for establishing a single API that contains all the CSS style rules for a theme, wherever they come from. It cleans up the way WordPress would inject inline styles pre-6.1 and establishes a system for semantic class names.

Further details on the long-term and short-term goals of Style Engine can be found in this Make WordPress Core discussion. You can also follow the tracking issue and project board for more updates.

Working with JSON elements

We talked a bit about JSON elements in the theme.json file and how they are basically HTML primitives for defining default styles for things like headings, buttons, and links, among others. Now, let’s look at actually using a JSON element and how it behaves in various styling contexts.

JSON elements generally have two contexts: the global level and the block level. The global level styles are defined with less specificity than they are at the block level to ensure that block-specific styles take precedence for consistency wherever blocks are used.

Global styles for JSON elements

Let’s look at the new default TT3 theme and examine how its buttons are styled. The following is an abbreviated copy-paste of the TT3 theme.json file (here’s the full code) showing the global styles section, but you can find the original code here.

View code
{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {},
    // ...
  "styles": {
    // ...
    "elements": {
      "button": {
        "border": {
          "radius": "0"
        },
        "color": {
          "background": "var(--wp--preset--color--primary)",
          "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--contrast)"
        },
        ":hover": {
          "color": {
            "background": "var(--wp--preset--color--contrast)",
            "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--base)"
          }
        },
        ":focus": {
          "color": {
            "background": "var(--wp--preset--color--contrast)",
            "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--base)"
          }
        },
        ":active": {
          "color": {
            "background": "var(--wp--preset--color--secondary)",
            "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--base)"
          }
        }
      },
      "h1": {
        "typography": { }
      },
      // ...
      "heading": {
        "typography": {
          "fontWeight": "400",
          "lineHeight": "1.4"
      }
      },
      "link": {
        "color": {
          "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--contrast)"
        },
        ":hover": {
          "typography": {
            "textDecoration": "none"
          }
        },
        ":focus": {
          "typography": {
            "textDecoration": "underline dashed"
          }
        },
        ":active": {
          "color": {
            "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--secondary)"
          },
          "typography": {
            "textDecoration": "none"
          }
        },
        "typography": {
          "textDecoration": "underline"
        }
      }
     },
    // ...
  },
  "templateParts": {}
}

All buttons are styled at the global level (styles.elements.button).

Every button in the Twenty Twenty-Three theme shares the same background color, which is set to the --wp--preset--color--primary CSS variable, or #B4FD55.

We can confirm this in DevTools as well. Notice that a class called .wp-element-button is the selector. The same class is used to style the interactive states as well.

Again, this styling is all happening at the global level, coming from theme.json. Whenever we use a button, it is going to have the same background because they share the same selector and no other style rules are overriding it.

As an aside, WordPress 6.1 added support for styling interactive states for certain elements, like buttons and links, using pseudo-classes in theme.json — including :hover, :focus, and :active — or the Global Styles UI. Automattic Engineer Dave Smith demonstrates this feature in a YouTube video.

We could override the button’s background color either in theme.json (preferably in a child theme since we’re using a default WordPress theme) or in the Global Styles settings in the site editor (no child theme needed since it does not require a code change).

But then the buttons will change all at once. What if we want to override the background color when the button is part of a certain block? That’s where block-level styles come into play.

Block-level styles for elements

To understand how we can use and customize styles at the block level, let’s change the background color of the button that is contained in the Search block. Remember, there is a Button block, but what we’re doing is overriding the background color at the block level of the Search block. That way, we’re only applying the new color there as opposed to applying it globally to all buttons.

To do that, we define the styles on the styles.blocks object in theme.json. That’s right, if we define the global styles for all buttons on styles.elements, we can define the block-specific styles for button elements on styles.block, which follows a similar structure:

{
  "version": 2,
  // ...
  "styles": {
    // Global-level syles
    "elements": { },
    // Block-level styles
    "blocks": {
      "core/search": {
        "elements": {
          "button": {
            "color": {
              "background": "var(--wp--preset--color--quaternary)",
              "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--base)"
            }
          }
        },
        // ...
      }
    }
  }
}

See that? I set the background and text properties on styles.blocks.core/search.elements.button with two CSS variables that are preset in WordPress.

The result? The search button is now red (--wp--preset--color--quaternary), and the default Button block retains its bright green background.

We can see the change in DevTools as well.

The same is true if we want to style buttons that are included in other blocks. And buttons are merely one example, so let’s look at another one.

Example: Styling headings at each level

Let’s drive all this information home with an example. This time, we will:

  • Style all headings globally
  • Style all Heading 2 elements
  • Style Heading 2 elements in the Query Loop block

First, let’s start with the basic structure for theme.json:

{
  "version": 2,
  "styles": {
    // Global-level syles
    "elements": { },
    // Block-level styles
    "blocks": { }
  }
}

This establishes the outline for our global and block-level styles.

Style all headings globally

Let’s add the headings object to our global styles and apply some styles:

{
  "version": 2,
  "styles": {
    // Global-level syles
    "elements": {
      "heading": {
        "color": "var(--wp--preset--color--base)"
      },
    },
    // Block-level styles
    "blocks": { }
  }
}

That sets the color for all headings to the preset base color in WordPress. Let’s change the color and font size of Heading 2 elements at the global level as well:

{
  "version": 2,
  "styles": {
    // Global-level syles
    "elements": {
      "heading": {
        "color": "var(--wp--preset--color--base)"
      },
      "h2": {
        "color": "var(--wp--preset--color--primary)",
        "typography": {
          "fontSize": "clamp(2.625rem, calc(2.625rem + ((1vw - 0.48rem) * 8.4135)), 3.25rem)"
        }
      }
    },
    // Block-level styles
    "blocks": { }
  }
}

Now, all Heading 2 elements are set to be the primary preset color with a fluid font size. But maybe we want a fixed fontSize for the Heading 2 element when it is used in the Query Look block:

{
  "version": 2,
  "styles": {
    // Global-level syles
    "elements": {
      "heading": {
        "color": "var(--wp--preset--color--base)"
      },
      "h2": {
        "color": "var(--wp--preset--color--primary)",
        "typography": {
          "fontSize": "clamp(2.625rem, calc(2.625rem + ((1vw - 0.48rem) * 8.4135)), 3.25rem)"
        }
      }
    },
    // Block-level styles
    "blocks": {
      "core/query": {
        "elements": {
          "h2": {
            "typography": {
              "fontSize": 3.25rem
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Now we have three levels of styles for Heading 2 elements: all headings, all Heading 2 elements, and Heading 2 elements that are used in the Query Loop block.

Existing theme examples

While we only looked at the styling examples for buttons and headings in this article, WordPress 6.1 supports styling additional elements. There’s a table outlining them in the “Defining styles with JSON elements” section.

You’re probably wondering which JSON elements support which CSS properties, not to mention how you would even declare those. While we wait for official documentation, the best resources we have are going to be the theme.json files for existing themes. I’m going to provide links to themes based on the elements they customize, and point out what properties are customized.

ThemeWhat’s customizedTheme JSON
BlockbaseButtons, headings, links, core blocksSource code
Block CanvasButtons, headings, links, core blocksSource code
DiscoButtons, headings, core blocksSource code
FrostButtons, headings, links, captions, cite, core blocksSource code
PixlButtons, headings, links, core blocksSource code
RainfallButtons, headings, links, core blocksSource code
Twenty Twenty-ThreeButtons, headings, links, core blocksSource code
VivreButtons, headings, links, core blocksSource code

Be sure to give each theme.json file a good look because these themes include excellent examples of block-level styling on the styles.blocks object.

Wrapping up

Frequent changes to the full-site editor are becoming a major sources of irritation to many people, including tech-savvy Gutenberg users. Even very simple CSS rules, which work well with classic themes, don’t seem to work for block themes because of the new layers of specificity we covered earlier.

Regarding a GitHub proposal to re-design the site editor in a new browser mode, Sara Gooding writes in a WP Tavern post:

It’s easy to get lost while trying to get around the Site Editor unless you are working day and night inside the tool. The navigation is jumpy and confusing, especially when going from template browsing to template editing to modifying individual blocks.

Even as a keen early rider in the world of Gutenberg block editor and block-eye themes, I do have tons of my own frustrations. I’m optimistic, though, and anticipate that the site editor, once completed, will be a revolutionary tool for users and techno-savvy theme developers alike. This hopeful tweet already confirms that. In the meantime, it seems that we should be preparing for more changes, and perhaps even a bumpy ride.

References

I’m listing all of the resources I used while researching information for this article.

JSON elements

Global Styles

Style Engine


Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your own reflections on using the block themes and how you managing your CSS.


Managing CSS Styles in a WordPress Block Theme originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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Adding Fluid Typography Support to WordPress Block Themes https://css-tricks.com/fluid-typography-wordpress-block-themes/ https://css-tricks.com/fluid-typography-wordpress-block-themes/#respond Fri, 07 Oct 2022 13:19:23 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=373905 Fluid typography is a fancy way of “describing font properties, such as size or line height, that scale fluidly according to the size of the viewport”. It’s also known by other names, like responsive typography, flexible type, fluid type, …


Adding Fluid Typography Support to WordPress Block Themes originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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Fluid typography is a fancy way of “describing font properties, such as size or line height, that scale fluidly according to the size of the viewport”. It’s also known by other names, like responsive typography, flexible type, fluid type, viewport sized typography, fluid typography, and even responsive display text.

Here is an example of fluid typography that you can play live (courtesy of MDN documentation). CSS-Tricks has covered fluid typography extensively as well. But the point here is not to introduce you to fluid typography, but how to use it. More specifically, I want to show you how to implement fluid typography in WordPress 6.1 which recently introduced a fluid type feature directly in the WordPress Block Editor.

Open up your style.css file, slap in a style rule with fancy clamp()-ing on the font-size property, and good to go, right? Sure, that’ll give you fluid text, but to get Block Editor controls that make it possible to apply fluid type anywhere on your WordPress site? That requires a different approach in these block-ified days.

Fluid typography support in Gutenberg

Some WordPress theme developers have been using the clamp() function to define a fluid font-size, in their WordPress themes, even in newer “block” themes such as Twenty Twenty-Two, Twenty Twenty-Three, and others.

But the Gutenberg plugin — the one that contains experimental development for WordPress Block and Site Editor features — introduced support for fluid typography starting in version 13.8. That opened the door for implementing at a theme level so that fluid type can be applied to specific elements and blocks directly in the Block Editor. CSS-Tricks was even given a shout-out in the Pull Request that merged the feature.

That work became part of WordPress Core in WordPress 6.1. Rich Tabor, one of the earlier advocates of fluid typography in the Block Editor says:

[Fluid typography] is also a part of making WordPress more powerful, while not more complicated (which we all know is quite the challenge). […] Fluid typography just works. Actually, I think it works great.

This Make WordPress post highlights the approach taken to support the feature at the block level so that a fluid font size is applied to blocks dynamically by default. There are some benefits to this, of course:

  • It provides a way for theme authors to activate fluid typography without worrying about implementing it in code.
  • It applies fluid typography to specific typographical entities, such as elements or blocks in a maintainable and reusable way.
  • It allows flexibility in terms of font size units (e.g. px, rem, em, and %).

Now that this new feature is available in the WordPress Block Editor by default, theme authors can apply uniform fluid typography without writing additional code.

Blocks that support typography and spacing settings

Gutenberg 14.1 released on September 16, 2022, and introduced typographic settings on a bunch of blocks. That means the text settings for those blocks were set in CSS before and had to be changed in CSS as well. But those blocks now provide font and spacing controls in the Block Editor interface.

Illustrated list of WordPress blocks that received font and spacing controls in the Gutenberg plugin. There are 31 total blocks.

That work is currently slated to be added to WordPress 6.1, as detailed in this Make WordPress blog post. And with it is an expanded number of blocks that with typography support.

Illustrated list of 60 WordPress blocks gaining typography and font size support in WordPress 6.1.
WordPress blocks that will support typography settings in the upcoming WordPress 6.1 release.

Declaring fluid type in a WordPress block theme

So, how do we put this new fluid typography to use in WordPress? The answer is in theme.json, a new-ish file specific to block themes that contains a bunch of theme configurations in key:value pairs.

Let’s look at a rule for a large font in theme.json where contentSize: 768px and we’re working with a widesize: 1600px layout. This is how we can specify a CSS font-size using the clamp() function:

"settings": {
  "appearanceTools": true,
  "layout": {
    "contentSize": "768px",
    "wideSize": "1600px"
  },
  "typography": {
    "fontSizes": [ 
      {
        "name": "Large",
        "size": "clamp(2.25rem, 6vw, 3rem)",
        "slug": "large"
      }
    ]
  }
}

As of WordPress 6.1, only rem, em and px units are supported.

That’s great and works, but with the new fluid type feature we would actually use a different approach. First, we opt into fluid typography on settings.typography, which has a new fluid property:

"settings": {
  "typography": {
    "fluid": true
  }
}

Then we specify our settings.fontSizes like before, but with a new fluidSize property where we can set the min and max size values for our fluid type range.

"settings": {
  "appearanceTools": true,
  "layout": {
    "contentSize": "768px",
    "wideSize": "1600px"
  },
  "typography": {
    "fontSizes": [ 
      {
        "size": "2.25rem",
        "fluidSize": {
          "min": "2.25rem",
          "max": "3rem"
        },
        "slug": "large",
        "name": "Large"
      }
    ]
  }
}

That’s really it. We just added fluid type to a font size called “Large” with a range that starts at 2.25rem and scales up to 3rem. Now, we can apply the “Large” font to any block with font settings.

How does this works under the hood? Rich Tabor offers a nice explanation, as does this Pull Request in GitHub. In short, WordPress converts the theme.json properties into the following CSS rule:

.has-large-font-size {
  font-size: clamp(36px, calc(2.25rem + ((1vw - 7.68px) * 1.4423)), 48px);
}

…which is applied to the element, say a Paragraph Block:

<p class="has-large-font-size">...</p>

Initially, I found it hard to understand and wrap around in my mind the concept of the CSS clamp() function without also learning about the min(), max(), and calc() functions. This calculator tool helped me quite a bit, especially for determining which values to use in my own theme projects.

For demonstration purposes, let’s use the calculator to define our font-size range so that the size is 36px at a 768px viewport width and 48px at a 1600px viewport width.

Entering values into the online calculator for fluid typography.

The calculator automatically generates the following CSS:

/* 36px @ 768px increasing to 48px @ 1600px */
font-size: clamp(36px, calc(2.25rem + ((1vw - 7.68px) * 1.4423)), 48px);

The calculator provide options to select input units as px, rem, and em. If we select rem unit, the calculator generates the following clamp() value:

/* 2.25rem @ 48rem increasing to 3rem @ 100rem */
font-size: clamp(2.25rem, calc(2.25rem + ((1vw - 0.48rem) * 1.4423)), 3rem);

So, those minimum and maximum values correspond to the the fluidSize.min and fluidSize.max values in theme.json. The min value is applied at viewports that are 768px wide and below. Then the font-size scales up as the viewport width grows. If the viewport is wider than 1600px, the max is applied and the font-size is capped there.

Examples

There are detailed testing instructions in the merged Pull Request that introduced the feature. There are even more testing instructions from Justin Tadlock’s pre-prelease post on Make WordPress.

Example 1: Setting a new fluid font setting

Let’s start with Justin’s set of instructions. I used in a modified version of the default Twenty Twenty-Three theme that is currently under development.

First, let’s make sure we’re running the Gutenberg plugin (13.8 and up) or WordPress 6.1, then opt into fluid type on the settings.typography.fluid property in the theme.json file:

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {
    "appearanceTools": true,
    "layout": {
      "contentSize": "768px",
      "wideSize": "1600px"
    },
    "typography": {
      "fluid": true
    }
  }
}

Now, let’s drop the settings.typography.fontSizes examples in there:

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {
    "appearanceTools": true,
    "layout": {
      "contentSize": "768px",
      "wideSize": "1600px"
    },
    "typography": {
      "fluid": true
      "fontSizes": [
        {
          "name": "Normal",
          "size": "1.125rem",
          "fluid": {
            "min": "1rem",
            "max": "1.5rem"
          },
          "slug": "normal"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

If everything is working correctly, we can now head into the WordPress Block Editor and apply the “Normal” font setting to our block:

The WordPress Block Editor interface showing a paragraph block and the fluid typography settings for it.

Nice! And if we save and inspect that element on the front end, this is the markup:

Inspecting the WordPress Paragraph block in DevTools.

Very good. Now let’s make sure the CSS is actually there:

DevTools showing the font-size custom property for the WordPress Paragraph block's fluid typography.

Good, good. Let’s expose that CSS custom property to see if it’s really clampin’ things:

Revealing the custom property value in DevTools, showing a CSS clamp function.

Looks like everything is working just as we want it! Let’s look at another example…

Example 2: Excluding a font setting from fluid type

This time, let’s follow the instructions from the merged Pull Request with a nod to this example by Carolina Nymark that shows how we can disable fluid type on a specific font setting.

I used the empty theme as advised in the instructions and opened up the theme.json file for testing. First, we opt into fluid type exactly as we did before:

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {
    "appearanceTools": true,
    "layout": {
      "contentSize": "768px",
      "wideSize": "1000px"
    },
    "typography": {
      "fluid": true
    }
  }
}

This time, we’re working with smaller wideSize value of 1000px instead of 1600px. This should allow us to see fluid type working in an exact range.

OK, on to defining some custom font sizes under settings.typography.fontSizes:

{
  "version": 2,
  "settings": {
    "typography": {
      "fluid": true,
      "fontSizes": [
        {
          "size": ".875rem",
          "fluid": {
            "min": "0.875rem",
            "max": "1rem"
        },
          "slug": "small",
          "name": "Small"
        },
        {
          "size": "1rem",
          "fluid": {
            "min": "1rem",
            "max": "1.5rem"
          },
          "slug": "normal",
          "name": "Normal"
        },
        {
          "size": "1.5rem",
          "fluid": {
            "min": "1.5rem",
            "max": "2rem"
          },
          "slug": "large",
          "name": "Large"
        },
        {
          "size": "2.25rem",
          "fluid": false,
          "slug": "x-large",
          "name": "Extra large"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Notice that we’ve applied the fluid type feature only on the “Normal”, “Medium”, and “Large” font settings. “Extra Large” is the odd one out where the fluid object is set to false.

the WordPress Block Editor interface with four Paragraph blocks, each at a different font size setting.

What WordPress does from here — via the Gutenberg style engine — is apply the properties we set into CSS clamp() functions for each font size setting that has opted into fluid type and a single size value for the Extra Large setting:

--wp--preset--font-size--small: clamp(0.875rem, 0.875rem + ((1vw - 0.48rem) * 0.24), 1rem);
--wp--preset--font-size--medium: clamp(1rem, 1rem + ((1vw - 0.48rem) * 0.962), 1.5rem);
--wp--preset--font-size--large: clamp(1.5rem, 1.5rem + ((1vw - 0.48rem) * 0.962), 2rem);
--wp--preset--font-size--x-large: 2.25rem;

Let’s check the markup on the front end:

Inspecting the WordPress Paragraph blocks in DevTools.

Good start! Let’s confirm that the .has-x-large-font-size class is excluded from fluid type:

Showing the font-size custom property for the Extra Large font setting in DevTools.

If we expose the --wp--preset--font-size--x-large variable, we’ll see it’s set to 2.25rem.

Revealing the Extra Large font size custom property value, showing 2.25rem.

That’s exactly what we want!

Block themes that support fluid typography

Many WordPress themes already make use of the clamp() function for fluid type in both block and classic themes. A good example of fluid typography use is the recently released Twenty Twenty-Three default theme.

I’ve reviewed all the block themes from WordPress Block Theme directory, examining theme.json file of each theme and to see just how many block themes currently support fluid typography — not the new feature since it’s still in the Gutenberg plugin as of this writing — using the CSS clamp() function. Of the 146 themes I reviewed, the majority of them used a clamp() function to define spacing. A little more than half of them used clamp() to define font sizes. The Alara theme is the only one to use clamp() for defining the layout container sizes.

Understandably, only a few recently released themes contain the new fluid typography feature. But here are the ones I found that define it in theme.json:

And if you read my previous post here on CSS-Tricks, the TT2 Gopher Blocks theme I used for the demo has also been updated to support the fluid typography feature.

Selected reactions to the WordPress fluid typography features

Having fluid typography in WordPress at the settings level is super exciting! I thought I’d share some thoughts from folks in the WordPress developer community who have commented on it.

Matias Ventura, the lead architect of the Gutenberg project:

Rich Tabor:

As one of the bigger efforts towards making publishing beautifully rich pages in WordPress, fluid typography is a pretty big experience win for both the folks building with WordPress — and those consuming the content.

Automattic developer Ramon Dodd commented in the Pull Request:

Contrast that idea with font sizes that respond to specific viewport sizes, such as those defined by media queries, but do nothing in between those sizes. theme.json already allows authors to insert their own fluid font size values. This won’t change, but this PR offers it to folks who don’t want to worry about the implementation details.

Nick Croft, author of GenesisWP:

Brian Garner, designer and principal developer advocate at WPEngine:

A few developers think some features should be an opt-in. Jason Crist of Automattic says:

I love the power of fluid typography, however I also don’t believe that it should just be enabled by default. It’s usage (and the details of it) are important design decisions that should be made carefully.

You can also find a bunch more comments in the official testing instructions for the feature.

Wrapping up

The fluid typography feature in WordPress is still in active development at the time of this writing. So, right now, theme authors should proceed to use it, but with caution and expect some possible changes before it is officially released. Justin cautions theme authors using this feature and suggests to keep eye on the following two GitHub issues:

There is also still lots of ongoing work on typography and other design-related WordPress tools. If you’re interested, watch this typography tracking GitHub ticket and design tools related GitHub issues.

Resources

I used the following articles when researching fluid type and how WordPress is implementing it as a feature.

Tutorials and opinions

CSS-Tricks


Adding Fluid Typography Support to WordPress Block Themes originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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How To Customize WordPress Block Theme Cover Templates with Dynamic Post Feature Images https://css-tricks.com/how-to-customize-wordpress-block-theme-cover-templates-with-dynamic-post-feature-images/ https://css-tricks.com/how-to-customize-wordpress-block-theme-cover-templates-with-dynamic-post-feature-images/#comments Fri, 23 Sep 2022 16:15:19 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=373057 If we browse the WordPress theme directory, a majority of themes showcase cover images. It is a feature in popular demand. The cover page trend is true even in the block theme directory screenshots as well.

Let’s consider the …


How To Customize WordPress Block Theme Cover Templates with Dynamic Post Feature Images originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

]]>
If we browse the WordPress theme directory, a majority of themes showcase cover images. It is a feature in popular demand. The cover page trend is true even in the block theme directory screenshots as well.

Let’s consider the following example from Twenty Twenty (a classic theme) which includes a cover template that can be used to display both in single post and page, where the post’s featured image displays at the top that stretches across the browser screen, with post title and other desired meta data below. Cover templates allow creating content that stands out from the traditional constraints of displaying content.

Screenshot showing a single post with Twenty Twenty cover template.

Creating cover templates currently requires writing PHP code as captured here in the Twenty Twenty default theme’s cover template. If we look at the template-parts/content-cover.php file, it contains the code for displaying content when the cover-template is used.

Thus, it is not possible to create a customized cover page if you do not possess a deep knowledge of PHP. For many ordinary WordPress users, the only option is to use plugin like Custom Post Type UI as described in this short video.

Cover sections in block themes

Since WordPress 5.8, theme authors could create custom templates (like single post, author, category, and others) with a top hero section using block editor cover block and bundled into their themes with minimal or no code.

Before diving into how top large cover sections are created in block themes templates, let’s briefly look at the two block themes Twenty Twenty-Two and Wabi by Rich Tabor (full review here).

Screenshot showing cover page thumbnails of Twenty Twenty-Two (left) and Wabi (right) themes.

Behind-the-scenes, Twenty Twenty-Two implements a large header by adding a hidden image stored as a pattern in the header-dark-large parts. Whereas, in the Wabi theme, the large header background color in a single post is implemented with accent background colors and a 50px height spacer block (lines: 5-9). The accent colors are managed by the assets/js/accent-colors.js file.

Many others chose to create a top cover section by using cover block, which allowed users to change the background color and add a static image from Media Library or upload from media devices – without writing any code. With this approach, images from the post featured image block had to be added manually to each single post if you wanted to have the post featured image as the background image in single posts.

Cover Blocks with dynamic post featured image

WordPress 6.0 made available another cool featured image cover blocks feature, which allows use of the featured image of any post or page as the background image in the cover block.

In the following short video, Automattic engineers discuss adding featured images to cover blocks with an example from Archeo theme:

The image block including post featured image block can be further customized using duotone color in theme.json as discussed in this short Connecting The Dots YouTube video (Automattic’s Anne McCarthy).

Use case examples (Wei, Bright Mode)

If we browse the thumbnail images in the block theme directory, we see a majority of them include large cover header sections. If we dig into their template files, they make use of cover blocks with static image background.

Some recently developed themes are using cover blocks with the dynamic post featured image background (e.g., Archeo, Wei, Frost, Bright Mode, etc.). A brief overview of the new feature is available in this short GitHub video.

Screenshot showing cover page thumbnails of Wei (left) and Bright-mode (right) themes.

Combining dynamic accent colors features of Wabi theme with cover and post featured image blocks, Rich Tabor further expands his creativity in his new Wei theme (full review available here) to display dynamic cover images from a single post.

In his Wei announcement post, Rich Tabor writes: “Behind-the-scenes, the single.html template is using a Cover block that leverages the post’s featured image. Then the duotone is applied by the color scheme assigned to the post. This way, just about any image will look fine”.

If you would like to dig deeper into the Wei theme’s header cover block and learn how to create your own, here is a short video from Fränk Klein (WP Development Courses) who explains step-by-step how it was created.

Similar to the Wei theme, Brian Gardner also makes use of cover block with post featured image block in his recent Bright Mode theme to display standout contents with vibrant colors.

Brian told WPTavern: “he loves most about the theme is the way the Cover Block is used on single pages. It pulls the featured image into the Cover block and also offers custom block styles for shadows and full-height options. […] I feel as though this really presents what’s possible with modern WordPress.”

For more detail, here is its demo site and full review of Brian’s Bright Mode theme.

Designing complex layouts with block editor

Recently, WordPress launched a new block editor designed landing homepage and a download page. The announcement attracted mixed reactions from its readers, including from Matt Mullenweg (Automattic) who commented on the 33-days taken to design and launch such a “simple page”. You can find additional behind the scene discussions here.

In response, Jamie Marsland of Pootlepress created this YouTube video where he reproduces a nearly identical homepage in nearly 20 minutes.

Commenting on Marsland video, Sarah Gooding of WP Travern writes: “He is what one might describe as a power user with the block editor. He can quickly shuffle rows, columns, and groups around, adjusting padding and margins as necessary, and assign each section the corresponding color for the design. At this point, this is not something most average WordPress users could do.”

Though the block editor has come a long way, there are still growing pain points to most theme developers and ordinary users to create and design complex layouts with it.

Adding enhancement to TT2 Gopher blocks

In this section, I will walk you through how I added enhancements to the TT2 Gopher Blocks theme that I referenced in my previous article. Inspired by cover blocks from themes that I described earlier, I wanted to add three cover templates (author, category, and single-cover) to the theme.

While browsing websites, we notice two types of cover headers. The mostly observed header is cover section blended with the site header (site title and top navigation) into the cover block (e.g., Twenty Twenty, Twenty Twenty-Two, Wei, Wabi, Frost, Bright Mode, etc.). We also find header cover section which is not blended with site header and positioned just underneath, such as this BBC Future website. For TT2 Gopher blocks theme, I opted for the latter.

Creating cover header patterns

First, let’s create cover header patterns for author, single, and others (categories, tags) templates using cover blocks. Then we will convert them into patterns (as described here previously) and call the respective header cover patterns into the templates.

If you are familiar to working with the block editor, design your header section using cover blocks in the site editor and then convert the cover header code into patterns. However, if you are not familiar with FSE editor, then the easiest way is to copy patterns from the patterns directory in a post, make necessary modification and convert it into a pattern.

In my previous CSS-Tricks article, I discussed in detail on creating and using block patterns. Here is a brief overview of the workflow that I am using to create the single post cover header pattern:

Single post cover header pattern

Step 1: Using FSE interface, let’s create a new blank file and start building block structure as shown on the left panel.

Screenshot of the WordPress UI with the Full Site Editor. A block is being assembled with post date, categories, and post title.

Alternatively, this could be done in a post or page first, and then copy and paste the markup into a pattern file, later.

Step 2: Next, to covert the above markup into a pattern, first we should copy its code markup and paste into a new /patterns/header-single-cover.php in our code editor. We should also add required pattern file header markup (e.g., title, slug, categories, inserter, etc.).

Here is the entire code of the /patterns/header-single-cover.php file:

<?php
    /**
     * Title: Header cover single
     * Slug: tt2gopher/header-cover-single
     * Categories: tt2gopher-header
     * Block Types: core/template-part/header
     * inserter: yes
     */
?>
    <!-- wp:cover {"url":"https://pd.w.org/2022/08/15062ed5f5707b5c5.85694718-2048x1536.jpg","id":100,"dimRatio":0,"overlayColor":"foreground","focalPoint":{"x":"0.40","y":"0.37"},"minHeight":50,"minHeightUnit":"vh","isDark":false,"align":"full","style":{"color":{"duotone":["#000000","#00a5ff"]},"spacing":{"margin":{"top":"0px","bottom":"0px"}}}} -->
    <div class="wp-block-cover alignfull is-light" style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;min-height:50vh"><span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-cover__background has-foreground-background-color has-background-dim-0 has-background-dim"></span><img class="wp-block-cover__image-background wp-image-100" alt="" src="https://pd.w.org/2022/08/15062ed5f5707b5c5.85694718-2048x1536.jpg" style="object-position:40% 37%" data-object-fit="cover" data-object-position="40% 37%"/><div class="wp-block-cover__inner-container"><!-- wp:group {"style":{"elements":{"link":{"color":{"text":"var:preset|color|base"}}},"spacing":{"blockGap":"10px"}},"textColor":"base","layout":{"wideSize":"800px"}} -->
    <div class="wp-block-group has-base-color has-text-color has-link-color"><!-- wp:group {"style":{"spacing":{"blockGap":"10px"}},"textColor":"primary","layout":{"type":"flex","flexWrap":"nowrap","justifyContent":"center"},"fontSize":"small"} -->
    <div class="wp-block-group has-primary-color has-text-color has-small-font-size"><!-- wp:post-date {"textColor":"foreground"} /-->
    
    <!-- wp:paragraph -->
    <p>|</p>
    <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
    
    <!-- wp:post-terms {"term":"category","style":{"elements":{"link":{"color":{"text":"var:preset|color|foreground"}}}}} /--></div>
    <!-- /wp:group -->
    
    <!-- wp:post-title {"textAlign":"center","level":1,"style":{"typography":{"fontStyle":"normal","fontWeight":"400"}},"textColor":"foreground","fontSize":"max-60"} /--></div>
    <!-- /wp:group --></div></div>
    <!-- /wp:cover -->

Step 3: For this demo, I have used this image from photos directory as a filler background image, and applied the Midnight duotone color. To use post featured image dynamically, we should add "useFeaturedImage":true in the cover block by replacing the above filler image link just before the "dimRatio":50 such that the line 10 should look like the following:

<!-- wp:cover {"useFeaturedImage":true,"dimRatio":0,"overlayColor":"foreground","focalPoint":{"x":"0.40","y":"0.37"},"minHeight":50,"minHeightUnit":"vh","isDark":false,"align":"full","style":{"color":{"duotone":["#000000","#00a5ff"]},"spacing":{"margin":{"top":"0px","bottom":"0px"}}}} -->

Alternatively, the filler image could also be changed by clicking Replace and selecting Use featured image option:

Screenshot of the WordPress UI with ‘Replace’ and ‘Use featured image’ selected.

Now, the header cover patterns should be visible in the patterns inserter panel for use anywhere in the templates, posts, and pages.

Archive cover headers

Inspired by this WP Tavern post and a step-by-step walkthrough to create an author template header, I wanted to create a similar cover header and add to TT2 Gopher theme, too.

First, let’s create the archive cover header pattern for author.html the template as well, following the above workflow. In this case, I am creating this in a new blank page, by adding blocks (as shown below in list view):

Screenshot of the WordPress UI for an Author page using a single post header cover.

In the background for the cover, I used the same image used in the single post header cover.

Because we would like to display a short author biography on the author block, a biographical statement should also be added to the user profile page, or else a blank space will be displayed in the front-end.

The following is the markup code of the header-author-cover, that we will use pattern, in the next step:

    <!-- wp:cover {"url":"https://pd.w.org/2022/03/8256241eff74ef542.61868565.jpeg","id":226,"dimRatio":10,"focalPoint":{"x":"0.50","y":"0.75"},"minHeight":200,"minHeightUnit":"px","isDark":false,"align":"full","style":{"color":{"duotone":["#000000","#00a5ff"]}}} -->
    <div class="wp-block-cover alignfull is-light" style="min-height:200px"><span aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-cover__background has-background-dim-10 has-background-dim"></span><img class="wp-block-cover__image-background wp-image-226" alt="" src="https://pd.w.org/2022/03/8256241eff74ef542.61868565.jpeg" style="object-position:50% 75%" data-object-fit="cover" data-object-position="50% 75%"/><div class="wp-block-cover__inner-container"><!-- wp:group {"layout":{"inherit":true}} -->
    <div class="wp-block-group"><!-- wp:group {"style":{"spacing":{"padding":{"top":"1rem","right":"2rem","bottom":"1rem","left":"2rem"}}},"layout":{"type":"flex","flexWrap":"nowrap"}} -->
    <div class="wp-block-group" style="padding-top:1rem;padding-right:2rem;padding-bottom:1rem;padding-left:2rem"><!-- wp:avatar {"size":70,"isLink":true,"align":"right","style":{"border":{"radius":"9999px"}}} /-->
    
    <!-- wp:group -->
    <div class="wp-block-group"><!-- wp:group {"style":{"spacing":{"blockGap":"6px"}},"layout":{"type":"flex"},"fontSize":"large"} -->
    <div class="wp-block-group has-large-font-size"><!-- wp:paragraph {"textColor":"foreground","fontSize":"large"} -->
    <p class="has-foreground-color has-text-color has-large-font-size">Published by:</p>
    <!-- /wp:paragraph -->
    
    <!-- wp:post-author-name {"isLink":true,"style":{"typography":{"fontStyle":"large","fontWeight":"600"},"elements":{"link":{"color":{"text":"var:preset|color|background"}}}},"textColor":"foreground"} /--></div>
    <!-- /wp:group -->
    
    <!-- wp:post-author-biography {"textColor":"foreground","fontSize":"small"} /-->
    
    <!-- wp:separator {"backgroundColor":"foreground"} -->
    <hr class="wp-block-separator has-text-color has-foreground-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-foreground-background-color has-background"/>
    <!-- /wp:separator --></div>
    <!-- /wp:group --></div>
    <!-- /wp:group --></div>
    <!-- /wp:group --></div></div>
    <!-- /wp:cover -->

To covert the markup into a header-author-cover pattern, we should add the required pattern file header markup as described earlier. By editing the header-author-cover.php pattern, we can create similar header covers for tags, taxonomy, and other custom templates.

The header-category-cover.php pattern for my category.html template is available on GitHub.

Creating Templates with header cover blocks

WordPress 6.0 and the recent Gutenberg 13.7 extended template creating features into the block editor, thus making it possible for many WordPress users, without deep knowledge of coding, to create their customized templates.

For more detailed information and use cases, here is a thorough customization note by Justin Tadlock.

Block editor allows creating various types of templates, including cover templates. Let’s briefly overview how combining cover block and post featured image block with new template UI makes easy to create various types of cover custom templates even with no or low coding skills.

Screenshot of the WordPress UI displaying available templates provided by TT2 Gopher Blocks – Single, Page, Index, Home, 404, Blank, and Archive.

Creating templates has been made much easier with Gutenberg 13.7. How to create block templates with codes and in site editor is described in the Theme handbook and in my previous article.

Author template with cover block

Top (header section) markup of the author.html template is shown below (line 6):

    <!-- wp:template-part {"slug":"header-small-dark","theme":"TT2-GOPHER-V2","tagName":"header"} /-->
    
    <!-- wp:group {"tagName":"main","style":{"spacing":{"margin":{"top":"0","bottom":"0px"},"padding":{"bottom":"80px"},"blockGap":"0px"}},"className":"site-content"} -->
    <main class="wp-block-group site-content" style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0px;padding-bottom:80px">
    
        <!-- wp:pattern {"slug":"tt2gopher/header-author-cover"} /-->
    
    ...
    ...
    ...
    <!-- /wp:group -->
    ...

Here are screenshots of cover headers for the author.html and category.html templates:

Screenshot of Author Page header (left) with author name, avatar, and biography. And screenshot of Category Page header (right).

The entire code for both templates is available on GitHub.

Single post with cover block

To display cover block in our single post, we have to call the header-cover-single pattern below the header section (line 3):

    <!-- wp:template-part {"slug":"header-small-dark","tagName":"header"} /-->
    
     <!-- wp:pattern {"slug":"tt2gopher/header-cover-single"} /-->
    
    <!-- wp:spacer {"height":32} -->
    <div style="height:32px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
    <!-- /wp:spacer -->
    ....
    ....
    ....

Here is a screen capture showing the front-end view of the single post with the header cover section:

Screenshot of TT2 Gopher Blocks Single Post with Header Cover Section Pattern.

The entire single-cover.html template is available on GitHub.

You can find additional step-by-step walkthrough tutorials on creating a hero header post section and using post featured image background cover blocks on WP Tavern and Full Site Editing website.

There you have it!

Helpful Resources

Blog posts


Even though the block themes, in general, are getting lots of pushback from WordPress community members, in my opinion, they are the future of WordPress, too. With block themes, amateur theme authors, without the deep coding skills and mastery of PHP and JavaScript languages, can now create themes with complex layouts with a hero cover section as described in this article combined with patterns and style variations.

As an early Gutenberg user, I couldn’t be more excited with the new theming tools like create block theme plugin and others which allow theme authors to achieve the following directly from block editor UI without writing any code:

  • (i) create
  • (ii) overwrite theme files and export
  • (iii) generate blank or a child theme, and
  • (iv) modify and save style variation of the current theme

Additionally, the recent iterations of the Gutenberg plugin allow enabling fluid typography and layout alignments and other stylistic controls using only theme.json file without JavaScript and a line of CSS rules.

Thank you for reading and share your comments and thoughts below!


How To Customize WordPress Block Theme Cover Templates with Dynamic Post Feature Images originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

]]>
https://css-tricks.com/how-to-customize-wordpress-block-theme-cover-templates-with-dynamic-post-feature-images/feed/ 1 https://www.youtube.com/embed/2-1kwfDzZXg Using the Post Featured Image with the Cover Block nonadult 373057
How to Create Block Theme Patterns in WordPress 6.0 https://css-tricks.com/how-to-create-block-theme-patterns-in-wordpress-6-0/ https://css-tricks.com/how-to-create-block-theme-patterns-in-wordpress-6-0/#comments Wed, 01 Jun 2022 15:30:15 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=365841 Block patterns, also frequently referred to as sections, were introduced in WordPress 5.5 to allow users to build and share predefined block layouts in the pattern directory. The directory is the home of a wide range of …


How to Create Block Theme Patterns in WordPress 6.0 originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

]]>
Block patterns, also frequently referred to as sections, were introduced in WordPress 5.5 to allow users to build and share predefined block layouts in the pattern directory. The directory is the home of a wide range of curated patterns designed by the WordPress community. These patterns are available in simple copy and paste format, require no coding knowledge and thus are a big time saver for users.

Despite many articles on patterns, there is a lack of comprehensive and up-to-date articles on pattern creation covering the latest enhanced features. This article aims to fill the gap with a focus on the recent enhanced features like creating patterns without registration and offer an up-to-date step-by-step guide to create and use them in block themes for novices and experienced authors.

Since the launch of WordPress 5.9 and the Twenty Twenty-Two (TT2) default theme, the use of block patterns in block themes has proliferated. I have been a big fan of block patterns and have created and used them in my block themes.

The new WordPress 6.0 offers three major patterns feature enhancements to authors:

  • Allowing pattern registration through /patterns folder (similar to /parts, /templates, and /styles registration).
  • Registering patterns from the public patterns directory using the theme.json.
  • Adding patterns that can be offered to the user when creating a new page.

In an introductory Exploring WordPress 6.0 video, Automattic product liaison Ann McCathy highlights some newly enhanced patterns features (starting at 15:00) and discusses future patterns enhancement plans — which include patterns as sectioning elements, providing options to pick pattern on page creation, integrating pattern directory search, and more.

Prerequisites

The article assumes that readers have basic knowledge of WordPress full site editing (FSE) interface and block themes. The Block Editor Handbook and Full Site Editing website provide the most up-to-date tutorial guides to learn all FSE features, including block themes and patterns discussed in this article.

Section 1: Evolving approaches to creating block patterns

The initial approach to creating block patterns required the use of block pattern API either as a custom plugin or directly registered in the functions.php file to bundle with a block theme. The newly launched WordPress 6.0 introduced several new and enhanced features working with patterns and themes, including pattern registration via a /patterns folder and a page creation pattern modal.

For background, let’s first briefly overview how the pattern registration workflow evolved from using the register pattern API to directly loading without registration.

Use case example 1: Twenty Twenty-One

The default Twenty Twenty-One theme (TT1) and TT1 Blocks theme (a sibling of TT1) showcase how block patterns can be registered in the theme’s functions.php. In the TT1 Blocks experimental-theme, this single block-pattern.php file containing eight block patterns is added to the functions.php as an include as shown here.

A custom block pattern needs to be registered using the register_block_pattern function, which receives two arguments — title (name of the patterns) and properties (an array describing properties of the pattern).

Here is an example of registering a simple “Hello World” paragraph pattern from this Theme Shaper article:

register_block_pattern(
    'my-plugin/hello-world',
    array(
        'title'   => __( 'Hello World', 'my-plugin' ),
        'content' => "<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Hello World</p>\n<!-- /wp:paragraph -->",
    )
);

After registration, the register_block_pattern() function should be called from a handler attached to the init hook as described here.

 function my_plugin_register_my_patterns() {
    register_block_pattern( ... );
  }

  add_action( 'init', 'my_plugin_register_my_patterns' );

Once block patterns are registered they are visible in the block editor. More detailed documentation is found in this Block Pattern Registration.

Block pattern properties

In addition to required title and content properties, the block editor handbook lists the following optional pattern properties:

  • title (required): A human-readable title for the pattern.
  • content (required): Block HTML Markup for the pattern.
  • description (optional): A visually hidden text used to describe the pattern in the inserter. A description is optional but it is strongly encouraged when the title does not fully describe what the pattern does. The description will help users discover the pattern while searching.
  • categories (optional): An array of registered pattern categories used to group block patterns. Block patterns can be shown on multiple categories. A category must be registered separately in order to be used here.
  • keywords (optional): An array of aliases or keywords that help users discover the pattern while searching.
  • viewportWidth (optional): An integer specifying the intended width of the pattern to allow for a scaled preview of the pattern in the inserter.
  • blockTypes (optional): An array of block types that the pattern is intended to be used with. Each value needs to be the declared block’s name.
  • inserter (optional): By default, all patterns will appear in the inserter. To hide a pattern so that it can only be inserted programmatically, set the inserter to false.

The following is an example of a quote pattern plugin code snippets taken from the WordPress blog.

/*
Plugin Name: Quote Pattern Example Plugin
*/

register_block_pattern(
    'my-plugin/my-quote-pattern',
     array(
      'title'       => __( 'Quote with Avatar', 'my-plugin' ),
      'categories'  => array( 'text' ),
      'description' => _x( 'A big quote with an avatar".', 'Block pattern description', 'my-plugin' ),
      'content'     => '<!-- wp:group --><div class="wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container"><!-- wp:separator {"className":"is-style-default"} --><hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-default"/><!-- /wp:separator --><!-- wp:image {"align":"center","id":553,"width":150,"height":150,"sizeSlug":"large","linkDestination":"none","className":"is-style-rounded"} --><div class="wp-block-image is-style-rounded"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img src="https://blockpatterndesigns.mystagingwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/StockSnap_HQR8BJFZID-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-553" width="150" height="150"/></figure></div><!-- /wp:image --><!-- wp:quote {"align":"center","className":"is-style-large"} --><blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center is-style-large"><p>"Contributing makes me feel like I\'m being useful to the planet."</p><cite>— Anna Wong, <em>Volunteer</em></cite></blockquote><!-- /wp:quote --><!-- wp:separator {"className":"is-style-default"} --><hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-default"/><!-- /wp:separator --></div></div><!-- /wp:group -->',
      )
);

Using patterns in a template file

Once patterns are created, they can be used in a theme template file with the following block markup:

<!-- wp:pattern {"slug":"prefix/pattern-slug"} /-->

An example from this GitHub repository shows the use of “footer-with-background” pattern slug with “tt2gopher” prefix in TT2 Gopher blocks theme.

Early adopters of block themes and Gutenberg plugin took advantage of patterns in classic themes as well. The default Twenty Twenty and my favorite Eksell themes (a demo site here) are good examples that showcase how pattern features can be added to classic themes.

Use case example 2: Twenty Twenty-Two

If a theme includes only a few patterns, the development and maintenance are fairly manageable. However, if a block theme includes many patterns, like in TT2 theme, then the pattern.php file becomes very large and hard to read. The default TT2 theme, which bundles more than 60 patterns, showcases a refactored pattern registration workflow structure that is easier to read and maintain.

Taking examples from the TT2 theme, let’s briefly discuss how this simplified workflow works.

2.1: Registering Patterns Categories

For demonstration purposes, I created a TT2 child theme and set it up on my local test site with some dummy content. Following TT2, I registered footer-with-background and added to the following pattern categories array list in its block-patterns.php file.

/**
* Registers block patterns and categories.
*/
function twentytwentytwo_register_block_patterns() {
	$block_pattern_categories = array(
		'footer'   => array( 'label' => __( 'Footers', 'twentytwentytwo' ) ),
		'header'   => array( 'label' => __( 'Headers', 'twentytwentytwo' ) ),
		'pages'    => array( 'label' => __( 'Pages', 'twentytwentytwo' ) ),
                // ...
	);

	/**
	 * Filters the theme block pattern categories.
	 */
	$block_pattern_categories = apply_filters( 'twentytwentytwo_block_pattern_categories', $block_pattern_categories );

	foreach ( $block_pattern_categories as $name => $properties ) {
		if ( ! WP_Block_Pattern_Categories_Registry::get_instance()->is_registered( $name ) ) {
			register_block_pattern_category( $name, $properties );
		}
	}

	$block_patterns = array(
		'footer-default',
		'footer-dark',
		'footer-with-background',
		//...
		'header-default',
		'header-large-dark',
		'header-small-dark',
		'hidden-404',
		'hidden-bird',
		//...
	);

	/**
	 * Filters the theme block patterns.
	 */
	$block_patterns = apply_filters( 'twentytwentytwo_block_patterns', $block_patterns );

	foreach ( $block_patterns as $block_pattern ) {
		$pattern_file = get_theme_file_path( '/inc/patterns/' . $block_pattern . '.php' );

		register_block_pattern(
			'twentytwentytwo/' . $block_pattern,
			require $pattern_file
		);
	}
}
add_action( 'init', 'twentytwentytwo_register_block_patterns', 9 );

In this code example, each pattern listed in the $block_patterns = array() is called by foreach() function which requires a patterns directory file with the listed pattern name in the array which we will add in the next step.

2.2: Adding a pattern file to the /inc/patterns folder

Next, we should have all the listed patterns files in the $block_patterns = array(). Here is an example of one of the pattern files, footer-with-background.php:

/**
 * Dark footer wtih title and citation
 */
return array(
	'title'      => __( 'Footer with background', 'twentytwentytwo' ),
	'categories' => array( 'footer' ),
	'blockTypes' => array( 'core/template-part/footer' ),
  'content'    => '<!-- wp:group {"align":"full","style":{"elements":{"link":{"color":{"text":"var:preset|color|background"}}},"spacing":{"padding":{"top":"var(--wp--custom--spacing--small, 1.25rem)","bottom":"var(--wp--custom--spacing--small, 1.25rem)"}}},"backgroundColor":"background-header","textColor":"background","layout":{"inherit":true}} -->
      <div class="wp-block-group alignfull has-background-color has-background-header-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color" style="padding-top:var(--wp--custom--spacing--small, 1.25rem);padding-bottom:var(--wp--custom--spacing--small, 1.25rem)"><!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center"} -->
      <p class="has-text-align-center">' .
      sprintf(
        /* Translators: WordPress link. */
        esc_html__( 'Proudly powered by %s', 'twentytwentytwo' ),
        '<a href="' . esc_url( __( 'https://wordpress.org', 'twentytwentytwo' ) ) . '" rel="nofollow">WordPress</a> | a modified TT2 theme.'
      ) . '</p>
      <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div>
          <!-- /wp:group -->',
);

Let’s reference the pattern in the footer.html template part:

<!-- wp:template-part {"slug":"footer"} /-->

This is similar to adding heading or footer parts in a template file.

The patterns can similarly be added to the parts/footer.html template by modifying it to refer to slug of the theme’s pattern file (footer-with-background):

<!-- wp:pattern {"slug":"twentytwentytwo/footer-with-background"} /-->

Now, if we visit the patterns inserter of the block editor, the Footer with background should be available for our use:

Screenshot of the pattern for Footer with background.

The following screenshot shows the newly created footer with background pattern on the front-end.

Screenshot of the footer background as it appears rendered on the site.

Now that patterns have become the integral part of block theme, many patterns are bundled in block themes — like Quadrat, Seedlet, Mayland, Zoologist, Geologist — following the workflow discussed above. Here is an example of the Quadrat theme /inc/patterns folder with a block-pattern registration file and list of files with content source and required pattern header within return array() function.

Section 2: Creating and loading patterns without registration

Please note that this feature requires the installation of WordPress 6.0 or Gutenberg plugin 13.0 or above in your site.

This new WordPress 6.0 feature allows pattern registration via standard files and folders – /patterns, bringing similar conventions like /parts, /templates, and /styles.

The process, as also described in this WP Tavern article, involves the following three steps:

  • creating a patterns folder at the theme’s root
  • adding plugin style pattern header
  • pattern source content

A typical pattern header markup, taken from the article is shown below:

<?php
/**
* Title: A Pattern Title
* Slug: namespace/slug
* Description: A human-friendly description.
* Viewport Width: 1024
* Categories: comma, separated, values
* Keywords: comma, separated, values
* Block Types: comma, separated, values
* Inserter: yes|no
*/
?>

As described in the previous section, only Title and Slug fields are required and other fields are optional.

Referencing examples from recently released themes, I refactored pattern registration in this TT2 Gopher Blocks demo theme, prepared for a previous article on the CSS-Tricks.

In the following steps, let’s explore how a footer-with-background.php pattern registered with PHP and used in a footer.html template is refactored.

2.1: Create a /patterns folder at the root of the theme

The first step is to create a /patterns folder at TT2 Gopher theme’s root and move the footer-with-background.php pattern file to /patterns folder and refactor.

2.2: Add pattern data to the file header

Next, create the following pattern header registration fields.

<?php
/**
* Title: Footer with background
* Slug: tt2gopher/footer-with-background
* Categories: tt2gopher-footer
* Viewport Width: 1280
* Block Types: core/parts/footer
* Inserter: yes
*/
?>
<!-- some-block-content /-->

A pattern file has a top title field written as PHP comments. Followed by the block-content written in HTML format.

2.3: Add Pattern Content to the file

For the content section, let’s copy the code snippets within single quotes (e.g., '...') from the content section of the footer-with-background and replace the <!-- some-block-content /-->:

<!-- wp:group {"align":"full","style":{"elements":{"link":{"color":{"text":"var:preset|color|foreground"}}},"spacing":{"padding":{"top":"35px","bottom":"30px"}}},"backgroundColor":"background-header","textColor":"foreground","className":"has-foreground","layout":{"inherit":true}} -->
    <div class="wp-block-group alignfull has-foreground has-foreground-color has-background-header-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color" style="padding-top:35px;padding-bottom:30px"><!-- wp:paragraph {"align":"center","fontSize":"small"} -->
    <p class="has-text-align-center has-small-font-size">Powered by WordPress | TT2 Gopher, a modified TT2 theme</p>
    <!-- /wp:paragraph --></div>
<!-- /wp:group -->

The entire code snippet of the patterns/footer-with-background.php file can be viewed here on the GitHub.

Please note that the /inc/patterns and block-patterns.php are extras, not required in WordPress 6.0, and included only for demo purposes.

2.4: Referencing the patterns slug in the template

Adding the above refactored footer-with-background.php pattern to footer.html template is exactly the same as described in the previous section (Section 1, 2.2).

Now, if we view the site’s footer part in a block editor or front-end of our site in a browser, the footer section is displayed.

Pattern categories and types Registration (optional)

To categorize block patterns, the pattern categories and types should be registered in theme’s functions.php file.

Let’s consider an example of registering block pattern categories from the TT2 Gopher theme.

After the registration, the patterns are displayed in the pattern inserter together with the core default patterns. To add theme specific category labels in the patterns inserter, we should modify the previous snippets by adding theme namespace:

/**
* Registers block categories, and type.
*/

function tt2gopher_register_block_pattern_categories() {

$block_pattern_categories = array(
  'tt2gopher-header' => array( 'label' => __( 'TT2 Gopher - Headers', 'tt2gopher' ) ),
  'tt2gopher-footer' => array( 'label' => __( 'TT2 Gopher - Footers', 'tt2gopher' ) ),
  'tt2gopher-page' => array( 'label' => __( 'TT2 Gopher - Page', 'tt2gopher' ) ),
  // ...
);

/**
* Filters the theme block pattern categories.
*/
$block_pattern_categories = apply_filters( 'tt2gopher_block_pattern_categories', $block_pattern_categories );

foreach ( $block_pattern_categories as $name => $properties ) {
  if ( ! WP_Block_Pattern_Categories_Registry::get_instance()->is_registered( $name ) ) {
    register_block_pattern_category( $name, $properties );
  }
}
add_action( 'init', 'tt2gopher_register_block_pattern_categories', 9 );

The footer-with-background pattern is visible in the patterns inserted with its preview (if selected):

Screenshot showing pattern category displayed in patterns inserter (left panel) and corresponding default footer pattern displayed in the editor (right panel).

This process greatly simplifies creating and displaying block patterns in block themes. It is available in WordPress 6.0 without using the Gutenberg plugin.

Examples of themes without patterns registration

Early adopters have already started using this feature in their block themes. A few examples of the themes, that are available from the theme directory, that load patterns without registration are listed below:

Section 3: Creating and using patterns with low-code

The official patterns directory contains community-contributed creative designs, which can be copied and customized as desired to create content. Using patterns with a block editor has never been so easier!

Any patterns from the ever-growing directory can also be added to block themes just by simple “copy and paste” or include in the theme.json file by referring to their directory pattern slug. Next, I will go through briefly how easily this can be accomplished with very limited coding.

Adding and customizing patterns from patterns directory

3.1: Copy pattern from directory into a page

Here, I am using this footer section pattern by FirstWebGeek from the patterns directory. Copied the pattern by selecting the “Copy Pattern” button and directly pasted it in a new page.

3.2: Make desired customizations

I made only a few changes to the color of the fonts and button background. Then copied the entire code from the code editor over to a clipboard.

Screenshot showing modified pattern (left panel) and corresponding code in code editor (right panel)

If you are not familiar with using the code editor, go to options (with three dots, top right), click the Code editor button, and copy the entire code from here.

3.3: Create a new file in /patterns folder

First, let’s create a new /patterns/footer-pattern-test.php file and add the required pattern header section. Then paste the entire code (step 3, above). The pattern is categorized in the footer area (lines: 5), we can view the newly added in the pattern inserter.

<?php
 /**
 * Title: Footer pattern from patterns library
 * Slug: tt2gopher/footer-pattern-test
 * Categories: tt2gopher-footer
 * Viewport Width: 1280
 * Block Types: core/template-part/footer
 * Inserter: yes
 */
?>

<!-- wp:group {"align":"full","style":{"spacing":{"padding":{"top":"100px","bottom":"70px","right":"30px","left":"30px"}}},"backgroundColor":"black","layout":{"contentSize":"1280px"}} -->
<div class="wp-block-group alignfull has-black-background-color has-background" style="padding-top:100px;padding-right:30px;padding-bottom:70px;padding-left:30px"><!-- wp:columns -->
<div class="wp-block-columns"><!-- wp:column -->
<div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:heading {"style":{"typography":{"fontStyle":"normal","fontWeight":"700","textTransform":"uppercase"}},"textColor":"cyan-bluish-gray"} -->
<h2 class="has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-text-color" style="font-style:normal;font-weight:700;text-transform:uppercase">lorem</h2>
<!-- /wp:heading -->

<!-- wp:paragraph {"style":{"typography":{"fontSize":"16px"}},"textColor":"cyan-bluish-gray"} -->
<p class="has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-text-color" style="font-size:16px">One of the main benefits of using Lorem Ipsum is that it can be easily generated, and it takes the pressure off designers to create meaningful text. Instead, they can focus on crafting the best website data.</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:social-links {"iconColor":"vivid-cyan-blue","iconColorValue":"#0693e3","openInNewTab":true,"className":"is-style-logos-only","style":{"spacing":{"blockGap":{"top":"15px","left":"15px"}}}} -->
<ul class="wp-block-social-links has-icon-color is-style-logos-only"><!-- wp:social-link {"url":"#","service":"facebook"} /-->

<!-- wp:social-link {"url":"#","service":"twitter"} /-->

<!-- wp:social-link {"url":"#","service":"instagram"} /-->

<!-- wp:social-link {"url":"#","service":"linkedin"} /--></ul>
<!-- /wp:social-links --></div>
<!-- /wp:column -->

<!-- wp:column -->
<div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:heading {"level":4,"style":{"typography":{"textTransform":"capitalize","fontStyle":"normal","fontWeight":"700","fontSize":"30px"}},"textColor":"cyan-bluish-gray"} -->
<h4 class="has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-text-color" style="font-size:30px;font-style:normal;font-weight:700;text-transform:capitalize">Contact Us</h4>
<!-- /wp:heading -->

<!-- wp:paragraph {"style":{"typography":{"fontSize":"16px","lineHeight":"1.2"}},"textColor":"cyan-bluish-gray"} -->
<p class="has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-text-color" style="font-size:16px;line-height:1.2">123 BD Lorem, Ipsum<br><br>+123-456-7890</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:paragraph {"style":{"typography":{"fontSize":"16px","lineHeight":"1"}},"textColor":"cyan-bluish-gray"} -->
<p class="has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-text-color" style="font-size:16px;line-height:1">sample@gmail.com</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:paragraph {"style":{"typography":{"fontSize":"16px","lineHeight":"1"}},"textColor":"cyan-bluish-gray"} -->
<p class="has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-text-color" style="font-size:16px;line-height:1">Opening Hours: 10:00 - 18:00</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph --></div>
<!-- /wp:column -->

<!-- wp:column -->
<div class="wp-block-column"><!-- wp:heading {"level":4,"style":{"typography":{"fontSize":"30px","fontStyle":"normal","fontWeight":"700","textTransform":"capitalize"}},"textColor":"cyan-bluish-gray"} -->
<h4 class="has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-text-color" style="font-size:30px;font-style:normal;font-weight:700;text-transform:capitalize">Newsletter</h4>
<!-- /wp:heading -->

<!-- wp:paragraph {"style":{"typography":{"fontSize":"16px"}},"textColor":"cyan-bluish-gray"} -->
<p class="has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-text-color" style="font-size:16px">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur ut labore et dolore magna aliqua ipsum dolor sit</p>
<!-- /wp:paragraph -->

<!-- wp:search {"label":"","placeholder":"Enter Your Email...","buttonText":"Subscribe","buttonPosition":"button-inside","style":{"border":{"width":"1px"}},"borderColor":"tertiary","backgroundColor":"background-header","textColor":"background"} /--></div>
<!-- /wp:column --></div>
<!-- /wp:columns --></div>
<!-- /wp:group -->

3.4: View the new pattern in the inserter

To view the newly added Footer pattern from patterns library pattern, go to any post or page and select the inserter icon (blue plus symbol, top left), and then select “TT2 Gopher – Footer” categories. The newly added pattern is shown on the left panel, together with other footer patterns and its preview on the right (if selected):

Screenshot showing new footer pattern (left panel) and its preview (right panel).

Registering patterns directly in theme.json file

In WordPress 6.0, it is possible to register any desired patterns from the pattern directory with theme.json file with the following syntax. The 6.0 dev note states, “the patterns field is an array of [pattern slugs] from the Pattern Directory. Pattern slugs can be extracted by the [URL] in single pattern view at the Pattern Directory.”

{
    "version": 2,
    "patterns": ["short-text", "patterns-slug"]
}

This short WordPress 6.0 features video demonstrates how patterns are registered in the /patterns folder (at 3:53) and registering the desired patterns from the pattern director in a theme.json file (at 3:13).

Then, the registered pattern is available in the patterns inserter search box, which is then available for use just like theme-bundled patterns library.

{
  "version": 2,
  "patterns": [ "footer-from-directory", "footer-section-design-with-3-column-description-social-media-contact-and-newsletter" ]
}

In this example, the pattern slug footer-section-design-with-3-column-description-social-media-contact-and-newsletter from the earlier example is registered via theme.json.

Page creation pattern model

As part of “building with patterns” initiatives, WordPress 6.0 offers a pattern modal option to theme authors to add page layout patterns into block theme, allowing site users to select page layout patterns (e.g., an about page, a contact page, a team page, etc.) while creating a page. The following is an example taken from the dev note:

register_block_pattern(
    'my-plugin/about-page',
    array(
        'title'      => __( 'About page', 'my-plugin' ),
        'blockTypes' => array( 'core/post-content' ),
        'content'    => '<!-- wp:paragraph {"backgroundColor":"black","textColor":"white"} -->
        <p class="has-white-color has-black-background-color has-text-color has-background">Write you about page here, feel free to use any block</p>
        <!-- /wp:paragraph -->',
    )
);

This feature is currently limited to Page Post Type only and not for “Posts Post Type”, yet.

The page creation pattern modal can also be disabled completely by removing the post-content block type of all the patterns. An example sample code is available here.

You can follow and participate in GitHub’s discussion from the links listed under the resource section below.

Using patterns directory to build page

Patterns from the directory can also be used to create the desired post or page layout, similar to page builders. The GutenbergHub team has created an experimental online page builder app using patterns directly from the directory (introductory video). Then the codes from the app can be copied and pasted in a site, which greatly simplifies the building complex page layout process without coding.

In this short video, Jamie Marsland demonstrates (at 1:30) how the app can be used to create an entire page layout similar to page builder using desired page sections of the directory.

Wrapping up

Patterns allow users to recreate their commonly used content layout (e.g., hero page, call out, etc.) in any page and lower the barriers to presenting content in styles, which were previously not possible without coding skills. Just like the plugins and themes directories, the new patterns directory offers users options to use a wide range of patterns of their choices from the pattern directory, and write and display content in style.

Indeed, block patterns will change everything and surely this is a game changer feature in the WordPress theme landscape. When the full potential of building with patterns effort becomes available, this is going to change the way we design block themes and create beautiful content even with low-code knowledge. For many creative designers, the patterns directory may also provide an appropriate avenue to showcase their creativity.


Resources

WordPress 6.0

Creating patterns

Patterns enhancement (GitHub)

Blog articles


How to Create Block Theme Patterns in WordPress 6.0 originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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https://css-tricks.com/how-to-create-block-theme-patterns-in-wordpress-6-0/feed/ 3 https://www.youtube.com/embed/abaaVKl-beM Exploring WordPress 6.0: Style Variations, Block Locking UI, Writing Improvements, & more nonadult 365841
How to Create Style Variations in WordPress 6.0 Block Themes https://css-tricks.com/creating-style-variations-in-wordpress-block-themes/ https://css-tricks.com/creating-style-variations-in-wordpress-block-themes/#respond Mon, 16 May 2022 14:38:29 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=365377 Global styles, a feature of the block themes, is one of my favorite parts of creating block themes. The concept of global style variations in WordPress were introduced in Gutenberg 12.5 which would allow theme authors to create alternate …


How to Create Style Variations in WordPress 6.0 Block Themes originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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Global styles, a feature of the block themes, is one of my favorite parts of creating block themes. The concept of global style variations in WordPress were introduced in Gutenberg 12.5 which would allow theme authors to create alternate variations of a block theme with different combinations of colors, fonts, typography, spacing, etc. Different theme.json files stored under /styles folder “lets users quickly and easily switch between different looks in the same theme.”

The global styles panel UI is in active development iteration. More details on the development of this feature can be found and tracked here at this GitHub ticket (#35619).

In this article, I will walk through creating a proof-of-concept global style variation using alternate /styles/theme.json files and create child themes with different color modes by swapping color palettes only.

Table of contents

Prerequisites

This article is intended for those who have basic understanding of WordPress block themes and some familiarity of using Full Site Editor (FSE) interface. If you’re new to block themes and the FSE, you can get started here on CSS-Tricks with this deep introduction to WordPress block themes and site editor documentation. This Full Site Editing website is one of the most up-to-date tutorial guides to learn all FSE features including block themes and styles variations discussed in this article.

Global style variations

For some background, let’s briefly overview global style variation. Twenty Twenty-Two (TT2) theme lead and Automattic design director Kjell Reigstad introduced global styles variations with this tweet and GitHub ticket #292 as child themes. In the ticket, Kjell notes that they were initially intended as alternate color patterns and fonts combinations, but they can be used for building simple child themes.

This example from Kjell demonstrates how different style combinations could be selected from options available in the sidebar.

Since then, the Automattic theme team has been experimenting with the concept to create variable child themes (variable color and fonts only), including the following:

  • geologist with blue, cream, slate, yellow variations
  • quadrat with black, green, red, white, and yellow versions

Global style switcher

The Gutenberg 12.5 release has introduced a global styles switcher which would allow users quickly and easily switch between different looks in the same theme via different theme.json files stored under a /styles folder.

The concept of allowing switching global style variation via theme.json has been discussed on GitHub for a while now. Gutenberg lead engineer Matias Ventura gave renewed importance to it by adding it to the WordPress 6.0 roadmap recently.

Embrace style alternates driven by json variations. This was teased in various videos around the new default theme and should be fully unveiled and presented in 6.0. One of the parallel goals is to create a few distinct variations of TT2 made just with styles. (35619)

Matias Ventura, “Preliminary Roadmap to 6.0”

The latest development iteration of theme style variation switcher is available with Gutenberg 13.0 and included in WordPress 6.0. In this Exploring WordPress 6.0 video, Automattic product liaison Anne McCarthy provides an overview of its major features, including style variations and Webfonts API (starting 5:18) discussed in this article.

Theme style variation versus child theme

In my previous article, I briefly covered building block child themes. Global style variations have blurred the line between alternate-theme.json and child themes. For example, the only difference between a recently released alante-dark child theme and its parent theme is an alternate.json file in the child theme that overrides the global theme styles like this:

Screenshot of the Visual Studio Code UI displaying the contents of alante-dark.
The alante-dark theme.

Likewise, the two recent Alara child themes in the WordPress directoryFramboise and Richmond — differ only in their single theme.json file.

Section 1: Creating theme style variations

At the root of your child theme folder, create a /styles folder, which holds style variations as JSON files. For this demo example, I created three variations of Twenty Twenty-Two’s theme.json color palettes — blue.json, maroon.json, and pink.json — by swapping the foreground and background colors:

Screenshot of the Visual Studio Code UI displaying the child theme file structure of "blue.json", "maroon.json", and "pink.json" in the styles directory.
The child theme file structure of “blue.json”, “maroon.json”, and “pink.json” in the styles directory.

Here is the final result after clicking the styles icon from the admin dashboard (located at Appearance → Editor):

Animated GIF showing the theme variations in WordPress.
Walking through the WordPress admin interface to select the “blue”, “maroon”, and “pink” styles.

Click the Other Styles button (recently revised to Browser styles), which displays “blue”, “maroon”, and “pink” color style icons in addition to its original styles.

To change and choose a style, select your preferred variation and click the Save button (top-right), which is displayed on the front end of your browser.

Adding labels to alternate style variations and file name with hover animation effect are available in Gutenberg 13.0.

Step 1: Setup and installation

First, install and set up a WordPress site with some dummy content. For this demo, I made a fresh WordPress install, activated Twenty Twenty-Two theme, and added Gutenberg test data.

The theme style variations and WebFonts API discussed in this article require installation and activation of the Gutenberg 13.0 plugin or WordPress 6.0.

Step 2: Create a TT2 child theme

In this demo child theme example, let’s slightly vary the body color from the header and footer color, with all site content centered:

The lower part of the site design are not visible because it is not scrolled into view. Site navigation is present in the header. A large banner image with a bird is visible. A date and title for the latest blog entry is also visible.
Screenshot of the default appearance of the demo theme in a browser window.

Step 3: Create JSON files

Create /styles in your child theme’s root folder with blue, maroon, and pink.json files:

__ style.css
__ theme.json
__ functions.php
__ index.php
__ templates
__ ...
__ parts
__ ...
__ styles
__ blue.json
__ maroon.json
__ pink.json

Step 4: Create alternate theme JSON files

Next up, create your alternate-theme.json files with desired color pallets under /styles folder. For this demo example, I created three color palettes (blue, maroon, and pink). Here is the code for maroon.json:

{
  "version": 2,
  "title": "Maroon",
  "settings": {
    "color": {
      "palette": [
        { "slug": "foreground", "color": "#7C290F", "name": "Foreground" },
        { "slug": "background", "color": "#ffffff", "name": "Background" },
        { "slug": "foreground-dark", "color": "#000000", "name": "Foreground Dark" },
        { "slug": "background-body", "color": "#ffd8be", "name": "Background Body" },
        { "slug": "primary", "color": "#000000", "name": "Primary" },
        { "slug": "secondary", "color": "#ffe2c7", "name": "Secondary" },
        { "slug": "tertiary", "color": "#55ACEE", "name": "Tertiary" }
      ]
  },
  "typography": {}
},
"styles": {
  "color":
      {
        "background": "var(--wp--preset--color--background-body)",
        "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--foreground-dark)"
      },
  "elements": {
      "link": {
        "color": { "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--primary)" }
      }
    }
  }
}

The other two alternate blue.json and pink.json files swap values of foreground and background-body, foreground-dark and primary color properties with their respective blue and pink hex color values.

Section 2: An example of a use case

As I noted in my previous article, I have been working on block themes and using them for my own personal project site. Inspired by the theme style variations and Webfonts API features in Gutenberg plugin, I started tweaking my work-in-progress block theme with an alternate dark color mode and by configuring the Webfonts API.

In this section, I will walk you through how I created TT2 Gopher Blocks, a demo sibling of my work-in-progress block theme created for this article. The theme includes maroon, dark, and light color modes created using theme style variations and Webfonts API that became available with the Gutenberg 12.8 release.

Showing the homepage we are creating with style variations in WordPress.
Screenshot displaying a sample site using the TT2 Gopher theme with maroon default color.

Some highlights of the TT2 Gopher theme include centered, single-column content display, distinct header and footer, more user-friendly archive and search pages.

A copy of TT2 Gopher Blocks is available at the GitHub repository, which you can fork and customize.

Creating dark mode on WordPress

First, some background on dark mode. Dark mode is a personal preference and developers offer it or other mode toggle switches like on this site, which is not a small job for most regular developers. Creating dark mode is well-covered here at CSS-Tricks, including this complete guide to dark mode and dark mode typography.

In a WordPress site, we can add a dark mode toggle using the WP Dark Mode plugin. Erin Myers of WP Engine and WPBeginner describe how to use the WP Dark Mode plugin, while Brenda Barron lists other dark mode plugin options in this WPExplorer post.

Creating a dark mode in WordPress block themes without a plugin involves several steps. Over a year ago, Ari Stathopoulos created a dark support for the TT1 Blocks theme at the GitHub. Looking at the example here, it involves some JavaScript knowledge to create assets (e.g., toggler, customize, editor-mode-support), dark color CSS variables, and expanded functions.php files.

In this short video, Automattic’s Anne McCarthy demonstrates how simple it is to create a dark mode of TT2 block theme with global style variation by adding kllejr’s gist of JSON snippets in the TT2 /styles folder.

Creating the demo TT2 Gopher blocks theme

The TT2 Gopher is a very simple and modified version of the default Twenty Twenty-Two theme. It includes three theme style variations — maroon, dark, and white.

Describing each customization step is beyond the scope of this article, but you can learn more from my deep introduction to WordPress block themes as well as the Block Editor Handbook over at WordPress.org.

A brief overview of the TT2 Gopher theme color and font combinations include:

  • Light mode
    • The header is white and the footer has a smoky body background color.
    • Open Sans is the primary font.
  • Dark mode
    • The header and footer are black with lighter dark colors for the body backgrounds.
    • Source Serif Pro is the primary font.
  • Maroon mode
    • The header and footer are both a dark maroon color, with a lighter yellowish body background.
    • Work Sans is the primary font.

Let me briefly walk you through how I created theme style variations.

Adding and configuring webfonts

The Gutenberg 12.8 plugin introduced a new Webfonts API that allows the authors to load local (bundled) fonts “in a performance-friendly, privacy-friendly, and future-proof manner.” This feature can be implemented in a block theme the PHP way or the theme.json way.

Currently this feature works only with fonts bundled with block themes and does not support Google-hosted fonts because of privacy concerns. More details on the current status of Webfonts API development are covered in this make WordPress core article and this WP Tavern article.

Step 1: Download and add fonts in block theme

The TT2 theme adds Source Serif Pro font files to the theme’s assets/fonts folder. Two additional fonts — Work Sans and Public Sans — are also provided in he GitHub repository.

Step 2: Registering webfonts

In the TT2 theme, local Source Serif Pro webfonts are registered with PHP in its functions.php file:

function twentytwentytwo_get_font_face_styles() {
  return "
  @font-face{
    font-family: 'Source Serif Pro';
    font-weight: 200 900;
    font-style: normal;
    font-stretch: normal;
    font-display: swap;
    src: url('" . get_theme_file_uri( 'assets/fonts/SourceSerif4Variable-Roman.ttf.woff2' ) . "') format('woff2');
  }
  @font-face{
    font-family: 'Source Serif Pro';
    font-weight: 200 900;
    font-style: italic;
    font-stretch: normal;
    font-display: swap;
    src: url('" . get_theme_file_uri( 'assets/fonts/SourceSerif4Variable-Italic.ttf.woff2' ) . "') format('woff2');
  }
  ";
}

Gutenberg 12.8 introduced the ability to register local web fonts with theme.json file. The following theme.json snippets from the demo TT2 Gopher theme show how local Work Sans web fonts are registered in the maroon theme style variation:

"typography": {
  "fontFamilies": [
    {
      "fontFamily": "'Work Sans', -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Helvetica Neue', 'Helvetica', sans-serif",
      "slug": "work-sans",
      "name": "Work Sans",
      "fontFace": [
        { "fontFamily": "Work Sans", "fontDisplay": "block", "fontWeight": "400", "fontStyle": "normal", "fontStretch": "normal", "src": [ "file:./assets/fonts/work-sans/WorkSans-VariableFont_wght.ttf" ] },
        { "fontFamily": "Work Sans", "fontDisplay": "block", "fontWeight": "700", "fontStyle": "normal", "fontStretch": "normal", "src": [ "file:./assets/fonts/work-sans/WorkSans-VariableFont_wght.ttf" ] },
        { "fontFamily": "Work Sans", "fontDisplay": "block", "fontWeight": "400", "fontStyle": "italic", "fontStretch": "normal", "src": [ "file:./assets/fonts/work-sans/WorkSans-Italic-VariableFont_wght.ttf" ] },
        { "fontFamily": "Work Sans", "fontDisplay": "block", "fontWeight": "700", "fontStyle": "italic", "fontStretch": "normal", "src": [ "file:./assets/fonts/work-sans/WorkSans-Italic-VariableFont_wght.ttf" ] }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Additional information on how to register and use local webfonts in block themes is described in this tutorial and this WP Tavern article.

Creating theme style variations

Following the steps described in the previous section, I created two alternate versions of the theme.json file — white.json and black.json — with different color and fonts combinations inside the child theme’s /styles folder.

This feature requires version 2 of theme.json. Since Gutenberg 12.5, title can also be added at theme.json to display style label in the site editor or file name (without extension) will be displayed by default.

Here is an example of white.json:

{
  "version": 2,
  "title": "White",
  "settings": {
    "color": {
      "palette": [
        { "slug": "foreground", "color": "#000000", "name": "Foreground" },
        { "slug": "background", "color": "#f2f2f2", "name": "Background" },
        { "slug": "background-header", "color": "#ffffff", "name": "Background header" },
        { "slug": "primary", "color": "#0d0d0d", "name": "Primary" },
        { "slug": "secondary", "color": "#F0EAE6", "name": "Secondary" },
        { "slug": "tertiary", "color": "#eb3425", "name": "Tertiary" },
        { "slug": "quaternary", "color": "#7c7e83", "name": "Quaternary" }
      ]
    },
    "typography": {
      "fontFamilies": [
        {
        "fontFamily": "\"Public Sans\", sans-serif",
        "name": "Public Sans",
        "slug": "public-sans",
        "fontFace": [
          { "fontFamily": "Public Sans", "fontDisplay": "block", "fontStyle": "normal", "fontStretch": "normal", "src": [ "file:.assets/fonts/publicSans/PublicSans-VariableFont_wght.ttf.woff2" ] },
          { "fontFamily": "Public Sans", "fontDisplay": "block", "fontStyle": "italic", "fontStretch": "normal", "src": [ "file:./assets/fonts/publicSans/PublicSans-Italic-VariableFont_wght.ttf.woff2" ] }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
},
"styles": {
  "blocks": {
    "core/image": {
      "filter": { "duotone": "var(--wp--preset--duotone--default-filter)" }
    },
    "core/post-title": {
      "typography": { "fontFamily": "var(--wp--preset--font-family--public-sans)", "fontWeight": "700", "fontSize": "var(--wp--custom--typography--font-size--gigantic)" }
    },
    "core/query-title": {
      "typography": { "fontFamily": "var(--wp--preset--font-family--public-sans)", "fontWeight": "300", "fontSize": "var(--wp--custom--typography--font-size--gigantic)" }
    },
    "core/post-featured-image": {
      "filter": { "duotone": "var(--wp--preset--duotone--default-filter)" }
    },
    "core/site-logo": {
      "filter": { "duotone": "var(--wp--preset--duotone--default-filter)" }
    },
    "core/site-title": {
      "typography": { "fontFamily": "var(--wp--preset--font-family--public-sans)", "fontSize": "var(--wp--preset--font-size--normal)", "fontWeight": "normal" }
    }
    },
    "color": { "background": "var(--wp--preset--color--background)", "text": "var(--wp--preset--color--foreground)" },
    "elements": {
      "h1": {
        "typography": { "fontFamily": "var(--wp--preset--font-family--public-sans)", "fontWeight": "600", "fontSize": "var(--wp--custom--typography--font-size--colossal)" }
      },
      "h2": {
        "typography": { "fontFamily": "var(--wp--preset--font-family--public-sans)", "fontWeight": "600", "fontSize": "var(--wp--custom--typography--font-size--gigantic)" }
      },
      "h3": {
        "typography": { "fontFamily": "var(--wp--preset--font-family--public-sans)", "fontWeight": "300", "fontSize": "var(--wp--custom--typography--font-size--huge)" }
      },
      "h4": {
        "typography": { "fontFamily": "var(--wp--preset--font-family--public-sans)", "fontWeight": "300", "fontSize": "var(--wp--preset--font-size--x-large)" }
      },
      "h5": {
        "typography": { "fontFamily": "var(--wp--preset--font-family--public-sans)", "fontWeight": "700", "textTransform": "uppercase", "fontSize": "var(--wp--preset--font-size--medium)" }
      },
      "h6": {
        "typography": { "fontFamily": "var(--wp--preset--font-family--public-sans)", "fontWeight": "400", "textTransform": "uppercase", "fontSize": "var(--wp--preset--font-size--medium)" }
      },
      "link": {
        "color": { "text": "var(--wp--custom--color--foreground)" }
      }
    },
    "typography": { "fontFamily": "var(--wp--preset--font-family--public-sans)", "fontSize": "var(--wp--preset--font-size--normal)" }
  }
}

This code swaps color palettes from theme.json and also registers and defines the local Public Sans font files.

The black.json is also very similar and uses Source Serif Pro fonts registered in the functions.php file.

Screenshot of the light color theme on the left. And screenshot of the dark color theme on the right. The heading navigation and first blog entry are visible.
Side-by-side comparison of the light (left) and dark (right) color themes for TT2 Gopher.

Example of block themes with theme styles variations

  • Twenty Twenty-Two – the first default theme to include style variations. Its updated 1.2, bundled with WordPress 6.0 includes three style variations — “Blue”, “Pink”, and “Swiss” — allowing users to quickly swap between different visual styles.
  • Frost – an experimental block theme with dark theme style variation.
  • Alara – has above 100 active installs and includes 7 style variations.
  • Wabi– which powers Rich Tabor website contains 3 style variants and 300+ active installations.
  • Brisky – has more than 600 installs and one dark theme style variation.
  • Pendant – a theme by Automattic theme team under development at GitHub contains 3 theme style variation.

In this WP Tavern article, Justin speculates that this new feature may be utilized by theme authors by tying to the site visitor’s settings, while some users may prefer to tweak their site giving a seasonal or event-based design look. This is probably a little early, but only time will tell how this powerful feature would be utilized by both theme authors and users.

Wrapping up

Creating style variations of a block theme with different typography and color combination has been greatly simplified, without using plugins. It’s one of my favorite feature of the block editor that I plan to apply in my personal projects.

In my opinion, theme style variations are definitely a game changer for block themes and with this handy feature there might not be a need for child themes or even many cooky-cutter block themes. A few well-designed base block themes, similar to Automattic theme team’s block-canvas or blockbase (work-in-progress base block themes at GitHub), could be customized with theme style variation.


Resources

Dark Mode


How to Create Style Variations in WordPress 6.0 Block Themes originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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A Deep Introduction to WordPress Block Themes https://css-tricks.com/a-deep-introduction-to-wordpress-block-themes/ https://css-tricks.com/a-deep-introduction-to-wordpress-block-themes/#comments Fri, 04 Feb 2022 15:07:04 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=362799 The relatively new WordPress editor, also known as the WordPress Block Editor, always under development via the Gutenberg plugin, has been with us since 2018. You can use the block editor on any WordPress theme, provided the theme …


A Deep Introduction to WordPress Block Themes originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

]]>
The relatively new WordPress editor, also known as the WordPress Block Editor, always under development via the Gutenberg plugin, has been with us since 2018. You can use the block editor on any WordPress theme, provided the theme loads CSS that the blocks use. But there are new themes that lean into the Block Editor much more deeply.

WordPress Block Themes allow you to build out the entire site using blocks, meaning the theme’s responsibility is mostly design guidelines, and less about controlling the pages and the content on them. This is referred to as Full-Site Editing in WordPress and the themes that are built for this are called Block Themes, because you build out everything with blocks.

Let’s dig into all this.

Illustration of a black vinyl record coming out of a record sleep sleeve from the left that contains a blue tinted image of jazz singer Joséphine Baker's profile looking right with a soft smile and parted lips. The image includes white text that says WordPress 5.9 and code is poetry.
Credit: WordPress.org

Table of Contents

Introduction

Except for those who follow its day-to-day development iterations at GitHub, most development surrounding the block editor is largely visible to users — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I have been personally trying to keep myself updated with the block editor through WP Tavern and Gutenberg posts, and have been using both the legacy — or “Classic” editor — as well as the block editor in my personal learning project sites.

After taking a detour to learn and experience headless WordPress sites with Gatsby and Frontity frameworks, I am now back to my native WordPress home.

Though I have been aware of the WordPress theme-experiment GitHub repository for a while — themes made completely out of blocks! — I have only started digging into block themes recently. In fact, I have been using an experimental block-based theme here in this project site.

WordPress 5.9 is now out in the wild and with it comes block-based theming for the masses. This release, dubbed Joséphine, is the formal introduction to WordPress full site editing and Block Themes.

Even though the block-based theming functionality has been available in various iterative forms in previous releases, this is a big deal for the WordPress platform and the ecosystem that relies on it. I’ve had my hands on it and thought I’d share what I’ve learned about block themes in my hands-on experience, as well as some personal thoughts on how it works.

Disclaimer: I am not a block themes expert by any stretch. I am well-versed in WordPress and a major fan of the content management system. My goal here is not to critique WordPress 5.9 or steer you in the direction of whether or not you should like it or want to use it. I’m merely coming from the perspective of an open-minded learner who is building personal sites with fairly deep understanding and familiarity with the WordPress Block Editor.

Before we dive straight into block themes, I think it’s a good idea to form a baseline understanding of just what we’re talking about when we’re tossing around terms, like blocks and site editing, as they’re so incredibly new and game-changing relative to what we’ve known and loved about WordPress for decades.

Block Editor

This is really what we mean any time we refer to the “WordPress Editor.” We call the WordPress Editor the Block Editor because it allows us to create pages and posts where each element— including text, images, videos, headers, footers, etc. — is inserted into the post using blocks that can be arranged modularly to complete page layouts. It evolved from what’s now called the “classic” editor, which was more squarely based on entering content to be published on a page or post in a predefined layout.

A full screenshot of the WordPress Block editor split into three numbers parts that are highlighted in red.
WordPress Block Editor including the block inserter (1), block editor content area (2), and the document and block settings (3)
Credit: WordPress Block Editor Handbook.

It’s sort of like content and layout coming together, where both are managed in the WordPress Editor. So, where we used to rely on the editor for content and (more or less) theme templates to define layout, both are directly editable in the WordPress Editor interface.

You can find more detail here on using the Block Editor.

Block Theme

As explained in the WordPress docs:

A block theme is a WordPress theme with templates entirely composed of blocks so that in addition to the post content of the different post types (pages, posts, …), the block editor can also be used to edit all areas of the site: headers, footers, sidebars, etc.

This WordPress documentation provides an overview of block themes in its knowledgebase, including how to create block themes and styling in this primer.

The bottom line: Block themes are different than “classic” WordPress themes. Rather than relying strictly on PHP files that conform to the WordPress Template Hierarchy, a WordPress Block Theme consists of block-based HTML templates — assembled groups of blocks that can be styled and arranged in the WordPress Site Editor (that’s coming up next) as well as using a theme.json file for global styling tokens.

Site Editor

This is the crown jewel of WordPress 5.9. While it is officially called the WordPress Site Editor, it’s largely been referred to as Full-Site Editing** (FSE) during development and is described as “the cohesive experience that allows you to directly edit and navigate between various templates, template parts, styling options, and more.” Phew, that’s a lot!

Credit: WordPress Support

The WordPress Site Editor allows us to create and editing templates that are made of blocks. So the idea is that we can assemble a group of blocks that can be applied globally to a site. Like a header component, for example. That might consist of blocks for a site logo, a primary menu, and a tagline. The site editor allows us to create a new block theme or modify an existing theme to give the site’s global appearance a completely new look without writing a line of code.

So, you know how you’ve had to build a theme in the past with a bunch of PHP templates? That’s no longer the case. Theme “development” now has a UI that’s available directly in WordPress.

More detail on using site editor is in the WordPress documentation.

The official WordPress Glossary has additional terms and definitions you may want to explore as we dig deeper into WordPress Block Themes and FSE.

Using the block editor with classic themes

The WordPress Block Editor can be used in both the classic and block themes. When the Gutenberg editor project began, the classic TinyMCE-based editor was detached from WordPress Core into the Classic Editor plugin. As long as the Classic Editor plugin is installed and active, content writing is pretty normal as it was before blocks were introduced.

Prior to the formal introduction of block editor features, we had to install the experimental Gutenberg plugin. By simply switching plugins, individual page or post contents could be created with either editor. The WordPress 5.0 release introduced the block editor alongside the default Twenty Nineteen theme, demonstrating how to add block editor features and explore its power.

In other words, the evolution toward FSE has been building for a while. And because of that, we get to enjoy a high level of backwards compatibility that allows us all to adopt block-based features when we’re good and ready.

The anatomy of block-based themes

Experimental block-based themes have been in development since early 2020. At the time I’m writing this, the GitHub theme experiment repository lists 12 block themes that explore some aspect of creating themes using blocks or block templates.

But it was probably the Twenty Twenty-One theme that was the first “default” theme to make blocks a first-class citizen, introducing block styles and block patterns, though the recently updated versions of Twenty Nineteen, and Twenty Twenty also include bundled block styling and block patterns. Currently, there are more than 130 themes from the community with bundled block editor patterns, block styles feature, including my favorite, Anders Noren’s Eksell theme.

With the ongoing development of the WordPress Block Editor’s FSE features, even more block-based themes are also being introduced.

So, what does the development of block-based themes mean for those of us who are deeply entrenched in the “classic” way of building WordPress themes? That’s what I want to look at in this section.

The file structure of block themes

In classic PHP-powered theming, markup elements are generated with PHP and JavaScript, while in block themes those templates are entirely composed of HTML blocks and structural CSS provided by the block editor. This might sound scary for lots of folks, but it’s easy to imagine just how liberating it is for others as it lowers the bar when it comes to developing a WordPress theme.

The structure of a block theme is drastically different from the classic WordPress Template Hierarchy that we all are used to. In classic PHP-based themes, page element markup has to be generated with PHP and JavaScript, whereas in block themes, the WordPress Core provides both the markup and basic styling. For example, the default Twenty Twenty-One theme contains 48 PHP files and 11 JavaScript files weighing in at 4.5 MB. Its block-based sibling, the experimental TT1 Blocks theme, contains only four PHP files, one JavaScript file, and eight HTML files at 3.5 MB.

Screenshot of a Mac window open to the default Twenty Twenty-One WordPress theme, displaying a long list of files.
Twenty Twenty-One theme folder
Screenshot of a Mac window open to the TT1 theme folder, showing that WordPress Block Themes contain fewer files.
TT1 theme folder

A block theme structure can be very simple with just a few required files : index.php, style.css and template/index.html. The following is a typical block theme file structure, pulled from the WordPress Editor Handbook:

#! basic block-theme structure
theme
|__ style.css
|__ functions.php
|__ index.php
|__ theme.json
|__ templates
    |__ index.html
    |__ single.html
    |__ archive.html
    |__ ...
|__ parts
    |__ header.html
    |__ footer.html
    |__ sidebar.html
    |__ ...
  • styles.css: Contains theme’s style sheet
  • functions.php: Contains theme setup and may include additional files, enable an editor style sheet, and enqueue style.css, if there are any
  • index.php: An empty file to switch to default file in case the block theme is activated without the WordPress Block Editor.
  • theme.json: Optional configuration file used to enable or disable features and set default styles for both the website and blocks
  • templates: Contains page templates that are composed of blocks. These files follow the same template hierarchy as traditional themes.
    • index.html: The primary template to generate a post or page, analogous to index.php in classic themes
    • single.html: The template to generate single posts or pages
    • archive.html: The template to generate archive lists of posts
  • parts: The common collections of blocks to be used in block templates
    • header.html: The global header block
    • footer.html: The global footer block
    • sidebar.html: An optional global sidebar block

A list of theme blocks including that are specific to block themes is available in WordPress Block Editor Handbook.

Templates and template parts

Templates are basically group of assembled blocks that might include reusable block parts, like a site header or footer. Different blocks are used to compose a page template. For example, that might be a list of blog posts, a list of products, or even a widget.

Here’s an example of a block template pulled from the WordPress Block Editor Handbook.


<!-- wp:site-title /-->

<!-- wp:image {"sizeSlug":"large"} -->
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large">
    <img src="https://cldup.com/0BNcqkoMdq.jpg" alt="" />
</figure>
<!-- /wp:image -->

<!-- wp:group -->
<div class="wp-block-group">
    <!-- wp:post-title /-->
    <!-- wp:post-content /-->
</div>
<!-- /wp:group -->

<!-- wp:group -->
<div class="wp-block-group">
    <!-- wp:heading -->
    <h2>Footer</h2>
    <!-- /wp:heading -->
</div>
<!-- /wp:group -->

Creating WordPress Block Themes

The WordPress Site Editor is now the primary tool for defining the look and feel of a WordPress website. You may be used to using the WordPress Customizer to do these things — and some themes have heavily tapped into that to do what the site editor is now designed to do.

So, no longer is the block editor for pages and posts; it’s the way WordPress themes are created.

I’m assuming that many of you have already used the block editor, and don’t really need a deep lesson on what it is or how to use it. That said, it’s worth poking at it a bit since it’s the impetus for everything related to WordPress theming moving forward, now that WordPress 5.9 is in the wild.

In fact, when we talk about block editing and theming, yes, we’re talking about the block editor. But really what we’re talking about is the WordPress Site Editor.

The WordPress Site Editor interface

Even as an early adopter of the Gutenberg plugin, I find the experience of the site editor intimidating and frustrating. It changes frequently and often drastically with each new release. I am hopeful, though, that WordPress 5.9 is a sort of line in the sand that helps stabilize that rocky feeling.

The site editor is accessed the same way you’re already used to accessing the WordPress Customizer. It’s located under Appearance in the dashboard menu, called Editor.

Screenshots of the WordPress admin Themes screen side-by-side, the first showing the classic WordPress menu items like Customize, Widgets, and Menus, while the second shows how a WordPress Block Themes only displays a single Editor menu item.
The site editor option is available only when a block theme is activated. If you’re using a classic theme, you’ll get the classic UI to go with it.

Let’s briefly walk-through the new Editor interface.

First, navigate to the site editor by clicking Appearance → Editor from the WordPress admin menu. That menu item may have a red “beta” label on it, like it currently does in WordPress 5.9.

That takes you to the site editor, which displays either your homepage or post archive, depending on what you have your homepage set to in Settings → Reading. From there it sort of looks like the fullscreen version of the block editor when creating or editing a page or post. But click on the WordPress logo in the top-left of the screen, and a left panel opens up revealing the WordPress Site Editor and its menu to navigate between different parts of the site. This includes Site, Templates, and Template Parts.

Screenshot of the WordPress Site Editor. There is a dark gray left panel open with an Editor heading and three links for Site, Templates, and Template Parts. The main content shows a preview of the site homepage in the WordPress Block Editor.

Let’s click into Templates. This shows us a list of the available templates provided by the theme, complete with a description of each one and where it is registered (e.g. the parent or a child theme).

Screenshot of the site editor's Templates screen which shows a two-column table listing template on the left and who a template was added by on the right.

The other way to get to this screen is from the initial page we landed on when entering the site editor. Click the name of the template in the top admin bar to reveal a button that takes you directly to the same Templates screen.

Screenshot of the Home template open in the WordPress Site Editor. The template name is at the top of the screen in a white toolbar and is expanded with a submenu that describes the template and provides a black button with white text to view all templates.

Any of templates can be edited just like any page or post in the block editor. Let’s say I don’t like to have a featured image on my index page and want to remove it. Simply delete the featured image block and save the template.

The other key part of the site editor UI is a list view that outlines the current blocks that are placed in the template. This has been a feature in WordPress since the introduction of the block editor, but what’s new this time around is that you can open and close parent blocks that contain child blocks like an accordion. Not only that, but it supports dragging and dropping blocks to change the layout directly from there.

The WordPress Site Editor with a white left panel expanded revealing an outline of the current blocks that are applied to the template.

One more thing in the site editor UI: you can clear out customizations with the click of a button. From the Templates screen, click the kebob menu next to a template and select the option to Clear customizations. This is a nice way to reset and start from scratch, should you need to.

Screenshot of the Template Parts screen in the WordPress Site Editor, showing a two-column able with a column that displays template names, and a column that identifies the location of the template part.

The WordPress Core team publishes regular updates on what’s new at Make WordPress Core. It’s worth bookmarking that to stay posted on the latest changes to the WordPress Block Editor and Site Editor.

Creating Templates and Template Parts

Templates, as you know, are core to WordPress theming. They enforce consistent and reusable layouts. That doesn’t change in WordPress 5.9. And neither does the fact that we can create template parts that are like module pieces that can be used in multiple template, say a post query that lives in an archive template and the home template.

What’s different in WordPress 5.9 is that they are created and managed with the site editor rather than PHP files that live in the theme folder.

The Block Editor Handbook lists three ways to create templates and template parts: (a) manually, by creating HTML files containing block markup, (b) using the site editor, and (c) using the template editing mode in the block editor.

Brief descriptions of creating template in the site editor and template editing mode are available in the Block Theme handbook. The WordPress 5.9 allows to create a new template using editor mode.

Screenshot of the Template Parts screen open in the WordPress Site Editor. A modal is open above the UI that contains an interface to create a template part, including the part's name and area.

The customized templates can then be exported to include in a block theme. So, yeah, we now have the ability to create a fully functioning WordPress theme without writing a line of code! The exported folder currently does not contain theme.json file, however there is a proposal over at GitHub to allow exporting both block themes and styles.

Screenshot of the WordPress Site Editor preferences panel open as a white panel to the left of the screen.

But for those who prefer working more closely with code, then manually creating WordPress templates and template parts is still a thing. You can still crack open a code editor and create HTML files containing block markup.

Global settings and styles (theme.json)

In classic themes, we write the styling rules in a style.css file. In block themes, styling is more challenging because CSS comes from different sources (e.g. core blocks, themes, and users). WordPress 5.8 introduced a concept of Global Styles — which is essentially a theme.json file — that, according to the docs, consolidate “the various APIs related to styles into a single point – a theme.json file that should be located inside the root of the theme directory.“

Screenshot of a theme dot jayson file open in the VS Code editor. The file contains objects for version and settings. The settings object contains a color object. The color object contains a palette objects which contains properties for slightly, color, name, and default.

The theme.json file is said to have been designed to offer more granular styling structure for theme authors with options to manage and customize the CSS styles coming from various origins. For example, a theme author may set certain styling features that are hidden from users, define default colors, font sizes and other features available to the user, and may set the default layout of the editor as well. Plus, theme.json allows you to customize styling on a per-block basis. It’s powerful, flexible, and super maintainable!

The block editor is expected to provide all the basic styling that theme authors are allowed to customize style, as defined by the theme.json file. However, the theme.json file could get quite long for a complex theme, and currently there is no way to partition it in a more digestible way. There is a GitHub ticket to restructure it so that different theme.json files map to a /styles folder. That would be a nice enhancement for developer experience.

The default Twenty Twenty-Two theme is a good example of how WordPress full-site editing features use theme.json for global settings and styling blocks.

WordPress Block Theme approaches

Maybe you’ve always made WordPress themes from scratch. Perhaps you’ve relied on the Underscores theme as a starting point. Or maybe you have a favorite theme you extend with a child theme. The new features of the WordPress Site Editor really change the way we make themes.

Following are a few emerging strategies for block-based theme development that are deeply integrated with the WordPress Site Editor.

Universal themes

The Automattic team has built a Blockbase universal theme that’s dubbed as a new way to build themes, sort of similar to the Underscores starter theme. The Blockbase theme provides temporary “ponyfill” styles that the block editor “does not yet take into account on theme.json ‘custom’ properties” and that may eventually become obsolete once the Gutenberg plugin fully matures and is integrated into WordPress Core.

Using the universal parent theme approach, the Automattic has already released eight Blockbase child themes, and several others are in progress over at GitHub.

Twenty Twenty-Two default theme

The Twenty Twenty-Two default theme is another excellent starting point, as it’s really the first WordPress theme that ships with WordPress that is designed to work with the site editor.

In my opinion, this theme is excellent for theme developers who are already familiar with FSE features to showcase what is possible. For others users who are not developers and are not familiar with FSE features, customizations it in the block editor, then exporting it as a child theme could be painfully frustrating and overwhelming.

Hybrid themes

The concept of “Hybrid” themes in the context of FSE is discussed in this GitHub ticket. The idea is to provide paths for any user to use the site or template editor to override traditional theme templates.

Justin Tadlock in this WP Tavern post predicts four types of themes — block only, universal, hybrid, and classic — and speculates that theme authors may split between “block themes and a mashup of classic/hybrid themes.”

Proof in the pudding is provided by Frank Klein in “What I Learned Building a Hybrid Theme”:

A hybrid theme mixes the traditional theming approach with full-site editing features. A key component here is the theme.json file. It offers more control over the block editor’s settings, and simplifies styling blocks. A hybrid theme can use block templates as well, but that’s optional.

Frank is the author of the Block-Based Bosco theme and has expanded further on what a “hybrid theme” is by creating a hybrid version of the default Twenty Twenty theme. The theme is available on GitHub. Currently, there are no hybrid themes in the WordPres Theme Directory.

WordPress community themes

At the time of writing, there are 47 block-based themes with FSE features available in the theme directory. As expected, this approach is widely varied.

For example, in this post, Aino block theme author Ellen Bower discusses how they converted their classic theme into a block theme, detailing what makes a theme a “block” theme. The file structure of this approach looks different from the standard block theme structure we covered earlier.

Another popular block theme, Tove by Andars Noren, is described as a flexible base theme that follows the standard block theme file structure.

There’s also a very simple single page proof of the concept theme by Carolina Nymark that contains nothing but a single index.html called Miniblock OOAK. It’s already available in the theme directory, as is another one from Justin Tadlock that’s a work in progress (and he wrote up his process in a separate article).

Block Theme Generator app

Even though we’ve already established how friendly WordPress Block Themes are for non-developers, there are tools that help create complete block themes or merely a customized theme.json file.

David Gwyer, an Automattic engineer, has been working on a Block theme generator app which, at the time of writing, is in beta and available for testing by request.

Screenshot of the Block Theme Generator app homepage. It has a bright blue background and dark blue text that welcomes you to the site, and a screenshot of the app.

In my brief testing, the app only allowed me to generate customized theme.json file. But Gwyer told to WP Tavern that the app isn’t fully baked just yet, but features are being added often. Once complete, this could be a very helpful resource for theme authors to create customized block themes.

Block themes that are currently in use

This Twitter thread from Carolina Nymark shows some examples of block themes that are live and in production at the time of this writing. In a recent Yoast article, Carolina listed a bunch of personal and business websites that use block themes.

Personal sites

Business sites

As I mentioned earlier, I also have been using a block theme for one of my personal websites for a while. The default Twenty Twenty-Two theme also currently shows more than 60,000 active installs, which tells me there are many more examples of block-based theme implementations in the wild.

Building Block Child Themes

Child theming is still a thing in this new era of WordPress blocks, though something that’s still in early days. In other words, there is no clear approach to do make a block-based child theme, and there are no existing tools to help at the moment.

That said, a few approaches for creating WordPress child block themes are emerging.

Create Blockbase Theme plugin

The Automattic team is working on a plugin called Create Blockbase Theme. This will make it fairly trivial to create child themes based on the Blockbase universal theme we talked about earlier. Ben Dwyer has discussed how theme authors can build Blockbase child themes with simple six steps and without writing a line of code.

I tested the plugin in my own local environment, making only small changes to my Blockbase theme install, and everything appeared to work. Just note that the plugin is still experimental and under development, though you can follow the roadmap to see what’s up.

Using an alternate theme.json file

Kjell Reigstad, author of the default WordPress Twenty Twenty-Two theme, demonstrates how swapping a single theme.json file with another theme.json file that contains different style configurations can change the look and feel of a block-based theme design.

Kjell has opened a pull request that shows off several experimental child themes that are available for testing at the GitHub theme-experiment GitHub repository.

A three-by-two grid of screenshots of child themes based on the default WordPress Twenty Twenty-Two theme in alternate colors schemes.

Along these same lines, Ryan Welcher is in the process of developing a theme.json builder tool that will generate a customized theme.json file to facilitate non-coders to create similar child themes. More can be found in this WP Tavern post.

The Framboise child theme (available in theme directory) is an early example of that approach which includes only a single theme.json file.

Is there even a need for child themes?

Rich Tabor asks the question:

Indeed, a single theme.json file could serve as a child theme on its own. There is an ongoing discussion about allowing theme authors to ship multiple theme.json files with block themes that offer multiple global style variations. This way, a WordPress user could pick one of the variations to use on the site.

Some features of global style variations are already included in Gutenberg v12. 5 and expected to be available with WordPress 6.0.

Some personal thoughts

I’d be remiss to end this without weighing in on all this from a personal level. I’ll do this briefly in a few points.

Block themes are a WordPress answer to Jamstack criticisms

Jamstack enthusiasts have lobbed criticisms at the WordPress platform, most notably that WordPress themes are bloated with PHP files. Well, that’s no longer the case with WordPress Block Themes.

We saw earlier how an entire theme can be a single index.html file and a theme.json file. No bloat there. And nothing but markup.

I miss the WordPress Customizer

Especially the ability to inject custom code. From here on out, it’s going to require a deep level of familiarity with the WordPress Site Editor UI to accomplish the same thing.

Customizations a site is easy-peasy.

Customizing a classic theme — even something as minimal as changing fonts — can be difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s changed now with the site editor and the introduction of the theme.json file, where a theme can be customized (and even exported!) without writing a single line of code.

I still hold my opinion, though that the site editor interface is confusing. I think a pleasant user experience is a far ways off but looking forward to the next WordPress 6.0 release for better user experience.

Barriers to designing themes is getting lower.

It’s less about PHP and template files, and more about developing patterns and creating content. That sounds exactly what a content management system should be designed to do! I am already excited with new features being considered for the WordPress 6.0 release.

Resources

There is already a ton of other articles that cover WordPress Block Themes, full-site editing, and the block editor. And many of those came before WordPress 5.9 was released!

So, in addition to this article, here’s a collection of others for you to consider as you begin or continue down your journey of WordPress blocks and site editing.

WordPress 5.9

Site editor and block themes

Selected blog posts


As expected in beta testing, the site editor is still intimating and confusing, nevertheless, I am finding it a fun to work with block themes. Indeed, I have been already modifying Twenty Twenty-Two as a child theme and plan to create style alternatives using single theme.json file.

Have you been using block themes in your project, if so, share your experience and thoughts; I love reading any comments and feedback!


A Deep Introduction to WordPress Block Themes originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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Mars Theme: A Deep Look at Frontity’s Headless WordPress Theme https://css-tricks.com/mars-theme-a-deep-look-at-frontitys-headless-wordpress-theme/ https://css-tricks.com/mars-theme-a-deep-look-at-frontitys-headless-wordpress-theme/#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2021 14:31:18 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=350070 Frontity is a framework for creating de-coupled (or "headless") WordPress sites. In this article, we dive into the process of spinning up such a site, with a detailed overview of the building blocks provided by Frontity and its flagship theme, Mars.


Mars Theme: A Deep Look at Frontity’s Headless WordPress Theme originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

]]>
This post was in progress before Automattic acquired Frontity and its entire team. According to Frontity’s founders, the framework will be transitioned into a community-led project and leave the project in “a stable, bug-free position” with documentation and features. Like other open-source community projects, Frontity will remain free as it has been, with opportunities to contribute to the project and make it an even better framework for decoupled WordPress. More detail is found in this FAQ page.

In my previous article, we created a headless WordPress site with Frontity and briefly looked at its file structure. In this companion article, we will go into a deep dive of the @frontity/mars-theme package, or Mars Theme, with a step-by-step walkthrough on how to customize it to make our own. Not only is the Mars Theme a great starter, it’s Frontity’s default theme — sort of like WordPress Twenty Twenty-One or the like. That makes it a perfect starting point for us to get hands-on experience with Frontity and its features.

Specifically, we will look at the fundamental parts of Frontity’s Mars Theme, including what they call “building blocks” as well as the different components that come with the package. We’ll cover what those components do, how they work, and finally, how styling works with examples.

Ready? Let’s go!


Frontity’s building blocks

Let’s revisit the file structure of the Frontity project we made in the last article as that shows us exactly where to find Frontity’s building blocks, the frontity.settings.js, and package.json and packages/mars-theme folder. We covered these is great detail before but, in particular, the package.json file gives us a lot of information about the project, like the name, description, author, dependencies, etc. Here’s what that file includes:

  • frontity: this is the main package that includes all the methods used in Frontity app development. It’s also where the CLI lives.
  • @frontity/core: This is the most important package because it takes care of all the bundling, rendering, merging, transpiling, serving, etc. We don’t need to access to it in order to develop a Frontity app. The full list is captured in the Frontity docs.
  • @frontity/wp-source: This package connects to the WordPress REST API of our site and fetches all the data needed in the Mars Theme.
  • @frontity/tiny-router: This package handles window.history and helps us with routing.
  • @frontity/htmal2react: This package converts HTML to React, working with processors that match HTML portions while replacing them with React components.

Frontity core, or @frontity/package (also referred as Frontity’s building block), is composed of useful React component libraries in its @frontity/components package, which exports helpful things like Link, Auto Prefetch, Image, Props, Iframe, Switch, and other functions, objects, etc., that can be directly imported into Frontity project components. A more detailed description of these components—including syntax info use cases—is in this package reference API.

The Frontity docs provide a little more information on what happens when a Frontity project is started:

When starting frontity, all the packages defined in frontity.settings.js are imported by @frontity/file-settings and the settings and exports from each package are merged by @frontity/core into a single store where you can access the state and actions of the different packages during development using @frontity/connect, the frontity state manager.

Next up, we’re familiarizing ourselves with how these building blocks, utilities and exports are used in the Mars Theme package to create a functioning Frontity project with a headless WordPress endpoint.

Section 1: Digging into the Mars Theme

Before discussing styling and customizing let’s briefly familiarize ourselves with the Mars Theme (@frontity/mars-theme) file structure and how it is put together.

#! frontity/mars-theme file structure
packages/mars-theme/
|__ src/
  |__ index.js
  |__ components/
     |__ list/
       |__ index.js
       |__ list-item.js
       |__ list.js
       |__ pagination.js
     |__ featured-media.js
     |__ header.js
     |__ index.js
     |__ link.js
     |__ loading.js
     |__ menu-icon.js
     |__ menu-model.js
     |__ menu.js
     |__ nav.js
     |__ page-error.js
     |__ post.js
     |__ title.js

The Mars Theme has three important component files: /src/index.js file, src/list/index.js and src/components/index.js. Frontity’s documentation is a great resource for understanding the Mars Theme, with especially great detail on how different Mars Theme components are defined and connected together in a Frontity site. Let’s start familiarizing ourselves with the theme’s three most important components: Root, Theme and List.

Theme Root component (/src/index.js)

The src/index.js file, also known as the theme’s Root, is one of the most important Mars Theme components. The Root serves as an entry point that targets <div id="root"> in the site markup to inject the roots of all the installed packages required to run a Frontity project. A Frontity theme exports a root and other required packages in the DOM as shown in the following use case example from the Frontity documentation:

<!-- /index.HTML (rendered by Frontity) -->
<html>
  <head>...</head>
  <body>
    <div id="root">
      <MyAwesomeTheme />
      <ShareModal />
      <YetAnotherPackage />
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

This Frontity doc explains how Frontity extends its theme using extensibility patterns called Slot and Fill. An example of the Root component (/src/index.js) is taken from its Mars Theme package (@frontity/mars-theme).

This is everything the package pulls in when initializing the Root component:

// mars-theme/src/components/index.js
import Theme from "./components";
// import processor libraries
import image from "@frontity/html2react/processors/image";
import iframe from "@frontity/html2react/processors/iframe";
import link from "@frontity/html2react/processors/link";

const marsTheme = {
  // The name of the extension
  name: "@frontity/mars-theme",
  // The React components that will be rendered
  roots: {
    /** In Frontity, any package can add React components to the site.
      * We use roots for that, scoped to the `theme` namespace. */
    theme: Theme,
  },
  state: {
    /** State is where the packages store their default settings and other
      * relevant state. It is scoped to the `theme` namespace. */
    theme: {
      autoPrefetch: "in-view",
      menu: [],
      isMobileMenuOpen: false,
      featured: {
        showOnList: false,
        showOnPost: false,
      },
    },
  },

  /** Actions are functions that modify the state or deal with other parts of
    * Frontity-like libraries. */
  actions: {
    theme: {
      toggleMobileMenu: ({ state }) => {
        state.theme.isMobileMenuOpen = !state.theme.isMobileMenuOpen;
      },
      closeMobileMenu: ({ state }) => {
        state.theme.isMobileMenuOpen = false;
      },
    },
  },
  /** The libraries that the extension needs to create in order to work */
  libraries: {
    html2react: {
      /** Add a processor to `html2react` so it processes the `<img>` tags
        * and internal link inside the content HTML.
        * You can add your own processors too. */
      processors: [image, iframe, link],
    },
  },
};

export default marsTheme;

The Mars Theme root component exports packages that includes any of the roots, fills, state, actions and libraries elements. More detailed information on Root can be found in this Frontity doc.

Theme component (/src/components/index.js)

The Frontity Theme component is its main root level component that is exported by the Theme namespace (lines 12-16, highlighted in the previous example. The Theme component is wrapped with the @frontity/connect function (line 51, highlighted below) which provides access to its state, actions and libraries props from the Root component instance and allows Theme component to read the state, manipulate through actions, or use code from other features packages in the libraries.

// mars-theme/src/components/index.js
import React from "react"
// Modules from @emotion/core, @emotion/styled, css, @frontity/connect, react-helmet
import { Global, css, connect, styled, Head } from "frontity";
import Switch from "@frontity/components/switch";
import Header from "./header";
import List from "./list";
import Post from "./post";
import Loading from "./loading";
import Title from "./title";
import PageError from "./page-error";

/** Theme is the root React component of our theme. The one we will export
 * in roots. */
const Theme = ({ state }) => {
  // Get information about the current URL.
  const data = state.source.get(state.router.link);

  return (
    <>
      {/* Add some metatags to the <head> of the HTML with react-helmet */}
      <Title />
      <Head>
        <meta name="description" content={state.frontity.description} />
        <html lang="en" />
      </Head>

      {/* Add some global styles for the whole site, like body or a's. 
      Not classes here because we use CSS-in-JS. Only global HTML tags. */}
      <Global styles={globalStyles} />

      {/* Render Header component. Add the header of the site. */}
      <HeadContainer>
        <Header />
      </HeadContainer>

      {/* Add the main section. It renders a different component depending
      on the type of URL we are in. */}
      <Main>
        <Switch>
          <Loading when={data.isFetching} />
          <List when={data.isArchive} />
          <Post when={data.isPostType} />
          <PageError when={data.isError} />
        </Switch>
      </Main>
    </>
  );
};

export default connect(Theme);

{/* define Global styles and styled components used Theme component here */}
const globalStyles = css`
  body {
    margin: 0;
    font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto,
      "Droid Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  }
  a,
  a:visited {
    color: inherit;
    text-decoration: none;
  }
`;
const HeadContainer = styled.div`
  // ...
`;

const Main = styled.div`
  // ...
`;

This example is pulled directly from the Mars Theme’s /src/components/index.js component, which we imported with connect from frontity (line 4, above). We are using state.source.get() to retrieve data to be rendered from the current path (lines 39-46, highlighted above); for example, List, Post and other components.

Section 2: Working with the List component

What we just looked at are the theme-level components in Frontity’s Mars Theme. You may have noticed that those components import additional components. Let’s look at a specific one of those, the List component.

The List component is exported by src/components/list/index.js which uses @loadable/components to split the List component code in such a way that the component only loads when a user clicks a List view; otherwise it won’t render at all, like when a Post view is clicked instead.

// src/components/list/index.js
import { loadable } from "frontity";

// Codesplit the list component so it's not included if the users
// load a post directly.
export default loadable(() => import("./list"));

In this example, Frontity utilizes loadble functions (integrated from Loadable components) for code splitting which loads a component asynchronously and separates code into different bundles that are dynamically loaded at run time. Frontity’s core package API reference goes into much more detail.

Displaying lists of posts

To display a list of posts in an archive page, we first have to look Frontity src/components/list/list.js component. As the name suggests, the List component renders lists of posts using state.source.get(link) and its items field (lines 22-25, highlighted below).

// src/components/list/list.js
import { connect, styled, decode } from "frontity";
import Item from "./list-item";
import Pagination from "./pagination";

const List = ({ state }) => {
  // Get the data of the current list.
  const data = state.source.get(state.router.link);
  return (
    <Container>
      {/* If the list is a taxonomy, we render a title. */}
      {data.isTaxonomy && (
        <Header>
          {data.taxonomy}: {state.source[data.taxonomy][data.id].name}
        </Header>
      )}
      {/* If the list is an author, we render a title. */}
      {data.isAuthor && (
        <Header>Author: {state.source.author[data.id].name}</Header>
      )}
      {/* Iterate over the items of the list. */}
      {data.items.map(({ type, id }) => {
        const item = state.source[type][id];
        // Render one Item component for each one.
        return <Item key={item.id} item={item} />;
      })}
      <Pagination />
    </Container>
  );
};
export default connect(List);

In the code example above, the connect function is imported by frontity in line 2 and is wrapped around the exported connect(List) component in line 31 (the last line). Two other components, list-item.js and pagination.js are also imported. Let’s look at those next!

Here’s what we have for list-item.js:

// src/components/list/list-item.js
import { connect, styled } from "frontity";
import Link from "../link";
import FeaturedMedia from "../featured-media";

const Item = ({ state, item }) => {
  const author = state.source.author[item.author];
  const date = new Date(item.date);
  return (
    <article>
     {/* Rendering clickable post Title */}
      <Link link={item.link}>
        <Title dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: item.title.rendered }} />
      </Link>
      <div>
        {/* If the post has an author, we render a clickable author text. */}
        {author && (
          <StyledLink link={author.link}>
            <AuthorName>
              By <b>{author.name}</b>
            </AuthorName>
          </StyledLink>
        )}
        {/* Rendering post date */}
        <PublishDate>
          {" "}
          on <b>{date.toDateString()}</b>
        </PublishDate>
      </div>
      {/* If the want to show featured media in the
       * list of featured posts, we render the media. */}
      {state.theme.featured.showOnList && (
        <FeaturedMedia id={item.featured_media} />
      )}
      {/* If the post has an excerpt (short summary text), we render it */}
      {item.excerpt && (
        <Excerpt dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: item.excerpt.rendered }} />
      )}
    </article>
  );
};
// Connect the Item to gain access to `state` as a prop
export default connect(Item);

The Item component renders the preview of a blog post with clickable post title (lines, 12-14, highlighted above), author name (lines 19-21, highlighted above) and published date (lines: 25-28, highlighted above) along with <FeaturedMedia /> which serves as a post’s optional featured image.

Paginating a list of posts

Let’s look at the Pagination component that was rendered earlier in the List component by the src/components/list/pagination/js that follows:

// src/components/list/pagination.js
import { useEffect } from "react";
import { connect, styled } from "frontity";
import Link from "../link";

const Pagination = ({ state, actions }) => {
  // Get the total posts to be displayed based for the current link
  const { next, previous } = state.source.get(state.router.link);
  // Pre-fetch the the next page if it hasn't been fetched yet.
  useEffect(() => {
    if (next) actions.source.fetch(next);
  }, []);
  return (
    <div>
      {/* If there's a next page, render this link */}
      {next && (
        <Link link={next}>
          <Text>← Older posts</Text>
        </Link>
      )}
      {previous && next && " - "}
      {/* If there's a previous page, render this link */}
      {previous && (
        <Link link={previous}>
          <Text>Newer posts →</Text>
        </Link>
      )}
    </div>
  );
};
/**
 * Connect Pagination to global context to give it access to
 * `state`, `actions`, `libraries` via props
 */
export default connect(Pagination);

The Pagination component is used so that users can paginate between lists of posts — you know, like navigating forward from Page 1 to Page 2, or backward from Page 2 to Page 1. The state, actions, libraries props are provided by the global context that wraps and exports them with connect(Pagination).

Displaying single posts

The Post component displays both single posts and pages. Indeed, structurally both are the same except, in posts, we usually display meta data (author, date, categories etc). Meta data isn’t usually used in pages.

In this Post component, conditional statements are rendered only if the post object contains data (i.e. data.isPost) and a featured image is selected in sate.theme.featured in the theme’s root component:

// src/components/post.js
import { useEffect } from "react";
import { connect, styled } from "frontity";
import Link from "./link";
import List from "./list";
import FeaturedMedia from "./featured-media";

const Post = ({ state, actions, libraries }) => {
  // Get information about the current URL.
  const data = state.source.get(state.router.link);
  // Get the data of the post.
  const post = state.source[data.type][data.id];
  // Get the data of the author.
  const author = state.source.author[post.author];
  // Get a human readable date.
  const date = new Date(post.date);
  // Get the html2react component.
  const Html2React = libraries.html2react.Component;

  useEffect(() => {
    actions.source.fetch("/");
    {/* Preloading the list component which runs only on mount */}
    List.preload();
  }, []);

  // Load the post, but only if the data is ready.
  return data.isReady ? (
    <Container>
      <div>
        <Title dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: post.title.rendered }} />
        {/* Only display author and date on posts */}
        {data.isPost && (
          <div>
            {author && (
              <StyledLink link={author.link}>
                <Author>
                  By <b>{author.name}</b>
                </Author>
              </StyledLink>
            )}
            <DateWrapper>
              {" "}
              on <b>{date.toDateString()}</b>
            </DateWrapper>
          </div>
        )}
      </div>
      {/* Look at the settings to see if we should include the featured image */}
      {state.theme.featured.showOnPost && (
        <FeaturedMedia id={post.featured_media} />
      )}
      {/* Render the content using the Html2React component so the HTML is processed
       by the processors we included in the libraries.html2react.processors array. */}
      <Content>
        <Html2React html={post.content.rendered} />
      </Content>
    </Container>
  ) : null;
};
{/* Connect Post to global context to gain access to `state` as a prop. */} 
export default connect(Post);

We just saw how important the List component is when it comes to displaying a group of posts. It’s what we might correlate to the markup we generally use when working with the WordPress loop for archive pages, latest posts feeds, and other post lists.

There are a few more components worth looking at before we get into Mars Theme styling.

The following MarsLink component comes from src/components/link.js, which is a wrapper on top of the {@link Link} component. It accepts the same props as the {@link Link} component.

// src/components/link.js
import { connect, useConnect } from "frontity";
import Link from "@frontity/components/link";

const MarsLink = ({ children, ...props }) => {
  const { state, actions } = useConnect();

  /** A handler that closes the mobile menu when a link is clicked. */
  const onClick = () => {
    if (state.theme.isMobileMenuOpen) {
      actions.theme.closeMobileMenu();
    }
  };

  return (
    <Link {...props} onClick={onClick} className={className}>
      {children}
    </Link>
  );
};
// Connect the Item to gain access to `state` as a prop
export default connect(MarsLink, { injectProps: false });

As explained in this tutorial, the Link component provides a link attribute that takes a target URL as its value. Quoting from the doc: it outputs an <a> element into the resulting HTML, but without forcing a page reload which is what would occur if you simply added an <a> element instead of using the Link component.

Frontity menu (src/components/nav.js)

Earlier, we defined values for menu items in the frontity.settings.js file. In the Nav component (located in src/components/nav/js) those menu item values are iterated over, match their page url, and display the component inside the Header component.

// src/components/nav.js
import { connect, styled } from "frontity";
import Link from "./link";

const Nav = ({ state }) => (
  <NavContainer>
    // Iterate over the menu exported from state.theme and menu items value set in frontity.setting.js
    {state.theme.menu.map(([name, link]) => {
      // Check if the link matched the current page url
      const isCurrentPage = state.router.link === link;
      return (
        <NavItem key={name}>
          {/* If link URL is the current page, add `aria-current` for a11y */}
          <Link link={link} aria-current={isCurrentPage ? "page" : undefined}>
            {name}
          </Link>
        </NavItem>
      );
    })}
  </NavContainer>
);
// Connect the Item to gain access to `state` as a prop
export default connect(Nav);

The Mars Theme provides two additional menu components — menu.js and menu-modal.js — for mobile device views which, like nav.js, are available from the Mars Theme GitHub repository.

In Frontity, featured media items values are defined in the Root component ‘s theme.state.featured line that we discussed earlier. Its full code is available in the /src/components/featured-media.js component file.

Now that we’re more familiar with the Mars Theme, as well as its building blocks, components, and functions, we can move into the different approaches that are available for styling the Mars Theme front-end.

As we move along, you may find this Frontity doc a good reference for the various styling approaches we cover.

Section 4: How to style a Frontity project

For those of us coming from WordPress, styling in Frontity looks and feels different than the various approaches for overriding styles in a typical WordPress theme.

First off, Frontity provides us with reusable components made with with styled-components, and Emotion, a CSS library for styling components in JavaScript, right out of the box. Emotion is popular with React and JavaScript developers, but not so much in the WordPress community based on what I’ve seen. CSS-Tricks has covered CSS-in-JS in great detail including how it compares with other styling, and this video provides background information about the library. So, knowing that both styled-components and Emotion are available and ready to use is nice context as we get started.

Frontity’s documentation has great learning resources for styling frontity components as well as set-by-step guidance for customizing Frontity theme styles.

I am new to the CSS-in-JS world, except for some general reading on it here and there. I was exposed to CSS-in-JS styling in a Gatsby project, but Gatsby provides a bunch of other styling options that aren’t readily available in Frontity or the Mars Theme. That said, I feel I was able to get around that lack of experience, and what I learned from my discovery work is how I’m going to frame things.

So, with that, we are going to visit a few styling examples, referencing Frontity’s styling documentation as we go in order to familiarize ourselves with even more information.

Using styled-components

As the name suggests, we need a component in order to style it. So, first, let’s create a styled-component using Emotion’s styled function.

Let’s say we want to style a reusable <Button /> component that’s used throughout our Frontity project. First, we should create a <Button /> component (where its div tag is appended with a dot) and then call the component with a template literal for string styles.

// Creating Button styled component
import { styled } from "frontity"

const Button = styled.div`
  background: lightblue;
  width: 100%;
  text-align: center;
  color: white;
`

Now this <Button /> component is available to import in other components. Let’s look specifically at the Mars Theme <Header /> component to see how the styled-component is used in practice.

// mars-theme/src/components/header.js
import { connect, styled } from "frontity";
import Link from "./link";
import MobileMenu from "./menu";

const Header = ({ state }) => {
  return (
    <>
      <Container> // This component is defined later
        <StyledLink link="/"> // This component is defined later
          <Title>{state.frontity.title}</Title> // This component is defined later
        </StyledLink>
        // ...
      </Container>
    </>
  );
};

// Connect the Header component to get access to the `state` in its `props`
export default connect(Header);

// Defining the Container component that is a div with these styles
const Container = styled.div` 
  width: 848px;
  max-width: 100%;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  padding: 24px;
  color: #fff;
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  justify-content: space-around;
`;
// Defining Title component that is h2 with these styles 
const Title = styled.h2`
  margin: 0;
  margin-bottom: 16px;
`;
// Defining StyledLink component that is a third-party Link component
const StyledLink = styled(Link)`
  text-decoration: none;
`;

In the above code example, the <StyledLink /> component (lines 39-41, highlighted above) is used to style another component, <Link />. Similarly. the <Container /> and <Title /> styled-components are used to style the site title and the site’s main container width.

The Emotion docs describe how a styled component can be used as long as it accepts className props. This is a useful styling tool that can be extended using a variable as shown in the following example below from Frontity’s documentation:

// mars-theme/src/components/header.js 
// ...
// We create a variable to use later as an example
Const LinkColor = "green";

// ... 

// Defining StyledLink component that is a third-party Link component
const StyledLink = styled(Link)`
  text-decoration: none;
  Background-color: ${linkColor};
`;

The styled component above is used extensively in the Mars Theme. But before we go further, let’s look at using a CSS prop to style components.

Using a CSS prop

The css prop is available as a template literal for inline styling from the Frontity core package. It is similar to styled-components, except css does not return a React component but rather a special object that can be passed to a component through the css prop.

/* Using as CSS prop */
import { css } from "frontity";

const PinkButton = () => (
  <div css={css`background: pink`}>
    My Pink Button
  </div>
);

See that? We can style a component inline using the css prop on a component. Additional use case examples are available in the Emotion docs.

Using the <Global /> component

<Global /> is a React component that allows to us create site-wide general styles, though Frontity does not optimize it for performance. Global styles should be added to the <Theme /> root component.

// packages/mars-theme/src/components/index.js
// ...

import { Global, css, styled } from "frontity";
import Title from "./title";
import Header from "./header";
// ...

// Theme root
const Theme = ({ state }) => {
  // Get information about the current URL.
  const data = state.source.get(state.router.link);

  return (
   <>
     {/* Add some metatags to the <head> of the HTML. */}
      <Title />
        // ...
      {/* Add global styles */}
      <Global styles={globalStyles} />
      {/* Add the header of the site. */}
      <HeadContainer>
        <Header />
      </HeadContainer>
        // ...
   </>
  );
 };

export default connect(Theme);

const globalStyles = css`
  body {
    margin: 0;
    font-family: -apple-system, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, sans-serif;
  }
  a,
  a:visited {
    color: inherit;
    text-decoration: none;
  }
`;

const HeadContainer = styled.div`
  // ...
`;

The <Global /> component has a style attribute that takes a css function as its value and consists of standard CSS inside back ticks (lines 35-45, highlighted above) as template literals. Frontity recommends using global styles for globally-used HTML tags, like <html>, <body>, <a>, and <img>.

Additional CSS styling options — including a dynamic CSS prop and React style props — are described in this Frontity guide to styling.

Resources for customizing a Frontity theme

I did a lot of research heading into my Mars Theme project and thought I’d share some of the more useful resources I found for styling Frontity themes:

  • Official Frontity themes. In addition to the default Mars Theme, Frontity has a ready-to-use package that ports the default WordPress Twenty Twenty theme in its entirety to a Frontity project. You will notice in the next section that my style customizations were inspired by this great learning resource.
  • Community themes. At this time of this writing, there are a grand total of nine Frontity community members who contributed fully functional theme packages. Those themes can be cloned into your own project and customized according to your needs. Likewise, many of the sites included in the Frontity showcase have GitHub repository links, and just as we can copy or pick up design tips from WordPress themes, we can use these resources to customize our own Frontity theme by referencing these packages.
  • Creating your own theme from scratch. The Frontity tutorial site has an excellent step-by-step guide to create your own fully working and functional theme package from scratch. Although it’s a little time consuming to go through it all, it is the best approach to fully understand a Frontity site project.

Now that we have covered the more commonly used Frontity styling techniques, let’s apply what we’ve learned to start customizing our Mars Theme project.

Section 5: Customizing the Frontity Mars Theme

I’m going to share one of my working Frontity projects, where I took the Mars Theme as a base and modified it with the resources we’ve covered so far. Because this is my learning playground, I took time to learn from Frontity default themes, community themes and Frontity showcase sites.

So here are examples of how I customized Frontity’s Mars Theme for my headless WordPress site project.

Changing the theme package name

First, I wanted to change the @frontity/mars-theme package name to something different. It’s a good idea to change the package name and make sure all of the dependencies in the package file are up to date. Luis Herrera outlines the required steps for renaming the Mars Theme package in this frontity community forum, which I used as a reference to go from @fontity/mars-theme package to @frontity/labre-theme.

So, open up the package.json file and change the name property on line 2. This is the name of the package that gets used throughout the project.

Screenshot of the package.json file open in VS Code. The left panel shows the files and the right panel displays the code.
I renamed my project from mars-theme to labre-theme in my package.json file,.

We should also update the name of the project folder while we’re at it. We can do that on line 25. I changed mine from ./package/mars-theme to ./package/labre-theme. Now, the theme package is properly listed as a dependency and will be imported to the project.

Our frontity-settings.js file needs to reflect the name change. So, let’s open that up and:

  • rename the package name on line 13 (I changed mine from @frontity/mars-theme to @frontity/labre-theme), and
  • rename the name on line 3 (I changed mine from mars-demo to labre-demo).
// @frontity-settings.js
const settings = {
  "name": "labre-demo",
  "state": {
    "frontity": {
      "url": "http://frontitytest.local",
      "title": "Frontity Demo Blog",
      "description": "Exploring Frontity as Headless WordPress"
    }
  },
  "packages": [
    {
      "name": "@frontity/labre-theme",
      "state": {
        "theme": {
          "menu": [
            ["Home", "/"],
            ["Block", "/category/block/"],
            ["Classic", "/category/classic/"],
            ["Alignments", "/tag/alignment-2/"],
            ["About", "/about/"]
          ],
 // ...

Next up, we want to re-initialize the project with these changes. We should delete the node_modules folder with rm -rf node_modules in a terminal and reinstall the npm package with yarn install. Once the npm package is reinstalled, everything gets properly linked internally and our Frontity project runs just fine without any errors.

Refactoring navigation with dynamic menu fetching

As we discussed earlier, Frontity menu items are either hard-coded in the frontity.setting.js file or in index.js component that’s stored in the Frontity state. However, WordPress can dynamically fetch the Frontity menu. In fact, Frontity just so happens to have a YouTube video on the subject. Let me break down the key steps here.

The first step is to install the WP-REST-API V2 Menus plugin in WordPress. The plugin is freely available in the WordPress Plugin Directory, which means you can find it and activate it directly from the WordPress admin.

Why do we need this plugin? It extends the new routes to all the registered WordPress menus to the REST API (e.g. /menus/v1/menus/<slug>).

If we check our project site at /wp-json/menu/v1/menus, it should display our selected menu items in the JSON. We can get the menu items with the menu item’s slug property.

Next, let’s use the menuHandler function from the tutorial. Create a new menu-handler.js file at src/components/handler/menu-handler.js and paste in the following code:

// src/components/handler/menu-handler.js
const menuHandler = {
  name: "menus",
  priority: 10,
  pattern: "/menu/:slug",
  func: async ({ link, params, state, libraries }) => {
    console.log("PARAMS:", params);
    const { slug } = params;

    // Fetch the menu data from the endpoint
    const response = await libraries.source.api.get({
      endpoint: `/menus/v1/menus/${slug}`,
    });

    // Parse the JSON to get the object
    const menuData = await response.json();

    // Add the menu items to source.data
    const menu = state.source.data[link];
    console.log(link);
    Object.assign(menu, {
      items: menuData.items,
      isMenu: true,
    });
  },
};

export default menuHandler;

This menuHandler function is only executed if the pattern value (i.e. /menu/:slug) matches. Now let’s update our /src/index.js root component so it imports the handler:

// src/index.js
import Theme from "./components";
import image from "@frontity/html2react/processors/image";
import iframe from "@frontity/html2react/processors/iframe";
import link from "@frontity/html2react/processors/link";
import menuHandler from "./components/handlers/menu-handler";

const labreTheme = {
  // ...
  state: {
    theme: {
      autoPrefetch: "in-view",
      menu: [],
      {/* Add menuURL property with menu slug as its value */}
      menuUrl: "primary-menu",
      isMobileMenuOpen: false,
      // ...
    },
  },

  /** Actions are functions that modify the state or deal with other parts of
    * Frontity-like libraries */
  actions: {
    theme: {
      toggleMobileMenu: ({ state }) => {
        state.theme.isMobileMenuOpen = !state.theme.isMobileMenuOpen;
      },
      closeMobileMenu: ({ state }) => {
        state.theme.isMobileMenuOpen = false;
      },
      {/* Added before SSR action */}
      beforeSSR: async ({ state, actions }) => {
        await actions.source.fetch(`/menu/${state.theme.menuUrl}/`);
      },
    },
  },
  libraries: {
    // ...
    {/* Added menuHandler source */}
    source: {
      handlers: [menuHandler],
    },
  },
};

export default labreTheme;

Add an array of handlers under the source property and fetch data before the beforeSSR function. It does not fetch but does match the menu-handler slug, which means menuHandler() is executed. That puts the menu items into state and they become available to manipulate.

Please note that we have added a new menuUrl property here (line 15 above) which can be used as a variable at our endpoint in handlers, as well as the nav.js component. Then, changing the value of menuUrl in the index.js root component, we could display another menu.

Let’s get this data into our theme through state and map with menu-items to display on the site.

// src/components/nav.js
import { connect, styled } from "frontity";
import Link from "./link";

/** Navigation Component. It renders the navigation links */
const Nav = ({ state }) => {
  {/* Define menu-items constants here */}
  const items = state.source.get(`/menu/${state.theme.menuUrl}/`).items;

  return (
  <NavContainer>
    {items.map((item) => {
       return (
        <NavItem key={item.ID}>
           <Link link={item.url}>{item.title}</Link>
         </NavItem>
      );
    })}
  </NavContainer>
  );
};

export default connect(Nav);

const NavContainer = styled.nav`
  list-style: none;
  // ...

If we change our menu slug here and in index.js, then we get a different menu. To view dynamic menu items in mobile view, we should similarly update menu-modal.js components as well.

Additionally, the tutorial describes how to fetch nested menus as well, which you can learn from the tutorial video, starting at about 18:09.

Modifying the file structure

I decided to restructure my Labre (formerly known as Mars) theme folder. Here’s how it looks after the changes:

#! modified Frontity labre-theme structure
packages/labre-theme/
|__ src/
  |__ index.js
  |__ components/
     |__image/
     |__assets/
     |__ list/
     |__ footer/
       |__footer.js
       |__ widget.js
     |__ header/
       |__ header.js
       |__ menu-icon.js
       |__ menu-model.js
       |__ nav.js
     |__ pages/
       |__ index.js
       |__ page.js
     |__ posts/
       |__ index.js
       |__ post.js
     |__ styles/
     // ...

As you can see, I added separate folders for pages, styles, headers, posts, and images. Please take a note that we have to update file paths in index.js and other related components anytime we change the way files and folders are organized. Otherwise, they’ll be pointing to nothing!

You may have noticed that the original Mars Theme folder structure includes neither a footer component, nor a separate page component. Let’s make those components to demonstrate how our new folder structure works.

We can start with the page component. The Mars Theme generates both pages and posts with the posts.js component by default — that’s because pages and posts are essentially the same except that posts have meta data (e.g. authors, date, etc.) and they can get away with it. But we can separate them for our own needs by copying the code in posts.js and pasting it into a new pages.js file in our /pages folder.

// src/components/pages/page.js
import React, { useEffect } from "react";
import { connect, styled } from "frontity";
import List from "../list";

const Page = ({ state, actions, libraries }) => {
  // Get information about the current URL.
  const data = state.source.get(state.router.link);
  // Get the data of the post.
  const page = state.source[data.type][data.id];
  //  ...
  // Load the page, but only if the data is ready.
  return data.isReady ? (
    <Container>
      <div className="post-title">
        <Title dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: page.title.rendered }} />
      </div>

      {/* Render the content using the Html2React component so the HTML is processed by the processors we included in the libraries.html2react.processors array. */}
      <Content>
        <Html2React html={page.content.rendered} />
      </Content>
    </Container>
  ) : null;
};
// Connect the Page component to get access to the `state` in its `props`
export default connect(Page);

// Copy styled components from post.js except, DateWrapper
const Container = styled.div`
    width: 90vw;
    width: clamp(16rem, 93vw, 58rem);
    margin: 0;
    padding: 24px;
`
// ..

All we did here was remove the meta data from post.js (lines 31-34 and 55-76) and the corresponding styled components. Just as we did with the Mars Theme /list folder, we should export the loadable function in both the pages and posts folders to code split the <List /> component. This way, the <List /> component isn’t displayed if a user is on a single post.

// src/components/pages/index.js
import { loadable } from "frontity";

/** Codesplit the list component so it's not included
*   if the users load a post directly. */
export default loadable(() => import("./page"));

Next, we should update path url of /src/components/index.js component as shown below:

// src/components/index.js
import { Global, css, connect, styled, Head } from "frontity";
import Switch from "@frontity/components/switch";
import Header from "./header/header";
import List from "./list";
import Page from "./pages/page";
import Post from "./posts/post";
import Loading from "./loading";
import Title from "./title";
import PageError from "./page-error";

/** Theme is the root React component of our theme. The one we will export
 * in roots. */
const Theme = ({ state }) => {
  // Get information about the current URL.
  const data = state.source.get(state.router.link);

  return (
    <>
      // ...

      {/* Add some global styles for the whole site */}
       <Global styles={globalStyles} />
      {/* Add the header of the site. */}
      <HeadContainer>
        <Header />
      </HeadContainer>
      {/* Add the main section */}
      <Main>
        <Switch>
          <Loading when={data.isFetching} />
          <List when={data.isArchive} />
          <Page when={data.isPage} /> {/* Added Page component */}
          <Post when={data.isPostType} />
          <PageError when={data.isError} />
        </Switch>
      </Main>
    </>
  );
};

export default connect(Theme);

// styled components

Now we’re importing the <Page / component and have added our <Main /> styled component.

Let’s move on to our custom footer component. You probably know what to do by now: create a new footer.js component file and drop it into the /src/components/footer/ folder. We can add some widgets to our footer that display the sitemap and some sort of “Powered by” blurb:

// src/components/footer/footer.js
import React from "react";
import { connect, styled } from "frontity";
import Widget from "./widget"

const Footer = () => {
  return (
  <>
    <Widget />
    <footer>
      <SiteInfo>
        Frontity LABRE Theme 2021 | {" "} Proudly Powered by {"  "}
        <FooterLinks href="https://wordpress.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WordPress</FooterLinks>
        {"  "} and
        <FooterLinks href="https://frontity.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Frontity</FooterLinks>
      </SiteInfo>
    </footer>
    </>
  );
};

export default connect(Footer);
// ...

This is a super simple example. Please note that I have imported a <Widget /> component (line 4, highlighted above) and called the component (line 9, highlighted above). We don’t actually have a <Widget /> component yet, so let’s make that while we’re at it. That can be a widget.js file in the same directory as the footer, /src/components/footer/.

Screen shot of VS code editor open to a widget.js file that shows the syntax highlighted markup for a component.
This widget.js component was inspired by Aamodt Group‘s footer component, available in a GitHub repository.
Four columns of links, each with a heading. The text is dark against a light gray background.
The widget is hard-coded but works.

Customizing the theme header

The default header.js component in Mars Theme is very basic with a site title and site description and navigation items underneath. I wanted to refactor the header component with a site logo and title on the left and the nav.js component (top navigation) on the right.

// src/components/header.js
import { connect, styled } from "frontity";
import Link from "./link";
import Nav from "./nav";
import MobileMenu from "./menu";
import logo from "./images/frontity.png"

const Header = ({ state }) => {
  return (
    <>
      <Container>
        <StyledLink link="/">
         {/* Add header logo*/}
          <Logo src={logo} />
          <Title>{state.frontity.title}</Title>
        </StyledLink>
          {/*<Description>{state.frontity.description}</Description> */}
          <Nav />
      </Container>
        <MobileMenu />
    </>
  );
};
// Connect the Header component to get access to the `state` in its `props`
export default connect(Header);

const Container = styled.div`
  width: 1000px;
  // ...
  `}
{/* Logo styled component */}
const Logo = styled.img`
  max-width: 30px;
  display: inline-block;
  border-radius: 15px;
  margin-right: 15px;
`;

// ...

My refactored header.js component imports a logo image (line 6, highlighted above) and uses in line 14. The nav.js component shown below is basically the same, only with some minor styling modifications.

Screenshot showing refactored site header with site logo and site title (left) and top navigation (right)

Adding the <Global> style component

We have already covered the <Global> component and how it’s used for site-wide CSS. There are only a few global styles in the default Mars Theme root component, and I wanted to add more.

I did that with a separate globalStyles file at /src/components/styles/globalStyles.js — similar to Frontity’s Twenty Twenty theme — and added root variables, a CSS reset, and common site-wide element styles, found in the GitHub repo.

Implementing fluid typography

Even though it’s not really in scope, I really wanted to use fluid typography in my custom theme as part of my overall learning journey. So, I added it to the global styles.

CSS-Tricks has extensively covered fluid typography and how the clamp() function is used to set target font sizes. Following those CSS-Tricks posts and this Picalilli one as my guide, I defined two custom properties with clamped font size ranges on the :root element in the globalStyles.js component.

// src/components/styles/globalStyles.js
:root {
  --wide-container: clamp(16rem, 90vw, 70rem);
  --normal-container: clamp(16rem, 90vw, 58rem);
}

The wide-container wrapper is used for header and footer components whereas the normal-container will be used for displaying posts and pages.

I also clamped the headings under elementBase in the globalStyles.js component as shown in this GitHub repo.

It was a fun working with the clamp() function because it meant I could set a range of sizes without any media queries at all!

Adding webfonts to the theme

I also wanted to use a different webfont in my theme. Importing webfonts in CSS using @font-face is covered here on CSS-Tricks. Frontity’s Twenty Twenty Theme uses it, so that’s a good place to reference as well.

I wanted three Google fonts:

We can use the fonts with either with a <link>in the HTML head or with @import in CSS. But Chris covered how to use @font-face with Google Fonts, which allows us to optimize the number of HTTP requests we make since we can download the fonts to our own server.

I use the Google webfonts helper to host the downloaded font files. Here’s what I got:

/* source: google webfonts helper */
/* source-sans-pro-regular - latin */
@font-face {
  font-family: 'Source Sans Pro';
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 400;
  src: url('../fonts/source-sans-pro-v14-latin-regular.eot'); /* IE9 Compat Modes */
  src: local(''),
    url('../fonts/source-sans-pro-v14-latin-regular.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'), /* IE6-IE8 */
    url('../fonts/source-sans-pro-v14-latin-regular.woff2') format('woff2'), /* Super Modern Browsers */
    url('../fonts/source-sans-pro-v14-latin-regular.woff') format('woff'), /* Modern Browsers */
    url('../fonts/source-sans-pro-v14-latin-regular.ttf') format('truetype'), /* Safari, Android, iOS */
    url('../fonts/source-sans-pro-v14-latin-regular.svg#SourceSansPro') format('svg'); /* Legacy iOS */
}

Looking at the Twenty Twenty Theme as a reference for how it’s done there, I created a font-face.js file and dropped it into the /src/components/styles folder as shown in this GitHub repository.

Those fonts point to a /fonts folder that doesn’t exist. So, let’s make one there and make sure all of the correct font files are in it so the fonts load properly.

Importing globalStyles and @face-font components to the root <Theme /> component

Let’s open our theme root component, /src/components.index.js, and add our globalStyles.js and font-face.js components in there. As shown below, we should import both components into index.js and call the components later.

// src/components/index.js

// ...
import FontFace from "./styles/font-face";
import globalStyles from "./styles/globalStyles";

/** Theme is the root React component of our theme. The one we will export
 * in roots. */
const Theme = ({ state }) => {
  // Get information about the current URL.
  const data = state.source.get(state.router.link);

  return (
    <>
    // ...

    {/* Add some global styles for the whole site, like body or a's.
     *  Not classes here because we use CSS-in-JS. Only global HTML tags. */}
      <Global styles={globalStyles} />
      <FontFace />
      {/* Add the header of the site. */}
      // ...

export default connect(Theme);

 {/* delete original globalStyles css component */}

 // ...

Finally, we should remove mars-theme globalStyles component from index.js. Now our new fonts are applied throughout our project.

Styling pages and posts

Our posts and pages are pretty much styled already, except for some Gutenberg block contents, like buttons, quotes, etc.

To style our post entry meta data, let’s add icons for the author, date, categories, and tags. Frontity’s port of the WordPress Twenty Nineteen theme uses SVG icons and components for author.js, categories.js, posted-on.js and tags.js components, which we can totally copy and use in our own project. I literally copied the top-level entry-meta folder and everything in it from the frontity-twentynineteen theme and added it all to the /components/posts/ project folder.

Next we should update our src/components/list/list-item.js component so we can use the new assets:

// src/components/list/list-item.js

import { connect, styled } from "frontity";
import Link from "../link";
import FeaturedMedia from "../featured-media";

// import entry-meta
import Author from "../entry-meta/author";
import PostedOn from "../entry-meta/posted-on";

const Item = ({ state, item }) => {

  return (
    <article>
      <div>
        {/* If the post has an author, we render a clickable author text. */}
        <EntryMeta>
          <Author authorId={item.author} /> {"|  "}
          <PostedOn post={item} />
        </EntryMeta>
      </div>

      <Link link={item.link}>
        <Title dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: item.title.rendered }} />
      </Link>
      // ...
    </article>
  );
};

// Connect the Item to gain access to `state` as a prop
export default connect(Item);

The styled component for the <EntryMeta /> component can be something like as shown in the GitHub repository.

With these styles in place, our archive page entry meta looks good with icons displayed before entry-meta taxonomy (authors, posted-on).

Here we will modify archives taxonomy page styling with more descriptive header. Let’s update list.js component of our /src/components/list/list.js as shown below.

// src/components/list/list.js

import React from "react";
import { connect, styled, decode } from "frontity";
import Item from "./list-item";
import Pagination from "./pagination";

const List = ({ state }) => {
  // Get the data of the current list.
  const data = state.source.get(state.router.link);

  return (
    <Container className="entry-content">
      {/* If the list is a taxonomy, we render a title. */}
      {data.isAuthor ? (
        <Header>
          Author Archives:{" "}
          <PageDescription>
          {decode(state.source.author[data.id].name)}
          </PageDescription>
        </Header>
        ) : null}

        {/* If the list is a taxonomy or category, we render a title. */}
        {data.isTaxonomy || data.isCategory ? (
          <Header>
            {data.taxonomy.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + data.taxonomy.slice(1)}{" "}
            Archives:{" "}
            <PageDescription>
            {decode(state.source[data.taxonomy][data.id].name)}
            </PageDescription>
          </Header>
        ) : null}
      // ...

      <Pagination />
    </Container>
  );
};
export default connect(List);

const PageDescription = styled.span`
  font-weight: bold;
  font-family: var(--body-family);
    color: var(--color-text);
`;
// ...

In the example above, we wrapped taxonomy.id data with PageDesctiption styled component applied some styling rules.

The post pagination in the default Mars Theme is very basic with almost no styling. Let’s borrow from the Frontity Twenty Nineteen theme again and add the pagination component and styling from the theme by copying the pagination.js component file in its entirety, and paste it to /src/components/list/pagination.js in our theme.

Showing two example posts in a post list, one with comments enabled, and the other with comments disabled. The post content is black against a light gray background.
I added some minor CSS and it works perfectly in our project.

To customize the actual individual posts and pages, let’s make bold header title that’s centered and displays the entry meta:

// src/components/posts/post.js

// ...
// Import entry-meta
import Author from "../entry-meta/author";
import PostedOn from "../entry-meta/posted-on";
import Categories from "../entry-meta/categories";
import Tags from "../entry-meta/tags";

const Post = ({ state, actions, libraries }) => {
  // ...
  // Load the post, but only if the data is ready.
  return data.isReady ? (
    <Container className="main">
      <div>
        <Title dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: post.title.rendered }} />

        {/* Hide author and date on pages */}
        {data.isPost && (
          <EntryMeta>
          <Author authorId={post.author} />
          <PostedOn post={post} />
        </EntryMeta>
        )}
      </div>

      {/* Look at the settings to see if we should include the featured image */}
      {state.theme.featured.showOnPost && (
        <FeaturedMedia id={post.featured_media} />
      )}

      {data.isAttachment ? (
        <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: post.description.rendered }} />
      ) : (
        <Content>
          <Html2React html={post.content.rendered} />
          {/* Add footer meta-entry */}
          <EntryFooter>
            <Categories cats={post.categories} />
            <Tags tags={post.tags} />
          </EntryFooter>
        </Content>
      )}
    </Container>
  ) : null;
};

export default connect(Post);
// ...
Screenshot showing header meta-entry (top) and footer meta-entry (bottom). Header has a large bold title above meta containing the author name and post date, all centered. There is a thick line between the header and content. The content is a simple paragraph containing lorem ipsum text. Dark content against a light gray background.

Adding Gutenberg block styles

WordPress uses a separate stylesheet for blocks in the Block Editor. Right now, that stylesheet isn’t being used but it would be great if we could get some base styles in there that we use for the various block content we add to pages and posts.

A post with DevTools open and highlighting the markup for the button component.
That .wp-block-buttons class is declared in the WordPress blocks stylesheet that we aren’t using… yet.

The WordPress Block Editor uses two styling files: style.css and theme.css. Let’s copy these directly from Frontity’s port of the Twenty Twenty theme because that’s how they implemented the WordPress styles. We can place those inside a /styles/gutenberg/ folder.

“Gutenberg” is the codename that was given to the WordPress Block Editor when it was in development. It’s sometimes still referred to that way.

Let’s add the above two style files to our theme root component, /src/components/index.js, just like we did earlier for globalStyles:

//  src/components/index.js
import gutenbergStyle from "./styles/gutenberg/style.css";
import gutenbergTheme from "./styles/gutenberg/theme.css"

Here’s our updated <Theme /> root component:

// src/components/index.js

// ...
import FontFace from "./styles/font-face";
import globalStyles from "./styles/globalStyles";
// Add Gutenberg styles
import gutenbergStyle from "./styles/gutenberg/style.css";
import gutenbergTheme from "./styles/gutenberg/theme.css"

/** Theme is the root React component of our theme. The one we will export
  * in roots. */
const Theme = ({ state }) => {
  // Get information about the current URL.
  const data = state.source.get(state.router.link);

  return (
    <>
    // ...
    {/* Add some global styles for the whole site, like body or a's.
      * Not classes here because we use CSS-in-JS. Only global HTML tags. */}
      <Global styles={globalStyles} />
      <Global styles={css(gutenbergStyle)} />
      <Global styles={css(gutenbergTheme)} />
      <FontFace />
      {/* Add the header of the site. */}
      // ...
export default connect(Theme);

 {/* Delete original globalStyles css component */}
 // ...

We could go about overriding styles many different ways. I went with a simple route. For example, to overriding button styles — .wp-block-buttons — in the styled-component for pages and posts.

Screenshot showing button style customization (left panel) and styled button in blue (right)

We can write override any other block styles the same way. In Frontity’s Twenty Nineteen theme, the entire stylesheet from the WordPress version of the theme is added to the Frontity version to replicate the exact same appearance. Frontity’s Twenty Twenty port uses only a select few of the styles in the WordPress Twenty Twenty themes, but as inline styles.

Additional styling resources

All the resources we covered in this section on styling are available in the GitHub repository. If you wish to expand my @frontity/labre-theme project further, here are the resources that I gathered.

Section 6: Resources and credit

There are ample resources to learn and customize your Frontity project. While preparing this post, I have referred to the following resources extensively. Please refer to original posts for more detailed information.

Frontity documentation and articles

  • Step-by-step tutorial (Frontity): This is the perfect place to start if you’re new to Frontity, or even if you’ve previously used Frontity and want to level up.
  • Conceptial guides (Frontity): These guides helps solve some of the common challenges that come up when working with dynamic server-side rendering in React apps connected to WordPress.
  • Frontity API reference (Frontity). This contains detailed information about Frontity CLI, packages, plugins and themes. Once you’ve mastered the basics of working with Frontity, this is where you’re likely to spend most of your time when working on projects.”
  • Frontity example repo (Frontity): This is a collection of Frontity projects that demonstrate how Frontity is used in the wild.

Frontity case studies

Frontity talks and videos

Frontity community

Frontity has a vibrant and engaging community forum for asking questions or getting help regarding your Frontity project.

Wrapping up and personal thoughts

If you can’t already tell from this post or the others I’ve written, I have a huge passion for headless WordPress sites. As I wrote in a previous article, I came across Frontity through when Chris posted this article. I have been experimenting with it for over six months, choosing to take a deep drive into Frontity and the building blocks used in its default Mars Theme. I must admit that it’s a fascinating software framework and I’ve had an enjoyable learning experience. I may even use this sort of setup for my own personal site!

Here are a few key takeaways from my experience working with Frontity so far:

  • It’s beginner-friendly and low maintenance: One of the things that impressed me most with Frontity is how relatively easy it is to jump into, even as a beginner. It installs with a couple of commands and takes care of all the setup and configuration for connecting to WordPress via the REST API—something I would have struggled with if left to my own devices.
  • It works with experimental block themes. In my very limited testing, Frontity’s framework works as expected with experimental block themes, just as it does with classic WordPress themes, like Twenty Twenty. I tested with the Quadrat theme that supports the experimental stuff the Gutenberg team is working on.
  • Hosting is good, but maybe too expensive: As Chris wrote, Frontity is “a perfect match for Vercel.” However, the current Jamstack pricing model that includes Vercel is unattractive for many ordinary WordPress users.
  • Frontity’s documentation is good, but could be better: The Frontity team recently reorganized Frontity documentation into tutorials, guides and an API reference. However, in my opinion it’s still confusing for those just getting into the framework.

Because I enjoyed this project so much, I am currently doing a theme project from scratch. Even in WordPress, I learned best by getting my hands dirty building WordPress themes from scratch.

While I am still doing my Gatsby and Frontity side projects, I have not lost my sight from the ongoing WordPress block editor and block-based theme development. At the time of writing, there are already sixteen block-based themes in the WordPress theme directory. I have just started exploring and understanding experimental block themes, which might be another interesting learning project.

After this project, my thoughts about Gatsby, Frontity and the concept of headless sites are still evolving. That’s only because it’s tough to make a fair comparison of when a lot of the tooling is actively in development and changing all the time. There are even experimental themes, that are much lighter and different structural markups than the current PHP-based classic themes, which might be a subject for yet another time.


Please share your experience and thoughts if you have been using Frontity in your projects. As always, I enjoy reading any comments and feedback!


Mars Theme: A Deep Look at Frontity’s Headless WordPress Theme originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

]]>
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Creating a Headless WordPress Site With Frontity https://css-tricks.com/creating-headless-wordpress-site-with-frontity/ https://css-tricks.com/creating-headless-wordpress-site-with-frontity/#comments Fri, 20 Aug 2021 14:59:30 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=346702 Frontity is a WordPress-focused React-based server-side dynamic-rendering framework (phew!) that allows us to create fast headless websites. Chris has a good introduction to Frontity. I guess you could think of it like Next.js for WordPress. And while the demand


Creating a Headless WordPress Site With Frontity originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

]]>
Frontity is a WordPress-focused React-based server-side dynamic-rendering framework (phew!) that allows us to create fast headless websites. Chris has a good introduction to Frontity. I guess you could think of it like Next.js for WordPress. And while the demand for headless WordPress sites may be a niche market at the moment, the Frontity showcase page demonstrates that there is excitement for it.

Frontity’s documentation, tutorials and guides focus on creating headless blog sites and its showcase page lists more than 60 sites, including CNBC Africa, Forbes Africa, Hoffmann Academy, Aleteia, Diariomotor and others. In that list, five headless WordPress sites made the cut as production level showcase studies.

Frontity’s official website itself is a very interesting production-level use case that demonstrates how to successfully link the WordPress Block Editor to Frontity’s framework.

So what I’m going to do is walk you through the steps to create a Frontity site in this article, then follow it up with another article on using and customizing Frontity’s default Mars theme. We’ll start with this post, where we’ll cover the basics of setting up a headless WordPress site on the Frontity framework.

This is not an expert guide but rather a headless WordPress site enthusiast’s journey toward learning the Frontity experience. For a more detailed and authoritative guide, please refer to Frontity’s documentation. frontity doc.

Prerequisites and requirements

Because Frontity is a React-based framework, I’d recommend that you have a working knowledge of React, and JavaScript with ES6 features. Frontity’s tutorial doc details some additional requirements, including:

  • Proficiency in HTML and CSS
  • Experience using the command line
  • A node.js server
  • And, of course, a code editor

Ready? Let’s go!

First, let’s get to know Frontity

Chris has explained here already what Frontity is and how it works. Frontity is a WordPress focused and opinionated React framework with its own state manager and CSS styling solutions. Recently updated Frontity architecture describes how a Frontity project can be run either in decoupled mode or embedded mode.

In the decoupled mode (see below) Frontity fetches REST API data from a WordPress PHP server and returns the final HTML to users as an isomorphic React App (used in the custom theme). In this mode, main domain points to Frontity whereas sub-domain pointing to WordPress site.

Screenshot showing Decoupled mode (left) and Embedded mode diagram from Frontity doc.

In the embedded mode, the Frontity theme package (an Isomorphic React App) replaces the WordPress PHP theme via a required Frontity Embedded Mode plugin. The plugin makes an internal HTTP request to the Frontity/Node.js server to retrieve the HTML pages. In this mode, the main domain points to WordPress where both the site visitors and content editors use the same domain, while Frontity uses the secondary domain (i.e. sub-domain).

Frontity’s built-in AMP feature generates a stripped down version of HTML pages for faster server-side-rendering thus overcoming multiple WordPress requests. It provides a more dynamic static site experience that is fast and has built-in server extedability that could be further improved using a Serverless Pre-redendering (SPR) (also called stale-while-revalidate cache) technique through KeyCDN and StackPath.

There’s more on Frontity mode in the Frontity architecture documentation.

Frontity site installation

To start our project, we need to install a Frontity project site and a WordPress installation for the data source endpoint. In the following sections, we will learn how to set up our Frontity site and connect it to our WordPress installation. The Frontity quick start guide is a very handy step-by-step guide and following guide allows us to set up our Frontity project.

First, check if Node.js and npm is already installed in your machine. If not, download and install them.

#! check node -- version
node --version
V14.9.0 #! output if installed
#! check npm version
npm --version
6.14.7  #! output if installed
#! to upgrade npm to latest version
npm install npm@latest -g

Step 1: Creating a Frontity project

Let’s run the following command using the Frontity CLI to create a new my-frontity project.

### creating a frontity project
npx frontity create my-frontity

The above code produces the following output.

Screenshot of Frontity project creation using frontity create app CLI command

Step 2: Select the Frontity mars-theme

Frontity provides two themes, twentytwenty-theme and mars-theme. For starters, Frontity recommends selecting the mars-theme and provides the following output:

Screenshot of showing cloning of mars-theme files & folder created during the project installation

If you answer the prompt for e-mail, a valid email address should be entered. I found it useful to enter the email for the first time so I can stay in contact with Frontity developers, but thereafter I didn’t see any use.

Step 3: Frontity project installation

The Frontity server installs the project and its dependencies. If successfully installed, the following output should be displayed:

Screenshot showing completed built process with frontity dev CLI command

Step 4: Change directory and restart development server

To get into the project folder, change directory with the following command and start the server to view the newly-created project:

### change dir to project folder
cd my-frontity

The Frontity development server can be started with the following command:

### start development server with npx
npx frontity dev

### starting dev server with yarn
yarn frontity dev

When the development server successfully completes, the project can be viewed at http://localhost:3000 and should display the following screen in the browser:

Screenshot showing installed Frontity front-end app with frontity mars-theme, including a large blue header that holds the site title and description in white, then a tabbed navigation, followed by body content against a light gray background.

The above screenshot shows a completed Frontity powered WordPress site front-end with mars-theme. The site is not connected to our own site yet which we will discuss in the next section.

Section 2: WordPress site installation

We need a WordPress site for our data source. We can either use an already installed site or install a fresh test site on your local machine. For this project, I install the latest version of WordPress in my machine with Local and imported theme test data which includes test data for block editor styling as well.

The site displayed in the default WordPress Twenty Twenty theme, with magenta colored links and a soft beige background.

In recent versions of WordPress, the WordPress REST API is built right into WordPress core, so we can check whether it is publicly extending our wp-content data by appending /wp-json to our site URL (e.g. http//mytestsite.local/wp-json). This should return the content in JSON format. Then we are good to proceed.

Screenshot showing output in JSON format.

One other condition Frontity requires in our WordPress installation is that the pretty permalinks (post name) needs to be activated in Settings > Permalinks.

Screenshot showing activated pretty permalinks.

Section 3: Connecting the Frontity project to WordPress

To connect our WordPress site to frontity project, we should update the frontity.settings.js file:

// change source URL in frontity.settings.js
const settings = {
  ...,
  packages: [
    ...,
    {
      name: "@frontity/wp-source",
      state: {
        source: {
          // Change this url to point to your WordPress site.
          api: "http://frontitytest.local/wp-json"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Please take note that while updating the URL to our WordPress install, we need to change the state.source object name from url to api (highlighted above) and save the file with our updates. Restart the development server, and we will see that the Frontity site is now connected to our own WordPress site.

Screenshot showing URL source change (left) and content displayed from our WordPress site (right).

In the screenshot above, you will notice that the menu items (Nature, Travel, Japan, About Us) are still displayed from the Frontity demo site, which we will fix in the next step.

Step 1: Updating our menu in Frontity site

WordPress treats menus items as private custom post types and are visible only to those who are logged into WordPress. Until the WordPress REST-API Version 2 is released, menu items are not exposed as visible endpoints, but registered menus can be extended using WP-REST-API V2 Menu plugin.

Because menu items are changed infrequently, Frontity Mars theme menu items are often hard-coded in the frontity.settings.js file to be store as state and then exported to the index.js file. For this demo project, I created the WordPress site menu as described in the frontity Mars theme with category and tags.

Next, let’s add our menu items to frontity-settings.js file as described in the Frontity Mars theme.

// add menu items in frontity-settings.js
{
  name: "@frontity/mars-theme",
  state: {
    theme: {
      menu: [
        ["Home", "/"],
        ["Block", "/category/block/"],
        ["Classic", "/category/classic/"],
        ["Alignments", "/tag/alignment-2/"],
        ["About", "/about/"]
      ],
      featured: {
        showOnList: true,
        showOnPost: true
      }
    }
  }
},

Let’s save our updates and restart development server as before. We should be able to see menu items (Block, Classic, Alignment, About) from our own site in the header section.

Screenshot showing menu items (left) and updated menu items in our Frontity site (right)

Lines 13-16 define whether we would like to show the featured image on the list (e.g. index page) or on post (e.g. single page).

Step 2: Frontity project folder structure

Our frontity-demo project (we changed project folder name from my-frontity) should contain two files, package.json and frontity.settings.js, and both node_modules/ and packages/mars-theme folders.

### File structure
frontity-demo/
|__ node_modules/
|__ package.json
|__ frontity.settings.js
|__ favicon.ico
|__ packages/
    |__ mars-theme/

A brief descriptions of the files/folders as described in the Frontity doc:

  • node_modules: where the Frontity project dependencies are installed (aren’t meant to be modified).
  • packages/ : a folder with mars-theme installed. The theme folder contains src folder which contains custom packages, and maybe some core packages from Frontity that can be edited and customized as desired. Everything in Frontity is a package.
  • frontity.setiings.js: This is most import file where the basic setup for our app is already populated. Currently these set up are Frontity default but any desired settings and extension are configured in this file. For example, data source URL (e.g. WordPress site URL), and required packages and libraries to run the project are defined under Frontity state package.
  • package.json: file where the dependencies needed for your app to work are declared.

We’ll get into Frontity theme packages and other dependencies, but in a later article since they warrant a deeper explanation.

Step 3: Modifying styles

Frontity uses the popular CSS-in-JS library Emotion for styling its component. Frontity’s default mars-theme is styled with styled components available from @emotion/syled. Styled components is very similar to CSS. Later in other sections, we will deep-dive into styling frontity project and with a use case example of modifying the entire mars-theme’s styling.

For now let’s do a quick demonstration of changing the color of our site title and description. The header and description styles are defined as Title and Description styled components at the bottom of the header.js component. Now let’s change title color to yellow and the description color to some sort of aqua (left panel). We see the changes reflected in our site header.

Section 4: Deploying the site to Vercel

Frontity lists three popular hosting service providers for hosting a Frontity project, including Vercel, Moovweb XDN, and Heroku. However, in practice it appears that most Frontity projects are hosted at Vercel, as Chris writes, “it’s a perfect match for Vercel.“ Frontity highly recommends Vercel and has prepared a handy step-by-step deployment guide.

Step 1: Create a production version of frontity project

While developing our Frontity project, we develop with the npx frontity dev command. For deployment, we should create a production version of the project from the root of our Frontity project.

#! create production version of project
npx frontity build

This creates a build folder “containing both our Frontity project (isomorphic) React app and Frontity (Node.js) server and the content will be used by the command npm frontity serve.”

Step 2: Create an account at Vercel

First, we should create a Vercel account following this signup form, which we can do using our GitHub credentials. We should login from our Frontity projects root folder in the terminal:

#! login to vercel
npx vercel login

Step 3: Create vercel.json file

To deploy our site to Vercel, we need the following vercel.json file at the root of our project:

{
  "version": 2,
  "builds": [
    {
      "src": "package.json",
      "use": "@frontity/now"
    }
  ]
}

Step 4: Deploying to Vercel

Finally, let’s deploy our project using the vercel command from the root of our project folder:

#! deployment vercel
npx vercel

Next, we are asked brief deployment-related questions:

Vercel assigns a temporary domain (e.g.  your-project-name.vercel.app) for our site. This Frontity doc describes how to customize site domain and nameserver settings.

Wrapping up

If you have been reading my other articles on WordPress headless sites using Gatsby’s framework, I have had an admirable but frustrating experience, primarily because of my own technical skills to learn and maintain advanced frameworks as a one-man team. Then I came across the Frontity React Framework while reading an article on CSS-Tricks.

As we learned from this and Chris’ article, creating a headless WordPress site with Frontity is pretty simple, all things considered. I am very impressed with its easy setup, streamlined UI, plus it appears to be a better option for less tech-savvy users. For example, you get all of the WordPress content without writing a single query.

In a follow-up article, we will do a deep dive on the default Frontity Mars theme and learn how to customize it to make it our own.

Credits and resources


Creating a Headless WordPress Site With Frontity originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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Using New Gatsby Source WordPress Plugin https://css-tricks.com/using-new-gatsby-source-wordpress-plugin/ https://css-tricks.com/using-new-gatsby-source-wordpress-plugin/#comments Fri, 23 Apr 2021 14:03:18 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=338051 In my previous article, I discussed how I learned to create a decoupled WordPress powered Gatsby site using the Gatsby Source WPGraphQL plugin. The project was done following the ongoing developmental version of WPGraphQL and an excellent tutorial by Henrik


Using New Gatsby Source WordPress Plugin originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

]]>
In my previous article, I discussed how I learned to create a decoupled WordPress powered Gatsby site using the Gatsby Source WPGraphQL plugin. The project was done following the ongoing developmental version of WPGraphQL and an excellent tutorial by Henrik Wirth. Although WPGraphQL was used in some production sites at that time, there were lot of iterations that introduced breaking changes. Since the release of WPGraphQL v1.0 last November, the plugin is stable and available via the WordPress plugin directory.

The WPGraphQL plugin can be used to create a site that uses WordPress for content management, but with a front-end that’s driven by Gatsby. We call this a “decoupled” or “headless” CMS because the site’s back-end and front-end are separate entities that still talk to one another via APIs where components on the front end consume data from the CMS.

The WPGraphQL plugin site has solid step-by-step documentation for getting started, and the release announcement post lists nine examples of production-level sites using the plugin.

Selected screenshots of production level decoupled WordPress sites with WPGraphQL.
The Denver Post, The Twin Cities Pioneer Press, The San Jose Mercury News, and Credit Karma have a decoupled WordPress site with WPGraphQL.

In the true sense of a “decoupled” or “headless” site, WPGraphQL can be used to port WordPress data to other frameworks, like Next.js, Vue.js, among others. For the Gatsby framework, the Gatsby Source WordPress plugin is recommended, and it utilizes WPGraphQL to source data from WordPress.

Let’s set everything up together and tour the plugin.

Prerequisites

In my previous article, we covered the prerequisites needed for setting up WordPress and Gatsby sites, and porting back-end WordPress data to a Gatsby-powered front-end site with site deployment. I’m skipping a lot of those details here because the fundamental concepts are the same for this article, except that WordPress data is fetched by the Gatsby Source WordPress plugin this time.

If you are new to Gatsby and just now jumping into Gatsby’s generated static site generator bandwagon, I’d suggest reading “An Honest Review of Gatsby” by React expert David Cramer and “Gatsby vs Next.js” by Jared Palmer. What we’re going to cover isn‘t for everyone, and these articles may be helpful to evaluate for yourself whether it’s the right technology for you and your project.

WPGraphQL, or GraphQL is the primary query language API used in Gatsby’s framework. There are frequent updates in GraphQL and that often requires expert knowledge and keeping an eye out for breaking changes. After all, GraphQL is designed by React experts for other React experts. That said, there’s some troubleshooting instructions and a WPGraphQL Slack where both the WPGraphQL and Gatsby Source WordPress plugin authors actively participate and help answer questions.

This article is not a step-by-step guide on how to use Gatsby Source WordPress Plugin. Again, that’s already available in Gatsby’s documentation. Conversely, if you happen to be an expert in React, JavaScript, Node.js or GraphQL, then what we cover here is probably stuff you already know. This article is an opinion piece based on my personal experience, which I hope is useful for the average WordPress user with basic working knowledge on the subject.

And, before we get started, it’s worth mentioning that the Gatsby Source WordPress plugin was completely rewritten in version 4 and uses WPGraphQL as its data source. The previous release, version 3, was built with REST API as its data source. Since the stable version of the plugin was recently released, the number of starter themes and demos that support it are limited.

First, we need WordPress

For this project, I set up a fresh WordPress site with Local by Flywheel that uses the default Twenty Twenty theme. I imported theme unit test data for pages and posts, as described in the WordPress Codex. While this was the baseline I was working with, this could have just as easily been an existing WordPress site that’s either on a remote server or a local install.

Now that we have an established baseline, we can log into the WordPress admin and install the WPGraphQL and WPGatsby plugins we need and activate them.

As we covered in the previous article, what this does is expose GraphQL and WPGraphiQL API in the WordPress admin, allowing the GraphiQL API to create a “playground” for testing GraphQL queries based on WordPress data.

Screenshot of the GraphiQL UI in the WordPress admin, showing a three-panel UI.
The GraphiQL screen provides three panels: one to navigate between different objects (left), one to query data (center), and one to visualize the returned data (right).

Now we need a Gatsby front-end

Gatsby is well known for good documentation and solid starter templates. To create a new WordPress-powered site, Gatsby tutorials suggest that either using a starter or starting from scratch is just fine for what we’re doing.

Gatsby also offers a library of example websites for basic use cases that are built around a specific technology. There currently happens to be one that uses WordPress and one that uses WordPress with the Advanced Custom Fields plugin. Note that the example sites in the library still use gatsby-source-wordpress plugin 3 and have not yet updated to the version 4, as of this writing.

According to Gatsby tutorials, there are three options for creating a WordPress-powered Gatsby site. Let’s look at each one.

Option 1: Using the Gatsby starter

The docs have a step-by-step guide on how to set up a WordPress-Gatsby site, but here’s the gist.

Run the following in the command line to fetch the starter from GitHub repository and clone it into a my-wpstarter project folder:

#! clone starter repo
gatsby new my-wpstarter https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby-starter-wordpress-blog 

Then, install the npm packages

#! npm
npm install

#! or yarn
yarn install 

Now that the starter is cloned, let’s open the gatsby-config.js file in our code editor and update its URL option to fetch data from our WordPress endpoint (see above).

// gatsby-config.js
{
  resolve: gatsby-source-wordpress,
    options: {
     // WordPress is the GraphQL url.
     url: process.env.WPGRAPHQL_URL || https://wpgatsbydemo.wpengine.com/graphql,
  },
},

Now, we’ll replace the starter’s data source endpoint URL with our own WordPress site URL:

// gatsby-config.js file
{
  resolve: `gatsby-source-wordpress`,
  options: {
    url: `http://gatsbywpv4.local/graphql`,
  },
},

Let’s make sure we are in the my-wpstarter project directory. From the project folder, we’ll run the gatsby develop command to build our new Gatsby site from our WordPress data source endpoint. In the terminal we should be able see the gatsby-source-wordpress plugin fetching data, including errors and successful site processes along the way.

If we see a success Building development bundle message at the end, that means the Gatsby site build process is complete and the site can be viewed at http://localhost:8000.

The homepage of our starting site, displaying posts pulled from WordPress data in a single column.

This is a bare-bone starter blog with basic files and a few components. It’s file structure is very similar to the gatsby-starter-blog, except this one has a templates folder that includes blog-post.js and blog-post-achive.js template files.

When we view the GraphiQL API explorer at http://localhost:8000/___graphql we can see all of the data from WordPress exposed by WPGraphQL, as well as query and retrieve specific data right from the UI.

The GraphiQL UI showing three panels, one for the Explorer, one for the GraphiQL query, and one that displays the returned data from the query.
This example shows a query for menu items in WordPress (middle panel) and the returned data of that query (right panel).

You got it! Gatsby assumes the rest is up to us to build, using Gatsby components that pull in WordPress data for the presentation.

Option 2: Building from scratch

Gatsby’s documentation offers a detailed step-by-step guide on how to create a new WordPress-Gatsby site from scratch using Gatsby’s default starter theme.

We’ll spin up a new project from the command line:

#! create a new Gatsby site
gatsby new wpgatsby-from-scratch-demo

This gets us a wpgatsby-from-scratch-demo folder that includes the starter theme. From here, we’ll cd into that folder and start developing:

cd wpgatsby-from-scratch-demo
gatsby develop

Now we can open up http://localhost:8000 in the browser and get the welcome page.

Now we are good to go to get start grabbing data from our WordPress site. Let’s install the Gatsby Source Plugin:

#! install with rpm
npm install gatsby-source-wordpress

#! install with yarn
yarn add Gatsby-source-wordpress

If we check our browser now, you’ll noticed that nothing happens — we still get the same Gatsby welcome. To fetch our WordPress site data, we need to add the plugin to the gatsby-config.js file. Open the file and insert the following:

// gatsby-config.js
module.exports = {
  siteMetadata: {
    // ...
  },
  plugins: [
  // Add Gatsby-source-wordpress plugin
  {
      resolve: `gatsby-source-wordpress`,
      options: {
        /*
         * The full URL of the WordPress site's GraphQL API.
         * Example : 'https://www.example-site.com/graphql'
         */
        url: `http://gatsbywpv4.local/graphql`,
       },
     },
    // The following plugins are not required for gatsby-source-wordpress ....
  ],
}

Just like last time, we need to change the WordPress data endpoint source to the URL of our WordPress site. Let’s run gatsby develop in our terminal to start things up.

Two terminal windows, side-by-side. They are dark with light text.
Now we see that the createPages function is running successfully to build a development bundle (left), and that WordPress data for posts, pages, taxonomies, users, menus, and everything else are fetched (right).

However, when we open http://localhost:8000 in our browser, nothing seems to happen. We still see the same welcome screen. But if we examine GraphiQL in our browser (at http://localhost:8000/___graphql) then we see all WordPress data exposed to our Gatsby site that we can query and display as we want.

The three-panel GraphiQL UI.
GraphiQL shows that WordPress data is indeed exposed and we are able to create and execute queries.

Let’s test the following query I pulled straight from Gatsby’s tutorial, in the GraphiQL explorer:

query {
  allWpPost {
    nodes {
      id
      title
      excerpt
      slug
      date(formatString: "MMMM DD, YYYY")
    }
  }
}

When we run the above query, we will see the allWpPost.nodes property value, with sub properties for id, title, excerpt, and others.

Now, let’s open our src/components/pages/index.js component file and replace the code with this:

// src/components/pages/index.js
import  React from "react"
import { graphql } from "gatsby"
import Layout from "../components/layout"
import SEO from "../components/seo"

export default function Home({ data }) {
  return (
    <Layout>
      <SEO title="home" />
      <h1>My WordPress Blog</h1>
      <h4>Posts</h4>
      {data.allWpPost.nodes.map(node => (
        <div>
          <p>{node.title}</p>
          <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: node.excerpt }} />
        </div>
      ))}
    </Layout>
  )
}

export const pageQuery = graphql`
  query {
    allWpPost(sort: { fields: [date] }) {
      nodes {
        title
        excerpt
        slug
      }
    }
  }
`

Save it, restart the server with gatsby develop, and refresh the page. If the build was successful, then our site’s homepage should display a list of sorted blog posts from WordPress!

Following the tutorial, let’s create pages for each blog post and link the post title from the list to the post page. The process of creating pages using Markdown data is described in detail in Part 7 of the Gatsby’s foundational tutorial, which we will follow here as well.

As described in the tutorial, Gatsby uses createPages API, or what it calls as its “workhorse” API, to programmatically create pages from data (from Markdown or WordPress). Unlike Markdown data, we don’t need to create a slug here because each WordPress post has its own unique slug which can be fetched from the WordPress data endpoint.

Creating pages for each post

Gatsby uses the gatsby-node.js file, located at the root of our project, to programmatically create blog post. Let’s open the gatsby-node.js file in our text editor add the following code from the tutorial.

// gatsby-node.js 
const path = require(`path`)

exports.createPages = ({ graphql, actions }) => {
  const { createPage } = actions
  return graphql(`
    {
      allWpPost(sort: { fields: [date] }) {
        nodes {
          title
          excerpt
          content
          slug
        }
      }
    }
  `).then(result => {
    console.log(JSON.stringify(result, null, 4))
    process.exit()
  })
}

As noted in the Gatsby Part 7 tutorial, the above code is the first part of creating our post pages from WordPress data source. Following the guide, let’s restart our server and develop our site with gatsby develop.

We should see console.log output in our terminal as pages being build). However, our homepage still looks the same. To create single posts, Gatsby requires templates to build pages, which we will create in next step.. That’s what we’ll do next.

Creating blog post templates

Let’s create a src/components/templates folder in the src/ directory and create a blog-post.js file by pasting the following code snippets from the tutorial:

// src/templates/blog-post.js
import React from "react"
import Layout from "../components/layout"
import { graphql } from "gatsby"

export default function BlogPost({ data }) {
  const post = data.allWpPost.nodes[0]
  console.log(post)
  return (
    <Layout>
      <div>
        <h1>{post.title}</h1>
        <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: post.content }} />
      </div>
    </Layout>
  )
}
export const query = graphql`
  query($slug: String!) {
    allWpPost(filter: { slug: { eq: $slug } }) {
      nodes {
        title
        content
      }
    }
  }
`

As explained in the tutorial, the above code snippets create a single post with React JSX and wraps post.title and post.content (lines 12-13) around the src/components/layout.js components. At the bottom section of the file, a GraphQL query is added and calls a specific post based on the post slug variable $slug. This variable is passed to the blog-post.js template when the page is created in gatsby-node.js.

Next we should also update lines 12-13 of our gatsby-node.js file with the following code from the tutorial.

// gatsby-node.js
const path = require(`path`)

 exports.createPages = ({ graphql, actions }) => {
   const { createPage } = actions
   return graphql(`
     {
       allWpPost(sort: { fields: [date], order:DEC }) {
         nodes {
           title
           excerpt
           content
           slug
         }
       }
     }
   `).then(result => {
    result.data.allWpPost.nodes.forEach(node => {
        createPage({
          path: node.slug,
          component: path.resolve(`./src/templates/blog-post.js`),
          context: {
            // This is the $slug variable passed to blog-post.js
            slug: node.slug,
          },
        })
      })
   })
 }

Let‘s stop and restart our local server with gatsby develop and view the site. We won’t see our homepage with a list of blog post links. However, if we check with http://localhost:8000/abcdf we should see the following 404 page with a list of individual pages and posts links.

If we check http://localhost:8000/hello-gatsby-world, we should our “Hello Gatsby WordPress World” post in all its glory.

The next step is to link the post titles from the homepage to the actual posts.

Linking to posts from the homepage

Linking the work from the homepage to post pages is done by wrapping post titles in the index.js file with Gatsby‘s Link component. Let’s open the index.js file that we created earlier and add the Link component:

// src/components/pages/index.js
import React from "react"
import { Link, graphql } from "gatsby"
import Layout from "../components/layout"
import SEO from "../components/seo"

export default function Home({ data }) {
  return (
    <Layout>
      <SEO title="home" />
     {/* <h1>My WordPress Blog</h1>
      <h4>Posts</h4> */}
      {data.allWpPost.nodes.map(node => (
        <div key={node.slug}>
          <Link to={node.slug}>
            <h2>{node.title}</h2>
          </Link>
          <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: node.excerpt }} />
        </div>
      ))}
    </Layout>
  )
}

export const pageQuery = graphql`
  query {
    allWpPost(sort: { fields: [date], order: DEC  }) {
      nodes {
        title
        excerpt
        slug
      }
    }
  }
`

We imported the Link component from Gatsby and then wrapped the post title with the Link component and reference the slug of the post. Let’s clean up the code by commenting out the page title, changing the title element to <h2>, and adding sorted posts order to DEC in our graphql query as well as the gatsby-node.js file.

As we did earlier, let’s stop and restart the development server with gatsby develop, and view our homepage at http://localhost:8000. The post title should link to single post page.

This is as far as we’re going to take this second method. The rest of what we cover will describe how to fetch menu items and query other data types — like custom post types — and configure incremental build and previews etc.

You can apply the same procedure to calling and creating pages, custom post types, custom fields, taxonomies, and all the fun and flexible content WordPress is known for. This can be as simple or as complex as you would like it to be, so explore and have fun with it!

Gatsby tutorial doc 

Option 3: Using Gatsby’s WordPress Twenty Twenty Starter

Gatsby’s starter template for the default WordPress Twenty Twenty theme is created and maintained by Henrik Wirth, who also has an extremely detailed and thorough step-by-step guide that you might recall from my previous article. This starter, unlike the others, is actually updated to version 4 of the Gatsby Source Plugin and works out of the box after the initial WordPress setup described in the documentation. It maintains the same Twenty Twenty styling in the Gatsby front-end site, but has few limitations — including, comments, monthly archive pages, and tags — that are unsupported.

First let’s clone the starter in our twenty-twenty-starter folder.

#! clone gatsby-starter-wordpress-twenty-twenty 
gatsby new twenty-twenty-starter https://github.com/henrikwirth/gatsby-starter-wordpress-twenty-twenty

Let’s cd into that folder and then run gatsby develop to spin up the site. It won’t work properly the first time because we have not changed our WPGRAPHQL_URL value yet in the env.example file. We need to rename the file from .env.example to simply .env, as suggested in the documentation.

After that, restart the development server with gatsby develop. It should build the site successfully.

The menu may or may not appear depending on how the WordPress menu is named. The starter’s menu slug for querying menu items is primary in Menu.js (line 8). Because I had set my WordPress site up using main-menu instead, I had to update the Menu.js file accordingly.

Screenshot showing Menu.js file with changed menu slug to “main-menu” in line 8.

Because the starter was tested with older versions of our tools , I decided bump up the plugins  to the latest versions — WPGraphQL 1.2.6, WPGatsby 1.0.6, and Gatsby Source WordPress  4.0.1 — and it worked fine without any errors.

The Twenty Twenty starter follows the file structure of the Twenty Nineteen Gatsby theme, as well as Gatsby Starter WordPress Advanced. Henrik Wirth describes how WordPress data is ported to Gatsby in his step-by-step guide, as does Muhammad Muhsin in a tutorial. Otherwise, creating pages, page templates, porting menu items is exactly the same.

Screenshot showing Gatsby Starter WordPress Twenty Twenty’s file structure.

This starter uses the same CSS that the default WordPress Twenty Twenty theme does, and the same assets folder, including fonts, images, SVG files, and other files that are included in the default theme.

Screenshot showing the Gatsby Starter WordPress Twenty Twenty assets folder contents open in VS Code.

If you are happy with WordPress Twenty Twenty styling, then that’s it. Enjoy your new decoupled Gatsby site!

But let’s say we want to work with custom styles. The CSS files are imported from the assets folder via the gatsby-browser.js file.

Screenshot showing the Gatsby StarterWordPress Twenty Twenty style.css file opened next to the WordPress Twenty Twenty theme’s style.css file. The two contain the exact same code.

Let’s modify the styles for the site’s header, footer, posts and pages. Gatsby provides different options to style its components and, in this project, I followed the CSS module for styling and modified CSS markup of the Twenty Twenty starter components accordingly.

We can start by creating a style folder at src/components/styles and, inside it, a base folder. Here’s the general file structure we’re aiming for:

#! partial structure of /style folder
src
 |--/components
   |--/styles
     |--main.css          
     |--/base
       |--reset.css
       |--variables.css
     |--/scss
       |--header.module.css
       |--mainNav.module.css
       |--footer.module.css
       |--elements.module.css
       // and so on...

We want to style the site’s header and footer, so let’s open up the Header.js and Footer.js components in the starter and replace the code with the following:

// src/components/Header.js
import React from "react"
import { graphql, Link, useStaticQuery } from "gatsby"
import Menu from "./menu"
import style from "../styles/scss/header.module.css"
import logo from '../images/gatsby-icon.png'

const Header = ( ) => {
  const { wp } = useStaticQuery(graphql`
    {
      wp {
        generalSettings {
          title
          description
        }
      }
    }
  `)
  return (
    <header className={style.masthead}>
      <div className={style.masthead_info}>

      <Link to="/">
        <img src={logo} alt="logo" width="100" height="100" display="inline-block" marginBottom= "0"  className={style.site_logo} />
      </Link>
      <div className={style.site_header} >
        <div className={style.site_title}>
          <Link
            to="/"
            dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: wp.generalSettings.title }} />
        </div>
        <div className={style.site_description} dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: wp.generalSettings.description }} /></div>

      </div>
      <Menu />
    </header>
  )
}

export default Header

Similarly, the Footer.js component was modified as follows:

// src/components/Footer.js
import React from "react"

import style from "../styles/scss/footer.module.css"

export default () => (
  <footer className={style.colophon}>
    <p>© {new Date().getFullYear()} | This site is Powered by {'   ' } <a href="https://www.gatsbyjs.org">GatsbyJS</a> {'   and  '} <a href="https://www.wordpress.org">WordPress</a></p>
  </footer>
)

Now, let’s restart our development server. We should see the following, including a new customized header and footer. I used the same style from Learning Gatsby which is an online course by Morten Rand-Hendriksen (I am a fan!).

Screenshot showing modified header and footer styling.
Screenshot showing modified header and footer styling.

You can grab the all the code I used over at GitHub.

What all this means for WordPress enthusiasts

There are many posts that compare the advantages and disadvantages of a decoupled WordPress and Jamstack site like the Gatsby examples we’ve covered. In my research, I realized that none of them are as exhaustive as what Chris already wrote in ”WordPress and Jamstack” where he compares everything, from performance and features, to the developer experience and build processes, and beyond.

I found the following articles draw some helpful conclusions on a variety of topics, including:

What’s the cost?

The general assumption is that Jamstack hosting is cheap, and cheaper than traditional LAMP stack hosting. But there’s actually quite a bit to consider and your actual costs might vary.

  • “How to Run Your WordPress Site On Local, Gatsby and Netlify for FREE!” (Nate Fitch): Nate’s take is that a headless WordPress setup like this might be a good option if the project is a static blog or a site that doesn’t require any interactions. For example, It wouldn’t take too much work to get images hosted on Cloudinary, or another CDN, but it would for large, interactive sites.
  • “WordPress and Jamstack” (Chris Coyier): There’s a specific section in here where Chris breaks down the pricing for different types of hosting for Jamstack sites and why a blanket statement like “Jamstack is cheaper” doesn’t fly because the actual cost depends on the site and its usage.
  • “Choosing between Netlify, Vercel and Digital Ocean” by (Zell Liew): Zell discusses his experience choosing a hosting plan. His take: If you have a small project, go with Netlify; if you have a larger project, use Digital Ocean.

Why go static at all?

Considering all the things you get for “free” in WordPress — think comments, plugins, integrations, etc. — you might wonder if it’s even worth trading in a server-side setup for a client-side solution. In his “Static or Not?” post, Chris breaks down the reasons why you’d want to choose one over the other.

How do we get commenting functionality?

We get native commenting right out of the box with WordPress. Yet, support for comments on a static site is a bit of a juggernaut. In “JAMstack Comments” here on CSS-Tricks, the author explains how dynamic comments can be implemented in a static site, like Gatsby, using Netlify services. I briefly touched on this in my previous article.

What about SEO?

  • “Gatsby SEO For WpGraphQL and Yoast” (Gatsby Community Plugin): The widely used Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress can be integrated into a Gatsby front-end using this plugin.
  • “A primer on JavaScript SEO for WordPress” (Jono Alderson): This exhaustive guide includes a section on how to integrate Yoast SEO into a headless architecture and the implications of relying on JavaScript for SEO. The bottom line is that theme and plugin developers shouldn’t worry much about the changing landscape of JavaScript and SEO as long as they continue following best practices. At the same time, they should be aware of what’s changing and adapt accordingly.

How do things work together?

There are currently no Gatsby React templates that are geared toward non-developers but some agencies, like Gatsby WP Themes and the Themeforest marketplace, are beginning to fill the gap. For example, Gatsby WP Themes covers plugins for dynamic contents like MailChimp integration, using the Contact Form 7 plugin for forms, Yoast SEO, and more. Themeforest lists 30+ Gatsby templates, including the Gatsby – WordPress + eCommerce theme which gives you an idea of how far we can go with this sort of setup. Just remember: these are commercial sites, and much of what you’ll find has a cost attached to it.

My evolving personal take

If you recall, I ended my last article with a personal reflection on my journey to create a headless WordPress site that uses Gatsby as the front end. My initial take was less than a glowing review:

Based on my very limited experience, I think that currently available Gatsby WordPress themes are not ready for prime time use for users like me. Yeah, it is exciting to try something on the bleeding edge that’s clearly in the minds of many WordPress users and developers. At the same time, the constantly evolving work being done on the WordPress block editor, WPGraphQL and Gatsby Source WordPress plugins makes it difficult to predict where things are going and when it will settle into a state where it is safe to use in other contexts.

So, after all this my long journey to headless WordPress site, what is my take now? As an open-minded learner, my thoughts are still evolving. But I couldn’t agree more with what Chris says in his “Static or Not?” post:

It’s a perfectly acceptable and often smart choice to run a WordPress site. I think about it in terms of robustness and feature-readiness. Need e-commerce? It’s there. Need forms? There are great plugins. Need to augment how the CMS works? You have control over the types of content and what is in them. Need auth? That’s a core feature. Wish you had a great editing experience? Gutenberg is glorious.

I am a WordPress enthusiast and I love WordPress as a CMS. However, as a technological learning challenge, I have not given up yet to have a decoupled WordPress site as a personal project.

I must admit that learning to create a decoupled Gatsby site with WordPress has continued to be frustrating. I acknowledge that any modern technology stack is not “a cup of tea” for many WordPress users. Gatsby has steep learning curve as these stacks are targeted for experienced React and JavaScript developers.

Self-learning a new technology can be a frustrating experience. Learning Gatsby is especially frustrating if we (including yours truly) happen to lack experience with Node, React, JavaScript and, most importantly, GraphQL. My learning project sites would break because of some dependency and fixing it might take me several days of research. I sometimes wonder if the trouble is worth the outcome. Don’t get me wrong; my frustration is with my own lack of experience, not the frameworks themselves (because they are amazing).

Even experienced developers like David Cramer and Jared Palmer find using Gatsby and GraphQL frustrating and echo some of the same sentiments that we beginners face when using GraphQL. I couldn’t agree more with David who writes:

It’s a static website generator. It literally does not need GraphQL all over the place. While there are few instances in the real world where that is valuable, it shouldn’t require a GraphQL API to read objects that are already in memory.

GraphQL is an opinionated query language API and its specification changes frequently. Indeed, most of the discussion in the WPGraphQL Slack are related to queries.

While working on this project, I came cross the Frontity React Framework while reading an article on CSS-Tricks. It fetches all WordPress data with the REST API without writing a single query. That seems to be a better option, at least for my use case. Additionally, it appears to be a much simpler alternative. In my brief experience with it, I didn’t have to deal with any dependency or library issues at all. Frontity’s themes concept is so WordPress-y and provides excellent tutorials.

I am currently exploring whether the Frontity framework would be a better option for my decoupled project site and will share my experience in a future article.

Resources

Gatsby feels like it is targeted at experienced React and JavaScript developers, not for beginners like me! The gatsby-source-wordpress and gatsby-source-wpgraphql plugins do an excellent job of exposing WordPress data into Gatsby sites, but the rest is up to users to present the data on the front end using your framework of choice: React, Vue, Next, etc.

A lack of sound knowledge of React and JavaScript is the main hurdle for beginners. The Gatsby community fills a lot of these gaps, and there are a lot of resources available to keep learning and exploring.

Gatsby Conference 2021 talks

Two workshop talks from the recent 2021 Gatsby Conference were related to Gatsby WordPress sites. In one, Jason Bahl hosts a workshop that walks through how to create a Gatsby blog powered by WordPress data, including support the Yoast SEO plugin, and how to deploy the site to Gatsby Cloud.

There’s another workshop hosted by WP Engine’s Matt Landers where he demonstrates how to set things up using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin to create a team member page.

Both talks are good, especially if you learn better with hands-on experience. I also found this Matt Report podcast episode with Jason Bahl where Jason answers basic questions that are geared toward beginners.

Tutorial courses

Morten Rand-Hendriksen has an excellent course on LinkedIn Learning that uses the Gatsby Source WordPress plugin. If you are interested in more hands-on experience making a customized site that expands on the two Gatsby starters we covered, this course is great because in teaches how to create a complete working site, complete with a dropdown header navigation, footer menus, posts, pages, categories, tags, and page navigation.

Check that out, a homepage, post template, categories, tags, a header that includes navigation… there’s a lot going on here!

The exercise files for the course are available in the GitHub LinkedIn Learning repository.

Gatsby starters

At the time I’m writing this, there are ten Gatsby starters for WordPress. As we mentioned earlier, only Gatsby Starter WordPress Twenty Twenty is based on the latest version of the Gatsby Source WordPress plugin; the rest are version 3.


Thanks for reading. I am always interested to know how fellow WordPress users who lack heavy technical experience like me are using this plugin. If you have any feedback, please feel free to post them in the comments.


Using New Gatsby Source WordPress Plugin originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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Creating a Gatsby Site with WordPress Data https://css-tricks.com/creating-a-gatsby-site-with-wordpress-data/ https://css-tricks.com/creating-a-gatsby-site-with-wordpress-data/#comments Mon, 20 Jul 2020 14:44:30 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=316186 In my previous article last week, I mentioned creating a partially ported WordPress-Gatsby site. This article is a continuation with a step-by-step walkthrough under the hood.

Gatsby, a React-based framework for static sites, is attracting attention not only …


Creating a Gatsby Site with WordPress Data originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

]]>
In my previous article last week, I mentioned creating a partially ported WordPress-Gatsby site. This article is a continuation with a step-by-step walkthrough under the hood.

Gatsby, a React-based framework for static sites, is attracting attention not only from JavaScript developers but also from the WordPress developers and users. Many WordPress users find its features appealing, like ultra fast image handling and improved security protection from hackers, but would like to use them while continuing to use the WordPress admin and editor to manage content.

Chris has covered the idea of combining Gatsby and WordPress before here on CSS-Tricks. As a WordPress enthusiast, I decided to give it a try. This article is based on what I learned and documented along the way.

Please note that WPGraphQL and gatsby-cli are in constant development with breaking changes in later versions. This project was done using WPGraphQL 0.8.3, gatsby-source-wpgraphql 2.5.1 and gatsby-cli 2.12.21. Unlike WordPress, newer WPGraphQL releases do not support backward compatibility. Please consult the official WPGraphQL & Gatsby doc for the latest changes and proceed with caution before using.

There are ready-to-use projects in the Gatsby starters library. Two great examples are Alexandra Spalato’s gatsby-wordpress-theme-blog and the twenty-nineteen-gatsby-theme by Zac Gordon and Muhammad Muhsin.

Prerequisites

If you want to follow along, here’s what you’ll need:

Assets and resources

Because I had already done a few Gatsby learning projects in the past, I had some assets like typography, layouts, and other reusable components that I could apply here. I had also gone through the following recent tutorial guides, which helped me to prepare for this project.

Henrick Wirth’s guide is super comprehension and thorough. Jason’s step-by-step article is a great resource and even includes super helpful videos that help see the process take place. Muhammad’s article helps explain how static pages are created with Gatsby’s createPages API and breaks down various functions, template files and React components along the way.

I largely followed Henrik’s guide and divided this article into similar sections. Henrik’s guide includes image handling and adding PageBuilder with ACF Flexible Content features which we don’t get into here.

Section 1: Setting up WordPress and Gatsby

First, let’s set up a WordPress site for a data source. This could be an already existing site or a fresh one. Even a local WordPress installation is fine. I decided to start with a new test WordPress site for this project using the Twenty Twenty theme that ships with WordPress.

Install the WPGraphQL and WPGraphiQL plugins

Let’s start by installing a couple of plugins in WordPress. We’ll use WPGraphQL to enable GraphQL API in WordPress and open up WordPress as a data source. We’ll also use WPGraphiQL (note the “i” in the name). This one is actually optional, but it creates an interface for testing GraphQL queries directly in the WordPress dashboard, which is super handy. You may notice that I’m linking to the GitHub repos for the plugins instead of the WordPress Plugin Directory and that’s intentional — neither plugin is available in the directory at the time of this writing. As such, you’ll download the ZIP files and manually install them in WordPress via the /wp-content/plugins directory.

Once activated, the GraphiQL API is displayed in the WordPress dashboard.

The GraphiQL API provides a playground to test GraphQL queries from WordPress site.

Screenshot of the GraphQL playground interface in the WordPress dashboard.
The GraphiQL screen provides three panels: one to navigate between different objects (left), one to query data (center),and one to visualize the returned data (right).

Setting up a local Gatsby site

We will setup a local Gatsby site by installing Gatsby’s starter default in the wordpress-gatsby directory of the project with this in the command line:

#! create a new Gatsby site using the default starter
gatsby new wordpress-gatsby https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby-starter-default

Restart the server with gatsby develop, then let’s navigate to localhost:8000 in a new browser tab. We should get a starter page in the browser.

A link to how to create a gatsby site locally is available from the Gatsby documentation.

Next, we’re going to install and configure the gatsby-source-graphql plugin. Just as we did when setting up WordPress, we have to install and configure WPGraphQL in the Gatsby site.

#! install wpgraphql plugin
#! add with yarn
yarn add gatsby-source-graphql
#! install with npm
npm install --save gatsby-source-graphql

OK, now it’s time to configure the gatsby-source-graphql plugin. Open up the gatsby-config.js file and let’s use these settings:

// plugin configuration
module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    {
      resolve: "gatsby-source-graphql",
      options: {
        typeName: "WPGraphQL",
        fieldName: "wpcontent",
        // GraphQL endpoint, relative to your WordPress home URL.
        url: "https://tinjurewp.com/wp-gatsby/graphql",
        // GraphQL endpoint using env variable
       // url: "${process.env.WORDPRESS_URL}/graphql",
      },
    },
  ],
}

How did I come up with this exact configuration? I strictly followed what’s described in the Gatsby docs. The plugin was added to the Gatsby instance by specifying the URL of the GraphQL endpoint (highlighted above) and two configuration options: typeName, a remote schema query type, and fieldName, which is available in the Gatsby query. Please note, the latest WPGraphQL doc suggest using fieldName: "wpcontent" instead of "wpgraphql"as described in the guide.

Alternative setup: Use the dotenv module

Optionally, we could have set things up  using the dotenv npm module to define environment variables that are used to customize the development environment. Henrik uses this method in his guide as well.

If you’re using this method, a variable in the .env.production plugin configuration file, like WORDPRESS_URL, can be defined and used instead of exposing the WordPress URL.

# .env.production
# Don't put any sensible data here!!!
WORDPRESS_URL=https://tinjurewp.com/wp-gatsby/

My test environment equally exposes the WordPress instance and data to WPGraphQL.

Colby Fayock has a helpful step-by-step guide on using environmental variables with Gatsby and Netlify.

After re-starting the development server, the WPGraphQL API is available with Gatsby to query and retrieve the specific data that’s queried from the WordPress site and display it on a Gatsby site through the localhost GraphQL URL at https//localhost:8000/___graphql/.

Screenshot showing the GraphQL query interface with the explorer on the left, the query in the center, and the returned data on the right.
Note that, unlike in WordPress site itself, the data here is exposed to WPGraphQL. We can query against the WPGraphQL API to display any field from the WordPress site.

Section 2: Porting posts and pages from WordPress

In Gatsby, posts and pages can be created at build time by querying data with GraphQL and mapping the query results to posts or page templates. The process is described in a Gatsby tutorial on programmatically creating pages from data. Gatsby make use of two APIs, onCreateNode and createPages, and tutorial contains a detailed explanation on how they are implemented.

The code snippets here come from Henrik’s guide. Because of the way WordPress stores data in its database under different data types and categories, porting all the contents turns out to be less than straightforward. However, with prior knowledge of creating pages and posts with Gatsby createPages API and Node API, I was able to follow along. There’s also a lot of real-world starter sites that can be referenced as examples.

Step 1: Add posts and pages content in a WordPress site

Add some posts and pages in WordPress site if you don’t have any already. Before creating page for that content, we need to delete index.js and page-2.js from the pages folder of the Gatsby site. These two files seem to interfere with the ported WordPress data.

Step 2: Create page and post template

We’re going to create two template files  for our content, one for posts (/src/templates/posts/index.js) and one for pages (/src/templates/pages/index.js).

Here’s our post template. Basically, we’re using the post title twice (one as the SEO page title and one as the post heading) and the post content as a Post component.

// src/templates/post/index.js
import React  from "react"
import Layout from "../../components/layout"
import SEO from "../../components/SEO"


const Post = ({ pageContext }) => {
  const post = pageContext.post


  return (
    <Layout>
      <SEO title={post.title} />


      <h1> {post.title} </h1>
      <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{__html: post.content}} />


    </Layout>
  )
}


export default Post

We’ll do nearly the same thing for the page template:

//src/templates/pages/index.js

import React  from "react"
import Layout from "../../components/layout"
import SEO from "../../components/seo"


const Page = ({ pageContext }) => {
  const page = pageContext.page


  return (
    <Layout>
      <SEO title={page.title} />


      <h1>{page.title}</h1>
      <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{__html: page.content}} />


    </Layout>
  )
}


export default Page

Step 3: Create static posts and pages with the createPages API

Note that the entire code we’re covering here can be written in the node.js file. However, for readability purposes, posts and pages are separated in a folder named create in the project’s root directory following Henrik’s Guide.

We’re going to get our hands dirty with the GraphQL createPages API! We’ll start by adding the following to gatsby-node.js.

// gatsby-node.js
const createPages = require("./create/createPages")
const createPosts = require("./create/createPosts")


 exports.createPagesStatefully = async ({ graphql, actions, reporter }, options) => {
  await createPages({ actions, graphql, reporter }, options)
  await createPosts({ actions, graphql, reporter }, options)
 }

Muhammad’s post makes a good point that’s worth calling out here: 

The createPages API is part of the Node APIs that Gatsby exposes. It essentially instructs Gatsby to add pages. Within this we are calling some methods using async/await (a feature of ECMAScript 2017).

In other words: both functions create relevant static pages. With that in mind, let’s define what data we want to use and fetch that data in the create/createPages.js file. Sorry for the big code dump, but Henrik’s comments help explain what’s happening.

//create/createPages.js
const pageTemplate = require.resolve('../src/templates/page/index.js');


const GET_PAGES = `
  query GET_PAGES($first:Int $after:String) {
    wpgraphql {
      pages(
        first: $first
        after: $after
        # This will make sure to only get the parent nodes and no children
        where: {
          parent: null
         }
      ) {
        pageInfo {
          hasNextPage
          endCursor
        }
        nodes {
          id
          title
          pageId
          content
          uri
          isFrontPage
        }
      }
    }
  }
`


const allPages = []
let pageNumber = 0
const itemsPerPage = 10


/** This is the export which Gatbsy will use to process.
 * @param { actions, graphql }
 * @returns {Promise<void>} */
module.exports = async ({ actions, graphql, reporter }, options) => {


  /** This is the method from Gatsby that we're going
   * to use to create pages in our static site. */
  const { createPage } = actions
  /** Fetch pages method. This accepts variables to alter
   * the query. The variable `first` controls how many items to
   * request per fetch and the `after` controls where to start in
   * the dataset.
   * @param variables
   * @returns {Promise<*>} */
  const fetchPages = async (variables) =>
    /** Fetch pages using the GET_PAGES query and the variables passed in. */
    await graphql(GET_PAGES, variables).then(({ data }) => {
      /** Extract the data from the GraphQL query results */
      const {
        wpgraphql: {
          pages: {
            nodes,
            pageInfo: { hasNextPage, endCursor },
          },
        },
      } = data


      /** Map over the pages for later creation */
      nodes
      && nodes.map((pages) => {
        allPages.push(pages)
      })


      /** If there's another page, fetch more
       * so we can have all the data we need. */
      if (hasNextPage) {
        pageNumber++
        reporter.info(`fetch page ${pageNumber} of pages...`)
        return fetchPages({ first: itemsPerPage, after: endCursor })
      }


      /** Once we're done, return all the pages
       * so we can create the necessary pages with
       * all the data on hand. */
      return allPages
    })


  /** Kick off our `fetchPages` method which will get us all
   * the pages we need to create individual pages. */
  await fetchPages({ first: itemsPerPage, after: null }).then((wpPages) => {


    wpPages && wpPages.map((page) => {
      let pagePath = `${page.uri}`


      /** If the page is the front page, the page path should not be the uri,
       * but the root path '/'. */
      if(page.isFrontPage) {
        pagePath = '/'
      }


      createPage({
        path: pagePath,
        component: pageTemplate,
        context: {
          page: page,
        },
      })


      reporter.info(`page created: ${page.uri}`)
    })


    reporter.info(`# -----> PAGES TOTAL: ${wpPages.length}`)
  })
}

Again, Muhammad’s post is excellent help because it breaks down what the createPages.js and createPosts.js functions can do. Henrik’s guide also provides helpful comments for each step. 

Step 4: Creating posts

The createPosts.js file is almost identical to createPages.js. The sole difference is prefixing the path with blog/ and replacing the “page” with “posts” throughout the code.

If we stop here and restart the development server with gatsby develop in the terminal, the develop log displays the page buildup.

Now, if we open up localhost:8000 in a browser, we get a 404 error. 

That might be off-putting, but it’s all good. Clicking any of the links on the 404 page displays the correct page or post from the WordPress data source. For example, if the sample-page link is clicked, it displays sample page content from WordPress in the browser.


Section 3: Working with navigation

Let’s move on to the navigation menu for our site. WordPress has a navigation management feature that allows us to construct menus using links to pages, posts, archives, taxonomies, and even custom links. We want to create navigation for a main menu in WordPress and send it to GraphQL where we can query it for our own site.

Navigation links — including page and post links — are created in Gatsby using the Gatsby Link API, which uses both the built-in <Link> component and navigate function. The <Link> component is used for linking to internal pages, but not to external links.

Porting navigation menu from the WordPress into Gatsby site turns out to be a tricky little task that requires creating <Menu> and <MenuItems> components and refactoring the <Layout> component accordingly. Here’s how that works.

Code snippets used in this section are taken directly from Henrik’s guide for completeness, however these code snippets appear to be pretty standard used in other Gatsby WordPress starters with little variation.

Step 1: Create a WordPress menu

As described in the guide, it is important to set up a menu called “PRIMARY” which is defined in the Twenty Twenty theme. We’re going to toss three links in there:

  • Home: A link to our homepage, which will be a custom link pointing to our site’s index.
  • Sample Page: The default page that WordPress creates on a new WordPress installation.
  • Front Page: This is typically the name given for the homepage in WordPress. You’ll need to create this page in the editor.

Step 2: Query Menu Items with GraphiQL Explorer

Next up, we’ll write a query for the menu items from the GraphiQL interface. Notice that we can use the explorer to practically write it for us by checking a few boxes.

query MyQuery {
  menuItems(where: {location: PRIMARY}) {
    nodes {
      label
      url
      title
      target
    }
  }
}

See how the URLs in the data are absolute, displaying the full address? We’ll need a utility function to translate those to relative URLs, again, because that’s what the <Link> component supports.

Henrik’s guide provides the following utility function for converting absolute WordPress URLs to relative URLs that are required for Gatsby:

// src/utils/index.js
/** Parses a menu item object and returns Gatsby-field URI.
 * @param {object} menuItem a single menu item
 * @param wordPressUrl
 * @param blogURI */
export const CreateLocalLink = (menuItem, wordPressUrl, blogURI='blog/') => {
  const { url, connectedObject } = menuItem;


  if (url === '#') {
    return null;
  }
  /** Always want to pull of our API URL */
  let newUri = url.replace(wordPressUrl, '');


  /** If it's a blog link, respect the users blogURI setting */
  if (connectedObject && connectedObject.__typename === 'WPGraphQL_Post') {
    newUri = blogURI + newUri;
  }


  return newUri;
};

Step 4: Create a menu item component

The next step is to create a <MenuItem> component which utilizes the utility function created in the previous step. The result is a fully formed link that gets consumed by the Gatsby site menu.

// src/components/MenuItem.js
import React from "react"
import { CreateLocalLink } from "../utils"
import { Link } from "gatsby"


const MenuItem = ({ menuItem, wordPressUrl }) => {
  return (
    <Link style={{marginRight: '20px' }}
     to={CreateLocalLink(menuItem, wordPressUrl)}>
     {menuItem.label}
     </Link>
  )
}


export default MenuItem

Step 5: Creating a menu component

OK, we created URLs and a functional <MenuItem> component. Let’s create a new <Menu> component where our <MenuItem> components can go. The Gatsby StaticQuery API is used to query all primary menu items with GraphQL.

// src/components/Menu.js
import React from "react"
import { StaticQuery, graphql } from "gatsby"
import MenuItem from "./MenuItem"


/** Define MenuItem fragment and get all primary menu items */
const MENU_QUERY = graphql`
  fragment MenuItem on WPGraphQL_MenuItem {
    id
    label
    url
    title
    target
  }


  query GETMAINMENU {
    wpgraphql {
      menuItems(where: {location: PRIMARY}) {
        nodes {
          ...MenuItem
        }
      }
      generalSettings {
        url
      }
    }
  }
`


const Menu = () => {
  return (
    <StaticQuery
      query={MENU_QUERY}
      render={(data) => {
        if (data.wpgraphql.menuItems) {
          const menuItems = data.wpgraphql.menuItems.nodes
          const wordPressUrl = data.wpgraphql.generalSettings.url


       return (
         <div style={{ marginBottom: "20px" }}>
           {
             menuItems &&
             menuItems.map((menuItem) => (
               <MenuItem key={menuItem.id}
               menuItem={menuItem} wordPressUrl={wordPressUrl}/>
             )
           )}
         </div>
       )
      }
      return null
   }}
  />
  )
}


export default Menu

Step 6: Adding the menu to the layout component

At this point, we have everything we need to construct a Gatsby site menu using WordPress data. We just need to drop the <Menu> component into our <Layout> component:

// src/components/layout.js
import React from "react"
import PropTypes from "prop-types"
import useSiteMetadata from '../components/siteMetadata';
import Header from "./Header"
import Footer from "./Footer"
import Menu from "./Menu"
import "./layout.css"


const Layout = ({ children }) => {
  const { title, description } = useSiteMetadata();


  return (
    <section>
      <Header siteTitle={title} description={description} />
      <div
      style={{ margin: `0 auto`, maxWidth: 960,
               padding: `0 1.0875rem 1.45rem`,}}>
        <Menu />
        <main>{children}</main>
        <Footer />
      </div>
    </section>
  )
}


Layout.propTypes = {
  children: PropTypes.node.isRequired,
}


export default Layout

Gatsby’s documentation on the <Link> component explains that data coming from an external CMS, like WordPress, should ideally be inspected by the <Link> component and renders either with Gatsby’s <Link> or with a regular <a> tag accordingly. This ensures that any truly external links on the WordPress side remain absolute without conflicting the <Link> component.

This requires — you guessed it — another component that does exactly that. In Gatsby Docs it’s referred as <UniversalLink> which returns either a Gatsby-compatible <Link> component or a traditional <a> element:

//src/components/UniversalLink.js
import React from "react"
import { Link as GatsbyLink } from "gatsby"


const UniversalLink = ({ children, to, activeClassName, partiallyActive, ...other }) => {
  const internal = /^\/(?!\/)/.test(to)
  // Use Gatsby Link for internal links, and <a> for others
  if (internal) {
    return (
      <GatsbyLink
        to={to}
        activeClassName={activeClassName}
        partiallyActive={partiallyActive}
        {...other}
      >
        {children}
      </GatsbyLink>
    )
  }
  return (
    <a href={to} {...other}>
      {children}
    </a>
  )
}
export default UniversalLink

Now, let’s go back to our <MenuItem> component and update it to use the <UniversalLink>:

/ src/components/MenuItem.js
import React from "react"
import { CreateLocalLink } from "../utils"
import UniversalLink from "./UniversalLink"


const MenuItem = ({ menuItem, wordPressUrl }) => {
  return (
    <UniversalLink style={{marginRight: '20px' }}
      to={CreateLocalLink(menuItem, wordPressUrl)}>
      {menuItem.label}
    </UniversalLink>
  )
}


export default MenuItem

Are you ready to check things out? Restart the local server with gatsby develop and the browser should display a navigation menu with items that contain links to relative page paths.

Screenshot showing the Same Page title and content under the site navigation, which includes the site title, and menu items.
Created in WordPress, displayed in Gatsby.

Section 4: Displaying blog posts in Gatsby

We’re in pretty good shape at this point, but there’s a big piece we’ve gotta tackle: displaying pages on the site. We’ll walk through the steps to make that happen in this section, specifically by  creating blog post templates as well as a couple of new components for post images before tying everything together in createPages.js and createPosts.js.

Have you already created your pages and posts in WordPress? If not, this is a good time to jump in there and do it.

Step 1: Add a globals variable file at the root of the project directory

// global variable
const Globals = {
  blogURI: ''
}
module.exports = Globals

The blogURI = ' ' URL path is used when the homepage setting in the WordPress admin (SettingsReading) is set to the “Your latest posts” option.

If you’re planning to use the “static page” option instead, then blogURI= 'blog' should be used in the global variables file.

Step 2: Create a blog template inside the templates folder

This template will handle displaying all published posts. Take note that two components — PostEntry and Pagination, both of which don’t exist yet) —are used here. We’ll get to those in just a moment.

// src/templates/post/blog.js
import React from "react"
import Layout from "../../components/Layout"
import PostEntry from "../../components/PostEntry"
import Pagination from "../../components/Pagination"
import SEO from "../../components/SEO"


const Blog = ({ pageContext }) => {
  const { nodes, pageNumber, hasNextPage, itemsPerPage, allPosts }
  = pageContext


  return (
    <Layout>
      <SEO
        title="Blog"
        description="Blog posts"
        keywords={[`blog`]}
      />
      {nodes && nodes.map(post => <PostEntry key={post.postId}
        post={post}/>)}
      <Pagination
        pageNumber={pageNumber}
        hasNextPage={hasNextPage}
        allPosts={allPosts}
        itemsPerPage={itemsPerPage}
      />
    </Layout>
  )
}


export default Blog

Step 3. Create a post entry component

This component is used within archive.js and other components to iterate through posts, displaying the post entry title, featured image (if any), excerpt and URL (aka “slug” in WordPress parlance).

// src/components/PostEntry.js
import React from "react"
import { Link } from "gatsby"
import Image from "./Image"
import { blogURI } from "../../globals"


const PostEntry = ({ post }) => {
  const { uri, title, featuredImage, excerpt } = post

  return (
    <div style={{ marginBottom: "30px" }}>
      <header>
        <Link to={`${blogURI}/${uri}/`}>
          <h2 style={{ marginBottom: "5px" }}>{title}</h2>
          <Image image={featuredImage} style={{ margin: 0 }}/>
        </Link>
      </header>


      <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: excerpt }}/>
    </div>
  )
}

export default PostEntry

Step 4: Create an (optional) image component

The Gatsby default starter comes with an Image component and that works just fine in most case. In this example, we’re fetching the image file used as the post’s featured image in WordPress and assign it a fallback image in case there is no featured image as described in Henrik’s guide.

// src/components/Image.js
import React from "react"
import { useStaticQuery, graphql } from "gatsby"


const Image = ({ image, withFallback = false, ...props }) => {
  const data = useStaticQuery(graphql`
    query {
      fallBackImage: file(relativePath: { eq: "fallback.svg" }) {
        publicURL
      }
    }
  `)


  /* Fallback image */
  if (!image) {
    return withFallback ? <img src={data.fallBackImage.publicURL}
      alt={"Fallback"} {...props}/> : null
  }


  return <img src={image.sourceUrl} alt={image.altText} {...props}/>
}


export default Image

If withFallback is set to false (like it is in the default Gatsby component file), then it will simply not render a DOM element.

Step 5: Create a Pagination component

The Pagination component allows us to display specified number of posts per page in the post index. WordPress has two types of pagination one that returns Next and Previous links to navigate between pages one at a time, and one that provides linked page numbers. We’re working with the former in this component:

// src/components/Pagination.js
import React from "react"
import { Link } from "gatsby"
import { blogURI } from "../../globals"


const Pagination = ({ pageNumber, hasNextPage }) => {
  if (pageNumber === 1 && !hasNextPage) return null


  return (
    <div style={{ margin: "60px auto 20px", textAlign: "center" }}>
      <div className="nav-links">
        {
          pageNumber > 1 && (
            <Link
              className="prev page-numbers"
              style={{
                padding: "8px 8px 5px 4px",
              }}
           to={pageNumber > 2 ? `${blogURI}/page/${pageNumber - 1}`: `${blogURI}/`}
            >
              ← <span> Previous</span>
            </Link>
          )
        }
          <span className="meta-nav screen-reader-text"></span>
          {pageNumber}
        </span>


        {
          hasNextPage && (
            <Link
              style={{
                padding: "4px 8px 5px 8px",
              }}
              className="next page-numbers"
              to={`${blogURI}/page/${pageNumber + 1}`
              }
            >
              <span>Next </span> →
            </Link>
          )
        }
      </div>
    </div>
  )
}


export default Pagination

There is a conditional statement on Line 7 that returns null if pageNumber === 1 && !hasNextPage. In other words, if the current page’s hasPageNumber is greater than 1, the Previous button (Lines 13-24) will display. Similarly, when the current page’s hasNextPage is at least 1, then the Next button (Lines 30-42) will display.

Step 6: Refactoring createPages

We need to clean up the createPages.js file to reflect all the work we’ve done since creating the file. The file simply becomes too big with everything it’s tracking. To keep our code organized and structured, we can use GraphQL fragments, which allow us “to split up complex queries into smaller, easier to understand components,” according to the documentation.

GraphQL fragments are reusable units which allows to construct sets of fields, and then include them in queries wherever needed.

If we follow Henrik’s guide, the GraphQL query fields for the post template and post preview are stored in the data.js file:

// src/templates/posts/data.js
const PostTemplateFragment = `
  fragment PostTemplateFragment on WPGraphQL_Post {
    id
    postId
    title
    content
    link
    featuredImage {
      sourceUrl
    }
    categories {
      nodes {
        name
        slug
        id
      }
    }
    tags {
      nodes {
        slug
        name
        id
      }
    }
    author {
      name
      slug
    }
  }
`


const BlogPreviewFragment = `
  fragment BlogPreviewFragment on WPGraphQL_Post {
    id
    postId
    title
    uri
    date
    slug
    excerpt
    content
    featuredImage {
      sourceUrl
    }
    author {
      name
      slug
    }
  }
`


module.exports.PostTemplateFragment = PostTemplateFragment
module.exports.BlogPreviewFragment = BlogPreviewFragment

Next, refactoring the create/createPosts.js file as described in the guide requires adding the following code at the top section of createPosts.js (Lines 2-10), just above the const = GET_POSTS=` query statement on Line 4.

// create/createPosts.js
const {
  PostTemplateFragment,
  BlogPreviewFragment,
} = require("../src/templates/posts/data.js")


const { blogURI } = require("../globals")


const postTemplate = require.resolve("../src/templates/posts/index.js")
const blogTemplate = require.resolve("../src/templates/posts/blog.js")


const GET_POSTS = `
  # Here we make use of the imported fragments which are referenced above
  ${PostTemplateFragment}
  ${BlogPreviewFragment}
  query GET_POSTS($first:Int $after:String) {
    wpgraphql {
      posts(
       first: $first
       after: $after
       # This will make sure to only get the parent nodes and no children
       where: {
         parent: null
       }
      ) {
         pageInfo {
           hasNextPage
           endCursor
         }
         nodes {
           uri


           # This is the fragment used for the Post Template
           ...PostTemplateFragment


           #This is the fragment used for the blog preview on archive pages
          ...BlogPreviewFragment
        }
      }
    }
 }
`

Here, the fragment strings created in the previous steps (Lines 9-10) are imported and registered outside the GET_POSTS query (Line 12) and used as fragments (Lines 34 and 37 ) inside the GET_POSTS($first:Int $after:String) query.

At the bottom of the createPosts.js file, the blogPage path is defined with global blogURI variable (Lines 36-41) and we’ve added the code to create paginated blog pages (Lines 99-111).

// create/createPosts.js
// Previous code excluded


const allPosts = []
const blogPages = [];
let pageNumber = 0;
const itemsPerPage = 10;


/** This is the export which Gatbsy will use to process.
 * @param { actions, graphql }
 * @returns {Promise<void>} */
module.exports = async ({ actions, graphql, reporter }, options) => {


  /** This is the method from Gatsby that we're going
   * to use to create posts in our static site */
  const { createPage } = actions


  /** Fetch posts method. This accepts variables to alter
   * the query. The variable `first` controls how many items to
   * request per fetch and the `after` controls where to start in
   * the dataset.
   * @param variables
   * @returns {Promise<*>} */
  const fetchPosts = async (variables) =>
    /** Fetch posts using the GET_POSTS query and the variables passed in */
    await graphql(GET_POSTS, variables).then(({ data }) => {
      /** Extract the data from the GraphQL query results */
      const {
        wpgraphql: {
          posts: {
            nodes,
            pageInfo: { hasNextPage, endCursor },
          },
        },
      } = data


      /** Define the path for the paginated blog page.
       * This is the url the page will live at
       * @type {string} */
      const blogPagePath = !variables.after
        ? `${blogURI}/`
        : `${blogURI}/page/${pageNumber + 1}`


      /** Add config for the blogPage to the blogPage array for creating later
       * @type {{
       *   path: string,
       *   component: string,
       *   context: {nodes: *, pageNumber: number, hasNextPage: *} }} */
      blogPages[pageNumber] = {
        path: blogPagePath,
        component: blogTemplate,
        context: {
          nodes,
          pageNumber: pageNumber + 1,
          hasNextPage,
          itemsPerPage,
          allPosts,
        },
      }


      /** Map over the posts for later creation */
      nodes
      && nodes.map((posts) => {
        allPosts.push(posts)
      })


     /** If there's another post, fetch more so we can have all the data we need */
      if (hasNextPage) {
        pageNumber++
        reporter.info(`fetch post ${pageNumber} of posts...`)
        return fetchPosts({ first: itemsPerPage, after: endCursor })
      }


      /** Once we're done, return all the posts so we can
       * create the necessary posts with all the data on hand */
      return allPosts
    })


  /** Kick off our `fetchPosts` method which will get us all
   * the posts we need to create individual posts */
  await fetchPosts({ first: itemsPerPage, after: null }).then((wpPosts) => {


    wpPosts && wpPosts.map((post) => {
      /** Build post path based of theme blogURI setting */
      const path = `${blogURI}${post.uri}`


      createPage({
        path: path,
        component: postTemplate,
        context: {
          post: post,
        },
      })


      reporter.info(`post created:  ${path}`)
    })


    reporter.info(`# -----> POSTS TOTAL: ${wpPosts.length}`)


    /** Map over the `blogPages` array to create the
     * paginated blog pages */
    blogPages
    && blogPages.map((blogPage) => {
      if (blogPage.context.pageNumber === 1) {
        blogPage.context.publisher = true;
        blogPage.context.label = blogPage.path.replace('/', '');
      }
      createPage(blogPage);
      reporter.info(`created blog archive page ${blogPage.context.pageNumber}`);
    });
  })
}

The final updated create/createPosts.js and create/createPage.js files are available in this GitHub repository.

In his Twenty Nineteen porting tutorial post, Muhammad describes in great detail how static pages created with Gatsby’s createPage use nearly the same code and file structure used in this example. Nice to see some consistency forming between our references.

After re-starting local server with gatsby develop, we should display a screen in our browser now showing a loop of our published posts, containing the post title and excerpt.


Section 5: Styling and deployment

While styling, typography and deployment are all beyond the scope of what we’re covering here, we can touch on them a bit. The Gatsby’s documentation provides excellent resources on both styling and deployment/hosting options.

Basic site styling

Gatsby’s documentation is grouped by global CSS files, modular stylesheets and CSS-in-JS. There are other styling options available, including Typograpgy.js, Sass, JSS, Stylus and PostCSS.

While porting the Twenty Nineteen WordPress theme to Gatsby, Muhammad includes the theme’s styles so they can be used over on the Gatsby site. He cautions that some adjustments are needed since some units and values are incompatible with Gatsby. For example, he had to adjust vw units in CSS to use them with flexbox for some components. Similarly, porting Twenty Twenty theme to Gatsby, Henrik followed a similar process in his Gatsby starter -Twenty Twenty by porting over the Twenty Twenty stylesheet as well as fonts.

I decided to use Sass in my project. That requires installing gatsby-plugin-sass and its required node-sass dependency:

#! install node-sass & gatsby-sass
yarn add node-sass gatsby-plugin-sass
#! or with npm
npm install --save node-sass gatsby-plugin-sass

Then the plugin can be added to gatsby-config.js and configured as shown here.

// gatsby-config.js
module.exports = {
  siteMetadata: {
    plugins: [
      `gatsby-plugin-sass`
    ],
  }
}

Now we can write styles in .scss files and import them as we normally would in any other Sass project.

// using import in a component file
import("./src/styles/global.scss")


// using require in the gatsby-browser.js file
require('./src/styles/global.scss')

The .scss stylesheet can be imported by the global <Layout> component or added in gatsby-browser.js with a require statement. For this demo project, I’m using Gatsby’s default styling for the main page and I simply left post content as is. I refactored the Header.js file a bit with some very basic styling.

//src/components/Header.js
import { Link } from "gatsby"
import PropTypes from "prop-types"
import React from "react"
import useSiteMetadata from '../components/siteMetadata';
import Menu from "./Menu"
import "../styles/header.css"


const Header = () =>{
  const { title } = useSiteMetadata();


  return (
    <header className="header">
      <div className="nav-container brand">
        <Link  to="/"> {title} </Link>
        {/* Menu here */}
        <Menu />
      </div>
    </header>
  )
}


Header.propTypes = {
  siteTitle: PropTypes.string,
  description: PropTypes.string,
}


Header.defaultProps = {
  siteTitle: ``,
  description: ``,
}


export default Header

This should give us the site header when we restart the server with gatsby develop.

Supporting WordPress block styles

I’m assuming you’re well familiar with the WordPress block editor if you’ve made it this far and know how blocks generally work. Since releasing the block editor, WordPress has maintained a separate set of styles specifically for block content.

That means we need an extra step to port those over to Gatsby with the theme styles. Jason Lengstorf demonstrates in his tutorial guide. First, the WordPress blocks package is installed:

# install wordpress/block-library
npm install @wordpress/block-library
# with yarn add
yarn add @wordpress/block-library

Then we can import those styles into a Gatsby component. Let’s go with the <Layout> component:

// src/components/layout.js
import React from "react"
  import { Link } from "gatsby"


import "@wordpress/block-library/build-style/style.css"
  import "../styles/layout.css"


const Layout = ({ children }) => {
  return (
    <section>
      <header>
        <Link to="/" className="home">
          Gatsby + WP
        </Link>
      </header>
      <main>{children}</main>
    </section>
  )
}


export default Layout

The block editor is still very much in active development, which means things are prone to change, perhaps unexpectedly. So, definitely proceed with caution if you’re planning to use them.

Site deployment

We’ve talked a bit about deployment when I explained why I chose Netlify, I chose it because it hooks into the project’s GitHub repo and deploys automatically when pushing to a specific branch, thanks to Netlify Functions.

Netlify has a nice steop-by-step guide that covers how to connect a Gatsby site to Netlify. The Gatsby Doc also describes deploying to Netlify.

Finally, link to my own Netlify deployed demo site.

Again, this gives us continuous deployment where the site rebuilds automatically when changes are pushed to the repo. If we want a similar process whenever changes are made in WordPress — like publishing a post or editing a page — then the JAMstack Deployments plugin can be used as described in Jason’s guide.


This is still a work in progress!

While what I’ve learned in the process of porting a WordPress theme to Gatsby is great for constructing the basic building blocks of a blog, I’ve realized that there is still a lot of work to cover. I mean, WordPress stores so much data, including authors, categories, tags, post statuses, custom post types, and so much more, that all take extra consideration.

But there’s a growing list of decoupled Gatsby WordPress site examples, some of which I’ll list below for reference. Henrik’s an awesome list of WordPress-Gatsby resources is super helpful to learn more about the WordPress-Gatsby decoupling.

Credits

I know I mentioned it throughout this post, but a big shout out to Henrick Wirth, Jason Lengstorf and Muhammad Muhsin for all the work they’ve done to document and share what it takes to port WordPress to Gatsby. Everything I’ve covered here is merely the accumulation of their fine work and I appreciate each of them for creating such helpful guides suitable even for beginners like myself. I owe a special thank you to our own Geoff Graham from CSS-Tricks for editing this article.


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My Long Journey to a Decoupled WordPress Gatsby Site https://css-tricks.com/my-long-journey-to-a-decoupled-wordpress-gatsby-site/ https://css-tricks.com/my-long-journey-to-a-decoupled-wordpress-gatsby-site/#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2020 14:32:42 +0000 https://css-tricks.com/?p=316282 As a professional research biologist, my playground used to be science laboratories filled with microscopes, petri dishes, and biology tools. Curiosity leads many scientists on their journey to discoveries. Mine led me to web design. I used to try learning …


My Long Journey to a Decoupled WordPress Gatsby Site originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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As a professional research biologist, my playground used to be science laboratories filled with microscopes, petri dishes, and biology tools. Curiosity leads many scientists on their journey to discoveries. Mine led me to web design. I used to try learning HTML on my lab desktop while centrifuging extraction samples or waiting for my samples to thaw or freeze. These wait times are valuable for writing experiment notes and even learn a new skill. For me, this meant learning basic HTML through editors, like HomeSite and later Dreamweaver, as well as many other online resources.

After leaving my science lab desk about a decade ago, I found a new playground. I was introduced to WordPress by a local web developer friend. This changed the course of my life. Learning web design is no longer a downtime activity — it has become the main activity of my daily life.

My first step: Learning theme development

I call myself a WordPress enthusiast and an avid WordPress user. I entered into the world of WordPress by learning to hack themes, my virtual guru“Building Themes from Scratch Using Underscores” by Morten Rand-Hendriksen. While learning to develop themes, I must have watched this tutorial countless times and quickly it became my go-to reference. While doing my learning projects, I often referred to Morten’s GitHub repository to learn from his themes. For my personal sites, I used my own themes which are inspired by Morten’s, like Kuhn, Popper and others.

I also learned how to build plugins and widgets for my own site, but I mostly stayed within theming. I built themes for my personal sites. My personal sites are like my three-ring binders: one for every subject area. My sites discourage search engines and are designed for archiving my personal learning and posting notes. This habit of writing and documenting every aspect of my projects was inspired by “Just Write” by Sara Soueidan.

A call to Learn JavaScript deeply

It all started with Matt Mullenweg‘s  call for WordPress developers to “learn JavaScript deeply” during the 2015 State of the Word address and the subsequent announcement of the Gutenberg block editor. Until then, I was a happy WordPress user and an aspiring WordPress developer. It was reported that JavaScript and API-driven Interfaces are the future of WordPress. Like other WordPress enthusiasts, I also acknowledged that JavaScript was  a must-have skill for WordPress development.

Thus, began my own JavaScript learning journey and road map. I used Zell Liew’s article “Learning JavaScript — where should you start and what to do when you’re stuck?”

Let me share my learning journey with you.

I started by looking at React and REST API-based themes

Since the official integration of the REST API in WordPress core, a few React-based themes have started popping up.

In my opinion, these themes appeared to be experimental. When the Foxhound theme was released, it was covered in CSS-Tricks as well as WordPress Tavern. I downloaded it to my test site, and it worked fine; however, I could not hack and learn from it given my limited familiarity with JavaScript and React.

I started digging into React

I used Robin Wieruch’s article “JavaScript fundamentals before learning React” as my JavaScript/React learning road map. While struggling to learn and understand React routing, I discovered Gatsby which utilizes @reach/router as a built-in feature, making routing a breeze. In my brief exploratory research, I learned that Gatsby is indeed a “React-based framework that helps developers build blazing fast websites and apps.” This led me to learn Gatsby while continuing to make progress on React. After a while, I immersed myself in my Gatsby projects and only occasionally returned to learning basic JavaScript and React.

I picked up Gatsby

Given that I had already done several small learning projects in React, understanding Gatsby was natural. Gatsby is said to be aimed at developers and not users. I did not find it that hard to learn and run my own simple Gatsby test sites.

Gatsby’s documentation and tutorials are well-written, helpful, and easy to follow. I decided to learn Gatsby using its tutorials and completing all eight parts as a means of “learning by doing.” While working on my projects, I consulted other guides and tutorial posts. The following two guides helped me to understand build concepts, add functionality and put together a reasonable Gatsby demo site:

For styling React components, there are several options which are covered on CSS-Trick. Some options include local inline CSS-in-JS, styled components and modular CSS. Gatsby components can also be styled with Sass using gatsby-plugin-sass, which makes the code more readable. Because of its familiarity and code readability, I chose styling with Sass; however, I recognize the value of CSS modules as well.

Resources for integrating Gatsby and WordPress

My Gatsby learning didn’t stop there. In fact, Gatsby has been the most significant part of my learning curve more recently. Here’s everything I found throughout my learning journey that I hope will serve you as well on your own journey.

There are many sites already running on Gatsby. Those who have migrated to Gatsby seem to be happy, especially with the blazingly fast speed and the improved security it offers.

Commenting in Gatsby

WordPress has natively supported comments for a long, long time. Gatsby sites are serverless-static, so posting comments is an issue since they are dynamic and requires a client side service.

Some Gatsby and React developers seem to leave commenting and interactions on their own personal sites to Twitter. Others seem to reach for Disqus. If you are interested, this Northstack tutorial describes in detail how to bring WordPress comments over to Gatsby.

WordPress Gatsby themes

I first became aware of WordPress ported Tabor for Gatsby theme from WordPress Tavern. It was developed by Rich Tabor and is freely available on GitHub (demo). From there, two WordPress-inspired Gatsby themes became available through the Gatsby Theme Jam project. One was by Alexandra Spalato called Gatsby Theme WordPress Starter (demo) and the other by Andrey Shalashov called WordPress Source Theme (demo).

In 2019, a team of Gatsby and WPGraphQL developers led by Jason Bahl, Muhammad Muhsin, Alexandra Spalato, and Zac Gordon announced a project that ports WordPress themes to Gatsby. Zac, talking to WordPress Tavern, said the project would offer both free and paid premium themes. At the time of this writing, five themes were listed with no free download.

Decoupled Gatsby WordPress starters

The current Gatsby starer library lists ten WordPress-compatible starter themes, including a more recent one by Henrik Wirth that ports the WordPress Twenty Twenty theme — stylesheets and fonts — to Gatsby. Although the theme is still a work-in-progress with some limitations (e.g. no support for tags, monthly archives, and comments). Nevertheless, it is a great project and uses a new experimental Gatsby Source plugin for WordPress.

Another popular starter is gatsby-starter-wordpress by Gatsby Central.

Gatsby WordPress themes from GitHub

There are other popular Gatsby themes that are available at GitHub. The Twenty Nineteen WordPress Gatsby Theme is a port of the Twenty Nineteen WordPress Theme by Zac Gordon and Muhammad Muhsin.

Experimental plugins

There are also two new GraphQL plugins for WordPress that are under development and only available on GitHub at the moment. One is Gatsby Source WordPress Experimental by Tyler Barnes. This is a re-written version of current Gatsby Source WordPress plugin using WPGraphQL for data sourcing, as well as a custom WPGatsby plugin that transforms WPGraphQL schema in Gatsby-specific ways.

The other one is Gatsby WordPress Gutenberg which is still being developed by Peter Pristas. Its documentation is available over at the GatsbyWPGutenberg Docs site.

Step-by-step guides

Despite the ongoing progress in Gatsby WordPress theme development, I could not locate any detailed how-to guides written for beginners like me. Mohammad Mohsin wrote up a thorough guide over at Smashing magazine in 2018, explaining how he developed his Celestial React theme using the WordPress REST API. The other tutorial is another one he wrote about porting the Twenty Nineteen WordPress Theme to Gatsby, which uses WPGraphQL for WordPress data sourcing.

More recently, there have been two additional guides that I’ve benefited from:

Finally, my own partially ported Gatsby site

Everything covered so far is what has fueled me to create my own WordPress Gatsby site. While it was a large technical task, the guides I’ve referenced, in addition to the experimental plugins and existing documentation for Gatsby made it so much easier than if I had attempted to figure it out on my own.

Here is the result. While it’s still a work in progress, it’s awesome to see it working. I’ve written up a complete step-by-step walkthrough on how I made it, which will publish next week here on CSS-Tricks. So stay tuned!

What’s next on the horizon for Gatsby and WordPress?

I am still keeping my eyes on the two experimental WordPress plugins I mentioned earlier. I plan to revisit the project once those are officially released, hopefully in the WordPress Plugin Directory. This recent tweet thread highlights the current status of porting content from the WordPress block editor to a decoupled WordPress Gatsby theme.

In a recent WordCamp Spain 2020 session, Matt Mullenweg said that the demand for decoupled WordPress sites is growing:

But for people who are building more advanced applications or have some sort of constraint on their website where they need the React frontend, I think the decoupled use case of WordPress is stronger than ever. 

Dan Abramov agrees:

Taking with Sarah Gooding of WPTavern, Gatsby WP Themes project members Zac Gordon and Jason Bahl also confessed that the “most current Gatsby WordPress themes are directed for businesses and developers, they are not suitable for beginners.” Let’s hope the future fixes that!

My personal take

Based on my very limited experience, I think that currently available Gatsby WordPress themes are not ready for prime time use for users like me. Yeah, it is exciting to try something on the bleeding edge that’s clearly in the minds of many WordPress users and developers. At the same time, the constantly evolving work being done on the WordPress block editor, WPGraphQL and Gatsby source WordPress plugins makes it difficult to predict where things are going and when it will settle into a state where it is safe to use in other contexts. Until then, it’s a frustrating experience to work on something only to have the API or the interface change on you.

For my own personal uses, a normal Gatsby site is enough, I could get content with Markdown files without any hassles associated with decoupling WordPress. For larger agency sites… I can see why having a decoupled solution would make a lot of sense for them and their clients.

Remember, I’ll be sharing my tutorial next week — see you then!


My Long Journey to a Decoupled WordPress Gatsby Site originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

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