Sometimes you have product releases that are just that extra bit cool. This is one of them! 😎
Genesis Custom Blocks has been in the wild now for around 6 months and in that time thousands of custom blocks have been designed, built, and deployed to WordPress sites. Today we roll out v1.1 of the plugin and introduce a brand new block building experience. The screen that you use to add and configure your custom blocks has had a major facelift. It’s now very much in line with the WordPress block editor experience itself. But there’s much more going on under the hood! On a technical level, we’ve built a custom React App that allows us to deliver a significantly more streamlined experience as well as lay a technical foundation for features that are otherwise impossible in standard old-school WordPress interfaces.
Check this quick little demo to get a taste of what I’m talking about:
No more accordions of death
When I say a more “streamlined experience”, the best example of this is when you add a field and then configure its settings. Compare the old experience to the new.
You can see the new interface lets you move so much more easily. No more eye-bending vertical panels opening and closing.
Reactive (live) data and template interactions
The fact that we’ve shifted our interface to React JS means we can interact far more dynamically with our database, templates, and user entered data. This means feedback is near instant and impact of changes made to a block are seen immediately, without a page reload.
A foundation for the future
Step one here is ensuring feature parity and delivering it in a better experience. The next steps though are where things start to get really exciting. The technical foundation we now have lets us do a bunch of very powerful things not possible with the architecture of the old interface. Looking forward to sharing more about what we’re planning.
This release is one we are very excited about. If you have the plugin already installed, just hit update. Otherwise, jump over to the plugin repo and download for free.
Until next time, happy block building!