It all started, as most things do, with an idea.
When I joined Automattic as a developer educator in May 2022, members of the WordPress Training Team had been working on a block theme developers course for Learn WordPress. I joined those efforts and ultimately that course turned into three different courses that we published late in 2023.
- Develop Your First Low-Code Block Theme
- A Developers Guide to Block Themes – Part 1
- A Developers Guide to Block Themes – Part 2
In the process of working on these courses I realized that while I understood the theory behind developing a block theme, I’ve not had the practical experience of developing one based on a specific design. In fact, it had been about 6 years since I’d worked on a custom WordPress theme!
And so, in early September of 2022, I decided to do something about it and put the word out on Twitter.
Fortunately for me, someone replied
That someone was Emily Rapport, an amazing designer and agency owner from Chicago, and we got to talking about how we could collaborate.
Two months later, Emily delivered on her end; a series of template designs and style elements for the Sendig theme, some of which you can view in the gallery below. I think you’ll agree that this is a pretty amazing-looking theme.
It’s now been six months since Emily sent me those designs, and I’m sad to admit that I have not upheld my end of the agreement. Emily has graciously been patient with me, and I really appreciate that. But the time for procrastination is over, and it’s time for me to make her amazing designs a reality.
Building in the open
Starting this Tuesday at 12:00 13:00 pm UTC, I’ll be working on turning these designs into a new WordPress block theme during my weekly Twitch live streams. I have no idea how long it will take, but I am hoping I can get it done before the end of the year at least!
If you can’t make the live streams, you’re welcome to watch the recordings on my YouTube channel.
You are also invited to follow the GitHub repository, which is where I’ll be committing all the code, as well as logging any issues I encounter along the way.
It’s been a while since I’ve developed something from scratch, but I’m looking forward to the challenge. Hopefully, we’ll all learn a little more about the process of developing block themes along the way!
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