New Design Superpowers for You to Leverage
One of the most exciting things about WordPress is that it’s constantly improving. In fact, did you know that Gutenberg releases new functionality and improvements every two weeks?! There have been a number of really cool and powerful capabilities rolled out over the last few months that give you even more control over the design of your site and your content. We wanted to take a minute to highlight some that we’re especially excited about.
Note: These updates are most relevant to those of you who have a block theme activated.
- Use Your Featured Image in the Cover Block
- Borders in Layout Blocks
- See What Margin vs Padding Actually Does
- Patterns Are Easier to Find and More Convenient to Use
- Leveling Up the Query Block
- Notable Mentions
Use Your Featured Image in the Cover Block
Over the last few months the Gutenberg team has really powered up the cover block and its ability to leverage the featured image set in your post/page. Not only can you do that when creating new content, you can use it in your templates too, making it easier than ever to make your featured image a bigger part of every post.
Borders in Layout Blocks
You now have the ability to add and customize borders in the columns, row, stack, and group blocks. Use them for subtle dividers or go nuts to create some fun retro drop-shadows. This is a great way to make different sections on your site stand out!
See What Margin vs Padding Actually Does
I’ve been working in the web space for a long time and I still get confused with how padding and margin will impact my layout — especially when there are multiple layers of blocks involved! You will now see exactly where the change is being applied as you adjust your settings.
Patterns Are Easier to Find and More Convenient to Use
Gutenberg 12.7 brings patterns front and center to help save you time and energy. Why recreate a layout block by block when you can start with something more complete? Take advantage of all of the great patterns the WordPress.com designers put together for our customers or maybe consider adding a pattern of your own to the WordPress.org pattern directory.
Leveling Up the Query Block
The Query Loop has grown a lot over the past few months. Not only can you filter by different authors or taxonomies, but you can now filter to show all content under a parent category. This is perfect for creators who create different types of content or jump between drastically different subject matters. It’s really the ultimate block for displaying a collection of posts and it just keeps getting better.
Notable Mentions
- You can now customize and display text on your social icons.
- We’ve made it easier to transform your content into different blocks without losing the work you’ve already done.
- Your new buttons will keep the design settings you already applied, preventing you from having to re-apply the settings for every button you add.
This is just a small subset of new features released over the last few months. Let us know what you think in the comments and feel free to share your favorites!
WordPress.com News 
Great work! I love that WordPress is constantly improving
LikeLiked by 16 people
Thanks Mike, yet to try the features.
LikeLiked by 9 people
Can someone please help me get into my website I’ve been out of it for a week nobody will answer me
Sincerely, Gerald Russell
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LikeLiked by 2 people
You gave away my biggest template design secret in this post lol. It’s the radius and borders on layout blocks. Using the Blank Canvas template, I’ve been able to customize a template using nothing but Gutenburg and the basic group + column blocks. It’s not difficult to do, and doesn’t even require a plugin. Just takes some playing around. Once you figure it out, you may not want to use a pre-made template again for a personal, or website. For Woocommerce you probably will just want to use a store template. Since learning Gutenburg and building my own template with it, I hope I’m set with it on this platform for the long-haul. I don’t want to have to redesign my website again. It was a pain switching from the Colinear template that I loved for years, but my website is better off for it now I think with this new block system. Looking forward to more updates, and trying out more new stuff. I have a suggestion…. Stories needs a block that can display them similar to the way they get displayed on social networks. It would be very cool if this type of block existed that could be placed within a website block template.
LikeLiked by 5 people
You sure make it look easy. I’m not a fan of the Blocks, so cumbersome to use, so much more clicking and if you don’t know what to do – takes time to figure it out. I miss the old Classic version. The other day, I had two Blocks – paragraphs. I wanted to combine the second one up to the one above it. I could not just click return twice and have it move up. I had to cut/past the block into the one above, then delete the block below. IS THERE AN EASIER WAY?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hey there, typically I’d position my cursor to the beginning of the second paragraph, tap delete a few times, and then add a space as needed. If that isn’t working for you, can you get in touch with more details? Let us know what browser you’re using, etc.
https://wordpress.com/help/contact
Thank you in advance!
LikeLiked by 3 people
In theory that’s what I would do in Microsoft Word and WordPress Classic, but not in Block style. It’s RIGID, the blocks stay within themselves, so I cannot work in the Blocks as I wold in Microsoft Word or WordPress Classic. I really dislike the BLOCK format. Browser — Safari.
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I’ve just tested in Safari (current) as well, and pressing delete works there as well.
Please get in touch if you’d like us to help you troubleshoot this:
https://wordpress.com/support/help-support-options/
LikeLiked by 5 people
Ok, I will. I’ll also try it again. I appreciate your assistance.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Nice Post
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I really like that we are getting more updates to the query loop and we have borders for the blocks. There are some features that I think would be beneficial for content creators such as an integrated way to post to discord with webhooks (similar to the twitter and tumblr connection integration), the ability to have entirely separate blogs (similar to squarespace), and integrating a content calendar with weekly and monthly views or give us the ability to sync it with our calendars via a subscription link. I really would like to see the posts i’ve scheduled out in a monthly and weekly view.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Thank you mike for sharing your new designs different types of templates and the time place you have shared in it looks very beautiful thank you for sharing once again time
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Gee you are making it even more difficult to use and your classes are too fast and like greek to me. sorry to be a downer but maybe you need the truth.
LikeLiked by 4 people
What a best work. i love the wp
LikeLiked by 2 people
Great Share!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I truly love the good work
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It is a great website.. The Design looks very good.. Keep working like that!.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Nice work. Keep it up
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s really awesome
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I agree,the changes are worth being shown off, thanks for the summary
LikeLiked by 3 people
Great work !! We all need superpowers
LikeLiked by 2 people
Loving the new features!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nice
LikeLiked by 1 person
Such a nice information
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