In the past 15 years the technology of the web has evolved, enabling exciting new techniques and tools for web developers. WordPress has evolved with it, but some of the newer and more exciting tools are still out of reach… or are they?

This is a developer focused talk about bringing newer technologies into WordPress development through the use (and abuse) of plugins and themes.

The block revolution is undoubtedly here, but not everyone has been able to embrace it yet. If you’ve never used ReactJS before it may seem intimidating, or at the very least time consuming to go all-in on the new editor and create custom blocks for every situation you come across.

• ⏰ Maybe you have a tight deadline for a project but you just can’t seem to find the right existing block to do the job?
• 👴🏻 Perhaps you have some legacy sites from ‘before’ where you built out custom meta data with ACF?
• 🏗 Maybe you (like myself) have been creating completely custom sites using ACF Flexible Content and are worried at the idea of the classic interface going away?

Gather round comrades and fear not, this talk is for you.

All are welcome in the Block revolution, and thanks to Advanced Custom Fields’ “ACF Blocks” feature we can quickly and easily get our own custom blocks running in the new editor, with a few lines of code and some basic templating.

Beyond the basics, we’ll look at using the idea of a block or component on the server side, and discuss some patterns for writing and organising our code to take maximum advantage of this new paradigm using modern PHP.

Whatever your reasons for not being able to ‘learn javascript deeply’ yet are, it doesn’t mean that this bright new future of block-based editing isn’t for you.

This talk gets progressively more technical – there should be something for all levels of experience including some minimal-code solutions, however later sections assume familiarity with WordPress concepts like Plugins, Themes and core WordPress APIs along with modern PHP practices and tooling.

If you already know JavaScript, but don’t have much React experience, you’ll learn what you need get started. You’ll then be able to develop your own blocks and extend Gutenberg.

You’ll see the most important parts of ES6 and JSX to know. Also, you’ll learn the basics of how React works, see a basic build setup, and learn about ES6 modules.

Without getting caught in the details, you’ll see what’s required to start developing in the new paradigm for WordPress. With this, you can build blocks, and you’ll know where to get the rest of the experience you’ll need.