About this episode.
On the podcast today we have Vinny McKee.
He’s the creator of the Wicked Block Builder plugin, which is a tool to make the job of creating your own custom blocks as easy as possible.
I’m sure that you know that WordPress’ editor is all about blocks. You can create content, and now whole websites with small components. A title here, and a paragraph there. But the real power of blocks is the way that they can be extended so that they can consume and display any kind of content in any way that you can imagine.
The WordPress landscape is moving towards blocks as the way to create and present all-the-things, and we’re just at the start of a very exciting journey.
You can download and try out blocks for almost everything. Some do one thing, other block packs bring entire suites of interesting blocks to the table.
But there is a problem… blocks are not all that easy to create. Yes, you might very well be a talented developer who has taken the lead in learning block creation. You burned the midnight oil and got your head around the complexities of it all. I suspect that it was an uphill struggle.
But WordPress’ mission is to democratise publishing. In an ideal world not just publishing, but extending WordPress would be something available to the masses.
Step in Vinny McKee. His Wicked Block Builder plugin is one of the tools out there that enables you to build your own blocks without the need to understand much of what’s going on behind the scenes, and there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.
Page Builders allowed users to create beautiful websites without needing to learn code, block builders are doing the same thing for blocks.
Today on the podcast we learn about why Vinny built the plugin, as well as how it works. What problems does it overcome, and are there any limitations to what you can build?
Useful links.
Wicked Block Builder on the WordPress repo
Wicked Block Builder website
Justin Tadlock's post "Wicked Plugins Launches UI-Based WordPress Block Builder"
Wicked Plugins Twitter account