2023: Year in review

It’s hard to believe that the Developer Blog now has a full year under its belt. And what a year it has been!

A total of 39 community members from all kinds of backgrounds contributed to 54 published posts. Seventeen of these were writers, and 23 earned their new Documentation Contributor badges. The posts covered everything from block development to themes and a little bit of everything in between.

So cheers to everyone who helped wrap up the first official year of the Developer Blog and all of you who supported the project by reading, subscribing, and sharing. 🥂

On a personal note, this is a WordPress project that I’ve always believed should exist. As someone who’s written development and design tutorials for at least 15 years (longer?), I never felt that they had a proper home on my personal blog. That’s why I jumped on the chance to be a part of this project and am happy to have played a role in getting it off the ground. But this isn’t just about me. I also get to do it alongside some of the most innovative developers in the WordPress space.

And we’re always looking for new writers. Please join us and share your knowledge with other WordPress developers as we kick off 2024.

A new coat of paint

If you’re reading this via an email or RSS feed, you’re missing out on the shiny new coat of paint that the Developer Blog got just a few weeks ago (GitHub ticket). So hop on over to the live site.

If you’re now reading this from the live site, let us know what you think. If you notice an issue, please open a ticket on the GitHub repository.

This was a part of the larger Developer Resources redesign in December 2023.

Statistics

In the below table, you can view the Developer Blog statistics. Both 2022 and 2023 are listed, but they are not really comparable because the blog was in beta for only a couple of months in 2022. The goal is to continue improving upon these stats every year.

Year	2023	2022
Total Views	131,235	11,079
Total Visitors	70,765	5,475
Total Posts	54	9
Total Comments	211	31
Total Words	99,585	1,844
Average Comments	3.9	3.4
Average Words	1,844	1,416

A look back at the posts published in 2023

Of the 54 posts published in 2023, most of them can fit broadly into one of a few categories: monthly roundup, block development, and theming. We also had a few oddballs in the mix that didn’t fit under those larger categories. They are still good reads—they just cover other topics or are more general.

Below, you can look through the posts from the past year. They are grouped into these larger categories and listed from newest to oldest.

Now is a great time to catch up on anything you missed! And if you haven’t subscribed yet, do it now so you never miss a new blog post again.

Monthly roundups

In 2023, we published 11 What’s new for developers? articles, our monthly roundup that highlights features, bug fixes, and other changes that directly impact your work as a WordPress extender.

These continue to be some of our most-read posts each month—it seems that y’all really like them. So we will continue to publish them in 2024. One change that we’re planning to make is to bring on someone new to write them every quarter or so.

If you need to catch up on something you missed, or if you’re just feeling nostalgic, here’s each roundup from last year:

• December 2023
• November 2023
• October 2023
• September 2023
• August 2023
• July 2023
• June 2023
• May 2023
• April 2023
• March 2023
• February 2023

Block development

Contributors published 15 posts specific to block development. These are tutorials, guides, and how-tos that often complement the Block Editor Handbook.

If you’re getting started with block development, these should be right up your alley:

• Understanding block attributes
• An introduction to block variations
• Navigating the Block Editor Handbook
• Quick and easy local WordPress development with wp-env
• Block deprecation – a tutorial
• Converting your shortcodes to blocks
• Static vs. dynamic blocks: What’s the difference?

If you’re looking for deeper dives into advanced topics, we have those too:

• Extending plugins using custom SlotFills
• Using block inspector sidebar groups
• How to add custom color options to blocks
• Styling blocks: empowering users with CSS custom properties
• useEntityRecords: an easier way to fetch WordPress data
• How webpack and WordPress packages interact
• Creating a custom block that stores post meta
• Some very cool things can happen when you hit Enter in a block.

Themes and design

For theming and visual design, writers published 21 posts in 2023. Often, they dived more deeply into subjects that you will find in the Theme Handbook, but they sometimes covered more general design concepts.

If you’re new to building themes or ready for intermediate-level topics, these posts will get you started:

• Typography series:
  • A great read—four simple steps to your best body copy ever
  • The anatomy of a letterform
  • Make your site’s typography make a statement
• A walk-through tutorial on using Create Block Theme plugin
• Styles, patterns, and more with the Details block
• Adding and using custom settings in theme.json
• The Style Book: a one-stop shop for styling block themes
• Customizing core block style variations via theme.json
• Per-block CSS with theme.json
• Using template patterns to build multiple homepage designs
• Block theme templates: the easy way to build an elegant grid of posts
• Block theme resources roundup
• Creating custom block styles in WordPress themes
• Using the box shadow feature for themes

Or if you’re ready for more advanced tutorials and discussions:

• Beyond block styles series:
  • Beyond block styles, part 1: using the WordPress scripts package with themes
  • Beyond block styles, part 2: building a custom style for the Separator block
  • Beyond block styles, part 3: building custom design tools
• Upgrading the site-editing experience with custom template part areas
• Everything you need to know about spacing in block themes
• Intrinsic design, theming, and rethinking how to design with WordPress
• A walk-through of layout classes in WordPress 6.1

Learning and other topics

And now we’re to those posts that didn’t fit quite as neatly into the sections above. Some of these expand on topics in the Common APIs Handbook while others are just more general tutorials about building on top of WordPress:

• Getting started with the Command Palette API
• How WordPress developers can keep their users satisfied
• The HTML API: process your tags, not your pain
• Exploring the future of web development with WebAssembly and PHP
• Understand and use WordPress nonces properly
• How to modify theme.json data using server-side filters
• Curating the Editor experience with client-side filters

Get ready for 2024

The Developer Blog editorial team and writers are already hard at work preparing for the new year. There are several new topics approved, and you should start seeing some of that content land in the coming weeks and months.

I think it’s going to be a big year. Even bigger than 2023. With the new design in place and more links that point to this blog, it should help with discoverability.

All I ask of you, dear reader, is that you continue supporting the project by reading, commenting, sharing, and—if you’re up for a challenge—publishing your own posts here.

Props to @ndiego and @bph for feedback on this post. The sparkler featured image by @mdburnette taken from the WordPress Photo Directory.