This short contract job in 2022 was a kind of proof-of-concept. I’m under NDA about it, so no identifying information here – but there’s something to be said about WordPress’s path forward with this project.

The project is a service provided via a hosted WP instance on client subdomains. It’s a pretty common niche market strategy – spin up a WordPress install and match clients’ existing branding. I’ve worked on a couple of other projects like this. It’s what I think of as “production” WordPress work, as the build is onboarding for the service.

This is good use for theme frameworks – where time to launch directly correlates to positive cash flow. Keep the designs lean standardized.

My mission/contribution/interest was to move this production workflow into the age of the WordPress block editor. I remain convinced that moving this kind of work away from custom page templates and CSS toward (primarily just) pre-made block patterns simplifies and speeds up builds.

I developed and tested this for a few weeks before turning it back over to the contractor. I’m pretty optimistic about this as a path forward. At the time I was testing it, the tools I was using were still in beta and being actively developed, so the job went the more traditional route. I was early, but I’m convinced- the block editor’s impact on how things are done in the WordPress world is still unfolding.