Day: October 14, 2022

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UniBlock: A Free Business Block Theme for WordPress

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WPZOOM is coming in strong with its first block theme approved for the WordPress Themes Directory. UniBlock is a beautifully designed theme that is well-suited for businesses and freelancers. The company plans to adopt the concept of full-site editing in other WPZOOM themes as well, following the release of UniBlock.

UniBlock’s default look is sporting a darker color palette in the navigation and above the fold, with a lighter background for the rest of the website. The video on the sample homepage uses the free WPZOOM Video Popup Block plugin, which supports Vimeo and YouTube. It’s a simple, lightweight block that allows users to customize the play button and play icon.

After activating the theme, clicking on ‘Customize’ will prompt the user to install the video plugin. It can also be converted to a Custom HTML block or removed entirely at the user’s discretion.

UniBlock’s 19 custom block patterns include everything one might expect from a business theme but, most impressively, it ships with five full-page patterns:

  • Front Page
  • About
  • Services
  • Blog
  • Contact

Alternatively, users can assign the page template in the post settings to get the same effect.

These full-page patterns are convenient for speedy page building. They make it possible to get a basic business website up in a matter of minutes. Here’s an example of the Services full-page pattern that will instantly embed when selected. Users can delete any sections they don’t need, add more blocks and patterns, and quickly fill in all their own information.

Separately there are patterns for a footer with text, links, multiple arrangements of featured boxes with text and button, multiple designs for call-to-action sections, pricing tables, team members with social icons, testimonials, header cover, sidebar, 404 page, and more.

Users can delve even further into customizing the templates with the site editor, as UniBlock is packaged with nearly two dozen templates and template parts. Here they can also edit the menu and adjust global styles.

WPZOOM is developing a Pro version of the theme to release in a few weeks with support for importing the whole demo, multiple color schemes, multiple demos, premium block patterns, and additional header and footer layouts.

Check out the demo on the WPZOOM website to see the theme in action. WPZOOM has also written documentation for UniBlock, which covers general topics like how to use block patterns, how to set up the front and blog pages, and how to create a menu in the site editor. Since the company’s most popular themes are what would be considered classic themes, UniBlock is new territory for most of their customers. It is so far the only block theme among WPZOOM’s collection of 31 themes.

Block theme adoption is slowly making its way across WordPress’ major theme shops and the official directory is now hosting 160 themes tagged for full-site editing. As more longtime theme companies make their block theme debuts and develop a base for future themes, WordPress users may start to see a rapid acceleration of the number and variety of block themes available. UniBlock is so far one of the few block themes in the directory with a singular focus on business websites. It is available to download for free from WordPress.org or via the admin themes panel.

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Tips for Developing a Screen Recorder

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Let's face it. Sometimes it can be difficult for our app users to find a specific app function when our apps are loaded with all kinds of functions. Many of us tend to write up a guide detailing each function found in the app, but — honestly speaking — users don't really have the time or patience to read through long guides, and not all guides are user-friendly, either. Sometimes it's faster to play about with a function than it is to look it up and learn about it. But that creates the possibility that users are not using the functions of our app to its full potential.

Luckily, making a screen recording is a great way of showing users how functions work, step by step.

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How to use Facebook to promote your Business?

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Facebook remains the most popular social media platform with nearly 3 billion users worldwide, out of which 2.9 billion people are active social media users. With an effective Facebook marketing strategy businesses can turn their Facebook business page into a powerful tool to market and advertise their services to reach potential customers.

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Gutenberg 14.3 Improves Image Drag and Drop

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Gutenberg 14.3 was released this week with drag-and-drop improvements for both the block editor and the site editor. Automattic-sponsored contributor Aaron Robertshaw published a video, illustrating how the block editor now supports  dropping an image onto an empty paragraph block to replace it with a new Image block.

The site editor has also added drag-and-drop capabilities for blocks and patterns in the new zoomed-out view, which was added in Gutenberg version 14.1. It zooms out to focus on building and composing patterns, allowing users to move sections around without affecting the inner blocks. It can be enabled under “Experiments.” In 14.3, users can drag blocks and patterns right onto the canvas with an overhead view that makes it easy to place in between existing blocks.

video source: Gutenberg PR #44402

This version also introduces new support for alt + arrow keyboard combinations for navigating blocks. Robertshaw explained how they work:

For example, if your cursor is towards the end of a long paragraph, you can quickly press alt + up arrow to move to the beginning of that paragraph. If you are already at the beginning of a text block, you’ll move to the start of the previous paragraph. Similarly, alt + down arrow will move you to the end of a block of text.

The Styles typography controls have been updated to include the Tools Panels that users have available in the Block Settings interface. This makes the experience more consistent and expands the capabilities to allow for resetting the values.

This release includes dozens of fixes and improvements to design tools, components, the Block API, and more. Check out the changelog in the announcement post for the full list of updates.

Gutenberg 14.3 will not be included in the upcoming WordPress 6.1 release but will be rolled into core the next time around. If you want these features now, you can install the Gutenberg plugin.