I’ve started out with reading I’m supposed to prepare a local development environment to get started with developing an own WordPress theme. I followed unofficial outdated instructions trying to get WordPress Studio running. Reading about WordPress Studio, I’ve read it is based on WordPress Playground, running PHP compiled to WebAssembly. I first wrote about that here.
But I’ve learnt of WordPress Playground now. So I searched it and found Streamlining block theme development with WordPress Playground and GitHub from January.
And from that post I found out about the Create Block Theme plugin, the name of which the abbreviation of seems to be much in favor with them throughout the blog post.
So I went and installed it in my production instance instead. But I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I went to the Playground instead. Actually, I went to the Playground in the first place but got distracted while the whole installation was getting saved to my browser storage when I chose to not have it in throwaway mode.
And good thing I did. After I found the Create Block Theme quite obviously under Appearance in Dashboard, I didn’t realize when Creating a new Blank Theme set it as my current theme.
First thing I wondered, how is content size set to be so narrow. I found it after a while, you have to click the wrench icon and select View theme.json, there you will find it under settings→layout→contentSize.
Then I started wondering how do I edit a post view. It turned out that when I leave this editor, the way to return is by going to Editor that I recognize as Design from prior version, there going to Templates and there, clicking the vertical ellipsis more actions context menu button and picking Edit.
So clearly I need to create a template for a single post. I clicked Add Template back in Templates and there I could pick either Single Posts (plural), or Single Item: Post.
- Single Posts is described as Displays a single post on your website unless a custom template has been applied to that post or a dedicated template exists.
- Single Item: Post asks me “whether to create a single template for all items or a specific one.”. Of “All Posts: For all items” and “Post: For a specific item”, I pick All Posts. I change something.
I don’t see my change in actual page after Saving. Maybe because of opening in new tab. I make a change in both. I don’t see it. I make a change in Index — I see it, but not the change on post templates. I notice “Edit Site” with a brush icon on top of the post view: it starts the editor, with Single Item: Post.
I have no idea why, until I choose to change Single Posts some more and delete Single Item: Post. It turns out the latter was overriding the former.
But it seems I know all that I need now, and now it’s just fiddling with the Block Editor. Not that it’s particularly easy to layout in it… I may end up looking up guides even, now that I think of it.