Over the past few months a lot of work has been put in to support the new Block editor (Gutenberg) in WordPress 5. This was a really challenging exercise, but one I feel was well worth the effort. Both the Directory and the Upcoming List blocks, for the most part, have feature parity with their shortcode equivalents. There are even a few features the blocks have which do not exist in the shortcodes!
So with that complete, what’s next?
There are several main goals for this year:
- Update the Social Network icons. The existing icon set is getting pretty dated.
- Add a new Team block. This will be a highly customizable block providing you many design options which will allow you to build team pages using the data from your directory. Similar premium plugins sell for $20 and more. We’re bringing this to you as a free feature!
- Add a Map block. Well, actually two. The first will be a simple generic map block, like many of the others available for the new Editor. It’ll allow you to add a map with an address pin to a page. The purpose of this block will be primarily to help flesh out the new Mapping API built into Connections at the end of last year (did you notice the switch ;) ). The second map block will be to pull in addresses from the directory data and add them as pins with popups. This block will be great to use as a basic store locator.
- Move from microdata to Schema.org for even better SEO.
- And lastly, more of a developer focused feature, continue to build out the WordPress REST API support.
Sounds great! Thanks, and keep up the good work.