The Home page of my Blog Site has changed, but it may not be immediately obvious where!
Until today I have used the WordPress Classic Editor to create and maintain my blog site posts and pages, but for the new Home Page and this post I have started using the new Gutenberg Block Editor. The question on your lips is then “Why?”. Much of the new functionality introduced recently into WordPress has been dependent on Gutenberg Blocks, which allows the web pages to be created from simple building blocks, like Lego. In particular, I was looking for a way to include an action button at the top of the Home page which would only appear if the user had not yet logged into the blog, because much of this site depends on knowing about the profile and membership level of the user. Gutenberg Blocks has just such a block, and I have used it at the top of the Home page, but if you have already logged in, then it is hidden.
So what are the changes to the Home page?
- At the top of the page users that have not yet logged-in will see a big button saying “–> YOU ARE NOT LOGGED IN! <–“. Clicking that button will take you to the login page.
- Near the bottom of the page there was a table explaining the different membership levels, which had merged cells in the Membership Level column to show you what was relevant to that level. Unfortunately, Gutenberg Blocks does not yet allow merged cells, so, in the new table, I have had to add a blank row between each level, which is why it looks a little different. Merged cells will be implemented as soon as they become available.
- The rest of the page looks remarkably unchanged, but it now uses Paragraph and List blocks.
- Finally, you may notice that the Total views counter at the top-right of the page now has a much smaller number. That is because the new Home page is a brand new page. The original Home page had 26,970 views! It is now up to you to get that view count back above 20,000!