Keir Whitakers WordPress Blocks

Whilst browsing twitter during the weekend I noticed that someone had retweeted Keir Whitaker, editor of Carsonifieds Think Vitamin blog. I normally just skim through the vast majority of the tweets in my timeline but this one caught my eye.

The tweet mentioned Keirs latest development — WordPress Blocks — I reckon most people will find this quite interesting and definately something that you should look into if you develope sites using wordpress. After clicking the link, I was taken to Keirs project page of his website where he explains that:

WP-Blocks will allow you to define unlimited content blocks and have them appear in your templates via a simple PHP function call. These blocks will then be editable via the normal WordPress editor.

Keir stated that the idea for this arose when a simple page or post just doesn’t quite cut it, meaning you would have to hardcode something within the template which would then make it inaccessibile for the person who owns the site. This of course could all be avoided if the person was happy enough to poke around the backend and edit the template files but we all know that this is far from ideal. Keir suggests using these blocks for areas which might change infrequently; think of your footer or small biography in the sidebar.

Currently the plugin is scheduled for a September release but I am tempted to drop Keir an email to see if I could help with the testing as it is something that I would like to experiment with and perhaps see incorporated into future wordpress installs.