New WordPress Plugins in 2022

Two Problems I've Faced While Blogging Daily

If you've just discovered this blog via this post, you're coming in on a streak of 352 days of daily blogging. I started the last day of last year and have been writing and publishing every day this year. Using Gutenberg and loving it. But it has driven the desire on my part to create two new WordPress plugins that I wish I had when the year started.

I'm close but not fully ready to launch them, so look for them in 2022. But I couldn't hold back from telling you about them because it's all so exciting for me.

Gutenberg Page Layouts

When Gutenberg first was announced, I worried about all the different libraries that would have tons of blocks in them. How would I keep track of which one I had used.

I downloaded, in the first few months, 5-10 of these plugins and my fears were realized. There were 6 “testimonial” blocks that were now on my site and I would likely never remember which one I used each time I put something on a page.

That was a few years ago. Then a year later (or more) came groups of blocks, called Patterns. I worried again about the same dynamic. There was the issue of discovery. Then of consistency. And lastly, ease of use.

Then, of course, was the issue of all the cool layouts I had created and used when I was using a page builder. I knew this would be a challenge.

But all of that was theoretical.

Because it wasn't until this year that I was using Gutenberg daily. And what I wanted was a replacement of my old awesome page builder.

What I wanted was a library of full page layouts that I used for various situations.

So I worked on that problem.

I didn't make one or two. That wouldn't be plugin worthy. Plus, I didn't want every single product page to look the same.

So for each category of a Gutenberg layout, I wanted a couple of options.

115 layouts later, I'm getting ready to make this available. I've already used it several times when I'm helping someone else and trust me, I can build a landing page for a product (or product launch) in minutes.

It isn't a page builder. But it makes use of core blocks and the free GenerateBlocks, so that you can quickly create page layouts without stress.

Gutenberg Blog Prompts

By the way, these aren't the names of the plugins. They're just the description of the problems I wanted to solve.

If you've heard me talk about blogging and content creation, you know I'm a big fan of frames. The structure that I use to help me craft posts faster.

But those have been on slides and PDFs, not integrated into WordPress.

So what we mostly experience in Gutenberg is this:

But imagine if you could add a block that would give you what you needed for the type of post you were writing.

And once you picked the “New Paradigm Prompt” block, you would get a roadmap for your post – to speed things up.

Two New WordPress Plugins

So there you have it. My unofficial announcement of the two new WordPress plugins, Gutenberg-specific solutions, that I think you'll enjoy as much as I have and will.

They won't be free. But they won't be expensive either.