Watching this IRL has been one of my bucket lists. As of now, Youtube should suffice.
Kecak dance is telling a story of Ramayana ballad — a story about a prince (Lord Rama) with his wife, Sita (in Indonesia, we named her “Shinta”) and their battle against evil force: Ravana.
The story opens with kecak dancers singing and dancing when Sita and Rama entered. Soon, a golden deer entered (with jingling and twinkling sounds.) Unbeknownst to them, the golden deer is actually Ravana’s lackey, being sent to lure Rama and Lakshmana away from Sita so Ravana can kidnap Sita.
Lakshmana joined Rama and Sita, then both Rama and Lakshmana chased the golden deer — but before that, they created a holy circle to protect Sita so no harm can come upon her.
Enter Ravana (you can hear the gasp from the audience.) Ravana tried to pull Sita, but the circle protecting Sita (the kecak dancers wave their hands and standing up — symbolizing protection.) Ravana, defeated, decided to withdraw. Sita was safe, for a moment.
Enter a rekshi, an oldholy man, asking for Sita’s help. Sita, sweet soul she is, wanted to help the holy man so she opened up the circle, only to find out the rekshi actually Ravana in disguise.
Jatayu, a garuda (giant bird) swooped down, realizing Sita is in danger. Jatayu looked around and tried to attack Ravana to no avail. Jatayu got defeated.
Rama and Lakshmana enter the scene, clearly distraught with Sita gone missing. Then they received a help: Hanuman. The all-powerful white monkey.
Hanuman, dude, this guy is like the OG. The superhero. Iron Man who WE ARE TALKING ABOUT OUR BOI LORD HANUMAN HERE. You can hear the literal gasps from the audience when Hanuman enters the scene — twice. Hanuman tends to move freely too, even sitting with the audience and taking selfies.
Hanuman, hell-bent on rescuing Sita with Rama and Lakshmana, decided to take a drastic approach: He burns down Ravana’s kingdom (there is a special dance for this: Hanuman Obong. Obong means burned/burning/burns/lighted on fire.)
The mission went successfully. Rama, Lakshmana, and Hanuman managed to defeat Ravana and bring back Sita.
Ramayana story is a full Hindu epic from India — and thanks to the trading activities between Indonesia and India at the beginning of civilizations, Indonesia is really familiar with Hindu stories and epics 😄
Listening to podcast has been quite a bumpy ride for me. I can converse and understand English pretty well, yes, but I’m still not comfortable on listening podcast because it feels like it needs additional level of effort (listening and comprehension skills) and I always thought podcast is One Serious Business.
It took baby steps for me to learn how to listen to podcast (yes, I have to learn about it) — mostly on how to navigate and put my focus when listening. I found that the best way to listen to English-language/speaking podcast is by sitting comfortably and having warm beverages because I need to listen properly to get the gist of what the podcast is all about. When I listen to Indonesian-language/speaking podcast, then I can do other stuffs. It feels like listening to high school gossips (I used to do that. I’m that kid who usually draw or read comics at the back of the class, sitting quietly, and some classmates gossiping near me. I’m not sure why they did that, though. Maybe they didn’t see me as a threat?)
Just recently, I found Brené Brown’s podcasts and I’m so thrilled to see one of the podcast series is about leadership. Currently, I’m undergoing a role switch and I’m doing my onboarding/training since last week (hence the quietness) — and Brené Brown’s podcast on leadership is such a welcoming comfort.
These are the podcasts I currently subscribed to:
You might noticed the title on WP Briefing is “Episode 6…” while the episode “Who Is WordPress” is actually the first episode on the podcast. This is due to a hiccup on Spotify and the team is aware of this — and this shouldn’t make the awesomeness of the podcast any less 😄
Do you have podcasts that you love to listen? Feel free to share!
I know what I said on the last post, okay. Then I just realized that I haven’t touched anything about how to create a template and how to edit/manage the templates 🙃
So yeah! Bonus Level! 😂
Okay, how do we access the FSE?
I need to remind you all again that FSE is still on progress — there are moving parts and screenshots I shared on a post several weeks ago might look different with the one you see on your end. When in doubt, ask! I’m here.
First, we need to activate FSE. FSE will be available on all WordPress.com websites (and WordPress websites), including the Free plan websites, so you don’t have to worry about having to upgrade.
If you haven’t able to see FSE on your website, not too worry, it means that the website is not included on the testing/beta phase.
Update (February 8, 2022): Didn’t see any sign of FSE on your site’s Settings? Make sure your site has FSE-supported theme activated. You can use Blockbase, Quadrat, Zoologist, or Twenty Twenty Two. Still not seeing FSE even after having FSE-supported theme on the site? Ping us on help@wordpress.com or on live chat and your friendly Happiness Engineer can do a check on the site and activate FSE if needed.
First, ensure the FSE is active on the website. Go to Settings > Full Site Editing (beta) and make sure the checkbox “Enable Site Editor” is checked.
Once you done that, you should see “Editor (beta)” on “Appearance” section.
Then you should be all set. When the “Editor” is clicked, you should see the template editor.
Now, be really careful about editing templates. Please remember, the changes on template will affect all pages/posts using that template. When you edit the template single.php, it will affect, yep, ALL posts on the blog.
How do we differentiate between post/page editor and template editor?
This cog icon/Settings icon is your friend. If you don’t see the right sidebar, click the Settings icon.
Now, compare these three editor sidebars:
So now you know which one is which 😄
Also, template usually has the template name on the top. Remember this, as this will be important later on.
Gotcha. Now, how do we access a template/templates?
See the screenshot above? Notice the “Page without title” text and how it has dropdown arrow? Yeah, click it.
You should see a dropdown modal. Click “Browse all templates”.
You should now see this next.
Template name section is the name of the template. Remember, you can create your own template, so when you add a name on it, be as specific as possible. “Template 1,” “Template 2,” or “Template 1 lolz” definitely not super helpful. The “Added by” field is informing who (or what) created the template. You can see my username there (cilantroinpho — yes, that’s me) and Quadrat theme. It means the template “Create New Template” (my apologies for a possibly confusing title. I created that for a test) was created by me, and the other templates are default templates/created by the theme Quadrat.
Click on the template you wish to edit. If you want to delete a template, click three dots next to the template you want to edit — only possible on templates that you create. You won’t be able to delete default templates — then click “Delete template”.
Cool. Now, how do we create a template?
SO. ABOUT THAT.
Currently, there is a bug on switching and creating a new template from post/page editor. For posterity, I’m going to share it here. I will also share a temporary workaround you can try.
Again, please note, FSE is still in beta version and there is no such thing as a perfect software/app/feature/tool. Things evolve and potential bugs lurk everywhere. If you see anything behaving unexpectedly or maybe you noticed some errors, please inform Happiness Engineers immediately on email help@wordpress.com. We will be happy to assist you.
Create a new template from post/page editor
Yep, you read that right. You can create a template from a page/post. Hopefully, this will reduce the number of clicks folks have to do to access the editor.
Open a page/post, click the “Template” tab on the right sidebar, then click “New” link on the template dropdown.
Status: Currently, there is a mini bug popping on this flow. The team is aware of this and currently working on a fix. Again, I can’t provide you folks 100% exact time frame on when the issue will be resolved.
Create a new template from Templates section
On template editor, click “Browse all templates”, then click “Add New” button. However, currently the “Add New” button only provides “Front Page” option (and no option to create a completely customized template.)
You will notice, once you clicked ‘Front Page’ option, the “Add New” button will disappear.
Status: You can bet the team is aware about this too and currently the awesome developers are working on a fix. Again, I can’t provide you folks 100% exact time frame on when the issue will be resolved.
Templates section from WP Admin area
This is the workaround I’m using and currently works. The downside, you will need to memorize the link/bookmark the link.
You can access the WP Admin section of Templates area here:
Change the WEBSITEADDRESS with your website address.
For example, if your website address is myawesomewebsite.com, you can access the Templates on WP Admin section on https://myawesomewebsite.com/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=wp_template
You should see this on the screen.
Click “Add New” button and you should be all set. Please note: Use “Block Editor” to create the template. “Classic Editor” won’t work.
Status: This is the workaround I’m currently using and has been working ever since. Hopefully the two flows above will get improvement and we can create and manage templates easier than ever!
Okay! Things should be all set (I… think…) If I forgot anything (and I believe I am!) do let me know!
At this point, I feel you folks realized how hyped I am about FSE — and I really am! I really like FSE and I can’t wait to see the potentials and awesomeness you all going to create. I really hope you folks are enjoying FSE as much as I do.
Have an awesome and hopeful New Year, folks! Stay safe and stay healthy!
Hey! Welcome to another post about WordPress Full Site Editing! For this post, we are going to talk about two main points in FSE: Themes and Blocks.
Themes
Not all themes support FSE, and to see the magic of FSE, you will need to make sure you have the right theme for the job.
FSE supports Blockbase-based themes. Blockbase is a theme developed by Automattic theme developers with FSE as the focus. From Blockbase, the theme then derived into child themes — and you can find the themes on your Themes section here.
“Hey, Kap, I see several similar themes — Geologist – Yellow, Geologist – Slate, and so on. What’s that? Are those different?”
No. They are the same themes (Geologist) — and the color only indicates the color palette the theme is using. We just recently launched it to show how diverse our theme can be 😄
This blog is using theme Quadrat (because I really like the triangle-thingy on the top) and as you can see, I’m using the regular Quadrat theme with different color palette (white).
Blocks
Now! The Blocks! I’m so excited about this because as you explore more about blocks and templates, you will found out endless possibilities for you to build your templates and make your website awesome.
Most of the blocks will be visible on regular page/post editor, so some confusion bound to happen — and you might find the block is not working as you expect (or even crashed the editor) when being used on the regular post/page. When that happen, feel free to reach out to Happiness Engineer on help@wordpress.com for assistance.
The following screenshots will look different from this blog/website. It’s because I’m using my another site (a free WordPress.com website) as my sandbox/a place for me to explore and destroy stuffs.
Now! First, lets see the template editor. The editor looks exactly the same as page/post editor that we are all familiar with.
We have:
Top left access menu
Left sidebar (this sidebar will be visible when you click the “Add Block” button or “List View” button)
Content area on the middle — where the magic happens
Right sidebar. Usually, there are two tabs there: “Post/Page/Templates” tab (the name changed depending on the area you are working on), and “Blocks”
Okay, lets get to it! Click the “Add Block” button and see all the blocks on it’s glory!
And here they are, under the “Theme” section.
Site Title Block, Site Logo Block, and Site Tagline Block
These triumvirate is a must-have on website designs (okay, maybe just two of them) but these three are self-explanatory.
The information for these three blocks can be edited on Settings > General section on the dashboard.
On Block Editor, the texts (site title and the site tagline) are editable and you can adjust the site size.
For site logo, you can resize the site logo size. Make sure you are using high-resolution image to ensure the site logo stays sharp!
You can also use the slider on “Image width” section on the right sidebar to adjust the site logo’s size.
Now, it’s all neat and cute. But maybe you are wondering, “okay, how do I make it to be in one line? Is it possible?”
For that, my friend, we are using Row Block (I’m trying so hard not to sing “row row row your block” okay)
Most definitely, yes! You are in control of how you want the site looks like, and nothing stops you!
And once you are comfortable on playing with blocks, you can even create your own preferred look. Site logo and title on the left, and menu on the right? Yep. Layout Grid Block, a couple of Spacer Blocks, and ta-da!
“I’m scared. I’m really not comfortable on doing this, and this looks like taking a really long time to achieve. You are a Happiness Engineer, Kap, so of course you know your way around. How about me?”
I’m here. Facing that kind of uncertainty is definitely not fun and there are times you might feel silly as you are on the verge of crying — and trust me, nothing silly about it. Frustration is real. Dealing with new stuffs and getting confused in the process is definitely disheartening.
Now! About the header area — and this goes to other areas too — let me introduce you this:
Legit, this is one of my favorite features in WordPress.com, up there with theme Leven (gonebutnotforgotten) and Blog Posts Block.
To access Block Patterns, click the “Add Block” button on the top left corner, and click “Patterns”.
See the following GIF to see it in action.
A bit of difference; the header block pattern that I chose on the GIF above is using regular Image Block instead of Site Logo Block. You can always replace the block by removing it and added Site Logo Block.
Query Loop Block
If you are creating a page where the page is expected to show your blog posts, pages, or your portfolio projects, Query Loop Block is your friend. What this block does is to display your website contents (post, page, or project) on a page. Be really careful about this block as you can find this block on your post editor. I haven’t tried it (I’m too terrified, really,) but I really don’t want to put Query Loop Block on a post (I imagine it will create some kind of post-ception-thingy, I guess?)
When adding Query Loop Block, you will see some options of pre-designed display (regular look or grid look,) or if you are feeling adventurous, you can click “Start blank”.
Once you got the Query Loop Block, you might notice — on some templates/some designs — that it has Pagination Block. Please note, this block only appears inside the Query Loop Block.
Notice how the Pagination Block is under Query Loop Block there?
Now! There is this SUPER neat trick you can play with Query Loop Block. It’s possible to have multiple Query Loop Block in one template — “what’s for?” you might asked — and you can display your posts differently. For example this website’s homepage!
I’m using TWO Query Loop Blocks there — and it’s all thanks to this little awesome feature:
For the first Query Loop Block on the top — the one I want to display the latest published post — I set it to have only one (1) item per page with Offset set to 0.
For the second Query Loop Block, I set it to display six (6) items per page and Offset set to 1. What is Offset? I call it as a “jump”. It will “jump” over X number of latest post. So the second Query Loop Block will not display the last published post. If I set it the Offset to 2, it will not display the last TWO published posts.
Post Title, Post Content, Post Excerpt, Post Date, and contents-related Blocks
Now, you might noticed some blocks with “Post” on it. I must admit, it threw me off on the first time. I thought Post Content Block is specifically to display a blog post content — and I was wrong! It’s to display contents on the page/post with the template. Having Post Content Block on the template will make the template to display contents of whatever content it is on the page/post.
I honestly not super sure why the name is Post Content and with Post-related naming, but I really hope this explanation helps!
So! You might wondering, where should or how should we use Post Content Block.
Sometimes, you might want to have your website page to not have any title (“I have a contact page, but I don’t want the page title — CONTACT — to be visible on the page. How do I do that?”
Now, you can edit the page template, then remove the Post Title Block:
But keep the Post Content block! You have to keep it, because Post Content Block’s job is to display the contents of the page.
At this point, you might also realized, “oh, so Post Title Block is to display the page title?” Yes! Yes it is! The same goes with Post Date, and the others. Remember, this is template, so it will follow the contents that assigned to it.
“Okay, so that’s for page. How about post template?”
I once showed my single post template! You can check it out here:
Assign a template on a page/post
Switching a post/page’s template can be done from the post/page editor. Open the post/page you want to edit/switch the template, click the “Templates” tab on the right sidebar, and you can change the template:
A bit of note: Currently, there is an issue with changing template on a page/post to default template (templates generated by the theme.) The team is aware about it; but I can’t provide 100% exact timeframe on when the issue will be resolved. Rest assured, I will keep you folks updated.
Again, all of these things might look super intimidating and super complicated — and to be honest, yes, yes it is. It can feel really tricky and difficult as you learn more stuffs about Full Site Editing and its magical and weird wonders it brings. However, you don’t have to go embark the journey alone!
“It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.”
If you need someone to chat with about FSE, or maybe you need another set of eyes to check (“heyyyy, I found this– Weird thingy here. Not sure if this should act like this or not. I think it bites. Can you check here too and maybe bring some kind of poke stick just in case?”), feel free to check with me or with any Happiness Engineers on help@wordpress.com. Imma bring my torch, washi tape, and stapler.
And that would be a wrap! Thank you so much for tuning in with me on Full Site Editing!
This is a part of my blog post series covering Full Site Editing, coming to your WordPress websites in January 2022! Check out the very first post about FSE here: Full Site Editing: Templates!
We are back on our Full Site Editing (FSE) Series and we are back talking about templates again because I got confused with my own previous blog post 😂
Some of you might still not super clear on what template is all about, and why it matters on FSE. Now, we will touch a bit about WordPress FSE.
Note: it’s not formally launched yet to all folks on WordPress.com. If you have WordPress.com Free to WordPress.com Premium plan website on WordPress.com and you still don’t see the option “Site Editor”, it means your website is not enrolled on the testing phase — and that’s okay! You can expect to see Site Editor (FSE) on January 2022 with the launch of WordPress 5.9.
If you have WordPress.com Business plan or WordPress.com eCommerce plan on your website or you have self-host WordPress website and you don’t see Site Editor option, you can install the plugin WordPress.com Editing Toolkit (LINK) to activate Site Editor feature. If you prefer to wait for WordPress.com version, that’s okay too!
To activate Site Editor/FSE on WordPress.com, you can find the option on Settings section.
To access Site Editor/FSE on WordPress.com (make sure it’s activated first,) you can find the option on Appearance section.
Again, please note the beta information. If you find issues or bugs related with FSE, or maybe product improvement request!, feel free to let Happiness Engineers know about it on help@wordpress.com.
Template and FSE 101
What is template? I love analogies, so imagine this:
Think… An apartment unit, or a house. You might familiar with how folks show/display the apartment’s floor plan. There’s a living room, master bedroom, bathroom, and so on. That’s a template. You know each room’s function and you can customize how each room looks like. Just because your neighbor is using yellow sofa for their living room, does not mean you have to use a yellow sofa too. It’s your freedom to choose what goes into the template.
Lets see this single.php template. As a refresher: single.php template is for single blog post, so you can expect something like this:
single.php template
We are focusing on content area first (I promise we will discuss more about header and footer 😄). On the content area, you can see post title, post content, post date (the date where the post is published,) post category (the category of the post assigned to,) and post author.
This used to be static. I have my fair share of having folks coming to live chat and asked, “hey, can I hide the post author? I don’t want my name to appear on the blog post,” or, “hello! Is it possible for me to move the arrangement? I want to have the post date on the top of the post title. Is it possible?”
The answer for the first question is “yes. Using CSS code” — and not all folks are comfortable with CSS — and the answer for the second question is “no”. Well, if you are familiar with PHP and you have access to the PHP file (template file,) then yeaaaah, a bit, but in general, no. Trust me, I feel equally bad of saying it can’t be done/it’s really tricky to achieve that.
See how discouraging it is?
With FSE, you can move the elements. FSE takes the principal of Block Editor and make it possible for folks to move the elements around, just like building blocks, without having to be super well-versed in programming language (this is another reason why I’m so hyped about FSE. Hyped.)
I’m going to show you a sneak peek of my single.php template 😄
Tips: Curious how I got the left sidebar with the list of blocks on the editor? Click the three-lines icon on the top left (hamburger icon) and ta-da, List View!
And yes! You can move it!
HOW COOL IS THAT.
My face when I see the developers doing a showcase on FSE
Gone now the time where you are wondering how the hell we can move this post date so it will be under post content because now yes, you can! Oh, or perhaps you prefer NOT to have featured image visible on single blog post? REMOVE THE POST FEATURED IMAGE BLOCK, BABY! BOOM.
Template Parts
Next! Template parts! For this, I’m going to focus on the defaults: Header and Footer — mainly because these two are always visible/exists on every WordPress website. Rest assured, you can create more template parts. Template part is super nifty when you found you keep doing the same thing over and over again so instead of re-typing the code for the gazillionth time, you can enter the shortcut on the template you are working on.
For example, with header area of the website. It usually has, minimum, three elements: Site Title, Site Tagline, and Navigation/Menu. Add it as a template and name it header.php. Then, you can add the header.php on another template, for example, page.php (for single page. Confused between post and page? Not to worry, you can check this Support guide: Post v. Page)
Lets say you have… 15 templates on your website. All of them have footer area. Then, you realized that you have to change something on your footer area. Maybe the background color, from black to grey.
Instead of changing it on every template (FIFTEEN OF THEM!), you only need to change it once on footer.php and all templates with footer.php on it will be updated too.
You can use this principal for creating template parts: Footer, Header, Sidebar, and many more! Give it a try and explore!
Up next, we are going to dive into WordPress Full Site Editing, the supporting themes, and its blocks. Again, I can’t promise when exactly I will publish it, but I will do so before the New Year 😄
🪴 coriander in pho 