There is a new post on +make.wordpress.org/design/ announcing the redesign of the home page and download page.
Development work is already underway on a block-based theme implementing that design. The work so far has been on the basic structure and tooling. Now that the designs are ready we can begin implementing the layout. A recent copy of the theme is running on a temporary staging site. You can see an early, obviously incomplete version of the front page there already.
Most of the code development will take place in the theme repo: https://github.com/WordPress/wporg-main-2022/
That repository contains the theme, some plugins, and a full local development environment. Using Docker and a few other prerequisites, it’s possible to run a local copy for development and testing. The setup scripts will even sync a current copy of the content from the staging site.
The plan for the new theme is that as much as possible of the content and page layout will be created and managed using the editor, as opposed to code in Subversion. Other than the header and footer, almost everything you see on the front page of the staging site is the contents of a page, edited with Gutenberg.
This means that, going forward, most changes to the newly redesigned pages on WordPress.org can be done directly by the folks who handle content, without requiring a code change.
Implementing the full design will require building some custom blocks and customizing existing core blocks. That work will take place in the GitHub repo.
The development plan is to roll out a MVP of this theme with the new front page and download page designs:
- Build the required blocks and other customizations needed for the designs.
- Rough out the designs in the editor on the staging site.
- Iterate on the fine details in the editor.
- Fix issues in code as needed.
- Involve the Design team in making refinements as needed.
- Test for a11y, SEO, and best practices.
- Deploy the theme live when it’s ready.
- Continue to iterate on the design and content in the editor after launch.
Given the complexity of making this work on Rosetta sites, we expect to initially roll out the MVP on the main WordPress.org page only, and roll out translated sites as a later iteration.
If you’d like to see how the new pages are being built using post content and a block theme, you can check out the theme repo and staging site here:
- Theme repo: https://github.com/WordPress/wporg-main-2022/
- Staging site: https://wordpress.org/main-test/