UW Theme Gutenberg update: May 2025

In May, we were able to take a deeper dive into WordPress patterns and completed some key updates to existing blocks to improve accessibility and align more closely with the campus brand.

Status Update

Here’s a few of the things we’ve completed recently:

  • Hero Carousel block
  • New secondary link styling for UW Link and Group of Links
    • There will now be two styles users can select from for different content needs.
  • External post link option to replace the existing External Link feature
  • Additional styles for the WordPress Table block
  • Patterns added:
    • Service Area full-page pattern with a 60/40 layout to help groups highlight and share key information about their services, along with primary call-to-actions.
    • Additional Alternating Content pattern with a smaller width similar to the classic UW Theme’s layout with light design update. 2 column Group of Links pattern with an image on the left and links on the right
    • 3 column Group of Links pattern for displaying a list of resource links for your users in an engaging layout.
    • Centered quote pattern with a circle image on top of the individual who provided the quote.
    • 3 column pattern with red background gradient to showcase statistics and points of pride about a program, department, research, or project.

The team also built a way to track which pages have been converted from the classic UW Theme over to the new Gutenberg/block editor theme. This adds a new “Migration Status” column to your page list to clearly denote items that are in progress vs migrated:

A WordPress page list with a new column titled "Migration Status." The status of each page is highlighted in green, denoting either "Completed" or "In Progress."

In June, we will be brainstorming what will be needed for launch. This includes a breakdown of what is needed for launch infrastructure, documentation/training, support, communications, etc. We’ll also continue building a few new patterns and continuing to build our migration tooling plugin.