Tag Archives: Site Editor

Glow Blogs Update 27 Aug 2026⤴

from @ Glow Blog Help

There has been a new release on Glow Blogs, making some changes, dealing with some issues and updating themes and plugins.

Changes

Site Creation

This will have no effect on existing sites.

We have changed the default site created to use the block editor and the Twenty Twenty Five-Five theme, a block theme.

In the Blog creation form there are two choices: Classic or Blocks

  • Choosing Classic leads to the site being created with the Twenty Fourteen Theme and the Classic Editor being set.
  • Choosing Blocks leads to the site being created with the Twenty Twenty Five theme and the block editor being set.
Classic or blocks radio buttons

You can have the same choice as before but the default has changed.

You can choose Classic if you wish. You can also change Editors and theme at any time so you can use the block editor with a classic theme after the site is created.

Theme Switch

We have changed the default theme when you choose Blocks from Twenty Twenty Three to Twenty Twenty Five. The Twenty Twenty Five theme is a lot less opinionated than the Twenty Twenty Three theme. The Twenty Twenty Three theme came with a fair amount of ‘boilerplate’ that is not suitable and over complex for the bulk of the type of sites typically created in Glow Blogs. Until recently we have been ‘protected’ from this problem by a bug with templates that our developers have just fixed.

The Twenty Twenty Five theme is the fastest and most efficient on the front end, loading less style sheets and other dependencies.

You can of course switch to Twenty Twenty Three or any other theme at any time. We have more information on themes and switching on the Themes Glow Blog Help page.

Quick Start Videos

We have added two Quick Start Videos to the Site Editor page. These show how to get started quickly with the site editor. One for simple blog type sites that consist in a series of posts, the other a school site that will be made up mostly of pages and organised hierarchically.

Editors

You can also change editors whenever you wish. You can also allow the switching of editors so posts can be made with either editor on the same site.

The Block editor was introduced in 2018 and to Glow Blogs in 2021. We would advise activating the block editor. If you are very familiar with the classic editor it is quite different so it would be a good idea to try it out. More information.

We have quite a few resources to help with the block editor, including a screencast demonstrating how to quickly create a school website using the site editor. We will be expanding that help over the next few weeks.

Fixes

Slow Menus problem

The problem with sites with a very large (>50) menus items having a problem with the menu editor has been fixed.

Missing Shortcode block

The problem with the shortcode block not being available on sites with a classic theme and using the block editor has been fixed.

Pupils Display Name

The problem with pupils not being able to set their display name to anything other than their first name has been fixed.

We would recommend that staff advise pupils either to stay with that option or to set a nickname.

Updates

Plugins

The Following plugins have been updated, mostly small bug and security fixes.

  • Draw Attention
  • H5P
  • WP Accessibility
  • Post Ratings

Themes

The Make theme has been updated to support more recent versions of WordPress. We would still advise thinking carefully about using the Make theme. It uses its own editing system. content created may not convert if the theme is changed. Skills learnt in the Make editor are not transferable to the classic or block editors.

Glow Blogs – Site Editing Adventure⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

Recently I saw a post on Doug Belshaw’s Thought Shrapnel pointing to a nice 3 column layout for a blog.

Doug wondered :

If you’re reading this and know of a similar blog theme, on any platform, could you let me know?

I thought it would be possible to use the Site Editor on a WordPress block theme and left a comment.

I’ve been watching quite a few WordPress videos from Jamie WP. I especially like his Remaking Famous Websites playlist. So I thought it might be possible to make a WordPress site that looked a bit like garry.net.

Jamie does these in 30 minutes. This took me longer, but I’ve not a whole lot of experience with the site editor. I decided to use Glow Blogs. It is free and easy for me to set up a site there. I serve as part time product owner so this is good practise. The disadvantage is that I can’t install any extra plug-ins or add any custom css1. Glow Blogs also runs a version or so behind WordPress.org.

I only did enough to see where I could go easily. I didn’t attempt to match styles or other features.

I got as far as Three Columns, this is not finished or polised but I managed:

  1. 1. a home page with some static content and a left hand navigation.
  2. a posts page with the same left hand column. A second column listing the posts and loading the latest post in the third column.
  3. finally a single post page with the same first two columns. The post tapped or clicked in the second column showing in the third.

To do this I created three page templates2. All are inside columns. All have the same first column. So I made that one as a pattern3. The second column is used twice, so I made another pattern for that. This stopped me having to fix the same thing in different places. I think this is the right approach.

I’ve ignored mobile and other possible pages. I didn’t touch archive, views for categories and tags for example . My aim was to spend a couple of hours on this.

I had trouble with a few things.

  • I had edited the Front Page Template, which should be used for the posts page. This didn’t show up. When I edit the posts page and then edit the template I see my 3 column. Unfortunately the live page still uses the old template. So given my time limit I just made another page to act as the posts page and made an ‘All posts’ template for that. This has a query loop in the second column, acting as an index for the posts.
  • The second column on the Posts & single post page should ideally scroll all of the posts. Probably inside a fixed height block with lazy load.
  • I think I should have used Template parts when I used patterns. but the result seems the same.
  • I am not sure how to hilight the posts selected in the second column. garry.net does this nicely.
  • I enjoyed poking around in the site editor. I can see the potential for creating different types of site. I am not convinced that access to the Site Editor alone would make much differences to busy teachers with a lot on their plate. Most Glow Blogs stick with the default theme. I am beginning to see how patterns and templates could make things easier for folk.
  1. WordPress multi-sites do not automatically support custom css. The Jetpack plugin used to do this but not anymore. I hope it will be added back in. ↩︎
  2. Well I did that finally, I made lots of mistakes first. ↩︎
  3. Again I did that a more than a few times. I think this should have been a template part rather than a pattern. ↩︎