WordPress introduces a new plugin, Create Block Theme

The WordPress Themes team announced the general availability of a new plugin, Create Block Theme. With the new plugin, users will be able to create standalone block themes and child themes inside the WordPress admin. It also allows users to design their own themes and then export the finished product as a theme to be able to install it on another WordPress site.

Block themes and child themes

This plugin is designed for designers and developers. It aims to complement the existing tools in the Site Editor. After building the theme with Site Editor, the plugin allows users to save the changes in the way that is most convenient for their use case. There are five different ways of using it:

1. Export: The current theme gets exported as a zip file, along with the user’s changes. This is essentially the same as the export option in the Site Editor
2. Create a child theme: Creates a new child theme with the currently activated theme as a parent.
3. Clone the current theme: Creates a new theme by cloning the activated theme. The resulting theme will have all of the assets of the activated theme combined with the user’s changes.
4. Overwrite theme files: Saves user’s changes to the theme files and deletes the user’s changes.
5. Create blank theme: Generates an “empty” theme inside of this site’s themes directory.

The Theme team also stated that plugin’s some features have made their way from this plugin into Gutenberg. Create Block Theme is designed for more advanced theme builders, thus can be confusing for average users. Putting these tools in a separate plugin, which will also be easy to install, would be a better way to make the solution available for everyone. Currently, the UI of the plugin is completely separate from Gutenberg but the team expects more integration with the Site Editor UI, to make it easier to access these features.