In this video I take a look at the new Onboarding Wizard from the Ollie WordPress Block Theme.
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This is awesome and so helpful. Thank you Jamie 💫
really good content!
Looks like a really helpful tool Ollie has produced and would cutdown on some of the confusion from users especially beginners. Shame WP are being shortsighted by not allowing it in the repository. They need to change their tune.
The Blog Home description reminds me of instructions found on income tax forms.
Why is onboarding not allowed in official WP themes? That's crazy. New users don't care about 'separating design from functionality' as stated below – that line is REALLY blurry anyway, so many themes need plugins or extras to work, content pages in the template menus etc. It's a nice ideal, but that doesn't work currently, templates have content in them and functionality across both.
As much I want to embrace WordPress block editor and FSE, I find it has very limited options.
However, I like what Ollie has done and I’m sure they’ll try to make it even better. This theme belongs in the WP theme directory in its current form.
WordPress should find a way to address the growing discontent among its core users unless they’re on a self-destruct mode.
How was this compare to the styling of elements, padding, margins, features and "stylability" to GeneratePress.Blocks Pro? It's a hard theme to beat.
Very cool video, interesting.
Why does WordPress not like for there to be an onboarding process?
If they made the learning curve easier, it wouldnt be necessary. Someone fixes that, and thats not okay?
So basically, it's a theme customizer for full site edititing 😉
I tried Ollie before this wizard and I think the wizard is a great tool, having it as a recommended plug-in would be the logical choice, just like Spectra One does. In the end for now I have gone back to a stripped back Divi because I wanted to use PostX and they don’t yet support FSE themes. I was actually surprised to get an A on GTMetrix with Divi. I will no doubt keep playing with FSE themes in staging though.
Great video as usual thanks. And Ollie's wizard is a great means to overcome WP's shortcomings. But I'm not convinced Mike has got it quite right trying to include it. To my mind WP is right to separate design theme (theme) from functionality (Plugin) for block themes. That allows us to pick the best design for our needs without being tied to it, as we were with Classic Themes. As you often demonstrate you can do anything with the basic TwentyTwentyThree theme and the right plugin. Ollie and other block themes just provide an easy way to get a consistent, attractive design that works well with any plugin. Classic themes locked you into a vendor and changing your site to another required a complete re-work. I'm all for providing flexibility so if you want to change look and feel later you can do so easily.
I just went through this nightmare of a process you described with the Spectra One block theme, figuring out what was the home page, how to set it, and how to edit it. Perhaps Spectra will add onboarding and we won't need theme directory, as one block theme will be enough. In the meantime, perhaps a video comparison.
Thank you for pointing out the Home page issue. That confuses me, I can't imagine a beginner doesn't run to Squarespace over that mess. This is a great solution. And thanks for the instant setup – what fun!
It’s funny, when you demonstrate all the steps one has to go through to get the basic site structure right in terms of pages, it does look daft. The WordPress core fan base seem to have this obsession with the whole blogging aspect of WordPress when the vast majority of users have moved onto a lot of other use cases, some of which are fairly sophisticated.
And what is it with FSE and templating the home page and other individual pages. It should be a free form experience in terms of layout; perhaps for header, footer, and outer page structure. When I’m on the home page as an individual entity I want to edit it directly.
As you say, the makers of Ollie have brought something useful to the table only to be turned away by the inn keeper.
Hi Jamie, do you know how to change breakpoints for tablet and mobile on classic WordPress (my theme does not change them)?
I’ve searched through the whole internet and cannot find answer to that.
Awesome. thx for sharing. 💥🚀⭐😎👍
This is fantastic. The way that the block editor gets really confusing really quickly and it definitely is a steep learning curve. Thanks for showing this to us, it's awesome.
I am creating a site with Kadence. But i am encountring a strante thing. The Post Content Block is not there. I needed that for post template.
And one block theme question, I don't understand how will you create sidebar with block themes.
Thank you for all your videos with tips. I love the new full site editing with the ollie theme, but what about hover color for buttons. I miss it so.
After watching your videos on block themes and the warm recommendation of Spectra One theme and blocks I finally tried it out last week and even though I use WP since 2006 (and have a love/hate relationship with it) I was taken aback at how complicated some parts like global colors & fonts still were. Then I found the AI WP site creator that you recommended but as it currently only creates traditional themes I’m waiting for the Block themes AI creator …and now this! This is the next thing I’ll try. Your YouTube channel is literally the only hope I have to find info about WP that makes me want to not ditch WP altogether.
Great demo Jamie… The Ollie Theme certainly seems to be making great progress with taking the friction out of setting up a WordPress website. It's a shame (actually it's F**** stupid) that the overlords are not allowing it to be added to the WordPress depository because of the Wizard. They should be embracing this kind of evolution.
Yes this is so much easier – WordPress needs to change their tune and adopt Ollie's superior setup.
I think Mike is doing a fantastic job at making a slick theme and supporting it on his youtube channel <— Which is huge! Huge props. I'm just waiting until it gets into the repository so I don't have to download it separately and most importantly I get notified within WordPress when updates are available. Wait, what? There's an issue with the repository? That's a confusing big deal. I still don't understand why. Can someone please explain why this theme has trouble getting into the repository??
I finally decided to give up on Full Site Editing. The menu block is annoyingly featureless and there are no 3rd party alternatives. It looks ugly on mobile devices, no matter what you do. In FSE, you can't edit Header, Content and Footer on same page (why even call it FSE). FSE is buggy if you try to make a serious website instead of just playing with it.
Out of all the FSE themes, Spectra One is the best (most features). Ollie is second best (useful presets). 3rd is Neve FSE.
Blocksy or Kadence theme with gutenberg blocks is my preferred free choice.
The Ollie theme is good but the main "Plus Factor" is the video tutorials Mike makes, it is surprising how little effort is being put in by others to do the same with Block Themes.
Way to go !
Hi Jamie, could you please create a video of Spectra One vs Ollie WP??
This is a brilliant approach!
Why is this method not the default way of starting a new WordPress site in 2023? It’s so simple!
Great – looks to solve a lot of the most counter intuitive snafus that my students have with wordpress
That might just be enough for me to get off the sidelines and throw my efforts into starting properly with WordPress. As you say, it's a pity this cannot be incorporated into themes as standard.
Thanks Jamie, I think the Ollie block theme is setting up some great benchmarks here. Love how lightweight and neat this theme is! It's a pixel perfect block theme out of the box.
I’m definitely not going back to classic themes again.