Flat Blocks WordPress Theme v1.6.3 Updates

We have updated the Flat Blocks WordPress theme to version 1.6.3 with even more features from WordPress version 6.6, including mixing and matching color palettes, font pairings, and drop-shadows.

Here is a summary of the most important updates to the Flat Blocks theme from version 1.6 to 1.63.

All of these are inherited by the Flat Blocks Class child theme as well.

• With WordPress v6.6, Global Theme Styles can now mix and match color palettes with different font pairings, upper case headings, and drop-shadow options. There are now well over 500 different theme style combinations!
• Added two new colors for Highlight and Highlight Alt which are used for button and link colors. This allows different theme styles to have different button and link colors from the primary color.
• Further Enhanced the Font and link color defaults on colored backgrounds.
• New Template Part for Page Title with Excerpt. This will display a subtitle below the page title that displays the page excerpt. By default the excerpt is the first 25 words from the page itself, but it is best to write a custom page excerpt. This was added from our Flat Blocks Classic theme to be used now by all.
• Added new Image Border style for the Image Gallery block. This makes it easy to add a border to all the individual images at once.
• For Image Gallery Pattern, add lightbox (click to expand) to each image. WordPress still requires this to be set on each image rather than the whole gallery itself, so this is a time-saver.
• Numerous additional bug fixes and enhancements to improve the look and usability of the theme.

Flat Blocks Classic Theme

You can download the Flat Blocks Classic child theme from WordPress.org.

Release Notes

Here is the full set of release notes for versions 1.6.1, 1.6.2 and 1.6.3:

= 1.6.3 =
August 16, 2024

Version Summary: This is a big update for WordPress v6.6, especially for Theme Styles. You can now mix and match various color schemes, font pairings (with and without uppercase headings), and drop-shadows on buttons and post featured images. There are 14 colors schemes, 14 typography options, and 3 different shadows totalling well over 500 possible combinations!

In addition, two new color names were added for “Highlight” and “Highlight Alt” which are now used to set the button background, link color, and link hover color. Various Template Parts and Block Patterns were updated to support all this.

Here are more details on the updates:

• Added Highlight Color (–wp–preset–color–highlight) and Highlight Alt (–wp–preset–color–highlight-alt) colors to the color palette to replace –wp–custom–link–color and –wp–custom–link–hover.
• Set the default button color to the highlight color to match the links.
• Added –wp–custom–color–field–background and –wp–custom–color–field–text to set form fields background and text color for dark theme styles. Renamed –wp–custom–outline–color to –wp–custom–color–field–outline.
• Removed inline CSS in the Dark Midnight Blue and Dark Very Dark Gray global theme styles that is no longer needed when using the new highlight colors. Note that Auto Dark Mode still needs inline CSS to change the colors depending on whether the user’s system is in light or dark mode.
• Updated Template Parts to no longer specify the text color so that the new default text colors will be used: Comments, Header Colored, Footer Default Light, Post Meta, Sidebar, Page Title with Excerpt.
• Updated Block Patterns to no longer specify the text color so that the new default text colors will be used: Title and Text, Pricing Table 3 Columns, Pricing Table 4 Columns, Cover Scroll Home Header, Cover Scroll Page Header.
• Changed the various Theme Styles that had yellow as the secondary or tertiary color to use orange instead as it is more readable with the default off-white text color. Note that existing Orange and Yellow theme styles can still be used for those that want those colors as a default.
• Increased the headings font sizes for the Style Script font.
• Fixed formatting issues in Templates: Page Site Map, Post Sidebar Left, and Post Sidebar Right.
• Bumped minimum WordPress version to 6.4, so that support goes back two major release levels.

= 1.6.2 =
August 7, 2024

• New Template Part for Page Title with Excerpt. This will display a subtitle below the page title that displays the page excerpt. By default the excerpt is the first 25 words from the page itself, but it is best to write a custom page excerpt. This was added from our Flat Blocks Classic theme to be used now by all.
• Added new Image Border style to the Image Gallery block. This makes it easy to add a border to all the individual images at once.
• For Image Gallery Pattern, add lightbox (click to expand) to each image. WordPress still requires this to be set on each image rather than the whole gallery itself, so this is a time-saver.
• Added Link Underline on Hover style to the Site Title.
• Fix Title and Subtitle Pattern which was displaying an issue in the block editor due to it using an H1 tag. Changed it to H2 since only the site title should be H1.
• Fix Default Auto-Dark Mode Global Theme Style since change to base and contrast colors in v1.6.
• Set headings top and bottom margin in theme.json to be the Block Gap (“spacing”) setting for the theme, which is by default 18px. This is done for consistency as core WordPress uses em values so much larger margins on larger fonts.
• Various CSS enhancements:
  • Enhanced CSS for images with borders and captions.
  • Tweaked the preset box shadows to make them a bit more prominent.
  • Simplify CSS for handling link underline, no underline, or underline on hover. These CSS classes can also now be added to 3rd-party blocks manually in the Advanced->Additional CSS Class(es) block setting in the Editor. Use is-style-link-no-underline, is-style-link-underline, or is-style-link-underline-hover.
  • Reduced line height on Latest Posts block article titles
  • Remove extra bottom margin on post excerpts with “no read more” style applied
  • Enhance native Dashicons CSS to preserve aspect ratio
• Moved Global Theme Styles to a new /styles/global directory now that the typography ones are moved into /styles/typography.

= 1.6.1 =
July 28, 2024

• Reverted back to defaulting link underlines, but then overriding it to no underlines on on navigation, captions, etc. This allows users to easily change the default in the Global Styles settings.
• Added custom CSS variables for link position, offset, and style to theme.json so that child themes can set these.
• Miscellaneous CSS enhancements, such as reducing specificity of CSS for default font colors on colored backgrounds, specifying some defaults for when custom variables might be missing, removed extra bottom margin on post author name in post meta, etc.