Ready to modernize your theme development workflow?
Build performant, beautiful, and easy-to-use themes using the WordPress Site Editor.
The Block Theme Academy is a comprehensive masterclass for building custom websites with blocks.
🚀 Community Update: This course is now 100% free
To support the WordPress developer community, we have removed the paywall. You can now access the full curriculum completely free on our partner platform.
Trusted by developers at leading WordPress companies
Theme development was a solved problem.
You have an efficient, reliable theme development process in place. And you had it for years.
Whether you use Advanced Custom Fields, a page builder, theme framework, or just plain WordPress theming–it all works.
Well worked.
Today, WordPress is very different from what it was five years ago. Or even one year ago.
The introduction of the block-based content editor, and later the Site Editor have changed theme development forever.
Many WordPress professionals struggle to adapt. They stumble along the way and are frustrated by their lack of progress. Trying to piece together a coherent approach from other people’s random blog posts and videos.
This creates a vicious cycle.
Without feeling confident building block themes, developers and designers continue to build classic themes. By avoiding new tools, they don’t familiarize themselves with them and don’t build this confidence.
And with each passing month, these freelancers and agencies fall further and further behind on modern WordPress.
There’s no single trusted source you can turn to for a step-by-step process to follow. One that’s rooted in real-world experience, and not just something a developer advocate thinks is a good idea.
Until now.
The Block Theme Academy contains proven methods and actionable strategies to go from building classic themes to block themes.
Included is all the training and resources you need to build client websites that do everything you want… and nothing you don’t.
What’s covered
Everything you need to go from building classic to block themes for your client projects
Understanding the Big Picture
We’ll start with the foundations. Why is WordPress changing? And what impact do these changes have on theme development?
Understanding the Site Editor
This is the tool that you’ll use the most when building themes. We’ll have a look at all the major features so that feel confident with using this editor.
Creating a Simple Block Theme
A crash course in how to build a block theme from scratch. Throughout 20 lessons, you’ll learn to use the most essential tools. Each lesson is paired with an exercise so that you can retrace the steps I show during the videos.
Understanding Settings
We’ll explore how settings allow you to adapt the customization options blocks offer. All just with a few lines added to the theme.json file.
We cover all of WordPress’s options, whether you’re adding color palettes, using web fonts, font sizes, or spacing presets. Maybe you want to remove settings? We’ll see how you can do this for all blocks, or specific block types.
Understanding Styles
Besides the block templates, styling using the theme.json file instead of CSS is the biggest change in block themes. Although this approach was quite controversial at first, I’ll explain why it’s a no-brainer. You can implement most styles visually without even needing to open theme.json.
Creating Layouts
What tools does WordPress offer to create layouts? And how do they work?
We’ll dive deep into controlling block widths, creating rows and columns, implementing global spacing, controlling positioning,…
Creating Block Patterns
Block patterns are crucial for modern themes, from offering users ready-made page layouts or modules to keeping pages in sync.
There’s a lot to be aware of, so this is a deep dive into all things patterns.
Creating Template Parts
Template parts present unique benefits in block themes. We’ll look at what these are, and how to make the most of template parts.
Creating Templates & Page Templates
The Site Editor has all the tools builtin to create templates without writing a single line of code. We’ll look at how these tools work and how to use them in the most efficient way.
Integrating post meta
WordPress 6.5 introduced the ability to output post meta using default blocks. We’ll see how this mechanism works, and how you can use the Block Theme Dev Tools plugin for a no-code solution.
Controlling WordPress: Remove Directories
By default, WordPress allows users to install block plugins or select from patterns and media hosted on WordPress.org.
This is not a good fit for custom sites, so we’ll see how we can remove these directories.
Controlling WordPress: Remove Unwanted Blocks
Not all default blocks make sense to be used in a project. And some blocks are only useful for specific post types.
We’ll see how we can adapt the available blocks for all editors, for specific editors, as well as for specific content types.
What do students say?
“Thank you so much for putting together one of the most cohesive, easy to follow courses that I have invested in. Although I have experience with development I believe a budding developer will find it such a pleasure and stepping stone to understanding what I refer to as development spaghetti.I am so very grateful to have stumbled upon this course.“
Alayna Wilson – ABConcepts
“THANK YOU for creating the Building Block-Based Themes course! I’m finding it incredibly helpful towards gaining a better understanding of the new WP theme development landscape. It is already proving to be just what I needed to help push me towards actually creating a new FSE theme. Thank you!”
Adam Mills – Bottomless Design
“The course is really interesting and easy to follow. I like that it’s about building a real theme and not teaching abstractly. It works how I like to work.”
Ben Gillbanks – Pro Theme Design
Working through your course makes a lot of stuff clear to me, and working through the steps makes me feel like I’ll be able to handle my future upgrades to block-based themes of my own proficiently! thanks again for a great course, something I’ve been trying to get the hang of a long time is getting clearer and clearer. I remember reading your articles on how you made Bosco on blocks, and I was like saying “wish I could see more of what that is like”, and now I can, so thanks!”
Victor Kane – AWebFactory
Who is behind this?
Hi, I’m Fränk Klein. I fast-track your path to advanced web and WordPress development.
In 2011, I made a calculated career pivot into software engineering. As a self-taught developer, I had to cut through a heap of fragmented information to build the skills necessary to get access to senior engineering roles.
My approach was and still is focussed on pragmatic, consistent execution. This allowed me to enter the web industry without the traditional computer science degree:
- Automattic: Designed and built themes for millions of users on WordPress.com.
- WordPress VIP: Provided code review and consulting for some of the largest, highest-traffic WordPress site on the internet.
- Principal Enterprise Engineer: Spent nearly a decade operating at the Principal level, leading complex technical strategies and shipping enterprise-grade code for global brands.
I’ve taken all the lessons I learned over this long career, and put them into this training.