Mike McAlister

olliewp.comAnother year of Ollie — and the foundation for what’s nextEverything we added to Ollie this year, from Pro Extensions to WooCommerce to AI in the editor — and where we're going next.

7 July

Another year of Ollie and another truck load of innovation delivered. We shipped like crazy, pushed the envelope in WordPress core, and now we're blazing a new path for the future. I can't wait to show you what's coming next... stay tuned! olliewp.com/another-yea...

14 May

Predictably, we're getting a lot of questions from @KadenceWP users curious about transitioning to Ollie. I'm happy to answer any questions here or even do a livestream if helpful. 👨🏻‍💻 What are the killer Kadence features that keep you in that ecosystem? Let me know!

14 May

Ollie and Kadence are similar in that they both help you get a website up and running quickly. But the approach (and now the future state) are quite different. We've got a new page that helps you compare the two: olliewp.com/ollie-vs-ka...

6 May

We just relaunched the Ollie video library! olliewp.com/video-library Now it's fully automated and pulls in videos automatically from our main YouTube feed and playlists. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Then simplify some more.

31 Mar

Coming this week to Ollie. 🧨

26 Mar

We just relaunched olliewp.com with a small brand refresh and a refocus on where we're going. 🎨 Ollie has been in constant evolution since its inception, and now we're boldly moving into the next era and bringing everyone with us.

26 Mar

Oh yeah, and Ollie AI is imminent. Your agent is going to love working with Ollie. Built on WordPress’s emerging AI infrastructure so it works natively with the platform and grows more powerful with every WordPress release.

youtube.comOllie Extensions — Text WrapSay goodbye to awkward line breaks and orphaned words. The Text Wrap extension in Ollie Pro adds a handy toolbar icon to your paragraph, heading, post title,...

23 Mar

Hey! We're cooking up all kinds of BIG things at Ollie, but we're also releasing lots of little improvements along the way. Alongside our WooCommerce release, we also released two new extensions: Video Modal and Text Wrap styles. Check out the thread to see them in action. 👇

Good typography is all about the details. The new Text Wrap extension gives you a few new options to balance your typography so it displays beautifully on your pages. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AM...

olliewp.comOllie Pro: Premium WordPress Block Theme & Pattern LibraryDesign better, build faster, publish sooner with a growing library of expertly-crafted WordPress patterns and styles. Start creating stunning, responsive websites with Ollie and Ollie Pro today.

23 Mar

These are just two of the many extensions we've packed into Ollie Pro — all designed to make the block editor work the way you actually want it to. Less friction, faster builds, better results. Head to olliewp.com/pro to get started.

Turn any Cover block or Button into a click-to-play video overlay. Add videos from YouTube or your video library and dial them in with settings for autoplay, timestamps, and more. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTf...

youtube.comOllie Extensions — Video ModalTurn any cover block or button into a video trigger with Ollie Pro's Video Modal extension. When visitors click, the video opens in a clean overlay — keeping...

🚨 Huge day for Ollie — we just released an eCommerce pattern collection and a whole suite of designs, blocks, and templates for WooCommerce. Beautiful eCommerce made simple. Check it out here and watch the video in the thread below: 🛍️ olliewp.com/ollie-for-w...

Ollie Pro extensions make store building even more powerful. Animation Designer, Class Manager, Advanced Grid Controls — each one supercharges your existing blocks without replacing your workflow. They're that good.

This is just the beginning of what's possible with WordPress + WooCommerce + Ollie. Check out the following links to learn more and to see it all in action 👇 Landing page: olliewp.com/ollie-for-w... Announcement: olliewp.com/design-fast... Demo: patterns.olliewp.com/ecommerce/

The Product Collection block handles everything from your main shop grid to featured products and carousels. Choose your card design, add hover effects, and drop it anywhere on your site.

We also added a dedicated pattern collection for WooCommerce in Ollie Pro — featured product blocks, promo banners, video cards with overlay support, and more. Drop in, customize, ship.

The Setup Wizard walks you through plugins, pages, branding, and colors in minutes. Starter Sites take it even further — one click and your entire store is set up automatically. Zero to full site, fast.

youtube.comDesign faster and sell more with Ollie + WooCommerceOllie now fully supports WooCommerce — and we've built a whole suite of designs, templates, and tools to go with it. In this video, we'll take you from a bla...

WooCommerce templates in Ollie are built entirely with blocks, so you have full design control right inside the editor. Swap patterns, resize elements, change layouts — no code, no page builder.

We didn't just slap some styles on this thing, we created a whole experience to make this the best solution for using WooCommerce in the WordPress site editor. Check out the highlights in our latest YouTube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGL...

16 Feb

New Ollie extension just dropped – Smart Sync ⚡ Sync your style changes across grids, columns, and groups. Style dozens of items in just a few seconds. Start building smarter and faster today with Smart Sync in Ollie Pro. olliewp.com/pro

youtube.comDesign at light-speed with Ollie Pro's Smart Sync extension!Introducing Smart Sync – a new Ollie Pro extension (https://olliewp.com/pro) that lets you style repetitive layouts in one click instead of editing each bloc...

16 Feb

Smart Sync analyzes your layout and detects repetitive design patterns that can be synced together. Once synced, you can instantly apply styles to dozens of blocks in real time. Check out the full video tutorial on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OH...

16 Feb

Smart Sync is one of those features where once you start using it, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. We're democratizing super powers. This represents where Ollie is heading in 2026 — smarter, faster, lighter. Combined with Ollie AI, you will be unstoppable.

4 Dec 2025

I am having a moment with Geist right now. 👌 I've tried to use this font on a few projects before but it never quite clicked. Last night, I tried it on this this eCommerce design collection I'm working on and it finally clicked perfectly. vercel.com/font

26 Nov 2025

Hey look at that, we just crossed 5,000 @BuildWithOllie users. We're not quite at the moon yet, but we're on our way. 🛹➡️🌝

17 Nov 2025

Good morning! ☀️ Today I'm hyped to share that Class Manager is live in Ollie Pro! Class Manager is a powerful and intuitive new way of working with CSS classes and styles in the WordPress editor. Super lightweight, native, and built for scale. Check out the video below!

youtube.comCSS Classes and Styles made simple with Class Manager in Ollie ProHey folks! Today I'm introducing Class Manager, a powerful new extension in Ollie Pro that brings professional CSS control right into the WordPress block edi...

17 Nov 2025

Class Manager is part of our growing suite of reimagined solutions for the block editor. A few highlights: ‣ Easy to use visual class editor ‣ Fullscreen and sidebar views ‣ Style with variables ‣ Create nested selectors ‣ Quick access shortcuts www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3f...

We just launched Ollie Pro Extensions – game-changing editor tools that supercharge your WordPress building experience. Animations, advanced grid + column controls, keyboard shortcuts, and more. All seamlessly integrated into the native editor. Let me show you what we built →

These extensions — combined with our recent release of the powerful Menu Designer plugin, Ollie Pro's intelligent design library, site setup wizard, and starter sites — makes the Ollie ecosystem the go-to solution for building blazing-fast, responsive websites with modern WP.

youtube.comIntroducing Ollie Pro Extensions - Supercharge Your WordPress Block EditorWe're excited to introduce Ollie Pro Extensions – game-changing tools that enhance your existing WordPress blocks and add powerful new capabilities to transf...

Head over to olliewp.com/pro to get started with Ollie Pro today and unlock these powerful extensions. This is just the beginning. More extensions coming soon 🚀

Advanced Group Controls: Turn any Group into a clickable link. "Stack on mobile" toggle for predictable responsive behavior. Hide-on-scroll for headers. Top offset, z-index control, and more. youtu.be/qq2DLc43pTk...

Plus: button icons, hover colors, advanced columns with mobile ordering, keyboard shortcuts, and more. All extensions blend seamlessly into the WordPress interface. They feel like they've always been there – not bolted on as an afterthought.

Animation Designer: Bring your blocks to life with smooth, professional animations. Fade-ins, slides, zooms, scale-on-hover. Preview right in the editor. Save presets. Create beautiful cascade effects. youtu.be/qq2DLc43pTk...

Advanced Grid Controls: Set custom responsive breakpoints at any screen size to get pixel-perfect control over your layouts across all devices – no code required. youtu.be/qq2DLc43pTk...

Check out the complete video walkthrough to learn about the Ollie Pro Extensions release and get a preview of all the new features. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq2...

29 Sept 2025

It's here! Menu Designer has landed at WP.org! Menu Designer is a powerful new way to build beautiful mobile menus and dropdown menus in the @WordPress block editor — no coding required. And now it's available right in your dashboard. wordpress.org/plugins/oll...

If you're using the free Ollie theme (and frankly, why wouldn't you be?), I've included a bunch of pre-designed menu patterns so you don't have to start from scratch. These are all ready to be dropped in, customized, and published.

29 Sept 2025

And finally, as I mentioned in the initial release, there is some indication that some of these features could make it to WordPress core, so your feedback is golden. The more we learn about how people use this, the better we can navigate how to improve core navigation.

The dropdown and mega menu building capabilities are pretty wild – you can add images, multiple columns, rich content, whatever blocks you want. Plus, smart edge detection so your menus never get cut off and hover intent to avoid finicky drop downs.

youtube.comTransform your WordPress navigation with Menu DesignerSay goodbye to boring, basic WordPress menus and hello to beautiful, content-rich navigation! In this video, I'm showing you Menu Designer – the game-changin...

29 Sept 2025

Mobile navigation has been completely unlocked. Instead of just plain text-based menus, you can now create rich mobile menus with your logo, CTAs, even video if you want. Your mobile menu can actually be part of your site's design now.

Check out the announcement video and full tutorial video below and there's more details about the plugin in the thread. 📢 Announcement: www.youtube.com/watch?v=w96... 📖 Tutorial: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXW...

therepository.emailOllie’s New Menu Designer Brings Intuitive Menu Creation to the Block EditorBuilt in just two weeks with the help of AI, the plugin introduces block-based mobile and dropdown menus, tackling a long-standing gap in WordPress site building.

19 Aug 2025

Chatted with @raemoreywrites yesterday about Menu Designer, a new take on WP core contributions, and what to expect from Ollie going forward. www.therepository.email/ollies-new-...

It's here! Introducing Menu Designer, a powerful new way to build beautiful mobile menus and dropdown menus in the @WordPress block editor — no coding required. 🔮 My prediction: this will become the way we build menus in WordPress. olliewp.com/menu-designer

We're also planning to submit this to the WordPress repo after gathering some feedback from early users. Would love to get this in front of more people before submitting. There is some hope and indication that these features could make it to WordPress core, so get testing!

Finally, shout out to @nickmdiego who created the initial prototype that inspired me to tackle this complex problem and build something intuitive for it. Nick is a legend.

Ready to give this thing a spin? There's a few ways to get started. Firstly, Menu Designer is already available for Ollie Pro subscribers. You'll find a link to download the plugin in your account area. Not an Ollie Pro member yet? Let's fix that: olliewp.com/pro

github.comGitHub - OllieWP/menu-designer: Create beautiful, content-rich mega menus in WordPress using the power of the block editor.Create beautiful, content-rich mega menus in WordPress using the power of the block editor. - OllieWP/menu-designer

Oh, and it's open source! So if you don't have Ollie Pro, you can can still browse the code and install it directly from GitHub. 🔗 github.com/olliewp/men... It works with all block themes but works best with Ollie and Ollie Pro. That's just the dang truth.

Check out the landing page and the thread below to learn more about Menu Designer. I've also created a full video tutorial showing you how to get started building beautiful menus. youtu.be/UXWOafpBn38