Have you taken the WordPress 2021 Survey yet? WordPress.org Search WordPress.org for: Submit Showcase Learn Themes Plugins Mobile Support Documentation Get Involved Five for the Future About Blog Hosting Get WordPress WordPress Planet December 02, 2021 WPTavern: #10 – What’s in WordPress 5.9, and What Is Openverse? About this episode. On the podcast today we have something new. Until now I’ve interviewed one person at a time, but today there’s three people on the call, Birgit Pauli-Haack, Marcus Kazmierczak and Zack Krida. Birgit is a Developer Advocate for WordPress and is an ardent supporter of the Gutenberg project. She publishes the Gutenberg Times and co-hosts the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. Marcus is a team leader at Automattic. His team is involved in Gutenberg, and has been working on it from the start. Marcus is also the documentation lead for the 5.9 release of WordPress. Zack is the team lead of the Openverse project, which will be the focus of the later part of the podcast. So WordPress 5.9 is just around the corner. Initially scheduled for release in December 2021, it has now been pushed back until January 2022. It’s an important release for a multitude of reasons, but perhaps the headline item is Full Site Editing. Full Site Editing, or FSE, will change the way that WordPress websites are built. Areas which were once the domain of template files and of developers will now be editable from inside the Block Editor. The intention is to make everything much easier to work with, but it’s a big departure from how things have been done until now. We’re moving into an era of Block Themes, Template Parts, Theme.json files and much more. But what does all this mean? Well, Birgit and Marcus are here to explain what’s coming in WordPress 5.9, why the changes have been made, and how you can make use of them. Later in the podcast we pivot and have a discussion with Zack about Openverse. If you’ve not heard of Openverse, it is a search engine for openly-licensed media. It makes it possible to find media from a growing catalogue of freely contributed assets. The project has been going for a while (it was previously called CC Search), but was recently brought under the stewardship of the WordPress Project. We talk about how you can make use of Openverse and what kind of media is available there. We get into how media is licensed and why this project is a good fit for WordPress, and we round off with some thoughts on how it will integrate with the Block Editor in the future. Transcript Nathan Wrigley [00:00:00] Welcome to the 10th edition of the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, the events, the plugins, the themes, the blocks. And in this case, the next release of WordPress and the Openverse project. Each month, we bring you people from that community and discuss a topic of current interest. If you like the podcast, please share it with your friends, and you might also like to think about subscribing so that you can get all of the episodes in your podcast player Automattically, and you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to WP Tavern dot com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. You can also play the podcast episodes directly on the WP Tavern website, if you prefer that. If you have any thoughts about the podcast, perhaps a suggestion of a guest or an interesting subject, then head over to WP Tavern dot com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox and use the contact form there. And we would certainly welcome your input. Okay, so today on the podcast, we have something new until now I’ve interviewed one person at a time, but today there’s three of us on the call Birgit Pauli-Haack, Marcus Kazmierczak and Zack Krida. Birgit is a developer advocate for WordPress and is an ardent supporter of the Gutenberg project. She publishes the Gutenberg Times and cohosts the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. Marcus is a team leader at Automattic. His team is involved in Gutenberg and has been working on it from the start. Marcus is also the documentation lead for the 5.9 release of WordPress. Zack is the team lead of the Openverse project, which will be the focus of the latter part of the podcast. So WordPress 5.9 is just around the corner. Initially scheduled for release in December 2021, it has now been pushed back until January 2022. It’s an important release for a multitude of reasons, but perhaps the headline item is Full Site Editing. Full Site Editing or F S E will change the way that WordPress websites are built. Areas which will once the domain of template files and of developers will now be editable from inside the Block Editor. The intention is to make everything much easier to work with, but it’s a big departure from how things have been done until now. We’re moving into an era of block themes, template parts, theme dot json files, and much more. But what does this all mean? Well, Birgit and Marcus are here to explain what’s coming in WordPress 5.9, why the changes have been made and how you can make use of them. Later in the podcast, we pivot to have a discussion with Zack about Openverse. If you’ve not heard of Openverse, it’s a search engine for openly licensed media. It makes it possible to find media from a growing catalog of freely contributed assets. The project has been going for quite awhile. It was previously called CC Search, but it was recently brought under the stewardship of the WordPress project. We talk about how you can make use of Openverse and what kind of media is available there. We get into how media is licensed and why this project is a good fit for WordPress. And we round off with some thoughts on how it will integrate with the Block Editor in the future. It’s a deep and broad discussion. And if any of the points raised in this podcast, resonate with you, be sure to head over and find the posts that WP Tavern dot com forward slash podcast, and leave us a comment there. And so without further delay, I bring you Birgit Pauli-Haack, Marcus Kazmierczak and Zack Krida. I am joined on the podcast today by three guests. This is the first time we’ve had a panel discussion on the WP Tavern Jukebox podcast. So it should be something a little bit different. Firstly, I’m joined by Birgit Pauli-Haack. Hello Birgit. Birgit Pauli-Haack [00:05:02] Nathan, thanks for having us. Nathan Wrigley [00:05:04] You are very welcome and I am also joined by Marcus Kazmierczak. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:05:09] Hello. Glad to be here. Nathan Wrigley [00:05:10] Thank you also for joining us. And finally I am joined by Zack Krida. Zack Krida [00:05:15] Hey Nathan. Thanks for having me. Nathan Wrigley [00:05:16] You’re very welcome. Now, in order to give some context to this conversation it’s probably a good idea to go through the panelists. I’m going to ask because of time constraints that we just keep it fairly brief, but a little bit of a background as to what your position is at the moment regarding WordPress. I should also say that this podcast is going to be focusing on the upcoming release of WordPress 5.9. And that will probably represent roughly half of the content, maybe a little bit more than that, but we’re also going to stray into something totally different, which is called Openverse. So that being said, maybe if we go to Birgit first, could you just tell us what your position is in the WordPress community, your employed status, and so on? Birgit Pauli-Haack [00:06:00] Yes. So I’m a developer advocate sponsored for WordPress, sponsored by Automattic. And I publish the Gutenberg Times. Co-host the Gutenberg Changelog podcast and run a YouTube channel for the Gutenberg Times. Nathan Wrigley [00:06:14] Thank you very much, indeed. Okay. Moving right along to Marcus. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:06:18] Hello, I’m a team lead at Automattic. I’ve been at Automattic for nine years. I’ve been working on Gutenberg now for three or four years. My team has been there since the start we’ve been greatly involved and this is my first lead role on a release. I’m the documentation lead for WordPress 5.9. Nathan Wrigley [00:06:36] Thank you so much. And finally, Zack. Zack Krida [00:06:39] I am the team lead on the Openverse project. We’re a group of developers sponsored by Automattic to build Openverse. Which I’ll give you a lot more information on shortly. Nathan Wrigley [00:06:48] Yeah. Okay. It’s a really going to be a really fascinating project, an awful lot to go through. I wonder if we’ll pack in all of the things that we hope to pack in, but we’ll give it a go. So we were on the cusp of having 5.9, WordPress 5.9 in our hands. This was due to happen well, sooner than it’s in fact going to happen. I don’t know which of you want to field this question. Anybody following WordPress will know that there has been a delay in the advent of 5.9, as much as six weeks is what I’m hearing at the moment. And I’m wondering if it might be possible to explain why this has happened. People may be thinking well, if something’s clearly gone wrong. But there’s probably a logical explanation for it, I’m sure. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:07:32] Yes. I can start the answer and Birgit can add in any color if he likes the new schedule was just released yesterday. So if you look at Make Core site it has a full schedule. We’re looking at the beta was moved out two weeks and then the final then there’s going to be a set of beta releases and release candidates, with that final release scheduled for January 25th. The reason it was scheduled so far out because it beta was only delayed two weeks, but the overall release is probably what was it? Mid December previously. So now maybe six weeks out. And that’s mostly due to holidays, the Thanksgiving holiday in America this week. And then there’s the slew of December holidays and New Year’s. So each of those kind of ended up bumping it extra weeks. It’s not, we needed six more weeks of development. It was, we needed one or two more weeks to get things all straightened up and cleaned up, so we had an excellent experience. And we wanted to make sure that it was fine, but with the holidays, it ended up moving out further. The reasoning for the delays, more or less, it just wasn’t quite as ready. There’s a lot of late changes. The Full Site Editing, which we’ll get into is a huge set of features and a lot of them are interrelated and we really want it to be a great experience when we launch. And there’s a lot of late changes that just needed to be worked through a couple of times and get the flows really clean and nice. And we weren’t comfortable with that initial beta. So we wanted to move it back a couple of weeks and get all those others issues ironed out and straightened out. Nathan Wrigley [00:09:01] Birgit, anything to add to that? Birgit Pauli-Haack [00:09:03] Yeah, sometimes when you have something like that, most of the time WordPress actually decides to take out the features that are not finished and then released without the feature and kind of put the features in the next time. But it was so intertwined that it was jeopardizing a lot more than just that one particular feature or module. Because it would have affected the whole Full Site Editing experience. There were design refinements, there were workflow issues, browsing issues, or block theme considerations. If you move one of that thing, that module, then you wouldn’t have a, it would delay also the default theme. Everybody is waiting for a good, the community’s waiting for Full Site Editing that was promised for 5.9. And overall, I think it’s the best decision, that outcome from the release team to say, okay let’s just move the first beta two weeks. Even if it delays the whole release for five weeks instead of two weeks, but it’s a better experience that comes out of it and everything else falls into place. And it would have, if I’m, what I’m reading also was that it would have been a similar, hard to pull out the features then to fix them. Yeah. So I think there was also a consideration there. Nathan Wrigley [00:10:24] Now there are some big releases of WordPress. When we do point releases, there are some that are certainly bigger than others, and the anticipation builds up. New features, think back to 5.0, which was a fairly sizeable release and, it was widely anticipated, and so on. This one seems to be on that level. It’s bringing new features and new capabilities to WordPress, which really are going to dramatically change the scope of what’s possible. And whilst we haven’t got time to cover every single feature, I’m just wondering if it’s possible between the three of you, if we can hoover up and mention the things that well, it may be that the criteria there is that the things that you’re most excited about, or it may be that you’re not personally excited about it, but you realize that for the project as a whole, it’s going to be a great addition. So in no particular order, I wonder if you could mention some of the highlight items, the things that you believe are going to make 5.9 a released to remember. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:11:19] I can start. The 5.0 release introduced the block editor and introduced blocks, but it was maintained just around pages and posts. And what 5.9 is looking at doing is bringing all of that to the rest of WordPress. At least from a theming standpoint. So from the page layout to page designs. And so the block theme is probably what I’m most excited about, but it’s not just the theme, but it’s bringing all the capabilities of blocks and the concepts of blocks to the rest of WordPress. And it all stems from a single block to expand out, and then you get into patterns which are sets of blocks. You get into a block theme, which is truly just a collection of patterns to a certain degree. You have like template parts, which is a collection of blocks and you can end up building on all these resources and building richer and richer interfaces all based upon just a single block. And so it’s really exciting to see all of it somewhat coming together in 5.9. And the great thing about it is WordPress is still WordPress. You don’t have to use a block theme, you’ll still be able to use normal themes. There’s not going to be anything breaking in there. That’s going to be a big change. If you opt out of, if you use a existing theme or you’re not using a block theme, it will still be the great WordPress that you know. So again it’s a kind of an iterative approach of bringing it on, but once you start using block themes, it really does open up to a lot more use in a lot more capabilities, which is, I think it’s going to be really exciting. Nathan Wrigley [00:12:51] Great. So you covered a lot of ground there, Marcus. That’s fabulous. Thank you. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:12:55] I’ve got more to cover. Nathan Wrigley [00:12:56] I’ll tell you what let’s keep that in mind. We’ll circle back. Let’s go through everybody at least one pass and then perhaps a second pass as well. That sounds good. So maybe I could go to Zack next. Zack Krida [00:13:07] Sure and again, I feel like this is something that Marcus can always speak to an even greater detail than I can, but I’m really excited about improvements made to the navigation block and there’s been a really tremendous amount of work done there, just streamlining those flows for users. And I think it’s a pretty core part of five nine. Nathan Wrigley [00:13:27] Thank you very much and Birgit. Birgit Pauli-Haack [00:13:29] Yeah, I’m totally excited about it because as Marcus said, the block comes to every piece of WordPress now. So all the mysteries that user had to learn about like the shortcodes and the widgets and the menu items and the templates and theme, and then you switch a theme and your site is different and loses some content and all that. That is going away, if you let it. Just to reiterate, unless you use a block theme that’s specifically built for Full Site Editing, nothing’s going to change with 5.9 for you. So there is not a whole, with 5.0, we actually had that the Block Editor took over the editing screen. This is not happening in with Full Site Editing or block themes. But if you have it, once you get your feet wet, you like that you can change the header of your theme, that you can change how the post list, yeah, that’s on your front page or that’s on your news site, the information that’s there, everything that you can edit there, usually would require another plugin or another developer to go in there and help you to make that small change, like changing the format of the date or adding the avatar for the author or something like that. You can do this all through the interface. And then you have the whole set of design tools that come with what was labeled earlier, global styles, that is in the, in 5.8, WordPress introduced the theme json file, which is our centralized configuration and settlings file for theme editors or theme developers, and now you also, 5.9 brings the interface, so that any user can use and change those settings. Be it the background, be it how each block looks in typography, color and layout as well. So I’m really excited about that part, that there’s a lot of controls that come back to a user. And I know what designers are gonna say, oh I don’t want them to change things. Yeah, users normally don’t have a good feel for design, and that’s mostly true. But it also, there are now really good controls in there that a theme developer can apply to help a user with the choices of background colors, being a color palette, even switch out between color palettes. So that is certainly something that will come in 6.0, but we see the proof of concept already. Yeah, so that is really exciting to me and the, what comes with it or the pattern enhancements, the block patterns, which are sections, as Marcus said, a collection of blocks that are specifically designed for a purpose, be it a header pattern, be it a gallery pattern, or just a call to action, like a pricing column pattern. Those on now prominently displayed in a better browsing experience. So I really liked that. So the choices on pulling a page together you can now do in a few minutes instead of spending hours on it through template editing. Nathan Wrigley [00:16:50] Thank you. I’m going to swing around one more time, just in case Marcus or Zack or Birgit feels like missed anything or there’s something that we just left lying on the ground there. So we’ll take one more pass. Marcus, anything that you feel we didn’t mention so far? Marcus Kazmierczak [00:17:05] A couple of things, just a couple of clarifications for the navigation block. If you’re not familiar, that is the menus block. So it’s a little more than just a menu. We renamed it to navigation because it’s a little bit clearer for say restaurant sites where you might have a menu category and it gets very confusing. So navigation is a little bit clearer on the usage of navigation block is it’s. One of the really cool features for that is the ability to instantly create a responsive menus. So on mobile, you can have navigation automatically hide, and this just comes built into WordPress now in WordPress 5.9. So make it much, much easier. So like one of the biggest things talking about the theme developers, is navigation tends to be one of the biggest areas for development and like getting responsive writing, getting a lot of these features right, is difficult and time consuming and now becomes bundled in with 5.9. So there’s a greater ability to focus on actual design versus trying to get the CSS right for different break points and things like that. So that makes it much, much easier. Theme json’s so awesome. Like it’s going to be it’s really cool. I’m really looking forward. One of the designers Channing Ritter, had an example of switching out, testing out how switching out theme json’s will allow you to create multiple, like versions of a site very easily. And it’s almost the, I think I Justin, might’ve had a comment about, it’s almost like the CSS Zen Garden ability for WordPress. I think there was an article on the Tavern about that too. It’s really powerful. And having that ability to switch it out in different themes, it’s really going to be a game changer of sorts. So that’s another piece. Zack Krida [00:18:39] Yeah. That functionality in particular really reminds me of, much earlier days in my career where I was building WordPress themes for agencies and that ability to, as a theme developer, write one theme and then really make some dramatic changes just with configurating some color values or different styles is pretty cool. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:18:58] Yeah. I think that’s going to be for theme shops and things like that. I think that’ll be a powerful tool. And it might, a lot of this stuff too, we’ll take some time as it gets in the hands of people and we find it. It’s software, so it’s never quite complete. So there will probably will be things you want to do. Oh, I used to do this in a normal theme, and I can’t do it in a block theme. And those are opportunities to like, okay, file an issue in the Gutenberg, and we can, you can try and address it and try and get all those cases addressed. So we know it won’t be perfect, but it’s gonna be… cause it’s definitely changing the way themes and WordPress, the way you defined the theme is now going to be in HTML and blocks and not PHP. So you lose a little bit of power that you might have in writing PHP functions or conditionals and things like that. And so we’ll have to… what you gain in visual design, you might lose in other areas. So as we work and edit and refine it, it’ll get better and better. Nathan Wrigley [00:19:49] Okay. Thank you for that. Zack, you’ve obviously had a little bit of a go there, but I don’t know if you wanted to add something new or if not, I’ll move on to Birgit Zack Krida [00:19:56] We could move on. So go for it Birgit. Birgit Pauli-Haack [00:19:59] Yeah. So there was this time in WordPress where themes would do so much more than just theming or skinning a website and this brings, WordPress actually back to the beginning where. The theme would just the look and feel, and now you have some more control over it, but then the functionality that is added is now going back to the domain of a plugin. And when you switch themes, you are not losing that functionality that was built in into the theme before. So I think it’s Tammy Lister who was a, or is a core contributor and was the design lead for a while on Gutenberg. She really said it right with “let themes be themes again”. So I really liked that. I also wanted to mention that with the 5.9, all the features that came with the Gutenberg plugin, already released in the Gutenberg plugin between versions 10.8 and 11.9 will also come to the WordPress core. One of the features is the duotone feature, which was a little bit in 5.8, but now got a, quite a new iteration, and now you can do duotone on the backend or a background color on a background image on a foreground image. So you can do quite a few designs with that with a duotone as well as with gradients. So I’m a fan with gradients, but there are other features that I right now can’t name specifically, but it all comes together with that release. And the other release item is the new gallery block. And there has been quite a few changes there. The biggest change is that the gallery block is now comprised of a single image blocks. Which brings all the image features or the image editing features the style changes and to the gallery block as well. So if you know how to do an image block or how to configure an image block, you can also do this and a gallery block. And one feature, a lot of people had asked WordPress for many years, is that in a gallery block, you can add individual links to each different image has different links. So that is now possible. And if that’s only one thing that you take from 5.9, this is it. Nathan Wrigley [00:22:32] I was standing in a room the other day full of people who are not WordPressers. This room was filled with people who are very much into their own career. It has nothing to do with technology. And I stood in this room and I was confounded by the terminology that was floating about. And it just occurs to me that we’ve been throwing around a fair degree of technical jargon. And it may be one of the great things about WP Tavern’s audience is that there are some people who are just straying into WordPress for the first time. So although you guys really know what it is that you mean by all of these things, I wonder if we might be able to go back and have a quick take on what some of these things are and how they might be useful to you in the near future. So I’ve written down more or less everything that we were speaking about over the last 10 minutes and very quickly. What are global styles? What’s the purpose of that? Marcus Kazmierczak [00:23:21] So the global styles is for, I believe we’re just going to be calling it styles in 5.9. It is the overall, to a certain degree, just it’s the CSS. It’s a way of specifying the colors, typography, spacing, other items and properties that you would normally define in CSS and define it through the editor. And then there’s a, there’ll be a new sidebar on the right. I believe it’s like an, a, like a double a icon. When you click that, you’ll see the different settings that you can have there, and that will, it ends up generating the CSS for both the front end view of the site, but also for the editor view. And so it also gives a nice way to make sure that the two are consistent. So when you’re in the editor, it looks much more similar to the front end and it saves a ton of work for theme developers on creating you know, not having to duplicate a style sheet and a style editor sheet for the editor too. So it makes it much, much more consistent. Nathan Wrigley [00:24:24] And that ties in nicely with this theme dot json file, which is probably the most difficult one for people to parse, if they’ve no understanding of what that is, again, same question. What is it? What does it do? Marcus Kazmierczak [00:24:35] Yeah, json just, it’s a JavaScript format. So the theme json is defining the styles and settings in a file format. It’s a text file format is, I don’t know, like a bunch of curly braces and strings. And then it’s not a thing to describe. Birgit Pauli-Haack [00:24:53] It’s actually one of the more human readable code files in a theme and it has instant effect. If you want to change the color palette or two or three colors, just a tiny bit, you can do this in the theme json file, on that particular section. So it’s all kind of colors for backgrounds, colors, for texts, colors for them. If you want to change that one thing, you would get instant gratification because when you reload the page or the site it’s already changed. So it’s different from the other big elephant in the room, the build process on Gutenberg and block developing kind of things. So this goes more to the tinkerers amongst us who just want to change one little thing and they can do this in their theme json file without having to really know much about it. Nathan Wrigley [00:25:47] Theme dot json seems to be one of the things which just doesn’t seem to cause any controversy. I’ve yet to hear anybody thinking, no, this is not where we want to be. It just seems like such a sublimely good idea to be able to set something in that very simplistic, easy to read format, save it, and it’s just done, everywhere, once, and you can just take it and repeat it somewhere else, it’s brilliant. Okay. So anybody using WordPress up until now will have been very familiar with the appearance and then menu section. And now we’ve got the option to, as Zack was mentioning, the navigation block. We’ll all understand the purpose of that, but is there any, is there going to be any difference in how it looks compared to what we’ve been using so far, is the interface dramatically different? Do you think people are going to stumble as they see, oh, this is not familiar, this is not what I’m used to. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:26:34] There’s two pieces to it. There is a navigation editor in that feature, I think we, it will not be making it to 5.9. Nathan Wrigley [00:26:41] Okay. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:26:42] And that was replacing the familiar menu screen with a block-based menu. There’s a lot of complexities. So the navigation, so that’s one piece is the editor and that’s the familiar menu screen, which builds a list of links, basically. And then the navigation block, which you’ll use in the block themes. And you can place inside of say a header or footer or any place within your block theme is a dramatically different, it’s a visual tool to create menus. But it’s not just a list of links. You can also have search boxes or site icons or page lists. You get a lot more with navigation block, and that’s where the, it became very difficult to marry the old menus with the new navigation block, because the new block has so many richer set of features. It’s hard to figure out how to map the data and be able to switch. So as Birgit was saying, one of the great things about theming is you want to be able to switch themes and be able to keep as much as possible when you switch your theme. And so that’s become of the challenges around navigation is trying to get the… how the data’s stored in a portable manner that it can go from, oh, we’re going from a block theme now back to a classic theme. What do we do with these search boxes inside icons that were in the navigation block and things along those lines. And it just needed a little more testing, a little more refining to get that, those interactions. So that’s where the editor got removed, and now the interface will just be within the block theme itself. Did that does that answer? Yeah. Nathan Wrigley [00:28:18] Yeah, that was perfect. I want to come back to the patterns in a minute. That was one thing that got heavily mentioned. But before that, there may be some people who are wondering why there’s this new class of theme, we’ve been talking for the last 20 minutes or so about blocks and how blocks are the new paradigm for anything, possibly. But what is the difference at heart between a new block theme and the old traditional themes and Birgit was very careful at the beginning to point out that one is not being thrown out. The baby is not going with the bath water. If you’re happy with the current status, you can just carry on as normal and disregard block themes and all of this stuff that we’re talking about today, in fact, but what are the major benefits? How will you interact differently between a theme and a block theme? And how would you even know that you’ve got a block theme as opposed to a normal theme? Birgit Pauli-Haack [00:29:10] It’s a very good question. So all of a sudden with a two, with the additional features coming with the theme json, there’s also a way to have the benefits of the theme json file with controlling the block editor for post and pages, also can be used in a classic theme. That’s I think the wording that is now a classic theme versus a block theme, and then there are two variations in between to confuse the whole thing is, so the hybrid theme is using theme json, but everything else is done in the theme. So you won’t be able to change the templates through an interface like the site editor. You will still have the customizer where the theme developer provides you with specific ways to change some of the theme options, but you will not be able to override the theme developers choices through an interface and in your control. So that’s one big difference. Another difference is that you will see that the appearance menu will change when you have a block theme, because then the editor that allows you to edit templates and template parts actually becomes available to you. And then when you click on it, you see all the other good features that come with it. And there’s also a additional admin bar there that gives you access to the templates and template parts, which are stored also in the database. From the front end view, you probably won’t be able to tell, is that a block theme or is it not? Unless you go into code and look at the HTML that is on the server. Nathan Wrigley [00:30:52] Essentially, there’ll be a moment in time where additional functionality in the future will be available to you. If you go with the block theme and there’ll be certain ways that path will not be available to you if you stick with the traditional theme, it’s not to say that everything that you’ve grown to use will suddenly stop because it won’t. It’s just that some of these new, newer technologies and newer ideas will not be readily accessible. Maybe that’s my way of taking that. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:31:19] A great thing too is the, and I don’t think we mentioned it by name the 2022 default theme is going to be a block theme. So it will ship, 5.9 we’ll ship with a new default theme. That default theme will be a block theme, so everyone will have the opportunity if they want to try that theme out, it is beautiful and they can use the new tools and play with it and see what it’s like. The main difference is, visual editing. So editing the headers, the footers, the layouts within the site editor, which in the site editor looks very similar to the post editor, as in you’re just manipulating blocks. Whereas a classic theme required modifying and editing PHP files required knowing what functions to call and what variables to put in. And it works really well for people who understand PHP, but it’s not a, it requires someone to know that language and that knowledge versus the new tool, the new block themes allows anyone to modify a header and add pieces in and using the same tools you would for creating a post. Nathan Wrigley [00:32:21] Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that it was on my list, but probably wasn’t featuring the prominence that it has the new 2022 theme. It’s a beautiful piece of work. Isn’t it? I really liked the way it looks. If I’m allowed to chip into this conversation. I think my favorite bit is block patterns. I’m all about the page. That seems to be where I dwell. And I just love the ability to file away a design or a piece, a part of a page, a row, if you like that I’ve fiddled with, and I enjoy and I’ve created it. And the idea that I can then just bring that out at a moments notice with the click of a single button and, there it is on my page. And if I wish I can make it go higher or lower or change things at that point, and it brings to mind the features that you would have in proprietary page builders, the ability to have saved rows and so on. And that just speeds things up greatly for me, you settle on a design and a theme and a color palette, the things that you enjoy, save away, half a dozen things, which, you’re going to use all over the site and then you can just deploy them. You’re about to create a new page. And whereas before it would take a great deal of work now, available for all inside of the default vanilla version of WordPress, you’ve got the ability to just drag these things in and really massively reduce the amount of time it takes. So that’s my favorite bit. Birgit Pauli-Haack [00:33:37] And to drive it a little further. So theme developers now are more inclined to give you a design system. Rather than just a theme and then you have to get with other plugins to get additional features in there. So you would have variations of headers that are available through the theme. Most block themes that I’ve seen in the repository, and right now there are 28 in there and the time yeah, that’s end of November, and all of them have additional dozens of block patterns in there for multiple scenarios what you could use. You have a menu for a restaurant. There are three or four different variations in how it can be designed and can look on your page or a footer or a a call to action. Yeah. And before you, you would have maybe a plugin that would give you calls to action, which is a group block with background and then a headline, a text and a button, and you would still have to assemble that. But now the theme developer or yourself, you can create those patterns and then reuse it over and over again but have different variations of that available right now. Nathan Wrigley [00:34:51] Yeah. And we’ve seen a new marketplace open up for people developing these patterns. They’ve got expertise in this area, they can make things look significantly better than I can, and they can put together some templated things with holding images and so on. And I’ve seen two or three of these come onto the market. And by all accounts be very successful, a completely new ecosystem of selling patterns to the market, just to speed things up. It’s fabulous. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:35:19] Yeah. I think that’s a, it’s such a great addition and it allows like I’m a developer and my design sense may not be as great. And I can just grab patterns either from the pattern directory or one of these other marketplaces and be able to enter that into my page. And this is where also this ties together into the theme json and other pieces of the system, is, I want to use maybe your pattern in my site, but I want it to apply my style to it. And so that’s where a lot of these pieces are all interconnecting okay, there are just blocks and we are just applying these different styles in settings. So you do want this cohesive ability to tie these things together. And I think that’s like the future looks really bright on being able to switch things. I want to be able to like, grab these pieces from other spots and be able to build a site using all these tools. It’s just going to be, it’s going to be great. Nathan Wrigley [00:36:06] Okay. So the annoying, difficult question is going to be, is there anything about this release that you don’t like that could simply be a sort of feature that got left? That’s probably the, the answer that’s going to get you in the least amount of trouble, but it may be that you, there’s something that you just wish had been done in a slightly different way. I don’t wish anybody to put themselves into a situation where they don’t wish to comment, but if you don’t wish to comment, that’s totally fine. We’ll go to Marcus. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:36:34] Yeah, I don’t, it’s hard, it’s software, right? It’s the first version of Full Site Editing. Finally being released. Everyone is working really hard and trying to get it to a point that it’s going to be usable and functional. Is this something that if you’re running a huge site, you should immediately convert everything over? Probably not. There’s going to be issues. There’s going to be things I don’t have anything specific. Navigation editor was a big piece that we do want to get in. There’s others, there’s lots of small things and there’s going to be things that we don’t know that people want to do that we just don’t know, and it’s not going to be possible, but that’s, that’s part of the software. That’s probably been part of WordPress ever since, the very first release, you want to be able to do all these different things. And there’s a lot of people working hard to make it easy and quite usable. The nice thing is it’s still just HTML and CSS that you’re shoving out to sites and web browsers. So if there’s something you can do in a theme setting, you can still write a, some CSS in a style sheet and do it how you want. You can still modify things. So it’s not completely limiting, but the power that’s going to bring is going to make it a lot easier for non-developers. The patterns is a great example. You can be a designer, you can design, you might have really good color sense, or really good layout sense or whatever it might be. You can build these patterns inside the editor, inside WordPress editor and create a pattern without writing any code at all. You don’t have to know this secret code behind PHP and what functions to call and all that stuff. So to me, those benefits will outweigh the bumps as we go and grow. So I’m excited for it all. Nathan Wrigley [00:38:10] That’s interesting though, you’re exercising a note of caution. If there’s something terribly complicated and complex, maybe it’s a good idea to tread lightly around the first few weeks and see where everything lands. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:38:21] From what I’ve seen in using it for awhile now in the FSE, nothing is really broken. There’s not oh my God, this is just going to work one day and not work another day, or like it’s just unstable and broken. There’s going to be things like, oh, on this page. I want to do this type of thing, which I could do using PHP and pulling in whatever custom post type or something like there’s, people have built up a knowledge on how to do things in WordPress that may just have to get changed. Or maybe we haven’t built that part into FSE and it’ll need to be added. I don’t see it as being unstable or breakable, so it’s not like a, oh, we can’t use it this week and then, after the first point release, it’ll all be better. I think it will be, we can do a lot of stuff in 5.9 and we’ll be able to do even more stuff in six zero and even six one’s going to be amazing, it’s just going to be growing on itself. So it’s also like at what point can it do everything that you want? Does that make sense? Nathan Wrigley [00:39:13] Yeah, that’s great. Thank you, Birgit. I don’t know if you want to answer that question or no. Birgit Pauli-Haack [00:39:18] What I’m missing. There is feature plugin to add web fonts to WordPress core. And that was slated for 5.9 early, early on, but then it was decided it probably needs a little bit more refinement and usage in a Gutenberg block first or not Gutenberg block, but in the Gutenberg plugin exposed to a few more users to figure out before it goes into a WordPress core. And it was a little sad to see that is not going to come, but it will be in the future. And those of listeners who use the Gutenberg plugin will certainly see an earlier version of that, relatively soon I would think. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. And the navigation screen definitely would need some more thinking. There has been thinking for two years now, and it’s really hard because it’s such a prominent feature. Many plug-in and extenders and theme developers have added their own little PHP code to it, and it’s very hard to grab all those use cases now with a new thing, with the new screen, and then also the thinking, do we really want that? Or it that like something like technical debt that we are introducing. So that’s the thinking behind that and it’s not yet fully fleshed out. So yeah, that was the problem there. Nathan Wrigley [00:40:43] WordPress 5.9 coming about fairly soon to the internet near you. You’ll be able to download it and make use of it. And obviously the intention throughout the whole project is to make the whole thing as easy as possible to use. Is it perfect? Probably not. Is it the better than it was last time? Yes. And stay the course and have a play with it and report back to these guys about what you think about it and helping push the project forward and so no doubt at the end, we’ll manage to find some Twitter handles and email addresses and that kind of thing, but we’re going to change the direction of the podcast to something which I confess is really new to me. And this is Zack’s chance to shine. Sorry, Zack, it’s almost like you’ve been locked in a closet for the last 40 minutes or so, but the closet is now firmly open, and you’re onto your area of expertise. So Openverse, I am fairly certain that a large proportion of the listenership of this podcast will not even know what Openverse is. So perhaps that’s the best he likes to begin. Zack Krida [00:41:44] Oh I definitely think that’s the best place to start and that would agree. And yeah there’s a lot of history here, so I can try to step back without stepping too far back. So yeah, a good place to start is probably with our name change, the project was previously known as CC Search and was created by Creative Commons, which for anyone unfamiliar Creative Commons, you can find it Creative Commons.org. They create open content licenses which you may have seen if you’ve, for example, uploaded photos to Flickr. There used lots and lots of places, but these are essentially licenses where the users of these licenses are giving up some level of copyright of their work to make those works easy for folks to use, reuse, share, remix is a popular term we’ll use and love to see happen, not just with audio. But yeah very similar to open software licenses, which folks in the WordPress ecosystem might be familiar with. But yeah you know, roughly, gosh, five years ago now, Creative Commons sat down and wanted to create a search engine to find and identify all of the Creative Commons licensed works on the web. Which is currently estimated to be nearly 2 billion works and a massive portion of that is images, which is one of, if not, perhaps the most common use of the licenses, but yeah, in any case, they began undertaking this massive journey of identifying and consolidating all of the metadata of all of these different works on the internet and making that accessible through a single search engine. Fast forward to the end of last year, Creative Commons was having some issues as far as sustaining the project and started looking for a new home for the project. So I was part of those conversations and the, at the end of 2020, got to keep my timeline in order, but yeah for a number of reasons, we found WordPress and it was a very appropriate home, essentially the work of CC Search, and now Openverse is, to take a model, very similar to that of WordPress and apply it to, not just websites and publishing, but individual pieces of media, pieces of content. Just making it very easy for folks to make their works available to others. So yeah, in that light, we really have two major audiences. We have the creators of openly licensed works and then the folks who want to use and find those works and the project serves both of those audiences. Yeah, we had… I think it was in April of this year that Matt announced that CC Search was joining the WordPress project on his personal blog, with the goal of creating a service to compete with some of these more restrictive photo directories and things like Unsplash obviously come to mind as places where you can find some really beautiful, really high quality stock photography, but where many folks don’t find their custom license, which is the Unsplash license, they don’t find that to be compatible with the GPL, which is the source software license that the WordPress code base is licensed under. And therefore a lot of people are unwilling to use Unsplash images in their WordPress themes, patterns, blocks. Yeah, we’re, we’re really hoping that, one of the more common use cases of Openverse will be to provide creators of WordPress sites with these openly licensed photos. Nathan Wrigley [00:45:21] Yeah, we talk a lot about photos, but the project itself, it spans more than that doesn’t it? There’s obviously support for images of more or less every kind I would imagine. And also audio, video comes along as well. Is it just those three? They’re the ones which come into my mind, but there’s probably some quirky content that I can’t someone up at the moment. Zack Krida [00:45:42] Yeah, no, there’s there’s a lot of things we’re really excited about. So right now the only thing live wordpress dot org forward slash Openverse, is images, but team has been actively working on audio for the past several months. Essentially we’re bringing in multiple sources of really high quality, openly licensed audio files. And that includes everything from field recordings of someone might go out and do a field and record crickets that they hear at night, music, podcasts, samples and sound effects, which are really wonderful for anyone producing music. So that’s the first non image media source we will be adding. Yeah. And then beyond there, the possibilities are pretty endless. There’s a lot we’re excited about, but yeah, naturally that includes video 3d models are of increasing interest to us. We’re going to have some limited support for 3d models. They appear as images in the search results, but then when you arrive on an individual result, we show the 3d preview where you can actually click through and interact with the model. Most of those are hosted on Sketchfab, which is a really lovely source of 3d models. Yeah, there’s also just, several other media types that we’d ultimately like to include, which is, could be anything from fonts and educational materials, just things as simple as PDFs or text files. Yeah, really endless. And with that comes the possibility of exploring support for other licenses outside of the Creative Commons licenses, because there are a few domains where the Creative Commons licenses aren’t commonly used. Fonts, font faces, and typography comes to mind is as a good example, where there’s some custom licenses specific to fonts. Nathan Wrigley [00:47:29] You mentioned at the start that the Creative Commons Search wanted to be on a more stable footing. And presumably that’s where we now are. Could you explain if not the financial model that you’ve got at the moment, what is the bedrock upon which this is built? How is a service like this able to carry on without receiving payment for each image? Shall we say? Zack Krida [00:47:52] Yeah, that’s a really interesting question because there’s a couple angles to it. We have an interest in exploring ways of paying the creators of individual works in Openverse. That’s a ways away, but that’s something we’re really excited about. But yeah, as far as the actual funding and support of the project right now that falls under Automattic’s five for the future initiative, since Openverse is part of the WordPress open source project, the development, and, fundamentally the hosting of the search engine right now, falls under that. So it’s really, and you can almost consider it a gift or a sponsored piece of web infrastructure for the WordPress community to use and have access to all these images and other content. Nathan Wrigley [00:48:40] So a philanthropic idea, isn’t it? People take their photographs and decide that they would like that to be available to all people go to your website, and you mentioned that there’s the creators on the one side and what I’m going to call users. The people like me who may wish to put those images onto my website, the process of uploading, I guess is fairy obvious. Zack Krida [00:49:01] No, actually we currently don’t have a standalone upload mechanism to get works into Openverse. We’re collecting works from other platforms. Hypothetically, if you were to upload a photo to a Flickr in a matter of weeks, it would appear within Openverse. But yeah, we’re still a bit of a ways out from actually accepting our own content. That’s largely because there’s a whole host of issues with accepting user uploads around, obviously things like content moderation and verification of these works that they’re the actual creator. So yeah we’re a bit ways out from actually having our own upload mechanism. Nathan Wrigley [00:49:40] From my point of view though, I would be looking at these images. I’m wondering if we’ve talked about the different sort of licensing models and the fact that maybe this came about, because there was, suspicion is the wrong word, but there was something not quite right about the licensing that you might find elsewhere and something that you believe to be truly available for you may have been available to you at one point and then fast forward a few years, perhaps it’s no longer available to you. And how would you even know that it was no longer available to you? So, is the promise of this, that something that you find on Openverse, yours to do with, as you like with no constraints? In other words, if I wish to use that for the next a hundred years, that’s fine. If I wish to modify it, that’s fine. If I wish to take it and send it to my friends, that’s all fine. Are there any boundaries with the licensing that we need to be mindful of or is it literally free as in totally free? Zack Krida [00:50:36] Yeah, that’s a great question. And I think fundamentally with a platform like this, it needs to be clear to the users that there’s a level of trust. For example, things like relicensing are extremely rare and actually aren’t allowed with the Creative Commons licenses. Although there’ve been some historical cases where that has happened, that are a bit contentious and unresolved. Yeah. At the heart of something like this, we really believe that, users need to know how a piece of media or content can be used and know that is true forever. And to the point of possible restrictions of various pieces of media, we support every Creative Commons license. There’s several, and they vary in their constraints and restrictions on how they’re used CC0 is, it’s not actually a license. It’s a, what’s called designation. It expresses the intent of the creator of the work to make that work available to people with no restrictions and Openverse allows for . Very easy filtering of the images by any particular license. If someone was looking for a work that they can always use commercially, that they can always use, that they can modify, I would recommend using the CC0 license or the public domain mark, but something that we also make very easy in Openverse is actually, one click copy and pasting of image attributions. So that licenses like CC BY which is a very common license that lets you do absolutely anything with an image, but you need to credit the creator for their work. So we have a tool within Openverse to make it very easy to copy and paste that attribution for use directly in an image block on your WordPress site or elsewhere. Nathan Wrigley [00:52:22] This is where the two conversations coalesce beautifully in a way, isn’t it. The idea of the image block with the Openverse search, just bolted onto it. And you’ve got that desperate urge to put a cat on your website and previously you have to go elsewhere and search through a myriad assortment of cats. Whereas now, all of that cat-ness, for want of a better word is available inside the block editor. And the same obviously would be true for, in the future things like all the support for audio and the support for videos, maybe as a background to something, all of this will be rolled in and available inside the interface, instead of having to go somewhere, find it, download it, upload it to the media library, and then you’re off to the races. It’s going to be a much more seamless process. Zack Krida [00:53:11] Yeah. That is perhaps our primary goal for early next year is actually building out our core integration in whatever form it finally takes. But yeah your fundamental vision of the flow definitely aligns with mine. Just making it super easy to search for that media and attribute it as easily as possible. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:53:29] If I could chime in, I’m also pretty excited for two way layer. So you can imagine that you have you’re, maybe a photographer, you want to upload your photos to your WordPress site, but also when you upload it, you check a box and say, yes, make this available to to other users of WordPress. And you can contribute directly from WordPress to Openverse would be a pretty exciting, I know, years off, maybe not years, but a ways off. But that’d be a pretty cool feature to grow the overall collection of openly sourced media. That’d be, I’m excited for it all. Nathan Wrigley [00:54:01] Zack, is something like that on the roadmap, because yeah, Marcus, that’s a stroke of genius if it’s not. Zack Krida [00:54:06] Yeah, no, that’s perhaps what I’m where my personal interest lies the most and where I really think being part of the WordPress project enables so much potential. Yeah. Fundamentally that model of allowing users to share media in the backend of their WordPress site with Openverse, really at the heart of that is turning every WordPress user into a WordPress contributor. It might not be through code, which is the standard thought of how to contribute to WordPress. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention translation as well as a really powerful way to contribute if you’re not contributing translations yet, please do and now, you with other directories, like the pattern directory, there’s more ways than ever to contribute to WordPress, even if you’re not a particularly technical individual or don’t work with code directly. So yeah, it’s a very large technical undertaking and not without its challenges, but we are extremely excited by the idea of fundamentally making it easier for users to license their own works in their media libraries, give those the proper licensed attributions directly in WordPress. And then again, share those with the world through this directory. Nathan Wrigley [00:55:17] Absolutely fascinating. The idea of using this with patterns again, another master stroke, what a great idea. You can imagine just by ticking a box, the impediment to making things available. And I think that’s probably the problem, isn’t it? The impediment is that you’ve got to wrap it all up, parcel it up and then go and upload it to some sort of third party service. If that third party service, if you like Openverse, is already baked into the thing that you’re already using, and it’s the only impediment is the ticking of a box. And obviously reading through probably some terms and conditions and making sure that you understand them. That has the capacity to spread virally almost and make the project much more useful. But when you get into the, obviously images and video, that’s of great interest to a larger number of people. Where probably we’re all at, the WordPress side of things, the ability to upload block patterns and who knows, the theme json files that we were talking about a moment ago and your design assets and that lovely font that you created, that’s absolutely enormously powerful, and I confess I hadn’t twigged quite how powerful it was until just that moment. That’s really astonishing. Marcus Kazmierczak [00:56:30] Yeah. It’s amazing. How much of it all ties together? It’s a difficult challenge ahead of us too, because how do you get a font that’s openly sourced on Openverse to the theme json, right. There’s a lot of technical hurdles. So this isn’t, it’s not something that’s income in the next release or two releases or three, but it’s like something you can see, like looking out, you can see oh, I can see, like you have these open source fonts and you can apply it to your theme json directly. Or you can pull it into different patterns or create a set of patterns just around, say cats, but then go, I’m running a dog blog, and I want to see dogs and all these patterns, not cats, you switch, you can switch them out just with the switch of a search term or something like that. It’s really, it’s really powerful. It’s exciting to see you know. Nathan Wrigley [00:57:13] Amazing. Okay. A couple of thorny questions, which I probably should throw in. Let’s say for example, that I’ve taken a photograph and I got it somehow into Openverse. Have you spent any time thinking about the option to roll that back? And if that image turns out to be something that I decided, you know what I’d rather that was private once more. And I was the person who had custodianship of that. Is that going to be possible? Is there a way to flip the license at a moment or are you signing in effect something imperpetuity when you give it to Openverse? Zack Krida [00:57:47] Yeah. So what first comes to mind there is that by default, if you are the creator of a work and you don’t say assign a Creative Commons license to it, at least in the United States, you are already implicitly buying into the copyright system and that work already has these protections applied to it that you haven’t necessarily consented to. So interestingly, that’s fundamentally true of anytime you create anything, you’re joining this whole large world of copyright that you might not be interested in. Outside of actual creators who might want to, relicense a work, we have already multiple reporting mechanisms built in, for example, for images that might not actually be under a Creative Commons license, but have been improperly labeled and uploaded to one of our sources. Flickr would be the most likely place something like that could happen or Wikipedia Commons comes to mind. Those are our two largest sources that are really, almost social networks. There’s a user uploading component there. A lot of our other sources are what we collectively refer to as GLAM institutions, which is galleries, libraries, archives, and museums that have decided to take their entire collection, and, essentially open-source that collection and make photographs of all the works openly, licensed and available to folks. But yeah. If you went to Openverse and you saw a picture of your cat that you took, that you had never licensed under Creative Commons license, you just had it on your personal blog somewhere, and someone else had taken that and uploaded it. We have a very simple mechanism to report that. It’s immediately flagged in the system and taken down until it’s properly reviewed. Nathan Wrigley [00:59:27] My final question, I think is about the future, the longevity of the project. Obviously it ran into issues which as of now are being fixed by the purse strings, probably for want of a better word of Automattic. Are you confident? Do you have any guidance that this is something that the organization Automattic will be funding into the future? Have they made any commitments around there? Because obviously, as this project grows and becomes bigger and is harder to police, the amount of effort and time and boots on the ground is only going to increase as well. And wonder if there’s any talks been had about the longevity of it so that we can all be satisfied, that the things that we take out from Openverse, we can keep taking out into the future. Zack Krida [01:00:15] Yeah. I appreciate your frankness and asking that question. It’s a really important one to us. The folks on the team right now. There’s a few layers to that as well. One is that there’s a lot of redundancy already built into Openverse. We don’t actually host the works on Openverse. We only collect metadata about these works, so they all exist on other platforms that have their own mechanisms of backups and redundancy. So there’s no opportunity to hypothetically put a work in Openverse and then have us lose it. We simply can’t do that from a technological standpoint. But beyond that, the entire project is open source, much like WordPress itself. So in the event of any kind of problems or downtime or anything like that, it’s actually quite feasible for other folks to migrate and host the project themselves. A great example of this is that we did this upon joining the WordPress project was move it from one set of infrastructure to another, which, I’ll be the first admit was no easy feat, but is you know, something that we actively and consciously try to make easier over time for folks. Yeah and then beyond that, I just think Automattic has a really great track record of supporting and maintaining projects, obviously financially, but also just like maintaining the spirit of a project. We were very nervous leaving Creative Commons, which is a nonprofit and finding a new home for the projects that had more resources would be ideal. But again, also just the reach of WordPress as a piece of software was really exciting to us and some of the power and capabilities that, that unlocks Nathan Wrigley [01:01:50] Well, I’m more or less certain that many people listening to this will be really excited about something that’s just come across their doorstep for the first time, best place to probably search for that would be wordpress dot org forward slash Openverse. Did I get that right? Zack Krida [01:02:04] Yeah, that’s right. And then, anyone who is more development minded or looking to contribute, we are a community project. So we have our own make site on the make network of blogs. So you can go to make dot wordpress dot org forward slash Openverse and join up with our community of developers. And like I said, translation contributors, and a whole host of other folks designers. Yeah. One thing that we are really proud of is our volunteer community. We had a lot of folks over at Creative Commons working on CC Search and now Openverse. The project has really bridged those two communities and an interesting way. Yeah. We kind of straddle two worlds right now of WordPress and the massive world of copyright and licenses. Nathan Wrigley [01:02:51] I’m going to have to draw this to a close. I’ll just start with you Zack. If anybody was curious to get in touch with you individually, if there’s any place, contact form, Twitter handle, whatever that you’re happy to share now would be the time to do that. Zack Krida [01:03:06] Great. Yeah, I’d say the best place to find me would be in the making WordPress Slack actually, I’m not on any social media right now. So we have an Openverse channel there. You can also shoot an email to Openverse at wordpress dot org and myself or another member of the team will be happy to get in touch with you. Nathan Wrigley [01:03:23] Thank you. And the same questions go to Birgit first, if that’s all right. Birgit Pauli-Haack [01:03:29] I’m really fascinated by all the museums that have, if you click on the Openverse, WordPress dot org Openverse sources. Yeah, at this moment, the Smithsonian has all their pictures in there and as well as the Reich’s Museum in the Netherlands, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art program museum. It’s really fascinating what you can all find. The spirit of open web, but also have the creators be in charge of their own creations, but have this big search capabilities, is so early nineties, but it really keeps the web open. So that’s just a little comment on that. I’m so happy that it’s in there. If you want to get in contact with me also WordPress Slack definitely at BPH is my handle there. That’s also the handle on Twitter @ BPH and my direct messages are open if you don’t want to do it publicly. Yeah. You can always catch me on a private chat on the Slack or on Twitter, if that is easier for you. Nathan Wrigley [01:04:32] Thank you so much Birgit, and finally, Marcus. Marcus Kazmierczak [01:04:36] Yeah. You can find me at mkaz, M K A Z on make Slack also mkaz dot blog. I write a lot about WordPress and tips and tech things there. You can also find me on Twitter, I’m not that great on Twitter, so make Slack is probably the best if you want to reach out to me directly, feel free to ping me there. Nathan Wrigley [01:04:55] Thank you very much. What a broad ranging conversation that we’ve had today. Thank you very much for joining us Birgit, Marcus and Zack, really appreciate it. What an interesting episode this has been. by Nathan Wrigley at December 02, 2021 02:50 PM under podcast WordPress.org blog: The Month in WordPress – November 2021 Despite the holiday season being around the corner, the WordPress project didn’t slow down. In a recent episode of WP Briefing, Executive Director Josepha Haden shares the first thing she wants people to notice about WordPress, which is also the heart of this open source project: “Now, the first thing I want people to see on that site is that WordPress has not only 18 years of learned knowledge that every single new user benefits from, but that it also has thousands of really smart people making sure it works and gets better every day.” As always, contributors across various teams are working hard to ensure the upcoming release of WordPress 5.9 doesn’t disappoint. With State of the Word 2021 coming up soon, there are many exciting things in the works. Read the November 2021 edition of the Month in WordPress to learn more about what’s happening. WordPress 5.9: Expected to release on January 25, 2022 The Core Team announced the WordPress 5.9 Revised Release Schedule, and the release is now planned for January 25, 2022. WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 was recently released and is available for testing. This version of the WordPress software is under development. Check out the release post to learn more about what’s new in version 5.9 and how you can help testing. Check out “A Look at WordPress 5.9” for a first peek into the exciting features included in this major release. WordPress 5.8.2, a security and maintenance release, was out on November 10, 2021. This release includes two bug fixes and one security fix. Are you interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC. Gutenberg releases: 11.9 and 12.0 are out Two new Gutenberg versions have been released! Version 11.9.0 brings new Gutenberg blocks for working with post comments, a fullscreen pattern explorer modal, further iterations on the Navigation block, and many other improvements. Gutenberg 12.0.0, released on November 24, improves the Block Styles preview and includes featured image block visual enhancements, a site Editor welcome guide, official JSON schema updates, and much more. Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. Follow #gutenberg-new for details on the latest updates. State of the Word 2021: Join a watch party in your local community State of the Word 2021, the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, will be held on December 14, 2021 between 5 and 7 pm ET/10 pm – 12 am (December 15) UTC. The event will be livestreamed from New York City, and include a Question and Answer session. Host or join a State of the Word watch party to enjoy the event with your WordPress friends. Check Meetup to see if a watch party is scheduled to be held in your local community! Add the event to your calendar so you don’t miss State of the Word 2021! Want to ask Matt a question during State of the Word? Please send your questions ahead of time to ask-matt@wordcamp.org or ask them live during the event via YouTube chat. Team updates: Nominations for some team representatives are still underway Requests 2.0.0 has been released. This release is fully compatible with PHP 8.0 and 8.1, indicating that a legacy codebase can be modernized, made more stable and secure without breaking backward-compatibility. The Requests project is a dependency of WordPress core, which was adopted into the WordPress organization earlier this year. The 2020 WordPress Annual Survey results are available to be viewed. The Core Team added six new committers. Last month, the Marketing Team opened its call for team representatives, joining Core, Themes, Accessibility, Support, and Hosting from October 2021. The Core Team announced its new Team Rep for 2022 (and beyond). The Design Team and the Accessibility Team’s meetings will be held bi-weekly moving forward. The Marketing Team published the latest edition of People of WordPress, featuring Devin Maeztri from Indonesia. There’s an open call for suggestions for Global Community Team, Training Team, and Polyglots goals for 2022. Please drop your ideas by December 6, 2021. The Accessibility Team has opened 1-2 volunteer positions for the #diverse-speaker-support channel. The November 2021 edition of the Polyglots monthly newsletter is out. The Marketing Team welcomes any help to promote WordPress Meetups on a weekly basis and thus keep the community connected. We want to hear from you! Suggest your 2022 goals for the Global Community Team by December 6, 2021. Feedback/Testing requests: Test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1; Take the 2021 Annual WordPress Survey to share your experience WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 is now available for testing and we’d like to hear from you! Testing is vital to ensure the release is as good as it can be—it’s also a great way to contribute. Read the comprehensive guide, “Help test WordPress 5.9 Features,” to learn how to test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 and report any bugs. There’s an open call for testing for WordPress iOS 18.7 and Android 18.7. The 2021 WordPress Annual Survey is out! Please respond to the survey, so your WordPress experience is reflected in the results. Keep an eye out for WordCamp Taiwan and Sevilla, along with several WordPress workshops in December 2021 Several WordPress Social Learning Meetups were held in November by the Training Team, and there will be more in December 2021. Tuesday Training sessions are paused until 2022. WordCamp São Paulo was held online on November 27, 2021. Get excited for WordCamp Sevilla 2021, coming up on December 11-12! Sevilla is the first in-person WordCamp happening in over 18 months, since WordCamps moved online in March 2020 due to COVID-19. Don’t miss the following upcoming WordCamps: WordCamp Taiwan 2021, WordCamp Birmingham 2022, and WordCamp Europe 2022! Check out the latest episodes of WordPress Briefing with Josepha Haden on “All Things Block Themes!” “WordPress=Blogging+” “The People of WordPress” Give back to open source. Please donate to the WordPress Foundation’s mission this holiday season. Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out this form. The following folks contributed to October 2021’s Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan, @harishanker, @rmartinezduque, @callye, @jrf, @webcommsat, and @nalininonstopnewsuk by Anjana Vasan at December 02, 2021 11:30 AM under the month in wordpress Post Status: Post Status Comments (No. 3) — The State of the WordPress News WordPress news commentators on the nature of their work, their views on the community, and the future of the project. In this episode of Post Status Comments, David and Dan hosted a conversation with several members of what we'll call “the WordPress news” or “media” community: Matt Medeiros (Matt Report Media), Joe Howard (WPMRR), Birgit Pauli-Haack (Gutenberg Times), and Sarah Gooding (WP Tavern). Among the questions asked: What challenges exist for those of us who are following and reporting WordPress news? How can the WordPress project and and WordPress companies help improve communication? Where do we see WordPress heading — the software and it's community — in the short and long term? What are the biggest and most impactful stories of 2021, so far? What are the most significant but less noticed stories? This engaging conversation was almost 90 minutes long! So we split it up into two audio parts. Here's the first part: Here's the second part: Post Status Comments is a stage for WordPress professionals to exchange ideas and talk about recent topics and trends. Browse past episodes and subscribe to our podcasts on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or get them by RSS. Mentioned in the show: The WP Minute WP Tavern Gutenberg Times WPMRR Podcast ZipMessage – Submitted Questions Post Status (Twitter) Sponsor: WP Lookout WP LOOKOUT tracks the plugins and themes you depend on. Get timely info on new WordPress plugin and theme versions, security updates, author changes, mentions in the news and more. Set customizable notifications by email, Slack, webhook and RSS. Transcript (Part 1) David Bisset: [00:00:00] So I want to set some ground rules, uh, before we officially get started. So first of all, everyone participating here, um, first of all, welcome by the way, I should say that first, everyone participating here, let's just pretend we're at a work camp. So we're bound by a standard work camp code of conduct. That includes speakers participants, and me, your host, uh, will, won't be able to get to everybody's question on every topic that we're bringing up today. So I'll be. Going with the flow and also probably rotating some questions, a little bit to various speakers and speakers with your responses. Just be mindful of the time. And if there's any in, we don't get to everybody's response and I'll mute that slack in a second. Apparently if we don't get to everybody's response, um, we can do a post follow up after the event. Our topic today is WordPress, the WordPress news space. So not, not specific pieces of WordPress news, it's the state of WordPress news, the people that [00:01:00] report the news, the news economy, and the thoughts along those lines. And we appreciate questions that we'll try to stick to that scope. And if there's any good questions that fall out of that scope, we'll save it for another discussion. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns after this feel free to direct them to me. I am on post-data slack and also you can DM me on Twitter at dimension media. And just to make this a completely transparent, this, this event, this audio is open, it's being recorded and will be shared, um, with the public, but also with our speakers as well for their own use. So can you go ahead and introduce yourself? And then Matt, can you go after her? And we'll just keep going in order here. I'll just call you out. So go ahead, Sarah, introduce yourself briefly. If anybody doesn't know you already, but shame on them. If they don't. Sarah Gooding: Hi, I'm Sarah Gooding. I write for WP Tavern. I've been writing there for about eight years. I think I'm just [00:02:00] writing about WordPress news. David Bisset: And Matt, who are you? Matt Medeiros: Uh, who am I? It's a great question. So I'm director of podcast or success at a company called cast is my day job. And my side gig is something called Matt report media, which covers Matt report.com and the WP minute.com. David Bisset: Okay, let's see who else we got here. I'm trying to look for, and Dan, if you see any whales in here, let me know. Forget why don't you introduce yourself? Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, hello everybody. Well, thanks David. For inviting me. I. Curate on the Goodluck times for the last four years was a side gig. Now it's also my day job, which I really love. Um, I'm also a developer advocate for WordPress at automatic. Um, automatic sponsors that contribution and I also am a co-host on the good milk change law [00:03:00] podcast was uh Um, and yeah, that's. David Bisset: Oh, good. Well, great. Well now, well, while we wait for the others to come in, I wanted to get started with our first question. Um, again, this is about the WordPress space here for news. So Sarah, we'll start with you. The challenges of following and reporting WordPress news. What challenges do you face or you think the industry faces and. And maybe including there, maybe how you might be able to see that improve or change? Sarah Gooding: Well, I think there are a lot of sources to follow and everyone has their own favorite way to, to get news. Um, I ended up spending a lot of time on social media, unfortunately, too. And it's, you know, I'm constantly going through tweets and [00:04:00] digging deeper into. But, um, I would love it if there was a, a way to get your news in a more aggregated form. And I know there are some sites out there that do that, but you know, sometimes they come and go or they don't have like the latest news. Um, so was kind of a challenge, but overall, I don't feel. As challenging as I did, maybe, you know, eight years ago when it seemed like there wasn't always enough news to write about. Sometimes it was like, there were a lot of slow weeks there and now it's just, this is hopping every day. David Bisset: How do you stay informed? Did you, so is it beyond social media? Yeah, I, I mean, I read change logs. I, I follow a bunch of people on Twitter. Um, Reddit, Facebook groups. I attend slack meetings. I dig through, um, I dig through old slack meetings that I couldn't attend. I get almost all the newsletters. I read almost everything. Everybody else writes though. That's, that's how I [00:05:00] stay on top of it. And Matt, same question to you. Um, what are your sources? How do you gather the news and what D what challenges do you. Matt Medeiros: So like Sarah, it's obviously a lot of social media. It's looking at that from a 50,000 foot view and paying attention to. You know, the most impactful, uh, headlines and Newsmakers that are out there. Uh, I take a slightly different tack with the WP minute as the community at the WP minute does contribute the news items, uh, that gets surfaced up. And we use that as, um, part of the foundation to the weekly newsletter and podcast. So that's a little bit of an advantage, uh, for us and how we do that. And. Uh, sort of side stepping the hands are a little bit, what I would like to see is more, uh, uh, WordPress companies, organizations, service agencies really reach out to us [00:06:00] and let us know about things that they think are going to be newsworthy or really impactful. Um, that would be a ginormous help instead of just having the Twitter stream, uh, and a few DMS here. Really having something like that in place and sort of letting them know that, look, you can level up your game a little bit, reach out to us, let us know if you have something that's. Um, my God, if you ever spent time in traditional businesses that do PR new, uh, PR uh, pieces, literally every single day for a single feature they've released, I'm not looking for, you know, stuff like that, but some level of surfacing that information up to us, uh, to us on the panel and others would be a tremendous help, but, uh, yeah, social media and a small community that I've gathered around the news on my side, uh, David Bisset: Okay. Get, I think, you know, already know I'm going to ask you, so where do you get your news from and what challenges do you face? [00:07:00] Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Um, yeah, social media is a lot of, um, part of it, but I also use a tool that's called brain 24 4, and it's, um, More a way of listening tool and that surface does some keywords and it needs to be curated a bit, but it helps me quite a bit to also look at the corners where social media doesn't go because the authors are not that much on social media. So I surface a few of those articles tutorials about the block editor and they go to McCombs is not so much about the news. It's more about. Um, w what's the latest feature in the Gutenberg or how can other people use it better developers, content, creators. Um, and there's a lot of, um, knowledge in the community already that is, um, sharing. I crossed a few blogs. Um, I see Courtney here. She does a wonderful job. Um, and I see, um, others, [00:08:00] um, that, um, post quite a bit about it. The challenge that I see, especially with the full site editing coming out is that there is a group of users that has not had, um, a lot of coverage. Through any of those news items or news shows apart from high level? Um, maybe, um, a little bit by Justin headlock from the Tavern was, uh, um, surfacing also some of the gluten, uh, Burke, um, features, but the group that I'm thinking about or what I'm kind of thinking about right now is. Um, site builders that don't use code to build other people's sites. Um, if they wanted to now co uh, they have been catered to by the, um, by elemental, by, uh, beaver builder by the Devi community. And there are all these third party page [00:09:00] fillers had all their separate communities that has not. Um, come over to the open source part of it. And I think there will be some cultural. Um, shock or most because the concept of open source is not there when, um, third-party page builders, they are corporate they'll, um, to have, uh, a product oriented. Um, a community they have as helping support and new features and also creating tools. Um, but that does not translate well into the open source community of WordPress core. So I'm kind of thinking about quite a bit about how to help them. And I'm glad that. Uh, leadership in retrospect, or also thought about it. Um, so that all of a few teams that are, uh, will help with that one is the learn team. And the other one is to, [00:10:00] um, sponsor team members on the WordPress marketing team that will hopefully be stepping into that void a bit. David Bisset: Oh, cool. Wow. That was a mouthful. You certainly am alive. That's great. You certainly have a lot of challenges though. So, um, yeah, Lee, um, Matt, this question is for you. What do you define as a, um, now that we're, we're talking about the state of the WordPress news reporting in the past year, what has there been any, is there been any redefinitions of what WordPress news is? Um, how do you decide. If something is relevant to the space or not, or what you focus your attention on? Matt Medeiros: Uh, from my particular angle for years, I've been covering just like business entrepreneurship stuff. Um, that's been the angle I've, I've sort of worked with for a long time. Now recently with the WP minute, really more opening that up to community-based stuff. Um, You know, like the rest [00:11:00] there's while we feel like there's a ton of news. There's also not a ton of news at the same time. David Bisset: Let's assume acquisitions didn't exist. What else is left?, Matt Medeiros: yeah, you could have a whole podcast on that this year. Um, you know, for me, I look at it and my editor looks at it from the things that we think are going to make. Hey, the biggest impact on business or be the biggest impact on the community, or maybe there's a see also on the software. So we look at it from those three angles first, um, long, unless it's a slow Newsweek, then we'll cover something that we might deem innovative, which falls into cool new feature, uh, which is still a challenge. Right. Um, You know, that's the lens that we look at, that we look at it through. Uh, and you know, there's, there's only so much stuff coming out of the fire hose that we can, that we can capture. Um, but hopefully we're capturing the stuff that we deem [00:12:00] either the most impactful on business, on a business community or the software. David Bisset: And Sarah, when it comes to the Tavern, what, are there any specific things that you look for for your audience? Um, I, I think probably out of everybody here, the Tavern might have a larger, or at least a wider scope. Maybe I know there's Gutenberg though. I know Matt does an excellent, um, business-related and startup related items. Um, where do you draw your lines for the. Sarah Gooding: Um, our, yeah, we're pretty wide open. We try to cover, um, WordPress core news business news, um, struggles that users are having, but we also reach a little bit outside and like GPL legal conflicts, I think are interesting and may impact the WordPress community. Um, we. You know, what, what other companies are doing or how like social media companies are impacting workers because everything kind of ties together. These days away, people share their, they publish [00:13:00] their posts to social media, or they, you know, they should be publishing from their own website cause social media. But you know, a lot of people, their businesses are built on social media and WordPress is just a smaller part of that. So there is, we just have such a large diverse audience that we try to hit everything, um, that we feel like is new. David Bisset: And special, special guest Joe Howard has joined us. Um, let's say, Joe, take yourself off of mute and say. Yeah, that's okay. I'm sorry. Uh, we, uh, he got lost on the way over here was very big, heavy traffic and you need Joe Howard: the mobile app and not the desktop app. So really, I just don't know how to use Twitter spaces. David Bisset: Oh no, let's let's blame Twitter because that's the platform we're currently recording on, uh, briefly introduce yourself and let us know how you decide your, what, what corner of the WordPress space? Uh, your news, my primarily focuses. Joe Howard: Sure. Uh, I am [00:14:00] the former CEO of WPP buffs, uh, currently work over, uh, do some stuff over at WP MRR, uh, community podcast, uh, uh, all that sorts of stuff. Um, how do I find my news online? Uh, a lot of the times. Yeah on Twitter, but I feel like a lot of it's, uh, uh, people are usually talking about the topics of the day. Um, aside from that, I used to get more from email. I used to subscribe to like every single, um, inbox or every single email newsletter. But these days, um, I don't, I'm not very good at checking email these days, but I also just, uh, I'm trying to be more minimalist about my, my inbox as a lot of people are these days delete selecting most and delete. There's still a few that I'm, uh, that I, uh, pay more attention to and then I'll read through. Um, but for the most part, uh, um, um, I'm [00:15:00] unsubscribed via when it comes to email. So, yeah. Keep it simple. Those are the big ways. How long have you been doing your newsletters, army or new, or your podcast too as well? Everything your whole, your whole deal. Yeah. PA podcast is the longest running thing over at WP MRR. That's been two and a half years, two years, something like that. 150 ish episode once a week. So, uh, David Bisset: Okay. No, that's okay. We'll do a state of the podcast stuff after this. That's why we have other people that we were going to be inviting to that. Um, but I don't want to forget, in fact, I don't, because of, I forget this person that he's of shoot me, um, Dan from post statuses here. So, um, Dan, um, you're from post status, I guess we have established that, um, a little bit, a brief mention about yourself and where post status gets this news. [00:16:00] Just don't say me, you know? Dan Knauss: Right. Well, that's, that's fairly accurate. I've been working with David as editor at post status for quite a while and, and that David Bisset: conventionally grown up being paid either to say this, but go ahead. Yeah. Dan Knauss: Uh, yeah. Do we have a little bit of a different arrangement maybe than, than others? David is kind of in a curatorial role. We do a lot of covered, a lot of different bases, but I'm going from essentially copyediting years ago to doing a much more of a kind of comprehensive general editorial role. So I do get, I do rely on David to kind of filter, be the filter and bring in a lot of stuff. And we have a lot going to David Bisset: get emails now. Dan Knauss: Yeah. Well, you're, you're kind of the gatekeeper in a lot of ways, but we have a lot of other people to kind of throw in once in a while. We are [00:17:00] working with Bob Dunn now. And others out there. The more minds we kind of have filtering news and ideas together, the more it helps me. Then I can kind of spend my time on higher level stuff and maybe get out of the echo chamber a little bit and think more broadly. But, um, yeah, I'm kind of operating in a different editorial role. I used to, I used to contribute more, um, original writing and interviews, but now we're often pushing that to, um, to those view, who do, like David and Corey, others working on a podcast and another recorded material. So yeah, I guess if I was going to say, I follow pretty much the same, the same things as everyone else, I do try to read outside. Uh, general stuff and David will push me back, you know David Bisset: I'm less relevant look, Minecraft can apply to WordPress tune in next week. Dan Knauss: Yeah. [00:18:00] So yeah, that would be my answer there. David Bisset: Okay. Well, great. Great. You can, uh, privately text me on the mistakes I'm making right now. In fact, you're doing, doing a pretty good job of it. So there's two areas in WordPress news that I thought we would love to tackle as a group here. Um, what we do, how it affects. Um, other communities or the parts within the WordPress community, the first one, um, is the new people into WordPress. Is there been any, um, what are your thoughts on WordPress news and what it can do or what it has done already to create entry points for the new people that are, that are coming into coming into WordPress or supporting the. Uh, people that already have a career in WordPress, um, uh, forget we'll S um, start with you. I think yours is more Gutenberg related, so maybe we'll focus on that. Um, entry points for new [00:19:00] people, maybe being, trying to lose Lauren Gutenberg or people who have that in their career. What are your thoughts on how we're doing in that? Birgit Pauli-Haack: That's a very interesting question. Um, and I've found that the new pupils come into Gutenberg or editor using the block editor in, in a few waves. So there was a, uh, 2018, uh, wave. There was a 2019 rave, 20, and now was a full-sized editing coming. To WordPress. It definitely brings in another wave of new users to the space. So there is a, um, big push and, um, quite a few agencies, as well as, um, hosting companies do a, uh, a phenomenal job. Um, Picking up those topics, like how do I, um, get a content created? How do I, um, um, yeah, uh, youth image blog, and all of [00:20:00] the, um, how tos of that, there is a user documentation on the web press.org. Um, and, uh, they have caught up probably, uh, to 5.7. Um, And the newest one is always a little bit like in behind, but I, uh, the hosting company. Yeah. If you follow Kim stir, if you follow, um, um, it escapes me now, but there were, uh, or WP beginner. Um, I think there is a very good. Search searching those articles and publishing up in the thing, but it's not about the news media, then I have not found that that is really something, um, That is picked up by any of the, um, any of us. Um, I soon pick it up just for that particular idea that if agencies read the Gutenberg times and they get questions from their [00:21:00] content creators and their, uh, users that I have a. A list of beginner tutorials, uh, where people can go or send their customers to. So they can kind of offset that customer support, um, a little bit to a material that's already out there. I wish we had a better, um, end user documentation on represent org David Bisset: documentations and other things. Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I, I stopped. Total different topic, but that's kind of, um, so, um, yeah, I think there is a new wave of, uh, new users coming in every eight to nine months. Um, kind of picking up on the, the buzz of new features in WordPress. David Bisset: Do you think, do you think the news, do you think, all right now the state of the WordPress, um, the state of the WordPress news reporting is doing a good enough job. Yes or no, regarding new Gutenberg stuff. Do you think there's. Is there a great [00:22:00] gap or yes or no on that one? Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, absolutely. Yes. On the new Gutenberg stuff, not on the new users, but the new Gutenberg stuff. That's definitely, um, um, uh, coming around on, on, uh, especially the top of your Tavern, um, of course, and, um, David Bisset: speak of the Tavern. I'm sorry. Speak of the Tavern. I do want to make sure we get everybody's comment on this, Sarah, what is your take on it? Sarah Gooding: I think it really depends on what publication you're running. I think with like something like the Gutenberg times, it's really important to, to get everybody along and, um, to, to get people on the same page and help people learn and move forward with, with convert. But if you're just like a straight up news publication, then, um, I don't think it should be the goal of WordPress news to help new users necessarily. It's certainly a positive by-product, but the news should just serve the public interest and report on anything that's [00:23:00] newsworthy. So even if it doesn't on its face, seem like as a positive slant for new users or contributors or even WordPress itself. Um, I think that if you're writing, you know, just WordPress news and you really need to stay. To, um, to just telling the truth. And sometimes that's going to be really exciting and positive and there's going to be big leaps for, for Gutenberg. And sometimes there are going to be major frustrations, but I think that that friction there, um, helps the project and refined it. And the more we can have these kinds of discussions in a, in a transparent and honest way, um, including all, all people's voices. I know that there are contributors who put like hours and hours in. And so sometimes there's. It seems more valuable, but there are users who have spent five minutes on it and failed, and their input is valuable too. So I think if we can be, you know, grab those diverse voices and put it together to form a narrative that helps people, then, then I think that. [00:24:00] David Bisset: Matt, you you're going to say something Matt Medeiros: I wasn't until Sarah just said it way better than I could have. David Bisset: Great. Well, I know what order to put you in next time, Matt Medeiros: but like real quick on the, yeah, it totally depends on the publication. It depends on the, the format as well. And this has been really interesting. Uh, because for years I run a podcast about business entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, and I would, uh, you know, in a, in a, in an effort not to get just like the same voices or just somebody who wants to appear on the podcast to promote their new plugin or theme, I do a lot of outreach into, into folks that I would, I deem interesting to not only me, but what would be interesting to my audience. And the point that I'm getting at is, is not everyone wants. Quite literally talk to me and use their voice to get their message out. They, in other words, they don't want to be on a podcast. And one of the interesting things that I've found with the WP minute is now I do text [00:25:00] and audio. And while that sounds like, you know, kind of silly or kind of throw away on the surface, I have found people who are much more willing to do a written interview or to express themselves, uh, through text. So that's. Uh, touching on just format of the news. Um, but what I've been doing a lot more with the WP minute is giving voices quite literally reaching out to people and saying, Hey, I think you've got a great story to tell. Do you have the confidence? Do you want to share this story? And I think to go back to the new people in the WordPress space, You know, leveling up your game a little bit, having some confidence to hop on a podcast or do an inter interview is something that you should do to get your message out. If you want to. I have approached countless people who just say no. Um, they, they just don't want to have their voice heard, whether that's a confidence thing or confidentiality thing or [00:26:00] something like that, David Bisset: maybe the wrong time Matt Medeiros: or maybe wrong time. Right. Uh, but I do see. You know, and poor folks who, who want to get a message out to, you know, to, to level up that side of their game, if, if they'd like to, David Bisset: well, I, uh, we actually. That's actually very good because you know, there's been a lot of discussion about how we get new contributors into the WordPress space, but not everybody's a contributor, they're a business owner, so it's, they rely if they come from the outside. So sometimes they have to figure out where their new sources are coming from, from inside the WordPress space. So that's a pretty important demographic for, I think, for all of us now, speaking of. Well, I don't really have a good segue for this. So I'll just skip that attempt. Um, if I'm pronouncing her name correctly, Dan, correct me if I'm wrong. But Ray Mori from the repository newsletter, uh, was not able to make it here today. Um, she did leave a video. I'll share with the link. I'll share the zip and message link in the show notes from this [00:27:00] episode. Live, um, all of you have, have had had opportunity to look at the page as well. So this won't be too much of a surprise, but I thought she had an interesting response into what improvements can be made into how news is reported. And I thought, and hopefully you can hear this audio. I think we did the sound check and work. So after listening to what I would love to. One or two of your guest's feedback here. Um, let's see if I can play this it's what improvements can be made and how news is rewarded system. Matt Medeiros: Can you, David Bisset: can we hear that? Can somebody say. Yes, Rae Morey: reporting more independent reporting, even more journalists working at WP Tavern chalet. Matt could put up some more cash for a couple more riders, because there were a lot of stories going on reported for instance, this week, elemental who for transparency is one of my, uh, sponsors at their poetry. Um, they launched a big budget marketing [00:28:00] campaign that I personally think is anything. This is better than anything that weeks or Squarespaces is doing. And it doesn't even mention WordPress is elemental trying to distance itself from WordPress. Maybe Sarah or Justin are already working on that story. I think it's a pretty big deal, but no, one's really talking about it yet anyway. So I'll be looking out for that story in the next week. And as more and more people who speak English as a second language or not at all, here's where press it's becoming increasingly important that we engage with those communities and acknowledge their contribution contributions to the WordPress project, as well as the success of businesses and individuals who are using the platform. Overall, I'd love to see more of a diversity of voices in the WordPress media. David Bisset: Hopefully Sarah, didn't put you too much on this spot. On that. I kind of forgot. She, she mentioned the Tavern a little bit. Um, but there are, there are stories that. That some feel are or going, uh, [00:29:00] unreported, which is we can't cover everything. But, um, and she mentioned also something about language as well. So, um, if anybody wants to comment on what improvements can be made into how you think general news is recorded, um, maybe what we can hit in terms of, I don't know, uh, we hit on it a little bit. Um, but it, does anybody have a specific frame on that? Or am I going to put somebody on the spot? I think I'm going to put somebody on that. I tell you why proposed status. I can speak for post status on this a little bit. Um, improvements on how the news is report. Um, for, for post status is actually post status is not really much of a new sources, more of a Anil, uh, analysis type of that's what we that's, what post status does primarily. So the cha so the ways we can, at least personally, for me, we used can be improved in how news is reported, because while we give analysis, we also share news as well [00:30:00] is not to jump the gun too quickly for us. Stories can be braking. And also there's a lot of emotion coming with some stories, whether it's an acquisition, whether individual expresses a certain opinion about a topic, Twitter gets hot, real fast, and sometimes I have to watch my reacts. Sometimes I don't want to give a reaction to something going on on Twitter because I think that's, that kind of starts to paint me into a corner a little bit and turns my, when we get to the post status, part of it in the analysis part of it. So. For me personally, an improvement would be sometimes I shouldn't give a hot take and let other people converse and then kind of take a step back. Um, Matt, what are your thoughts? Well, Matt Medeiros: just to, first of all, she asked some amazing questions in that, uh, in that zip message that you have recorded, um, some fantastic stuff. The, uh, and without trying to sound like a broken, broken record, but, uh, I'm not [00:31:00] worried. An element or story getting missed or not covered because it's elementary and they have a fantastic marketing team. And if they want to get heard, uh, they have certainly come across my radar and I'm sure they've gone across everyone. Else's radar. That's on this panel today. Uh, and they have the resources. It's the small fry, uh, or the smaller solo blue collar digital worker. That doesn't have that chance or it doesn't have those resources and we can't catch everything. Um, I certainly can't because this is just a side gig for me. Uh, David Bisset: it's not easy to get to that in a second. That's our next topic. Matt Medeiros: It's not a full-time job. So I know one of my. Tons and I'm sure Joe and beer get, get this all the time. Hey, I want to be on the podcast. We've got this thing. We want to pitch a very shallow, very just self-serving and those, I get a ton of those and it's just, I don't even respond. But if you come to me with a great story to be heard, absolutely a hundred percent, [00:32:00] let's at least have the conversation, um, to get you to get you some airtime and we can't catch everything. Um, Sarah's one person. A small team and same with me. Uh, and it's, it's just so hard. So if you want to reach out and get that story heard again, broken record moment, reach out and let us know. Okay. Yeah. I guess it is hard for the smaller fry so to speak. Um, and we kind of have to be open and receptive to that. That it's, that's a good point. So let's talk. Um, unless anyone else has something to share real quick, let's talk monetization. Let's talk about. Uh, Matt said this is a site gig. Um, um, I, Sarah, I believe correct me if I'm wrong, but I, our Eric, is it a, is it a site? Is it a part-time full-time side gig? What, where do you fall on that? Because I'm about to push her out of the way Sarah Gooding: it's full-time. Okay. So, um, and your employer, just to remind [00:33:00] everyone here is. Okay, so you have a full-time position. So this question may not, I'm not sure feel free to jump in, but I'm going to focus. Um, Joe is, is your, do you consider what you do a side gig as well? Joe Howard: Uh, that's a really good question. I don't even know if I David Bisset: have it. Yeah, because it's so melded together with WP and Mount with your business or your podcasts. Joe Howard: I'm trying to remember the name of the movie spotlight. Uh, there's a scene where Marty Baron is the editor in chief of the newspaper. He was talking to, um, someone in the church and the essence. He says, you know, we, we have to be a part in order to be our, you know, the best news organization we can, we can't be affiliated with anything. So I think. To me, it's like speaks to [00:34:00] what Matt was talking about in terms of, uh, it's kind of like a side gig. And I guess for me, I'd say, yeah, it's like, you know, maybe it's part of WP buffs. Maybe it's not, who are we sponsored by? Do we have affiliate links pointing to different places? That's a big challenge in the WordPress news space. I think, you know, how many of the people who are doing WordPress news who are really creating or news specific to the WordPress space or. Would consider themselves. Journalists would consider themselves full time employees or team members of a team where a hundred percent of their time and energy is put towards being a journalist. You know? Uh, I think that's probably for most of us, that's probably, that's not the case. David Bisset: Do you think that, do you think that's a big hindrance? The fact that we don't have more full-time people focused on news and WordPress or similar spaces. I know. In the recording mentioned that, um, you know, the, the [00:35:00] ability, you know, the existence of maybe a couple of more full-time writers, do you think that's a, that's a big hindrance right now? Or do you think with the most people doing this on the side gig, that is sufficient? Um, what are your thoughts on that? Joe Howard: I think it's a hindrance. I think Ray is right. I think, I think about the monetization of. Tavern where it not, uh, owned and operated and funded by Audrey capital, would it have enough views? Would it have enough? Like how would it monetize itself where it not monetize that way? And I think that the answer would pro I don't want to speak without having any real knowledge of it, but I would say probably the viewership would not be enough to like fully fund the full-time team members. They are just based on like a Google ad. You know, versus like, based on how many page views that Tavern gets. So I think that the, [00:36:00] yeah, in short, I think, yeah, we need more people who are doing full time journalists work, because I think that in my opinion, To do news on the side or news as kind of like part of something else. There's always going to be a, well, how are they, how are you funding this? You know, like post status does it with like a membership, you know, I think that's a really cool way to like fund news, but, um, you know, if I'm writing like an article for WP bus and it's a news article and it's like the best website management company is like, well, if I have WP boss, the number one company, like. Really news. Like, I don't think so. I think it goes back to what Sarah says sad about, you know, you had to put out the best stories that are the most important for people. Um, and I think traditionally news is really been about, you know, keeping [00:37:00] the it's about democracy. It's about keeping the, uh, keep giving us a educated. That's really the that's why we, we have journalism. I think so. Um, yeah, sorry. A little bit of tension, but there some thoughts, David Bisset: that's fine. I, I, you know what, um, there are times in wish, you know, some people, you know, we'd have a side gig and we say, wow, Could be paid to do this full-time and then there's I think sometimes I'm like, I rather, I'm very thankful this is a side gig. Um, because I don't think Joe Howard: I could do I'm sorry, I just want one quick thing. If any other thing, anybody else here, any other speakers like to think differently? Like I'm super open to having conversation about this. Um, and I think the there's, there's always pros and there's always cons to whatever monetization you're doing or however you. Go about reporting news, for instance, like, you know, however you set yourself up as a business or as an entity or as like how you're reporting the news. They're always going to be pros. There's always going to be [00:38:00] cons. But I think that I, I think that we, the, the, as WordPress gets more, as more money comes into the WordPress community and open source community, like we need more full time. People who are dedicated to, uh, you know, democracy dies in darkness. Like we have to make sure we're keeping up with, uh, keeping shining light on every aspect of the WordPress community. David Bisset: So when it comes to, so when it comes to news, is that something we would treat as kind of like a contribution or contributors? Is it, would it be possible for, you know, how the people, companies sponsor word sponsor contributors? Full-time. Would there be, let's pretend that a position exists for someone to be able to sponsor someone full-time to do the news or create content. Would that be a help or would that just be seen [00:39:00] as a, um, biased type of thing? Joe Howard: I th I think this is a key question and I see Matt with his hand up and I I'd be really interested to hear what Madison's. Yeah. David Bisset: Yes. Unfortunately, he's, it's more than one finger this time. So let me, let me ask Matt here. Matt Medeiros: Uh, so let me just restate that question. So the question is, if people are creating news, do you count that as a contribution to WordPress? David Bisset: Yeah. Plus, or more, more in the bigger question would be if we need more full-time efforts into WordPress or full-time people or full-time positions or whatever, or more smaller time positions, is that something that accompany could sponsor just like someone can sponsor a full-time. Matt Medeiros: Yeah. Uh, I'm biased because I feel like 10 years of creating WordPress content is a healthy dose of contribution and from my point of view, um, so I think, yes, if you, if, if a company, a small company, a medium company, big company wants to sponsor somebody to do that, certainly.[00:40:00] Absolutely. And I would count it as a contribution to the greater, um, ecosystem of, of WordPress. And I think folks who follow me know that the more we are rallying around WordPress, the more adoption WordPress gets and support, et cetera, et cetera. So, yes, I, I look at that as a contribution just to like put it in and I'll wrap this answer up super quick. Cause Sarah has her hand up, um, you know, as. We are like the 1% of the 1%, the people who actually care about the inside baseball, the news of WordPress, the Watchers, like I'm open to be challenged on that, but you know, I think more people care about the 50 new landscaping themes for 20, 22 than they care about some, you know, uh, analysis. On automatic or whatever the space is, as big as we make, we feel like it is it's really, really small. And in order for it to be properly funded, yes. You're always going to, [00:41:00] you're going to have to have some large institution or some company that does sponsor it. It will always be this question of, are you going to be biased? Uh, but you know, it's, it's totally. It's the trust that the journalist instills. And I think Sarah does a fantastic job with that. Uh, when look, my numbers are pretty public and I do talk about, I do talk about it in blog posts quite often, all you like. I sell my sponsorship through hu commerce store, and I have a membership that you can look at, buy me a coffee and see how many members I have the annual run rate for my sponsors. It's about $40,000 a year is what I make off of that. And then I just plow that back into, um, reinvesting into the company. And this is from a part-time thing. If people can. You know, live on that as a full time, then certainly these things are doable. Um, I think [00:42:00] there are companies that will support, you know, for more money, uh, and give somebody a healthy, uh, career out of it. And I think it's just up to the. The journalist or the blogger or the podcast, or who wants to step up and try to go and get that money and then have companies in the WordPress space that look at quality content, quality, journalism, and reporting, and want to support. Transcript (Part 2) Episode 3 – Part Two [00:00:00] David Bisset: Hello, welcome to post status comments, where we had our third episode state of WordPress news on Twitter spaces on November 19th, 2021. We had some great guests, including Matt from Matt report media, Joe Howard, from doughy P M R R. Forget from Gutenberg times, Sarah, from WP Tavern and Dan from post status. In fact, we had such an engaging conversation, including comments from the audience and pre recordings that it went about 90 minutes long. So we split it up into two equal audio parts. Before we go into this part. Now I want to thank a really great sponsor who really stepped it up and provided sponsorship for this entire episode. And that's WP. Now WP lookout, what that does is attracts plug-ins and the themes that your WordPress site uses and probably depends on it's especially useful for getting timely info on the plugins and theme versions, security updates, author changes. Mentions in the news and more, there's probably not a good way for you to keep track of all of that yourself. So WP lookout is an excellent tool, especially for important client sites that helps stay help you stay on top of things, especially for security updates. Plus it has great features, great customization. So you can be notified by email, slack, web hook, and RSS. So really great service. Chris is an awesome guy. Go check them out at post EDIS docs. Slash WP lookout. And here's our episode well said, uh, Sarah what's, what's your take and then we'll move on to the next, uh, question. [00:01:39] Sarah Gooding: Yeah, I think I just want to tag onto what, um, Matt was saying. It's really hard to do this without a contract, a conflict of. And I think I've seen, you know, hosting companies try to do it where they'll have people writing like a, what they'll call a news magazine and they'll, they'll post, you know, tons of, of news and really good articles actually, um, that investigate different things. But then they're mixed in with like product updates or, you know, we're coming out with this new thing. And so it's, it's mixed. And you know, you, as the reader have to decide like how much of this is. Um, what I can trust and how much is this company trying to sell me something? So it's, it's really hard for a company like a hosting hosting companies have a ton of money. So it's, you know, it's tough to be able to have them be completely independent, where they are allowed to just go write whatever they want. You know, there would have to be some, we'd have to have some kind of new, new way to do this. And it would be really interesting to see if something like that kind of. Um, because we do need more diverse voices. We need a lot, we need voices coming from different publications. And, um, I mean, I remember back in the day when post status, he used to write more news and there were times when I was like, why isn't, why isn't posting. Mentioning like what this company is doing. They're defrauding customers, or, you know, things like that. And I, and you realize that there are a lot of business relationships behind all of this. And at the same time, like some of these smaller publications, they're going to compromise their ability to stay afloat. If they, if they write news against, um, some of these people who are their partners are the people who, who fund what they're doing. Did they have a chance to keep making a positive impact long-term or are they going to burn, you know, 50% of their sponsors by publishing a story about, you know, corporate wrongdoing. So it's, it's really, it's a tough balance, you know, so you can have independent publications that are sponsored, but they, they have a tough road to walk. And then even with the Tavern, you know, we're constantly asked about the conflict of interest, uh, you know, being funded by Audrey capital. So. Um, yeah, everybody has a tough time and funding news as a, as an ancient problem. But I think, you know, maybe in the WordPress community, we could find some innovative way to tackle this where when you could get those independent people, those people who, I mean, it has to be people who love WordPress and who will write the truth and who, um, you know, at their core are wanting WordPress to succeed, but are able to discern what is this news or not. And, you know, finding those people and people who actually want write. Every single day. It's tough. You know, I've had to look for them before, like when we got Justin, you know, this is a guy who can't be bought to say, you know, something positive or negative about anything that… [00:04:26] David Bisset: …isn't true. I tried at a WordCamp and wouldn't tell me good things about myself. I gave him money. [00:04:30] Sarah Gooding: So, you know, everyone, everyone who's doing it. They have a tough job. [00:04:36] David Bisset: Here's Ray here with her comment on that from, from the zip message. And then I'm going to move on to another question here. [00:04:44] Rae Morey: I love this question because it's an easy one for me to answer no matter who sponsors the repository, I'm going to write about them. Whether their activities are good or bad, um, Elementor as I've just mentioned, they one of my sponsors and they're going to be in the next upcoming issue of the repository. Um, one of our current sponsors he's good at he pro I've written about GoDaddy in the past when there was negative news story that didn't stop in sponsoring their pository. I think it's crucial that we hold companies to account for their actions, particularly large companies that are sponsoring newsletters. We need sponsorship to keep the lights running, but we need to be able to ride. Um, you know, write independently of our sponsors, views and opinions. And if we're going to produce meaningful news content, we shouldn't be afraid of, of losing sponsorship. Um, and that's something I make very clear to sponsors from the outset when they choose to sponsor the repository. I thought that was a pretty good comment. If it more or less what we were talking about. So here's a question and feel free to raise your hand, um, panel here for this, but I'm going to start with Dan because I can put him on the spot. We want to know. From the news world, the people that report the news. And we asked you this before, um, to give you, give you time to think about it. What was the single biggest news story? So far of the year 2021 in WordPress. Um, and already we already went through what defines biggest influential, whatever, how you for you to find it. And, uh, and the, the game rule here is it needs to be a specific story and it can't be just. Acquisitions. So, um, Dan, if you're ready, I'd love to hear, um, give it, tell us briefly what you think the, um, in your opinion, the biggest news story. Sure. [00:06:32] Dan Knauss: Um, yeah, we've tossed this one around a bit. Um, I'm going to kind of bend that question a little bit. I, I make a pretty hard distinction between news journalism. And then what we would say is analysis or trying to set a conversation is more of what we try to do at post status. So I, I, I kind of, uh, agree with some other things Rae said in what she contributed, that there's a lot, that's not being written. And probably the biggest story is as a, not just a news piece, but a story that gives some, some deeper analysis is, you know, maybe the big, uh, big picture on, on acquisitions, multiple acquisitions, what it means for a specific industry or. The community as a whole, um, that hasn't really been done. Um, I think Sarah's amp piece is probably probably the biggest, the significant piece of journalism, um, to come along. And that that's something that has a lot of implications and in, um, what we want to do with things like that is have, have a rich news and journalism ecosystem that's out there that. You know, David and I, and others that post status and things to chew on and, um, create the discussions that matter a little bit more reflective and slow. Um, as we've posted status has really become more of a trade association at its heart, a membership community. Um, and I think people see. Think back to some old older days when, when there was, there was a bit of a journalistic quality to it. That's really rare for us to do at this point. So. Part think tank part, part association, um, with as many entry points now, as we can get to people who are at all different phases of their potential careers. So, uh, communal. Within the community, I guess [00:08:40] David Bisset: it was Matt. Oh, I'm sorry. Were you done Dan? I'm sorry. I'm juggling three different stages. Was there a single news story that you thought was likely could be a contender for the biggest, um, WordPress story related story of 2021 so far? [00:08:54] Matt Medeiros: Uh, I'm going to give you an interesting answer. But before I do, while I have an audience, I have to say that there's, I have a massive amount of imposter syndrome sitting alongside of Sarah. When you talk to journalists and quality of content and things like the amp story. I mean, people who are in the audience listening to this, you should just give her a round of applause with the emoji, uh, emoji icon thing in the [00:09:19] David Bisset: Twitter space .It might be hard to do the UI on this thing is nuts. But go ahead. Yeah. [00:09:25] Matt Medeiros: Um, so anyway, You know, I'm old enough to remember when Andrew Neeson was the biggest WordPress celebrity in the space and what I've witnessed over the last decade or so, or more at this point is that, um, a lot of celebrities that come and go and I think. With all of the acquisitions, the results of all of the acquisitions. I think the biggest story that's actually being written right now are all of, and I don't want to use the word celebrities, but all of the next round of leaders in this space, uh, whether or not they're writing code, writing a blog post, doing a podcast, uh, training people contributing, uh, volunteering at word camps when they come back. I think we're going to see a whole new wave of awesome WordPress leadership, um, coming out of all of the. You know, 20, 20, 20, 21, uh, acquisitions and just people, you know, bobbing and weaving out of the space for one reason or the other. So for me, it's the unwritten story. If I can cheat and use that really everybody's doing that. I can't get a straight answer out of anybody, but that's fine. That's, that's how these things go. And, you know, we submitted my resignation later. Um, we're good. What's let's see if we can. Third. Time's the charm. What's, what's the biggest, but oh, by the way, this is all legit, by the way. And I'd rather have this than. And pulling a URL out of, of some Mondays I'm rear end here, but I forget what is the single biggest news story? I'll ask you the same question of 2021. [00:11:01] Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, I have two stories. I'm sorry, [00:11:07] David Bisset: real quick. Now, if you've got two you've got to give them out real quick. Go ahead. [00:11:12] Birgit Pauli-Haack: So, um, WP engine did a study on the economic impact of her press and it's 509 5. 196 or something billion dollars. That is really big. Um, what I was missing on that story was how much of that money goes to hosting companies. Um, but that's just a side effect of that. It's a really big, um, economic issue. And the second story, I think, um, it's, it's just totally self-serving, but I think having developer advocates for the WordPress open source project, going out in the community and helping developers and seeing developers and agency developers to, um, to get to wrap their head around Gutenberg, JavaScript. Step over them, the hurdle to, I hate JavaScript too. Maybe I can work with it. Um, is, um, certainly for the impact that it will have on, um, the, uh, WordPress contributors might be, um, a good story too. Okay. It was that both of them or is that one? Because my counting abilities ain't so good. These days. I was too. Just making sure. No that's boom, boom, bang, bang, bang. All right. So listen, um, what I want to do now is I'm going to take a real quick pause here. And we were talking about sponsors a minute ago and just so happens. We have one for this podcast, and then I'm going to, I'm going to share that with you, but speakers and audience too. Um, I would like to take the last part of this conversation into, I think, what is, uh, Could be an elephant in the room. That's kinda broken out a little bit. Um, the topic of acquisitions. Um, we have a question from one of our audience member or one of our zip message members, and we want to get everybody's take on the acquisition space that seems to have consumed most of the, a lot of oxygen in the news space. Uh, this year. Um, first of all, though, I do want to thank though, um, WP lookout. Um, it's got a nice little tower as a logo. It's pretty, it's pretty nice. It actually tracks plugins and themes. So if you, uh, it'll actually was launched in August, 2020. Okay. It was providing a goal. It still is. It still is. It's present tense. It's providing WordPress users with a better way to stay informed about what's happening with their WordPress sites. So if you need plugins or if you need notification sent to you by email slack, RSS, a carrier pigeon could be something on here. I'm very certain that if you want to know about security updates and everything happened to your website, check them out at WP lookout. I'd actually like the tower to creme reminds me of, um, the forest lookout towers, which is probably what it's supposed to be. But anyway, let's talk last, last chapter here. Let's talk about acquisitions and Kim Coleman actually sent this real quick question in, and I want those who have a take, uh, feel free to share it here. [00:14:13] Kim Coleman: Hey everyone. I'm Kim Coleman from paid memberships pro I just wanted to get everyone's perspective on what the benefits and downsides the users of our WordPress plugins will experience with all the acquisitions we're seeing in this space. Thanks so much. [00:14:27] David Bisset: That is the most loaded question. I think I've ever put into a part, so we could go, this could be its own pockets in of itself. So let's just focus from a news from a news. Perspective someone who reports on the news and seeds, it sees, uh, uh, various size of landscape. What are your thoughts on how the WordPress acquisitions may be affecting? I think she said users of plugins or developers of plugins. I can play this again if we need to. It's only 15 seconds. Um, in fact, maybe you want me to re repeat the question? Let's repeat it one more time. Actually, I'm getting, uh, somebody didn't hear it. Hold on one sec. Just do it one more time. Hey everyone. I'm Kim Coleman from paid memberships pro I just wanted to get everyone's perspective on what the benefits and downsides the users of our WordPress plugins will experience with all the acquisitions we're seeing in this space. So users and developers. So I, you know, me personally, um, short term for a lot of these acquisitions, it seems like nothing much is changing, but maybe. Maybe that's just me or I'm not looking far ahead enough, Matt, what are you? What's your take on that? Well, [00:15:40] Matt Medeiros: I'll take the easy answer before anybody else snags it for me. [00:15:43] David Bisset: This is how you play monopoly. But [00:15:45] Matt Medeiros: the, uh, you know, I think look at the end of the day, that means that the users are going to get hopefully stronger, better, uh, options and less of them hold that thought they don't have to hold it. Yeah, they don't have to decide between a dozen forms or a dozen SEO plugins. And they can just see some from brands that they like, they can get an all-inclusive turn-key solution and there, they don't have to search around anymore. They've got it. They figured it out. They got one easy tool to use, uh, flips. They have less choices and that's the beauty, or has been the beauty of WordPress is that so many of us have been able to make a, go at earning an income and creating products and serving a set of customers for so many years. And, uh, it's been quite fun, but now we'll see that it's going to be a lot more challenging to stand out. And then as soon as you start to stand up, Uh, liquid web might knock on your door and ask about you, but, you know, it's, [00:16:52] David Bisset: it's, she tutored two men to, to credit of that act. I've heard you on Twitter, say many times I'm looking to be acquired and I'm assuming it means your business and not your personal self, but I'm taking it to that mean that way I actually want to touch on the less choice thing, maybe in a second of anyone else as a comment on that, rainbow has a final comment here on this subject as well. And I wanted to sneak this in before I got any more feedback. Um, let's see. oh, wait a minute. I think. Well, yes. [00:17:24] Rae Morey: I tend to think there's not one standout story. So much as one standout theme when it comes to influential news story of the year and that's gotta be acquisitions. It seems there's an acquisition acquisition every week. Um, as big as companies like Yoast and Paisley that have been around since the early days of being acquired, both of which were. Incredibly surprising you stories this year. Certainly changing the way we think about WordPress because it's no longer simply play open source project run by community of individuals and small businesses. So much as a it's project supported now by corporate interests. That is an interesting take. And Joe, you put up a hundred up there. Did you have. [00:18:10] Joe Howard: I think Ray and I share, uh, some opinions on this. Um, [00:18:16] David Bisset: oh, it's okay. You don't shine for another podcast, but yeah, it's, I've generally speaking from a, from a news reporter standpoint. Do you, um, how much of that do you gel with? And gel is a technical. [00:18:29] Joe Howard: Ah, well, I don't really even consider myself a news person, someone who produces news more based, but I would agree with Ray. Um, I think the shift is happening from being a true open source, um, community environment that we have to, I mean, if you look at the acquisition space, the people making acquisitions, you know, What three or four main organizations that are, that are making most of these acquisitions, um, and full transparency. WP boss has an acquisition arm as well as discount myself from this. Yeah. Hey, there you go. Transparency. But, uh, but I believe. And Matt, what Matt was saying was really important because that choice of that people have is slowly going away because these corporations are saying, oh, don't go out and look for the plugins you want, like, just use ours. And I think like today that doesn't have as big of an effect because the open source economy is still strong, but over time, you know, if we're not careful, You know, every, you know, everybody's going to be owned by five companies, you know? And then what choice do you really have? You know, who's really happy with like, you know, Comcast, you know, TV deal. That's totally, they're paying way too much for, or, you know, the, these huge companies that, you know, you have to buy from them because they have monopolies over things. I mean, this is how it starts. Uh, so I think longterm, this is, uh, what we have to, what is open source? What is it really going to be in 10 years? Is it going to be the same as it was 10 years? Um, I don't think so. And I think for, in some cases there'll be some improvements, you know, but I think in some cases, how [00:20:33] David Bisset: do you, how do you think that fits into the people that we have here speaking today about their, their, their dedication to reporting news in terms of, if it is going to be, if there is a consolidation, does that put more importance on trying to find the independent developer or plugin and. Or do you think that the pressure is on to kind of go with the flow in terms of, um, reporting from the bigger companies? I mean, where do you, where do you rank the efforts in terms of, do you, do you go, do you kind of fight against the grain that's taking what you said into account, or how do you go about finding independent people of that is what you see the future to be. That is for you. If you want to answer it otherwise I can just dump it on myself. [00:21:28] Joe Howard: Well, I'll just make a quick answer, cause I don't want to monopolize time too much, but the. I think we need more hard hitting news pieces, uh, in general. And that's not to say that I don't feel like the panel here does an excellent job, but a lot of that, I think we get a lot of good stories, but like I said before, like I would love if Tavern had like 10 people, you know, and I would love if they were, you know, I want more. Of the hard hitting stories. Like I haven't heard a story about, you know, there's like an acquire out there. That's like own, like they've acquired a bunch of plugins and they are owned by, uh, a big, big investment firm and the what drives them at the end of the day, in my opinion, I would say is, is profits. And that's. But I haven't seen that story written out there. So I'm not going to specifically name names there, but I, but I think there's room for a lot more storytelling in the WordPress community, both what you said, uh, about bringing smaller shocks to light, bringing smaller companies to light. Uh, but also, um, we need to be. We need to be hard on these big, big entities. You know, a lot of whom are sponsoring events. And again, I, I'm not discounting myself in this either. You know, we had the WMR summit, we had sponsorship by some big companies as well. Um, and I've thought a lot about that. And I really questioning whether I want to even accept sponsorships again next year, because part of me, I just, it doesn't feel like the right way. Separate yourself from these big entities taking their money. It's, it's a, it's a hard conversation. I'm not saying I'm right in that. [00:23:14] David Bisset: I'm just saying you're describing is awkward. Not this, not your current conversation is awkward. I mean, the subject is awkward. Um, I, I, [00:23:21] Joe Howard: but that's exactly why we need journalists in more journalists to help out, to have more of these awkward conversations because the awkward conversations and the hard conversations and the challenging conversations are always. The ones you have to have, you must have in order to move conversations forward. And in order to, to, to shed light where it needs to be shed in order to, you know, make the WordPress community what we want to be, or else it'll turn into what prophet wants it to be. I don't think anybody wants that. [00:23:53] David Bisset: I can tell you from a personal experiences, not as much as a, a news person, but as a WordCamp organizers sometimes. Um, and as somebody who blogs and tweets about stuff, And this is small time. This is small potatoes, right? But you have a sponsor. We actually had this happen one time. Somebody has a sponsor. They're big time sponsor. You're thanking them. And even though they're going through the foundation a little bit, um, some sponsors obviously are making a choice in many situations to sponsor your event. You're very happy you get money, but then their company. Does something I don't know, awkward, or it was a blunder or something. And like right before the work camp, it gets out in the news. And as somebody who likes to tweet a lot or someone who likes to like keep people informed, sometimes I give pause in terms of, am I going to have to somehow subconsciously make an apology to the, somebody at the work camp? Cause I'm, cause I'm a member of the community here, but I'm also a work camp organizer here and. It's like, I like, that's why I've picked the word awkward. Um, cause it kind of is, and I'm not sure if that's something that I would like to feel all the time. I'm not sure if that's something I can, I can get over. Um, Dan, what is your feeling as we wrap up, wrap up this discussion here, what is your, um, feelings on the impact of acquisitions on the news space? [00:25:15] Dan Knauss: Well, yes, I've been thinking a lot about that as we kind of digest, you know, what the — what are the big questions we should be asking? In the wake of big M and A stories. We do need people doing the journalism and news reporting side to give us the stuff that David curates and work through editorially and have discussions, bring on guests and talk about the issues of the day. Post Status traditionally has been very developer oriented. I'm glad we've really broadened and grown to cover really pretty much every aspect of every career and field in the WordPress space. But as Pippin Williamson told [Post Status Publisher] Corey [Miller] on his exit and referred to another conversation, I think it was Kinsta's podcast with Austin Ginter, that we should be concerned about big consolidation under hosting companies that are going to build their own beautifully smooth platforms for storefronts, for LMS, for vanilla WordPress. You know, making things work in a way that's very hard to do if you're integrating a lot of different plugins together, say an LMS or a membership site or something like that. If you have some of the big players really offer an outstanding WordPress experience, but it's branded (with their brand) and unique, is that really WordPress anymore? What are the implications for confusion there and I'm interested in, how does that look when you have a corporate interest and competition? How well do you play with developers from the other team? You know, which APIs get documented well, and you know, how much sharing and cooperation then really happens between these potentially more sectioned off parts of what is supposed to be a single ecosystem. So that untold story is one that, I think is a series of questions and conversations we all need to look at. [00:27:25] David Bisset: Okay. [00:27:26] Dan Knauss: I think Sarah has, has a, a comment here too, and oh yeah. Don't forget. Daniel Schutzsmith in there too. How can, how can a, the community support all the many different things we do? [00:27:39] David Bisset: Yeah. There's we could go on for, for a very long time here. We're technically, we're a little bit over. What I want to do is I want to, um, Travis has requested, uh, from the audience has I'm Travis. I'm really hoping it's brief not to put you on the spot, buddy, but I'm running already running over. And my wife's wondering why I'm not picking up the kids from school. Um, so, um, I'll let Travis on, in a second and then we're going to do a round room. A little bit, um, or at least, uh, everybody here has one minute to, um, summarize anything they would like to discuss. Whether it's like, where do you see WordPress in the short term or longterm or how people can help the media community? Um, something like that, but whoops. Oh Travis, where'd you go? Oh, I guess maybe he was I'm S I feel bad now. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Maybe he'll maybe was it? Oh, Oh, God, the rollercoaster here is killing me. I'm sorry. Hey, I'm here. I appreciate you. No problem. I'm sorry to say, to make a brief, but I don't have much of a choice. My kids are going to wonder why I'm not picking them up. Okay, go ahead buddy. Go ahead. [00:28:45] Travis King: It was a quick comment to what Joe was speaking on about the corporations that are trying to figure out how are we, you know, do we feel okay taking, you know, the, the, the investments and doing sponsorships and just one thought on that idea was just rethink sponsor. Because I'm someone that's in the community. I run media platforms, I host multiple podcasts. And the biggest thing that individual hosts and community builders struggle with is finding a thousand dollars to run an event. And corporations are putting 50,000 and for one sponsorship, we put their logo on the front to blast everything. What have you broke that up into 50 small micro things and distributed to solo preneurs. [00:29:30] David Bisset: No. Okay. Could you do me a favor? I'm going to take that. And I'm going to, I'm going to follow up with you on that on Twitter or post-test or wherever it is you live, because I would love to have another discussion about sponsorships in general. Um, but yeah, that's a very good, it's a really good point. And I think Joe and Sarah and all the little emojis are lighting up after that. So really appreciate your comment on that, Travis. Very much. And I'm not just saying that because I'm wondering where my kids wondering where. Um, but yes, we'll also, we'll also include your Twitter handle and the post status notes. If you don't mind, that would be great. Okay. So let's go around the, uh, so-called virtual table here. One last time. Um, you got a minute or two on whatever it is you want to comment on. Um, we're good. Let's start with you. Am I, are you good to go? [00:30:18] Birgit Pauli-Haack: I'm good to go. Sure. Um, I see a short term, um, hard time in veterans because of the transition, um, between the classic and the Gutenberg. And that's going to be for another two or three years, um, until everything is kind of settled. And, um, the new things is actually on par with. The other thing, but I also see in longterm that they will, uh, so much more creativity come into the space because the scenes, um, is now, uh, for designers, let things be themes and make it beautiful, make them, uh, right. Um, in the short term, it, we need to really alleviate all the pain that comes with change. And as it comes with learning new things, and that's the hardest thing you can do in a space like this. [00:31:09] David Bisset: Put that on a stone tablet hanging up on my wall. Cause I think that was for very well put, um, Joe, you want to bounce back to you? Um, you said, um, what you, you had a broad, you, we covered a few different things here, but in your particular space that you cover, what do you see the short term in terms of, um, businesses and then. You know, Sass or whatever it is you want to talk about in that space for like what, the stuff that you usually cover on podcasts. If somebody asks you, what do you see the shorter longterm of WordPress in your space? [00:31:45] Joe Howard: I think that the. Focus on running a good and competent business is never something that will get old, uh, or never something that will go out of style. Um, you know, focusing on building a good product, uh, focusing on subscription revenue, focus on, uh, getting feedback from users, making users happy and building something that users are actually. Actively willing to pay for, you know, all these basic things. I think the, I think at the end of the day, you know, we could talk a lot about the future of the WordPress system and WordPress economy, but, um, uh, in terms of the, uh, uh, short term, uh, for folks doing that, uh, I think just keep doing good work. Uh, and in terms of the, uh, folks doing news out there, People have already, you know, folks have already commended the folks on this panel for doing news, but I would like to commend them again for all the great news that they do. Uh, and I think that we should continue to find ways to get them more support, more resources. Uh, you know, we have five for the future. Uh, why don't we have five for. The news. It's not a very good catch line go. So there's definitely some, I think there are ways we can do more crowdsourcing or, you know, have everybody keep be providing the folks who are already doing good work to do more good work and to support other folks who want to. Do we want full-time journalists doing this? Uh, like, you know, I want Matt to be able to go full-time on mat report. If he, or, you know, uh, 15 his show, if he were to choose to want to do that. Um, Post status folks. I don't know if everybody at post-test is full-time, everybody should be able to go full time. Like, what do we need to do to get there that, uh, I see some, some, a hundred emojis coming up, so hopefully that people, but that should be the direction I think we should. [00:33:42] David Bisset: Yes. Well, yeah, that's fantastic. And just to be clear, I just want to make sure this was put on the record too. Um, Ray was, was kind enough to send a video. Uh, there were probably a couple of things that she said I wasn't able to work into here, but there are so many. Other people in the WordPress news space, outside of the people in this. And it was just it. And especially on, in other time zones, they couldn't, they couldn't make it for logistics reasons or we were, we could only invite so many people into this conversation and maybe we'll have another conversation in the future for those maybe who specialize in podcasting and newsletters, that sort of thing for similar topics because you know, general news and then there's newsletters. And then there's podcasting. There could be different ways to explore that, but I wanted, I wanted to make sure to thank everyone who covers WordPress news out there. Not just the people in this room, um, who are mostly also podcasters as well. So some of these people have great voices that I, that I know of anyway, but I would love to hear more voices, Dan, real quick here. What is your, um, last take? [00:34:45] Dan Knauss: Um, I would say in, uh, you know, looking where do I, where do I see WordPress, in the big picture, short and long term, it's obviously we're, you know, something Brian Krogsgard predicted a while back, you know, period of intense consolidation and growth, but it's a big question of growth for whom and who, you know, how that pie gets gets cut up. So there's a lot of anxiety about fragmentation — those left behind after the big fish scoop up a lot of established brands — and, and as you know, small even mid-sized and I would consider fairly large operations. They're wondering how do you, how do you compete? Is this the still the WordPress ecosystem we knew? Well no, it's always changing. So, as people exit, um, you know, that's been a question, a lot: opportunities and threats. I think those are the kind of questions that need to be asked on the business reporting side, and we need, we do need this kind of rich journalistic and news market and the ability to have these kinds of conversations and let the community feel that they have, they have some say in things. That's not exactly a prediction about the future for WordPress — it's where we are and what's needed now, to move forward. I will predict there's going to be a lot of further professionalization and WordPress companies needing to help create the kind of hires they need. Um, you know, we've been trying to support that with our Get Hired project. How do you create a pipeline to employers and how does the community change and, and still feel like it's it's itself. Um, I guess I have more, uh, more questions really then I would, I would make predictions. I think you get a lot of both. In the e-commerce space, it's an easy prediction that big platforms, that hosting platforms will take an ever larger role. But then you get these little startups, you know, or old timers like with Lemon Squeezy coming, coming out. I'm very interested in that. A little, disruptive, nimble play that can still possibly run circles around big established players, beating them on performance issues, by providing an alternative to platforms that you're locked into and make digital downloads really easy perhaps. Easier than ever. Um, that's, that's really an interesting play there. So I think there's always risks and opportunities. And we just need to keep, keep talking about it — as a space where anyone can get in and do great things. [00:36:59] David Bisset: Um, as things change, um, Matt, you, did you want to respond to Daniel's question in your wrap-up or was it, or did you want it. [00:37:07] Matt Medeiros: Yeah, no, just two super quick things to wrap up. Um, I just want to respond to Travis who popped on super quick. He has a fantastic idea of, uh, the industry supporting what I'll call micro creators or smaller creators. Maybe people who don't have a complete platform yet. Um, I am. To be able to sell my sponsorship spots pretty quickly and fairly painlessly. And I've done something called a content bounty at the WP minute where I've run two successful campaigns so far taking that same exact model that Travis is looking to do. Whereas if somebody wants to create a piece of content and get paid for it, I go out and grab a sponsor. For the last two, which was Paul Lacey and Michelle for chef have both earned $200 each to write their blog post. And I'm happy to have that conversation for anyone, with anyone who wants to start, uh, as a small creator and get paid, uh, because I have the contacts and I know that we can get a smaller creators paint, uh, in this space. And [00:38:07] David Bisset: Daniel's question real quick. And then you can give you a quick answer. Cause he's the only one that hasn't gotten the audio. [00:38:12] Daniel Schutzsmith: Covering the news, uh, can be a thankless job. I think, uh, in a industry like ours, that's a niche. It might be even more stressful sometimes. Uh, so I wonder, you know, how can the community help you, uh, be successful? What can we do to lift you up or to help you get to the next level of where you want to take your publications? [00:38:33] David Bisset: Okay, Matt, what's your response? [00:38:35] Matt Medeiros: I hit the retweet button, smash the like button, subscribe to the channel. That's how the support, uh, to the content creators, give them, you know, real, uh, effective feedback, share their content, support, the voices that, uh, that you admire in the WordPress space are the ones that should be heard for sure. Um, reach out if you're a company, a freelancer building something awesome. Reach out with a good solid pitch. Let us know why we should cover your. And, uh, be more communicative, more communicative on that side and just support us by sharing the news. Oh, okay. Sarah, let's end with you on, on, on your one or two minute. Take on anything you want to bring up. [00:39:17] Sarah Gooding: I think I'll answer the question. Where do you see work rests in the short and the long-term workers is going through a transitional time right now with full site editing. There's so many moving parts. Um, that have to be brought together all at the same time, sometimes with deadlines. Um, I think the experience of full site editing is going to be a little bit rough at first and people making WordPress. Like themes and plugins are gonna need to stay really connected to what's happening with the project because it's changing so fast and all the time, um, they might need to be ready to ride the rapids for the short term. Um, speaking from the heart though, I think we need to really be there for each other and help each other succeed during this transitional time. But, um, as far as core development goes, WordPress, executive director, Josepha, Haden, she has her own podcast. Um, so he gives me a lot of hope for WordPress future because she. Gracefully handling challenges and improving communication significantly across the board for the open source project, with a positive resilient kind of vibe that just tasks kids down to everybody under her leadership. So I think that even though we're going to have a lot of community challenges coming up with transitioning into full site editing, I think we have some good leadership that is going to provide transparent communication, which, um, is going to be a huge improvement for. From previous years where I think a lot of us felt like we might've been in the dark or not sure what kinds of things are going to be happening next. Um, I think we're in a good space right now. [00:40:51] David Bisset: Oh, actually we're in Twitter spaces, but yeah, I get your point. Okay. Well think, well that, and, and on that note, I, let me, excuse me, I'm going to punch slack in a second. Okay. There we go. And on that. Uh, thank you very much for, um, coming today. I think this was a good, um, I learned a little bit more about how you all kind of view the WordPress news space a bit and what the challenges are and what would be helpful for everybody. So I'm looking forward to the feedback that we're going to get on this, and maybe we'll talk again. Maybe we'll talk again on this same subject, maybe in a year with different people, um, different things to talk about. Um, maybe I'll be acquired and won't be able to talk about that, but who knows? I want to thank everybody here. I want to thank Dan. I want to think. Forget Sarah, Matt, and Joe, for, for being good sports and donating this large amount of their time. Um, to have this discussion. I want to thank everybody here as well. Like I said, this is going to be, um, swimming, the recordings when success. Thumbs up there. Um, this will be available, um, on post dennis.com and also we are giving a copy or not giving. I mean, everyone will be able to share this throughout their news platforms because that kind of makes sense. Um, thank you very much. And we'll look forward to, um, talking with you all again, have a good one. by David Bisset at December 02, 2021 06:31 AM under Post Status Podcasts WPTavern: WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 Released with Detailed Testing Guide WordPress 5.9 beta 1 is now available for testing. With just eight weeks remaining until the official release lands, the team is focusing on testing, an important part of the development process that will keep 5.9 on track. Due to the great many interconnected parts of full-site editing (FSE) that will make their debut in 5.9, contributors are organizing a more coordinated testing effort and have prepared a detailed guide. It includes testing instructions for all the major features in the next release, including the template editor workflow, new theme blocks (focusing on the new Navigation Block), list view, expanded block design tools, the Gallery block refactor, Block Pattern explorer, and more general core updates. If this is the first time you’re dipping your toes in the the new FSE features, you may be wondering what it’s supposed to look like. Anne McCarthy, who is co-leading testing for the release, has published several videos demonstrating the new features over the past few months. The video below is all about the new Navigation Block and another recent one explores block theme flows, styling, the patterns explorer, and more. Sometimes it’s easier to get started testing if you see it working in a video first. Version 5.9 will also introduce WordPress’ first block-based default theme, Twenty Twenty-Two. Testing the theme is as easy as activating it from the Themes screen after installing 5.9 beta 1, as outlined in the testing guide: You can test the theme by installing the Beta and activating Twenty Twenty-Two from Appearance > Themes. To report issues with the theme, you can do so here. Just a handful of pending issues and blockers remain for 5.9, but the release already contains 580 enhancements and nearly 450 bug fixes. More beta releases are planned for December, followed by RC 1 on January 4, 2022. WordPress 5.9 is still on track to be released on January 25. by Sarah Gooding at December 02, 2021 04:00 AM under News WPTavern: One Month Left To Take the 2021 WordPress Annual Survey Last month, Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced the annual WordPress survey. If you have not gotten around to participating, it is still open for the rest of 2021, leaving everyone another 30 days to answer. The survey is relatively short. I finished it in 16 minutes, but I also took screenshots in case I needed to loop back to anything. There is also an optional WordPress contributors survey at the end, which took another 10 minutes to complete. However, it has more open-ended questions and could take much longer to complete for those with a lot of feedback. The annual survey is available in the following six languages, but more may be considered for 2022: English French German Japanese Russian Spanish In the announcement, Haden Chomphosy stressed the importance of participating for WordPress users and professionals: Key takeaways and trends that emerge from this survey often find their way into the annual State of the Word address, are shared in the public project blogs, and can influence the direction and strategy for the WordPress Project. Simply put: this survey helps those who build WordPress understand more about how the software is used, and by whom. The survey also helps leaders in the WordPress open source project learn more about our contributors’ experiences.” Haden Chomphosy also announced that next year’s survey would take on a new format. She did not reveal any information outside of saying the included segments and questions would be included in that format change. That is still a year out, so we will have to wait and see what it looks like. I would welcome some changes for what feels like the same-old-same-old survey that I have responded to in much the same way. My professional usage of WordPress has changed in the last two years, so I can now answer some questions from a different perspective. But, part of me feels like I am not adding as much value as newer voices. One of the changes I would like to see is a separation of the annual and contributor surveys. By the time I finished the first, I had mostly lost interest in the second. It would be easier to come back to the contributor survey with a fresh mind at a different time. Haden Chomphosy also linked to a 164-page PDF of the 2020 survey results. It includes breakdowns and insights into the data. After a poor showing for the 2019 survey results, 2020 had nearly triple the respondents and was the highest since 2015. Here is a look at the last six years, excluding 2018, of completed surveys: 2015 – 45,995 2016 – 15,585 2017 – 16,245 2019 – 6,203 2020 – 17,295 Open-Ended Questions My favorite questions from the survey are those that are open-ended. These allow people to provide unique or more nuanced answers in comparison to checkboxes and radio inputs. Of course, it can be a mess to wade through the results when you have 1,000s of replies. I tried to keep these short in the survey. However, wanted to expand a bit on some of them below. What’s the best thing about WordPress? The community is always what is best about WordPress. You do not need to be a lead developer or a well-known business owner to make waves in the project. There are ways of contributing, making a living, or having an impact through dozens of avenues. I started out blogging about things I learned in my development pursuits and building free plugins/themes. I never thought about whether I was making any sort of real change for the overall project. I just found a home with people who liked what I was doing. As I think back upon my early years, the WordPress community has always been welcoming. Everyone has their own onramps into the WordPress ecosystem, and the more pathways we can carve out for other people, the better. Select three essential plugins from the 20 most popular. I almost feel like I am missing out. I have rarely used any plugin from the most popular list on sites I have worked on in the last few years. Akismet is almost a given. WP Tavern uses Jetpack as an essential tool, and I have deployed it for various reasons with some builds. But, I am a bit of an outlier. I typically use stock WordPress with custom plugins. There are not many that I consider essential. In the survey, the list was made up of September 2019’s top 20 most popular plugins. I reached out to Haden Chomphosy to verify if that was the correct date. She confirmed it was and said that the list has not changed substantially since then. For your next website project, which platform would you choose? The available answers to this question, such as Squarespace, Medium, and Wix, seemed geared more toward end-users than professionals or developers. While they represent popular alternatives, I would also like to see how the data might look if we overhaul this question in future surveys. What happens if we split this question between users and developers? For example, are devs also building projects on top of Laravel, Symfony, and other frameworks or technologies outside of WordPress? by Justin Tadlock at December 02, 2021 02:13 AM under WordPress December 01, 2021 HeroPress: How I Became a WordPress Evangelist in About Two Weeks How It Started When I first discovered WordPress, I wasn’t looking to start a web design business, or build websites for other people at all. That happened many years later. I came into the WordPress-i-verse simply because I needed to build a website for myself. Back in 2009, I was a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. I was looking for a way to develop a website to showcase my work. In the past I had always created my sites from scratch, using basic HTML and CSS. This time I needed to get a site up and running in just a week or two. I also needed it to look professional and I didn’t want to learn an entirely new language. I wanted to stay as far away from back-end stuff as possible, so I could focus on the front-end design. I also wanted something low-cost and easy to maintain over time. I know, right? Why didn’t I also ask for a flying car and a Star Trek food generator while I was at it? I knew it was a tall order, but I started hunting the internet anyway. First, I tried out a couple of different CMS tools like Joomla and Drupal, but I found them too complex for what I needed at that moment. Then, going completely in the other direction, I messed around with uber easy builder platforms like Wix and Weebly. It was fun to design and build on those platforms, but I didn’t like the branded options. I couldn’t be sure that even if I did pay for the non-branded option, the platforms would still be around in the years to come (Spoiler alert: they are. Oh well). Then, I stumbled upon WordPress. At first, I thought WordPress would be similar to Drupal so I didn’t get my hopes up. I was completely prepared to keep looking under internet rocks to find a better solution. But like the intrepid little tech monster I am, I went ahead and installed it on my domain. The first thing I noticed was that the dashboard was well-organized and super intuitive. I could quickly get into settings and configure things as I needed. It was also easy to figure out what Themes and Plugins were without expending too much brainpower, which is always very precious in my head. Because my site was brand new and unknown beyond my home office, I had the luxury of building things and tearing them down again without fear of visitors getting confused (what visitors?). I experimented with different plugins and explored several ways of setting up a gallery of my work. I felt a little like a mad scientist. Rather than wireframe a site and build with a solid plan, I allowed myself to create willy-nilly. I think that’s ultimately what got me hooked on WordPress. I didn’t sit down with a step-by-step manual, I sort of dove in and geeked out on messing things up and failing often. I had nothing to lose, which sometimes is the best way to explore a new system. Eventually, I did buckle down and create a more solid layout plan. I also did get into the back-end more than I intended, and it turns out I enjoyed that quite a bit. After a couple of weeks, my site was “ready for prime time” and I started sending out the link to art directors. Periodically – and somewhat randomly – I tweaked things according to what I thought wasn’t working for the visitors I wanted and what might work better. After that first site, I slowly built more WordPress sites for myself, my family, and my friends. Every time I learned something new and every time I solidified my love for WordPress. After 12 years using WordPress I’ve gone back to developing a solid plan before creating a new site. Even though I don’t use traditional wireframing for WordPress sites, I still draw up little layout sketches so at least I know where I’m headed. WordPress is so familiar to me now that I no longer spend time experimenting with basic stuff. However, I still enjoy breaking things now and then just to keep my skills sharp. What I Love About WordPress It’s hard to choose just one reason that I still love building sites in WordPress. From the intuitive dashboard menu to the thousands of plugins that help me (almost infinitely) expand what I can do with my site, there’s just so much to keep me in the ecosystem. There’s the global WordPress community that has taught me – and saved me many times – throughout the years. I can’t count how many posts I’ve combed through in the wordpress.org support forums, looking for that one little nugget of information that would fix something I completely borked on the first try. Now that I know more about what I’m doing, I’ve been able to pay it forward by helping others to do the same. There’s also the vast community of WordPress users on Twitter, many with whom I’ve developed solid friendships over the years. However, if I were tied to a chair and threatened to be devoured by wolverines unless I gave just one answer, it would be that I own my content. Open-source is fascinating to me. Community-developed tech is always my first choice when it comes to software and hardware. It’s not always a practical choice, because I do have to work with other humans around the globe. So my primary working laptop is a Mac. But using and supporting platforms like WordPress is incredibly important to me because I believe the more we do that the more we retain the ability to own what we create. There are always the people who will say, “WordPress is dead.” They were saying it in 2009, yet here we still are. I don’t believe WordPress is dying anytime soon, mostly because of the open-source, community-driven nature of the platform. Is it for everyone? No. There are people I encounter today who I’ll steer towards SquareSpace or Wix. Usually, those are the ones who I get a sense just need things to work without trying very hard and need the kind of tech support you get from a mega-company like Apple or Microsoft. To them, WordPress was probably dead on arrival, but I don’t worry about that. The kind of people who get into using WordPress are the scrappier, “I’m-going-to-figure-this-out-if-it-kills-me” types. Count me in that category. How I Use WordPress Now Over the last couple of years, I’ve expanded my knowledge of PHP, MySQL, and CSS to the point where I can make a WordPress site do pretty much anything I want. I’ve set up WooCommerce stores, photo galleries, membership sites, news feed sites, and business directories. I’ve learned to customize pages using CSS, bending layouts to my will and whimsy. WordPress, like most software, is always evolving. Some people hate those evolutions, others merely tolerate it, but I love it. I admit that I’m not always thrilled with each change as they’re launched – in fact, sometimes I’m downright dumbfounded – but as a whole I feel that change is good. For example, when Gutenberg blocks were introduced, I did everything I could, as long as I could, to keep designing and posting using the classic editor. After taking a break developing websites for a few years, I came back to Gutenberg. This time, I chained myself to my desk and forced myself to learn it completely, instead of skimming around the edges. Now I can’t imagine designing without Gutenberg. I also very recently discovered WP CLI. I’m a bash geek from way back, so when I learned that I could use CLI commands to update my WordPress sites over ssh, I squealed like an 11-year old. I’m currently managing about 20 different sites on one of my host’s servers. I can easily log in remotely using my terminal and update plugins, themes and the core. I’ve found that it’s much faster than clicking around the dashboard and it satisfies some of my command line urges. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve started running a business centered around WordPress. I started taking on clients slowly, mostly managing the backend and host issues, as well as updating plugins and themes. I find that I do much less actual design and development than I do consulting and playing Tech Support. I’ve also found a niche in writing about WordPress for media outlets and other developers, which is very satisfying to both my brain and ego – as well as my bank balance. I’ve spent a lot of time here gushing about WordPress. I do love it, but I also see the flaws and have an extensive list of I wish they would… in my mental notebook. I even – gasp – develop sites without WordPress, even blogs. And though I stray from time to time, I imagine I’ll always come back to WordPress. by DJ Billings at December 01, 2021 04:00 PM WPTavern: Ask the Bartender: Should I Use a Page Builder or Wait for Block Themes? As a non-developer, I honestly don’t know what direction to take my WordPress site anymore. I used to rely on themes and even bought some premium ones, but over time, I’d outgrow them. As an artist myself, I prefer having control over every aspect of my website, from its layout, colors, to its fonts. Thus, I turned to page builders. I tried Elementor Pro, but it was frustrating how it was so difficult to create more advanced layouts without exponentially increasing the DOM size of the page. I had to install several Elementor plugins just to get the job done, but then it also made the site slower. Elementor would also often conflict with Gutenberg block styles since I used the block editor for writing posts. There’s Oxygen, which I’ve heard great reviews of, but its learning curve is too much for me. I also couldn’t get used to themes being completely disabled, as I relied heavily on child themes, knowing a bit of CSS. Now, there’s this whole Gutenberg uprising. FSE is the future, but I cannot adapt at all. Not to mention that there aren’t that many FSE themes out there yet. I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. I don’t know if I should take the theme route, the page builder route, or the Gutenberg route. If I take either of the first two, I fear they may become obsolete or incompatible in future versions of WordPress as Gutenberg is further developed. And if I take the Gutenberg route right now, I don’t really have much options yet. As it is, Gutenberg doesn’t seem to have any built-in ways of displaying custom meta fields like those from ACF. I don’t want to turn to another premium plugin for it, either. How much longer is Gutenberg’s development going to take before ordinary but semi-advanced users like me can actually make use of it? What’s actually the best route to take in WordPress right now, a time when a lot of groundbreaking changes are constantly being rolled out? Isabel Before diving too deep into this, I want to clarify some terminology for readers. Some of the above uses of “Gutenberg” refer to site editing, a feature landing in the January release of WordPress 5.9. However, to use the site editor, users will need to activate a block theme. Currently, there are not many to choose from simply because this technology is under development. You are not alone in wondering when we will move beyond what is a seemingly never-ending transitional phase. We are only now getting to some of the features touted three or four years ago when I was a full-time theme author. I am neck-deep in the development side of all this daily, so I can only imagine what it is like for non-developers. The question is tough to answer without a hyper-specific use case. And, the right solution for one person will not always be ideal for another. There are questions of time, resources, budget, etc. I only like the page-builder route if you are crunched for time and have a business riding on this. In the short term, Elementor and others make a lot of sense for getting something up and running fast while also giving you design freedom, assuming you have gotten past the learning curve. If this is the case, there is nothing wrong with going in this direction. I do not see builders disappearing anytime soon. Finding an ideal theme can take a lot of searching. Typically, I recommend end-users look for a design that matches at least the overall layout that they want. Colors, fonts, and other stylistic pieces of it are generally easy to change. The average theme nowadays has options for essentially “skinning” the website. The second part of this is whether you only want control over the global design or if you want to customize the layout for the inner pages of the site too. For the latter, you need something that supports the current WordPress features. If you are looking for something sooner rather than later, I would go with a theme that supports block editor styles, bundles several custom patterns, and includes a “blank canvas” template for building landing pages. This route gives you something that is forward-looking but does not rely on third-party builders. Many of these theme authors are already preparing for or building block themes for WordPress 5.9 and beyond. I am partial to the Eksell theme by Anders Norén. He also has a block theme named Tove that is more flexible. Eksell theme homepage. Be skeptical of themes that only have block editor styles. I have seen enough that only add some custom CSS for a few blocks and call it a day. It is nothing more than another bullet point for their marketing material. If you can afford to wait a couple of months, you should keep an eye on the upcoming Twenty Twenty-Two theme. It is one of the most beautifully-designed default themes I have seen, but it also has a ton of room for customization. Currently, it has over 60 custom patterns, so that gives you a lot of layout options. I expect this block theme to set the bar that all others must rise to. Twenty Twenty-Two color and font variations. There is one area where page builders excel in comparison to WordPress at the moment. And that is with horizontal layouts. When creating flexible columns or grids for all screen sizes, the block editor falls short. While the block system’s tools have improved, this gap will not close for a while. I mentioned patterns being one of the primary components more than once. If a theme offers a solid set of block patterns that focus on layout variations, piecing together a site can sometimes be as easy as pointing and clicking the mouse. If you need to do some heavy work with layout, there are several block-based grid plugins. When I have needed such a tool, I have almost exclusively relied on the Layout Grid Block by Automattic. It performs this one job and does it well. The plugin bridges the gap between page builders and the block editor when coupled with a well-designed theme. Everything comes down to timing. You don’t want to build your site on top of one system only to recreate the entire thing from scratch six months from now. For that reason alone, I would forego page builders altogether, except where time is limited. Give block themes like the upcoming Twenty Twenty-Two some time to come into their own. by Justin Tadlock at December 01, 2021 12:12 AM under gutenberg November 30, 2021 WordPress.org blog: WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 is now available for testing! This version of the WordPress software is under development. You don’t want to run this version on a production site. Instead, it is recommended that you run this on a test site. This will allow you to test out the new version. You can test the WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 in three ways: Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). Option 2: Direct download the beta version here (zip). Option 3: Use WP-CLI to test: wp core update --version=5.9-beta1. Do not use this option if your filesystem is case-insensitive. The current target for the final release is January 25, 2022, which is just eight weeks away. Your help testing this version is vital to make sure the release is as good as it can be. Check the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.9-related developer notes in the coming weeks which will break down all upcoming changes in greater detail. How You Can Help – Testing! Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing the release in the beta stage. It is also a great way to contribute. If you’ve never tested a beta release before, this detailed guide will help walk you through what and how to test. If you think you’ve found a bug, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs. To see every feature in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 5.8, check out the What’s New In Gutenberg posts for 10.8, 10.9, 11.0, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, 11.5, 11.6, 11.7, 11.8, and 11.9. Beyond the noted changes, which include 580 enhancements and nearly 450 bug fixes, contributors have fixed 297 tickets for WordPress 5.9, including 110 new features and enhancements. More fixes are on the way. Happy testing! Want to know what’s new in version 5.9? Read on for some highlights. Full Site Editing The Styles Interface Combine all the features that went live in 5.8 with those making their entrance in 5.9, and you get Full Site Editing. Formerly known as Global Styles, the Styles Interface lets you interact directly with your blocks and elements right in the WordPress Admin. From typography to color palettes, this cohesive design interface means a design change—even a dramatic one—can happen without a theme switch. No code needed. Theme.json Introduced in WordPress 5.8, theme.json has been improved to enable features and default styles for your site and its blocks. With 5.9, theme.json can support child themes and the duotone treatment. Coordinate layers of style with theme.json, taking the weight off of your theme’s required CSS. Other features supported by theme.json include: Border: color, style, and width augment the border-radius property that landed in 5.8. Flex layouts: Block Gap support, courtesy of spacing.blockGap. Typography: font families, font style, font weight, text decoration, and text transform. Images: Duotones. A New Navigation Block Welcome to the most intuitive way to build navigation: the Navigation Block. Here are the features that need testing the most: Responsive menu options you can turn off, have always on, or opt to use only for small screens. Built-in keyboard accessibility. For accessibility, for speed, or both. Add extra blocks like Search and Site Icon blocks (and customize them to your liking). Submenu items with styling options. Horizontal or vertical alignment. Reusable navigation? Even across themes? Yes. Because the Navigation Block you build gets saved as a custom post type. A Better Gallery Block What if you could treat single images in your Gallery Block the same way you treat the Image Block? Now you can. Make every image in your gallery different from the next, with inline cropping or a duotone and change layouts with the ease of drag and drop. With the improved gallery block, every image is its own Image block. One thing to note: Have you built a plugin or theme on the Gallery Block functionality? Be sure to review this Dev Note, which details what you need to do for compatibility. Focused Template Part Mode Building template parts can take a level of focus all its own because you’re making decisions for the entire site. So WordPress 5.9 adds a focus mode that shows you only the part you’re working on right now (and you can get back to the regular view with a keystroke). Block Pattern Directory The Pattern Directory offers a range of prebuilt block patterns, from a couple of blocks that show an image and text, to an entire page layout with columns and sections. Since the 5.8 release, the directory has become a hub for exploratory UI and patterns, taking submissions and offering them to the community. So now, your creation can help other people build out their perfect site. Twenty Twenty-Two Default Theme A whole new way of building WordPress themes. WordPress 5.9 introduces features that make Full Site Editing possible, including the first default block theme. Using minimal CSS, theme styles reside in theme.json so that you can configure them in the Styles interface of the WordPress Admin. Make this theme take on its own personality site-wide, with a wide array of color schemes, type combinations, page templates, premade components (forms), and image treatments to choose from. More Improvements and Updates Do you love to blog? New tweaks to the publishing flow let you add new posts just seconds after hitting Publish on your latest post. List View lets you drag and drop content as easily as you could always cruise through it – and collapse entire sections – so you can concentrate on a task or get the bigger picture. The Buttons and Social icons blocks now absorb and display their parent block’s toolbar controls. Choose your language on the login screen. More performance improvements (i.e., speed). Props to @chanthaboune, @priethor, @psykro, @annezazu, @webcommsat, @marybaum, @hellofromtonya, @davidbaumwald, and @rmartinezduque for their research and copy. by Chloe Bringmann at November 30, 2021 11:35 PM under Releases WordPress.org blog: People of WordPress: Devin Maeztri In this series, we share some of the inspiring stories of how WordPress and its global network of contributors can change people’s lives for the better. This month we feature a translator and campaigner who uses WordPress to highlight good causes and helps people in her area benefit from the open source platform. Going to a WordCamp can be a life-changing experience, as Devin Maeztri discovered. Every event she attends is a further step on a journey of discovering the WordPress community and its many opportunities. “It is not that hard to fall for WordPress if you have a chance to experience WordPress. For me, it took a WordCamp.” Devin Maeztri Devin’s first experience with camps came when she volunteered impromptu at an Indonesian event, WordCamp Denpasar, Bali in 2016. Here, she made a profound discovery: “WordCamps can bring people who will give back to the community, even if they don’t get anything from WordPress directly.” With every WordCamp after that first experience, she became more interested in WordPress and the community. Over time, Devin found she wanted to be part of WordPress events more often. She became a regular at Meetups in Ubud and Jakarta, joining as a co-organizer at WordCamp Jakarta in 2017 and 2019. Later, she took on the role of co-organizer for Meetups in Jakarta and Ubud. Smitten by what WordCamps can offer and how they can bring people together across national borders, she joined the organizing team for WordCamp Asia 2020. Sadly, this event was to become the first major WordPress event to be cancelled in the COVID-19 pandemic. Naturally, Devin hopes WordCamp Asia will happen someday very soon. Beyond the expected WordPress learning and sharing that event will promote, she believes its very scale will showcase how WordCamps add international tourism and cultural understanding everywhere they take place. WordCamp Asia 2020 Organizers at WordCamp Europe 2019. Devin is pictured in the front row, second from left. Photo Credit: Abha Thakor Showing how WordPress can be used locally After experiencing several events, Devin had questions: “At WordCamps and Meetups, you hear stories about how WordPress powers the web. How it changes the lives of so many people, how it helps dreams come true. It made me think, considering WordPress is that powerful, why are there not even more people in Indonesia using websites, and more using WordPress? Why aren’t more talented Indonesian WordPress users, developers, designers, and business owners taking part in WordPress.org projects? Language, for me, was the main answer.” The solution Devin felt was to make WordPress available in the main local language. She said: “I believe, the more content translated into Indonesian, the more Indonesian WordPress users see WordPress as more than just a blogging platform or a content management system. They will realize it’s a huge open source community that works together to make the web a better place. The more plugins and themes translated, the easier the work of the developer and designer will be. The more people see how WordPress can enhance their life, the better the ecosystem for business owners becomes.” Encouraging others to translate WordPress After talking with others about how WordPress could be even more useful in Indonesia, Devin felt she had to make a personal commitment to reviving the polyglot project in Indonesia. With another volunteer contributor and through promotion, the local polyglot team got bigger and the interest in translation grew. She also took on the responsibility of a General Translation Editor for the language. Through the efforts of Devin and the other translation editors, Indonesia took part in WordPress Translation Day in 2020, and in 2021 held sprints and learning sessions spanning the whole 30 days of the event. Her enthusiasm and dedication to helping others translate WordPress locally and promoting the global community were recognized in the Polyglot Appreciation Nominations for 2021. Helping to give access to more diverse audiences Through her involvement in translation, Devin noticed there were not many women involved in the WordPress community in Indonesia. Often, she found herself the only woman at an event. So, along with a couple of community members, she started Perempuan WordPress, a local initiative. This group is open for everyone to join, but prioritizes women as event speakers. Devin has gone on to support the work of the Diversity Speaker Training group in the Community Team, translating materials and promoting initiatives in Indonesia. She is keen to encourage others to get involved with this initiative which helps increase the diversity of presenters at Meetups and WordCamps. Organizing at WordCamp Jakarta 2019 In her professional roles, Devin is an advocate for WordPress as a tool for people with a wide variety of skill sets. She does not code, but uses the platform extensively for her projects. In 2014, she signed up for a free account on WordPress.com to keep and share notes about what she saw or was thinking about as she commuted on public transport to work. This site did not turn into a blog, but instead introduced her to other opportunities and the vast capabilities of the platform. WordPress can support your skills and passions With a background in environmental activism, Devin has worked for international development organizations on everything from policymaking to campaigning. Behind the desk, she worked with policymakers and organized conferences and meetings. That meant doing a lot of writing and translating and working with people on the ground who were impacted by the policies. “My work on the ground usually involved researching, movement building and community empowerment,” she noted. Her work with events inspired Devin to get involved in WordCamps and Meetups and share her energy for making things happen. As in her professional work, she felt WordPress was an opportunity to work and share with people about something that can make a positive impact on someone else’s life. “For me, everything comes from the heart. I do things that I feel so strongly about. Things that call me, and things that I am good at but still giving me room to learn and become better at. WordPress can be the perfect place for this.” While she was between jobs, Devin was encouraged to volunteer at WordCamp Denpasar 2016. With some help, she created an online CV. She also learned to manage a WordPress site, navigate the wp-admin, and make the content appeal to potential employers. She eventually got a job as a campaigner to build a movement online and offline. The brainchild of many university friends in America, who used digital campaigns to go global, the campaign used WordPress. Devin worked alongside a digital campaigner and helped shape the content, the call to action, and the user experience. She also had to use the wp-admin to make some amendments. As a global movement, it developed its resources in English, so she also reviewed the work of the translators she worked with. Devin’s cat became a regular on social media posts about #WPTranslationDay 2021 She left her job as a campaigner at the end of 2018 to concentrate on freelancing – and to spend more of her free time contributing to the WordPress community. She also took up the initiative to help street cats in Jakarta. Devin said: “So, I am busy helping these cats but also learning how to fundraise using a website. I’m learning to use online forms, set up a payment service provider, work on SEO, and do other new things I need to learn to grow my initiative. I do have the privilege to learn directly from a personal guru. The same person who convinced me to volunteer at WordCamp Denpasar, and who I married in 2018.” WordPress gives everyone a chance to learn Devin was so enthused by being a contributor for WordPress, she took part in the video shorts following the Translation Day events. Devin talks about translating in this short video (opens in a new tab on YouTube) She is also active in other Contributor Teams and decided to become a Community Team Deputy to support meetups in new cities across Indonesia and perhaps future WordCamps. She said: “One of the things that I like about WordPress is that it is very welcoming and open to people like me, who don’t code at all. At the same time, it shows me a different way of looking at the world.” Devin believes in the power of WordPress to give ‘everyone a chance to learn new things’ and allows her to contribute and share her knowledge and experience. “By contributing, I hope to make a difference in someone’s life. I hope they feel the benefit of using WordPress and want to give back to create a healthier WordPress community.” Contributors Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) and Mary Baum (@marybaum) for the interviews and writing this feature, and to Devin Maeztri (@devinmaeztri) for sharing her story. Thanks to Meher Bala (@meher) for work on the images, and to Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann) and Collieth Clarke (@callye) for proofing. Thanks to Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support for the series. This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. #HeroPress #ContributorStory by webcommsat AbhaNonStopNewsUK at November 30, 2021 10:21 PM under Polyglot Contributor WPTavern: ACF Solicits Lifetime License Holders for Contributions, Urging Them to Purchase Annual Subscriptions The Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) marketing team at Delicious Brains kicked up a sandstorm over the weekend after it emailed its lifetime license holders, asking them to consider signing up for a discounted subscription. Despite Delicious Brains’ explicit promise that they would never be required to pay for ACF updates in the future, the sales email insinuates that the development team is in need of appreciation in the form of annual paid subscriptions: I know you already have a lifetime license for ACF Pro, but I’m hoping you’ll consider signing up for a discounted subscription to support our ongoing work in continuing to improve Advanced Custom Fields. We’ve shipped two major releases (5.10 and 5.11) since we took over development of the plugin from Elliot in June, including a full-featured REST API! If you’re a fan of the work we’ve done so far, nothing will show our developers that you appreciate them more than signing up for an ACF Pro subscription, especially since you already have a lifetime license. This bewildering pitch to lifetime license holders landed in email boxes on the Friday after Thanksgiving in the US. It drew more attention after Paul Charlton, creator of WPTuts, tweeted a screenshot of the email, saying it left “a really bad taste” in his mouth. Charlton also recorded a reaction video that succinctly articulates why the email was so irksome to many lifetime license customers. He suggested Delicious Brains instead take the approach of offering a discount on their other subscription products. Am I the only one who thinks this is bad form trying to guilt your existing Lifetime owners into paying for a subscription? This type of thing leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, especially after the issues surrounding honouring the LTD in the first place! @wp_acf pic.twitter.com/ZqNLcMjoAk — WPTuts (@WPTutz) November 26, 2021 “If you’re going to broach the topic of asking lifetime subscribers to suddenly pay for $250/year for the same product, I would just think that something, anything, could be offered,” one lifetime license holder said. Some lifetime license holders found the email pitch was especially perplexing after the confusing messaging when Delicious Brains acquired ACF. A hasty response to a customer inquiry caused lifetime license holders to question if the company would continue honoring the agreement after the acquisition. “Lifetime license holders will get all ACF Pro software updates forever,” Delicious Brains founder and CEO Brad Touesnard said at the time. “They won’t be required to pay for version 6.0 or any other major or minor releases in the future. They signed up for updates for life, so we’ll continue to deliver on that promise forever.” Some lifetime license holders tried to read between the lines of the recent sales emails and wondered if Delicious Brains was signaling an end to its commitment. “What happened to our lifetime licenses being honored and we would get full and continued updates for life?” Brian J McCracken said in response to the email. “They haven’t said they aren’t doing that but talk about skirting the intention with this guilt trip.” Others are also skeptical, speculating that Delicious Brains may repurpose the code for a new product so they can “kill off the LTD’s once and for all.” “I honestly believe they WANT the LTD owners to leave,” WordPress developer Wendell Harness said. “Think about it — they won’t have to support us anymore. An email like this may garner a few buy-ins while also wiping away a bunch of people they no longer want to support. It’s brilliant. Rude, but still brilliant.” Those on the other side of the argument disagree with the notion that lifetime license holders should expect updates indefinitely. “You paid a hundred bucks or so 5 years ago and you expect a company to keep adding value to your business that could have been generating hundred of thousands of dollars in revenue,” 10up WordPress engineer Clayton Collie said in response to critics of the email. “They could abandon the project. How would you feel about that?” After the sales email created new confusion on the status of lifetime licenses, ACF tweeted to reaffirm their commitment to honor them, but many recipients had already formed their own conclusions about the intent of the email. Not going to lie, the email was gross and unnecessary. If you don’t want to make your customers unhappy maybe doing a better job at hiding your disdain for lifetime license holders https://t.co/UilZa40pU2 — Cameron Jones 👨‍👦 (@cameronjonesweb) November 29, 2021 “We’ve heard from many lifetime customers who are happy with the work we’ve already been doing to improve ACF and glad to contribute by subscribing,” Touesnard said in response to customers who suggested the company offer something in return for signing up to a new annual subscription. “If you don’t feel the way they do, that’s fine, you aren’t required to subscribe.” The heated conversations have renewed the controversial topic of selling lifetime licenses in the WordPress product space. Few have done this successfully long term, and it gets trickier when a company is acquired. “I see both sides for this – as someone who bought a lifetime ACF license 7 years ago and also a plugin dev,” Amber Hinds said. “Really lifetime licenses should be offered with extreme caution.” In many cases, when early adopters purchase a lifetime license, they are usually paying much more than the regular license, for an unproven product that isn’t guaranteed a future. This gives newer products the money they need to build momentum but also offers something in return. It’s a transaction where each participant extracts some value and assumes a share of the risk. In this particular scenario, ACF appears to be mistaking its relationship with lifetime license holders as something more akin to investors or donors. Customers who purchase lifetime licenses rarely share those same motivations. It’s quite unusual for a Black Friday sales email to ask for contributions for a product consumers have already paid for long ago. This unorthodox sales approach and timing was off-putting to many of the recipients. Was it worth upsetting a slew of customers who are not bringing ACF any money for the rest of its life as a product? Only the Delicious Brains team knows how successful the campaign has been so far. When asked if the email is generating new signups from lifetime license customers, Touesnard said the developer who pulls that report was not currently available. “Does a company that spans across five very popular products require a donation approach, to keep a product like ACF, afloat?” WordPress business podcaster Matt Medeiros said in a post titled “WordPress, the multi-billion dollar software industry that has us begging for money.” “If so, we better start getting better at pricing and voting with our dollars,” he said. “Either way, expecting lifetime updates for one price, coupled with a part-time donation strategy, is bad for both the consumer and the business. I don’t see any other major markets operating this way.” by Sarah Gooding at November 30, 2021 09:37 PM under acf November 29, 2021 WPTavern: Gutenberg 12.0 Focuses on Cleanup and Minor Enhancements Last week, contributors to the Gutenberg plugin wrapped up the version 12.0 release just ahead of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Most work is being pushed toward the upcoming WordPress 5.9 release, which has been postponed to January 25. As a result, Gutenberg 12.0 has fewer bells and whistles and more bug fixes and maintenance. However, the latest update has a handful of enhancements. The most notable features are an overhaul of block styles previews, grouped paragraph typography options, and block icons in the global styles sidebar. The site editor also has a new welcome guide, which should ship with WordPress 5.9 and introduce users to the new tool. Theme authors can now opt-out of the core color palette and gradients. There is still a bug where this does not currently work for the site editor. Block Styles Previews Hovering a block style to see its preview. For once in the last few years, the editor sidebar feels kind of clean and organized. When using a theme with multiple block styles, the style previews have been nothing short of an annoyance. The tab that held them took up a lot of space by presenting an entire demo of every option. In the latest Gutenberg plugin release, the previews have been replaced with text-based buttons, emphasizing the style names. Users can still see what individual block styles look like by hovering over each one or focusing on it with a keyboard. The downside to this new experience is that longer block-style names can sometimes get cut off. For example, the “Portfolio: Tilt Left” and “Polaroid: Tilt Right” options in my custom theme both read “Portfolio: Ti…” I will have to rethink their names, but that is a small price to pay for the cleaner interface. Paragraph Drop Cap Control Moved Drop cap control now under Typography tab. It seems this release has been one for fixing those irritating issues with the user experience. The option for adding a drop cap to the Paragraph block now rests alongside similar controls under the Typography block options tab. Formerly, users had to find it under a separate Text Settings tab, which only held the drop cap option. I am sure I have mentioned this being a poor user experience on a few occasions as someone who often reaches for the control. I, for one, am a happy camper with this change. Icons Shown in the Blocks List Blocks now show their icons. After the Gutenberg 11.7 release, one of my suggestions was to add icons to the global styles blocks list. Previously, it was a vertical scrollable area with dozens of block names, making it hard to find something specific to customize. Whether Nik Tsekouras, who wrote the patch for this change, happened to read that Tavern post or saw the same issue with his own experience, I am grateful that he coded a solution. Finding a block is now much faster because I can just scan the list for a recognizable icon. Themes Can Opt Into All Appearance Settings Note: This was incorrectly tagged as part of 12.0 but did not make it into the release. However, the code should be merged in the trunk branch of the Gutenberg repository. For any theme author who has been working with theme.json, you know how unruly the file can get when enabling or disabling specific settings. A new flag allows themes to opt into support of all appearance-related options at once. An example theme.json file would look like the following: { "version": 2, "settings": { "appearanceTools": true } } Setting the appearanceTools flag to true enables support for all border, color, spacing, and typography options. This should cut back on unnecessary JSON code, especially for themers who are opting into almost everything. Theme authors can still disable specific features individually. Depending on the theme author’s point of view, the potential up or downside to this new flag is that it will also enable support for other appearance-related features in the future. It would allow users to access new features before their themes officially support them. On the flip-side, theme authors may want more control or to run tests before enabling something new. by Justin Tadlock at November 29, 2021 11:15 PM under gutenberg WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 21: All Things Block Themes! In episode 21 of the WordPress Briefing, Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, talks all things block themes with developers and theme specialists Maggie Cabrera and Jeff Ong. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Beatriz Fialho Production: Chloé Bringmann Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod References 5.9 Beta 1 Delay Announcement 5.9 Revised Release Schedule WordCamp Sevilla 2021 Charitable Giving: WordPress Foundation Big Orange Heart HeroPress (Update: This organization is not a non-profit.) Transcript Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. See, here we go! Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:40 Well, today, folks, in our podcast, I am joined by a couple of special guests. I know it’s been a bit since I’ve had a guest, so I’m very excited to introduce you to who I have with me today. Today, I have Maggie Cabrera and Jeff Ong. They both are working on themes, and especially the future of themes as we move into this low code, no code block based experience of editing things in WordPress. And there have been so many questions lately about what does the landscape of being a theme developer turns into once we move fully into this excellent promise of user empowerment for Gutenberg? I figured who best to come and talk to us about that than these two. So welcome, Maggie. Welcome, Jeff. I’m really excited to have this conversation with you today. Jeff Ong 01:39 Thank you for having us. Excited to be here. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:45 I’m just gonna hop right in, and we will see what happens. The first thing that I want to chat about, I hear so many questions and so much discussion about patterns in a lot of different places. Like obviously, the work that I helped to steward the most is around like the Block Pattern directory and various other user-facing tools. And so I have never really been able to give a really solid answer about like patterns and how they work inside themes. And so I wondered if you all had anything that you could offer to our listeners to help clarify what is the power of patterns inside themes in the future? Implementation of themes? Jeff Ong 02:34 I can try to start unless, Maggie? Okay. Well, if you take a look at what I’ve been doing for the last couple of months working on Twenty Twenty-Two. And if you look at that theme, it’s mostly just the collection of patterns. Patterns. As you know, if you read the description, the theme, it’s designed to be the most flexible and kind of like flexible theme ever, dare I say ever created. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 03:04 I think you can dare to say it. Jeff Ong 03:03 And, you know, I think a huge part of that is because of the Full Site Editing being launched, introduced in 5.9. And also that theme itself ships with all of these patterns in it that work with the overall design, but really can be configured to your own kind of unique liking and kind of taste and ultimately, what you want to accomplish, whether that’s I want to make a portfolio, I want to make, you know, a single-page website promoting like my podcast, or there are patterns for that kind of shipping with the theme. And they’ve all been kind of designed and tailored to work with the typography choices at a baseline level with the color choices at a baseline level, but can very easily be tweaked. And you can kind of rely on them to work with the editor. And I guess, kind of zooming out for a little bit, not just about Twenty-Twenty Two. Jeff Ong 04:04 But like patterns as this idea that a theme, hopefully, what it is, it’s a collection of different design options or layout options that are ultimately presented as patterns to the user, the patterns are just a really easy way to basically say “I want you this layout, like two columns of text or with like some images here.” Basically, a theme becomes a way of packaging the patterns together in a way that feels like a coherent piece of a coherent website. And I think that’s a pretty powerful idea. I know that the patterns directory is also opening up making those patterns pretty widely available. But I think a theme you could think of as like a curation of those patterns in a way that makes sense. And I think Twenty-Twenty Two is a really good example. I mean, I’m biased. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:03 I also think it’s a good example. Maggie, did you have anything that you wanted to add to that? Maggie Cabrera 05:08 Yeah, What I really like about patterns is how it empowers the user, even if they don’t really have like a deep knowledge of code, or they’re not used to the more complex blocks. When the theme developer gives you this pattern about using the query block, for example, it lays out your posts in a very compelling manner. And you can edit it if you want it or just use it out of the box. And you have this dynamic blog that it’s, like, such a big important part of your website. Like if you want to have a page where you have, you have maybe a podcast website, and you want to showcase your podcasts differently than your regular blog posts. So you can use a different gray pattern for that. And it’s like, really, really easy to use, even if you’re not familiar with it. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:07 One of the things that I have found compelling about this new version of themes and kind of the way that themes are planning to look in the future; it’s going to be like a super throwback, so everyone get ready for me to sound old, my guests and my listeners alike. It reminds me of my original days of blogging on the web. I was not a developer and even though I had this really short stint of working with JavaScript in my career, at some point. Like no one actually would ever look to me and be like, that one is excellent at design and fixing everything with code, like I was just killer at searching for the right pieces of code, right. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:57 And so I remember sitting there on Zynga, which is, of course, now powered by WordPress, I absolutely just went out and found bundles of code that are now what we would consider themes and modified the small pieces that I needed to change in order to like really suit what I wanted to have happen on the site at the time. And they’re like, I knew I could break it all. Really easily. But also, it was, it was not scary to think about breaking it. Like it was clear how I could fix it if I really broke it. The content, like what I had written, was separate from everything to do with the way that it was looking. And so like, I wouldn’t destroy all of my work, just because I didn’t put a semicolon in the right place, or whatever it was in that moment. And so like, this future of themes really reminds me of this a lot where someone has curated how it can look how it should look. And you can just like add in modular pieces that will augment what was already intended, but still kind of work. And if it’s not gonna work, it’s kind of easy to fix too. So like, I’m excited. That was a really exciting time in my learning of the web and certainly was formative in my career, as we all now see. And so yeah, I think that’s really exciting. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 08:20 I did have actually another question that this conversation has kind of brought up for me. I have, obviously just use the term modular, which no one has ever used in the context of themes for WordPress. And I know that there is a lot there are a lot of terms kind of wandering around about themes right now. And especially as we’re moving into what themes can look like in the future. There was block based theme as a term for a while. And now it’s block themes. There was like this floating around the term, universal themes. And now we’re looking at just like block themes forever. And so I wondered if y’all could give us a just like a clear understanding of these terms that had been being used and maybe are going out of fashion? Like, are they important for us to keep knowing? Jeff Ong 09:11 So yes, the history of terms around themes. And obviously, even my knowledge only goes back so far. But it was around when we started doing the block based themes meeting. And trying to I think that’s where that term kind of came from is like, oh, let’s, let’s start talking about this idea that themes can be completely made up out of blocks. And what does that mean? Jeff Ong 09:33 I think over time, it wasn’t just block themes, because, you know, previously, there were themes and even default themes that used and took into account the fact that blocks existed. So there was some confusion there. Enough time has gone on where we focus on this idea that themes whose templates are ultimately made out of blocks are block themes. And to me, it’s kind of as simple as that. Its themes that supply a set of templates that previously in the past were a collection of PHP and various template tags and whatnot is all transitioned to themes made up including other blocks, as well as themes that supply styles through theme.json configuration instead of supplying it in raw CSS. To me this idea is really crystallizing around like this is a block theme, one that is really, at its core, supplying a set of templates, and styles through a language that WordPress understands natively, and can allow it to be configured and customized in a really powerful way. And then maybe someday in the future, they’ll just be called themes again. If we do a good enough they will just be called themes. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 10:57 I’m gonna, I’m gonna take us into a philosophical area now that you’ve just put us in there. You said, someday they’ll be called Themes. Again, I’ve talked about this on this podcast a few times. And for anyone who’s worked with me for any length of time, like you all probably heard this from me as well. But like, adjectives are so frequently the realm of things that are not what you expect, right? Because like you have coffee, and then decaf coffee, no one’s like caffeinated coffee, because that’s what you expect out of it. And so when you’re like themes, and block themes, it makes it look like block themes are secondary, which at the moment, they are, ish. But in the future, I think you’re probably right, there will be a time when the modifier isn’t necessary anymore because it will be hopefully a much better way for people to kind of change the way that their themes work and make it more usable for users and people who are, you know, having to manage their own site without necessarily wanting to or being able to, like, have a Maggie in the room to fix everything that they break. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 12:08 Maggie is nowhere near me. And so she’s never been in the room when I’ve broken anything. But I believe that Maggie on one occasion, at least, has come in and helped me fix something that I definitely broke. I’m an excellent breaker of WordPress things. Maggie, did you have anything you wanted to add to that question? 12:29 Yeah, I guess, maybe clarify a bit, what universal themes are because, yeah, maybe some people have heard about the term but they don’t really know what they are. And maybe just clarify that. The term was born when developing block themes wasn’t something that you could actually do for production websites like you could build them to test some experiments, but they weren’t really ready for users to use. So universal themes want to grasp the power of love themes while still being ready for users. So the way they do it is they are block based, like we used to call them in the sense that the templates are made of blocks. But they are also able to be customized using the customizer, which is the old way of customizing themes, instead of using the site editor. So they can have a balance between two worlds between the worlds of classic themes and block themes. But they are, at heart, a temporary concept. They are bound to be blocked themes in the future, but with maybe a foot in the past, where they can actually serve users who are not ready for full-on site editor. But they are bound to be full block themes in the future. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 14:00 There’s a really interesting concept in there. So universal themes, it sounds like are basically kind of like an on-ramp for people who are not really ready to fully commit to this for any number of reasons. Like we never want to say that we know the reason that people would be a little bit shy to get started with this. But like it’s kind of like an on-ramp, it’s a safe way to get back to something that they do know, in the event that what they don’t know, really hinders their progress makes it hard for them to get the work done. Maggie Cabrera 14:31 I think I wouldn’t say that they are for people shyer to get into new stuff rather than developers who want to embrace the new stuff before it’s even really ready. They really want to embrace the power of the blocks instead of doing things the old way. But even if it’s not fully ready. Jeff Ong 14:54 They still need to support the old way of doing things. Maggie Cabrera 14:58 Like being backward compatible and being ready for any kind of user. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 15:05 So mostly for developers, everyone who heard me just talking about how it was a great thing for users, ignore it. Maggie Cabrera 15:12 It’s also good for users; If they feel secure in using the customizer. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 15:20 Well, I think that there’s something important here that we certainly learned with the adoption of Gutenberg in 5.0. Right, which is that there is certainly one method of helping people to adopt things, which is to go like the art of war style, and kind of smash their rice pots and burn all their boats, like, that’s one way. Which works for a lot of companies in the world, I’m sure. But WordPress has always had kind of a commitment, not even kind of, has always had a commitment to backward compatibility. And like, we know that a lot of the work on Gutenberg is going to represent some breaking changes around the around workflows and around the user experience the interface, especially like, we know that. But the opportunity to like have a thing that gives you an early taste of what’s coming but also the ability to keep kind of working in your old space where you need to, I think it’s an excellent way to bring people forward into the future of things, I have never been a fan of the just like cut off all avenues and hope that they stay with your method because of course, like you can’t cut off all the methods. You can’t cut off all the ways people can get away from you. And even if we could, it wouldn’t be in line with how WordPress hopes to kind of help people through some tough stuff like making your first website is hard. If you are doing it as part of, an overall campaign that’s supposed to bring in leads for you or generate revenue like you don’t want to necessarily play with that in a way that could break things and be risky for you in the long term. So I think all the tools that we offer to help people kind of move forward with the technology move forward with the CMS as it’s moving forward, I think it’s really smart. And so universal themes are one of those things, but also not around to stay. As we move into non modified themes, just the word themes that happen to be based in blocks. If I’ve confused anyone, please email me at wpbriefing@wordpress.org. And tell me how I confused you. And I will do a follow-up to unconfuse everyone. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 17:40 So speaking of the way that we help people kind of move forward with WordPress and with the technology. So much has been done in the CMS in the past 12 months in the past 18 months to be able to move themes into this same future as the rest of the editor. Right. So like, for folks who have not been listening to me for the last five years, you may not know this. So I’m going to tell everybody now, like one of the pain points that Gutenberg overall is solving is the fact that you for a long time had to learn five different editing interfaces to get one thing done in WordPress, right. And so like the advent of blocks and moving it into more and more spaces in the CMS is intended to really flatten the editing experience by making the type of user interaction the type of workflow really similar across all of the editing interfaces in the CMS. And so themes are a natural extension of that, where we can take similar user patterns and workflows, and work them out into themes. So over the last 12 months or so probably a little bit more, there’s been a lot of work on the CMS to move us forward in that that is now enabling the work that we want to be able to do to move things forward ahead. And so, I mean, this is probably our last question. Is there anything that you all want to offer to people who maybe saw themes early on or saw Gutenberg early on and felt like this is just not for me, in that in that context of like, how far it’s moved ahead in the past 12 months or so. Jeff Ong 19:23 So you’re asking like, what in the last 12 months has maybe like really surprised me or like sticks out to me as something that like, Wow, look how far we’ve come? Josepha Haden Chomphosy 19:36 Yeah, yeah. So like, if you’re looking at what is the one thing that you saw in the last 12 months, that changed in the CMS that really enabled something wonderful for themes or from the other side of it. Like if someone had looked at themes or WordPress 18 months ago, and now they’re looking at it and seeing this new and different way to do things with the look and feel of their site, like what is one thing that they should be aware of? On either side of that question, Maggie Cabrera 20:05 I think there’s more than one thing that has really evolved through this last year, year and a half. Like the maturity of some of the blocks is astounding now, like navigation blog, for example, was really bare-bones at the start and now it’s full potential, and it’s really looking really great. I would say the same thing about those days or the features on fire, like how basic it was at the start, was full potential. But now it’s really, really mature in terms of how much you can do with it. Like, I think the example, the perfect example of that is the work that Kjell [Reigstad] has done on Twenty-Twenty Two with the alternative theme.json files, where just changing that file basically feels like a new theme, with just the configuration and the styles. And without writing any CSS without changing any templates. It’s really, really amazing how that can turn into a reality. And it’s so easy for users to tinker with that if they want to. And it’s much easier than having to delve deep into CSS and changing everything in like 2000 lines of code. Jeff Ong 21:23 Yeah, I probably would echo most of that. What the thing that astounds me is global styles and how the UI can be shipping a theme or default theme with basically like, 20 lines of CSS, and have it be one of them. A beautiful, beautiful, like crisp and sharp, like, experience. It’s super fast. And it’s like, what this is a theme, you know, I thought a theme was supposed to supply all the styles like no, like, it’s just yeah. And workers do for you. Exactly. And like that. That’s pretty amazing to think in the last 12 months, we can go from, you know, shipping 1000s of lines of CSS to you none, it’s like, Wow, pretty cool. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 22:10 Well, my friends, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a really interesting conversation. I hope that all y’all out listening. Also find it interesting. As I mentioned, if you have any follow-up questions, absolutely. Send them to me via email. And I collect all of my questions that I get through the year for answering at the end of the year, mostly because I don’t get lots of questions that people want to be answered on this. Everyone just asked me their questions on Twitter and in Slack, which is fine as well. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 22:41 So, Maggie, Jeff, thank you both for joining me. And I’m sure that we’ll talk to you all again soon. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 22:56 That brings us now to our small list of big things. In the last episode, I got all excited about being in the beta phase. But today, I’m rolling that back a little bit. As part of our usual open source processes, a group of contributors did a deep dive review on the WordPress 5.9 release and found a workflow that needed some refinement. So we are delaying the beta. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 23:19 Since we are in the midst of a major commerce slash/sales season, and of course, a lengthy holiday season, that delay also means that it makes sense to delay WordPress 5.9 final release a little as well. And so we are delaying that all the way into 2022 to January 25. For me, the trade-off works really well there. Every decision that we make in open source, of course, has some balance to it. It’s great for these aspects, it is less great for these aspects over here. But for myself, the opportunity to make sure that we have a really excellent experience for our users and also an opportunity to kind of avoid all of the chaos and hustle and bustle of the end of the year. Really, it seemed like a no-brainer for me. So in case you want to learn a little bit more about why we made the decision and get some insight into the actual milestones and where they have moved now, I’ll include some posts in the show notes below in case you want to read more and of course, if you have any additional questions you can always ask. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 24:33 The second small list of big things is that the first back to people WordCamp. I don’t think that’s what we’re calling it. Our first back to people WordCamp is happening in a couple of weeks actually. WordCamp Sevilla is happening in person on December 11. And I’m so excited I wish I were local, but I’m not so if you are local stop by their website and pick up your ticket. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 24:55 And the third thing on our smallest a big things is that it is, of course, charitable giving season. I don’t know if you do your charitable giving at the end of the year or if that’s even part of your general ways of giving back. But I can think of two or three charitable organizations inside the WordPress ecosystem. There’s of course the WordPress Foundation, but also Big Orange Heart and HeroPress. If there are others out there, I certainly do want to know about them. WordPress Foundation also does additional giving on behalf of just like the open web and open source as a whole. So if you’re the sort of person who does their charitable giving at the end of the year, just a reminder that you have some options inside the WordPress ecosystem if you were trying to figure out some new places to donate to in 2021. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 25:42 And that is your small list of big things. Thank you so much for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. Thank you again to our special guests, Maggie and Jeff. I’m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. by Chloe Bringmann at November 29, 2021 12:07 PM November 27, 2021 Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #56 – Gutenberg 12.0, WordPress 5.9 Release Schedule, Navigation Block and Site Editor Co-hosts, Birgit Pauli-Haack and Grzegorz Ziolkowski discuss with Ryan Welcher the Gutenberg 12.0 release, the updated WordPress 5.9 Release Schedule and a lot more. Music: Homer Gaines Editor: Sandy Reed Logo: Mark Uraine Production: Pauli Systems Show Notes / Transcript Subscribe to the Gutenberg Changelog podcast via your favorite podcast apps! 🎙️ Spotify | Google | iTunes | PocketCasts | Stitcher | 🎙️ Pod Bean | CastBox | Podchaser | RSS Feed Show Notes Ryan Welcher, Developer advocate, sponsored by Automattic. Twitch Live Streams @ ryanwelchercodes Gutenberg Examples Repository at GitHub Website & Blog Community Contributions WordPress development environment by Marcus Kasmierczak WordPress 5.9 updated Schedule Updated Release Schedule for 5.9 WordPress 5.9 Revised Release Schedule by Core release lead Tonya Mork Why I voted to delay WordPress 5.9 by Anne McCarthy, release co-lead for testing WordPress 5.9 Revised Release Date Confirmed for January 25, 2022, Sarah Gooding, WPTavern A Look at WordPress 5.9 with the newly published video via WordPress News. Video: Exploring WordPress 5.9: Block theme flows, Styling, Patterns Explorer, & more Gutenberg 12.0 Find the full changelog on GitHub Block Styles Previews (34522), Featured Image block Visual Enhancement in the Site Editor (36517), the Site Editor Welcome Guide (36172) and the updates to the JSON schemas for block.json and theme.json. GitHub discussions on Developer Experience. Gutenberg plugin v12.0.0 Release Party with Ryan Welcher What’s discussed and in active development Pull Request by Ryan Welcher related to ordering slotfill/panel: Plugin sorting via priority property in registerPlugin Enable React Fast Refresh for block development coming to @wordpress/scripts by Grzegorz Ziolkowski Gutenberg: How to test the latest updates w/ Birgit Pauli-Haack, Andy Fragen and George Mamadashvili via GoDaddy Pro Stay in Touch Did you like this episode? Please write us a review Ping us on Twitter or send DMs with questions. @gziolo and @bph. If you have questions or suggestions, or news you want us to include, send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com. Please write us a review on iTunes! (Click here to learn how) Transcript Is in the works by Birgit Pauli-Haack at November 27, 2021 11:33 PM November 26, 2021 Gutenberg Times: Rendering WooCommerce Blocks, Hold the Phone, WTF is FSE? and more — Weekend Edition #194 Howdy, For my US American friends, I am sending Happy Thanksgiving greetings! I hope y’all had a Happy Turkey Day! 🦃 🍗 You probably won’t get to read this until Monday or even later next week. Hopefully, the Black-Friday-Cyber-Monday offerings turn out well for you. I am so grateful that you let me drop a weekend edition into your inbox every week. And thank you for the thoughtful notes, questions, ideas, and product updates. Keep ’em coming. It is you for whom I build the Gutenberg Times, and it has been an ongoing joy and wonderful adventure! I am also grateful for everyone working on Gutenberg and on WordPress. The contributors and the Community at large has been a home to me in a world more and more divided. I have been hurting through these two years of no in-person meetings, longing to see my friends again, so I hope to meet you’all soon at a future WordCamp! That’s it for now. Y’all have a great weekend! Yours,💕 Birgit Table of Contents Updates on WordPress 5.9 New schedule for January 25, 2022 release Gutenberg 12.0.x released Developing Custom Blocks Full-Site Editing and Themes FSE Program Testing Call #11 WordPress Events Updates on WordPress 5.9 A Look at WordPress 5.9 with the newly published video via WordPress News. You can also take a longer discovery journey with Anne McCarthy on video Exploring WordPress 5.9: Block theme flows, Styling, Patterns Explorer, & more New schedule for January 25, 2022 release After a few features were deemed not-quite ready, the WordPress release team held intense discussions about the feature freeze and the release schedule of WordPress 5.9. Beta 1 was supposed to be released on November 16th. After careful weighing a few aspects of contributor sanity, user expectations, and technical details, the release team decided to punt Beta 1 for two weeks and release it on November 30th, 2021. Because of the Holidays mostly in America and Europe, these two weeks delay resulted into a six-weeks postponement of the final release, now scheduled for January 25th, 2021. Core release lead Tonya Mork has the details about the WordPress 5.9 Revised Release Schedule Anne McCarthy, release co-lead for testing, wrote in Why I voted to delay WordPress 5.9, her hope “is to bring you all along for the decision-making process and to demystify how this decision came to be. “ Sarah Gooding over the WPTavern posted: WordPress 5.9 Revised Release Date Confirmed for January 25, 2022. “Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2021” A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. Updated by yours truly. Gutenberg 12.0.x released Grzegorz Ziolkowski and I asked Ryan Welcher to be our guest for the Gutenberg Changelog episode 56. As he also worked on the release of this version, we heard first hand what the experience is like. Most contributors worked on the final touches for the WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 Feature Freeze, there are no big new features expected in this version. This version is more about the small details that end up making a big difference in the overall user experience. The most exciting updates: Block Styles Previews (34522), Featured Image block Visual Enhancement in the Site Editor (36517), the Site Editor Welcome Guide (36172) and the updates to the JSON schemas for block.json and theme.json. The changelog has a new section called Developer Experience. It lists the PRs that are relevant to WordPress extenders (plugin & theme developers and developers working in agencies) as well as core contributors. It goes along with the GitHub Discussion Category with the same name. Find the full changelog on GitHub A huge thank You to Álvaro Gómez Velasco who mentioned the Gutenberg Changelog as one of his Favorite podcasts in 2021. “Gutenberg Changelog podcast is the best way to keep up with changes in Gutenberg, the WordPress Block Editor. The show is very on point, full of useful content and they have some great guests too.” Álvaro Gómez Velasco Subscribe to the Gutenberg Changelog podcast 🎙️ Spotify | Google | iTunes | PocketCasts | Stitcher | 🎙️ Pod Bean | CastBox | Podchaser | RSS Feed Developing Custom Blocks Alex Standiford published a 2-hours course to teach developer how to build a Block from other Blocks. He wrote: “You’ll learn how to build a WordPress block using existing WordPress blocks. This allows you to pre-build commonly used block patterns and drastically simplify the block editing experience, even with the most advanced page layouts.” Lara Sc henck shared on her blog how to Retrieve taxonomy terms with compose, withSelect, and getEntityRecords, using the built-in @wordpress/data packages. Ryan Welcher continues building a Poll Block on his Twitch Live Stream. Last week, he started on the block. This week, he decided to abandons the original approach and rebuild it with the <InnerBlocks/> that is part of the WordPress scripts and takes care of the “CRUD stuff”. Check it out! In his article, Nadir Seghir, code wrangler at Automattic, explains how WooCommerce Blocks plugin renders interactive blocks in the frontend. The gist of it? Both, PHP and React component read the HTML data attributes. It’s of course more complicated than this. Follow along! Full-Site Editing and Themes Justin Sainton takes his readers along on his journey to Building the New website of the hosting company Pagely, recently sold to GoDaddy. He writes about what excites him about the new way of building themes. He explains what FSE is and how to get started with great list of resources. In his Bad & Ugly section, Sainton “found things to be painful or otherwise confusing.” He puts a lot of work in getting to the actionable details. Readers beware the post is over 4,500 words. If you want to contribute and stay on the bleeding edge of the development of Full-site Editing, Design Tool, Global Styles and block Themes, Jeffrey Pearce posted the Gutenberg + Themes 74th weekly round-up of approximately 40 theme related open issues and PRs. He also shares released merged features and updates as well as overview issues that are a great resource to keep up with the development. Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s main (trunk) branch? Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know. FSE Program Testing Call #11 The deadline for Call for Testing #11 Comments has been extended to December 7th, 2021. FSE Program Testing Call #11: Site Editing Safari There won’t be any zebras, rhinos and giraffes, though. If you prefer an Italian version of the call for testing, Piermario Orecchioni published the translation: ESF Program Test Call # 11: A Site Editing Safari. Akira Tashibana posted the Japanese version of the FSE Call for testing #11 FSE プログラムのテスト募集 #11: サイト編集の探索 Carrie Dils prepared a one file import for LocalWP to have an easy way to set up a test environment for the FSE Call for Testing. WordPress Events December 11 + 12, 2021 WordCamp Taiwan December 14th, 2021 – 5:00 pm ET / 22:00 UTC WordPress News State of The Word w/ Matt Mullenweg + Q & A February 4+5, 2022 WordCamp Birmingham, AL Call for Sponsors and Speakers are open now. March 4th, 2022 all day WordFest 2022 a 24-hour festival of WordPress. Call for Speakers is open. Deadline Dec 6th, 2021. On the Calendar for WordPress Online Events site, you can browse a list of the upcoming WordPress Events, around the world, including WordCamps, WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups. Don’t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? Type in your Email address to subscribe. Subscribe We hate spam, too and won’t give your email address to anyone except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition Thanks for subscribing. Featured image: “office block in sutton” by Mr Tigggs is licensed under CC BY 2.0 by Birgit Pauli-Haack at November 26, 2021 10:09 PM under Weekend Edition November 25, 2021 Post Status: Post Status Excerpt (No. 34) — Developer Overload: Physical and Mental Health “I prioritized my mental health over my physical health until I realized it was all the same thing.” In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David chats with Cory about taking care of your physical and mental health and how these factor into “Developer Overload.” Far too often (especially younger) professionals do not prioritize their health so they can work or do more in a day — until it comes back to bite them. Also: David shares that getting up early in the morning works for him and encourages people who have a hard time managing things in the morning to give it a shot — early mornings are usually quiet for many people, both in the place they live and the clients and employees they communicate with during the day. Every week Post Status Excerpt will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS. Mentioned in the show: David Bisset (Twitter) Cory Miller (Twitter) Post Status (Twitter) Sponsor: Bluehost Everything your website needs — from start-up to success story — is at Bluehost. Whether you're looking to create a website, blog, or online store, Bluehost will get you started with an all-in-one website platform tailored to your specific needs. Get a free domain name in your first year, free 24/7 lifetime support, and total design freedom with WordPress at Bluehost. by David Bisset at November 25, 2021 04:00 AM under Everyone November 24, 2021 WordPress.org blog: Watch State of the Word at a Watch Party with your WordPress Friends State of the Word 2021 is just around the corner! Although attending State of the Word in person would be ideal, not all WordPress community members get to enjoy the experience of attending the speech live with friends. This year, as State of the Word is streamed live for the second time, we want to restore that in person camaraderie through State of the Word watch parties for WordPress Community members around the world. We encourage WordPress meetup organizers and community members worldwide to (safely) host State of the Word 2021 watch parties —read this handbook to learn more. Why organize a watch party? If you are a WordPress meetup organizer, many folks in your meetup may be unaware of the State of the Word, and a watch party could be a great opportunity to introduce or remind them. As meetup organizers slowly bid goodbye to a tough year, the watch party could be an excellent opportunity to revitalize your group, especially if you haven’t had many events this year. Along with your Meetup group members, you get a platform to ask questions directly to Matt Mullenweg. And last but not least, even if you are not a Meetup Organizer, a watch party can be the perfect opportunity to reconnect and have a blast with your WordPress friends! How do I organize a State of the Word watch party? You can choose to host a watch party online or in person. Check out our handbook for detailed instructions on how to schedule an event (including event templates). Online The simplest way to organize an online watch party is to schedule an online event for your WordPress group and add the State of the Word YouTube streaming link directly on Meetup.com. Alternatively, you can schedule an online meeting using tools like Zoom and broadcast the live stream over there by screen sharing––thereby facilitating better engagement. Organize an Online Watch Party In Person If your region meets the guidelines for in person events (if vaccines and testing are freely available), you can organize an in person watch party event (for fully vaccinated OR recently tested OR recently recovered folks) for your WordPress Meetup! Group members can hang out together (following local safety guidelines of course) and watch State of the Word live. Plan an In person Watch Party NOTE: If State of the Word is happening at an odd hour in your timezone, you can still organize a watch party by organizing a replay of live stream, at a date/time that is convenient for your group. If your Local WordPress Meetup is organizing an in person watch party, fill out this form so that we can ship some swag for your group to celebrate! Deadline: November 30, 2021 What else do I need to know about organizing a State of the Word watch party? Excited? To help you get started, we’ve put together a few resources: Check out this handbook for detailed instructions on how to organize a watch party, be it online or in person. Looking for a Zoom Pro account to host your online watch party? Request a community zoom pro account for your event right away! We have prepared some email templates that Meetup Organizers can use to spread the word in their Meetup groups. Don’t forget to share on social media about your watch party events using the hashtag #StateOfTheWord so we can join in on the fun! NOTE: The guidelines in this post are primarily aimed at WordPress Meetup organizers. However, you do not need to be a Meetup organizer to schedule a watch party! You can simply hang out together with your friends online or in person (while following local safety guidelines) and catch the event live! Join a State of the Word Watch Party near you! We have compiled a list of State of the Word Watch Parties around the world. If you don’t see a watch party in your region listed here, check this page on Meetup.com to see if your local WordPress group is organizing one. If not, why don’t you consider organizing a watch party on your own? [WordPress NYC Meetup] An In Person MeetUp: The State of the Word 2021 is in Manhattan. [South Jersey WordPress Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [Morris County NJ WordPress Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [WordPress Montclair Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [WordPress Santa Clarita Valley] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [The Houston WordPress Meetup Group] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Birmingham WordPress Meetup] State of the Word Watch Party [Lehigh Valley WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [WordPress Coventry Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [WordPress Exeter] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Kigali WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Lagos WordPress Community] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Ijebu WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Port-au-Prince WordPress Meetup Group] Rejoignez-nous le 14 décembre pour regarder State of the Word 2021 (online) [WordPress Singapore] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [WordPress Meetups Lahore] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (In-person) [WordPress Medellín] State of the Word 2021: Discurso de Matt & Fiesta de Comunidad (Online) If you are planning a watch party for State of the Word, and have questions, please drop us an email to: support@wordcamp.org if you have any questions. We are happy to help you in the best way possible. The following folks contributed to this post: @anjanavasan @eidolonnight @evarlese and @rmartinezduque by Hari Shanker R at November 24, 2021 06:30 PM under Events WordPress Foundation: Give Back to Open Source this Giving Tuesday Giving Tuesday is a global, non-profit movement that encourages people, organizations, and companies around the world to give, collaborate and celebrate generosity. Hosted on the first Tuesday following Thanksgiving in the United States, this year the charitable giving event will be taking place on November 30, 2021. With Giving Tuesday around the corner, many in the world are thinking about giving back. If you’re one of them, consider this opportunity to give back to open source. 2021 and the pandemic brought a lot of changes to the world, including the open source community. And the year wasn’t without its challenges. Open source developers worldwide still face roadblocks, from “lack of training opportunities” to “getting management buy-in for open source.” This is why the WordPress Foundation exists. How does the WordPress Foundation support open source? As a non-profit organization, our work is to ensure that open source software gets the support it needs. The funds we raise go toward ensuring free access to the projects we promote, protecting the WordPress trademark, and funding multiple programs aligned with our mission. Some of the programs the WordPress Foundation supports include: Video documentation of WordCamp and WordPress meetup events. “Intro to Open Source” workshops that increase awareness and understanding of the open web and open source in regions around the world that have relatively less participation. Charity hackathons where developers come together and volunteer to build websites for nonprofit organizations around the world. Workshops, both live and recorded, on how to use and develop for the WordPress platform. School mentorship programs to encourage interest in WordPress and open source development from a young age. Improving documentation about how to use and develop for, and contribute to the WordPress project. But this is just the beginning. With your help, we can strengthen our support for these programs and fund many more exciting open source projects. Volunteers from do_action Cape Town 2018 working on charity websites How can you help this Giving Tuesday? The future is open source, and whether you’re a believer or part of the open source community, you can play a part in helping build this foundation for generations to come. This Giving Tuesday, consider donating to the WordPress Foundation so we can work together toward a future that’s built on open source. You can choose to donate annually or make a one-time donation. Every gift counts! Donate to the WordPress Foundation Thank you for supporting our mission! by Anjana Vasan at November 24, 2021 04:05 PM under support HeroPress: Tales Of A Serial Contributor – Histórias de um colaborador em série O texto também está disponível em português do Brasil. Hey! My name is Daniel Kossmann. I’ve been WordPress user since 2009, one of the organizers of the Curitiba community, creator of the weekly newsletter called PainelWP, and a regular writer about WP in my blog. This is my before and after story from joining the WordPress community in Brazil. Happy reading! First contacts with the internet Since I was a kid I was very fond of computers and video games, but the internet opened a whole new world for me. I was so fascinated that at eleven years, around 1998, reading tutorials and analyzing HTML codes I created my first website on James Bond, of whom I was a big fan. In those first years, even though my parents didn’t quite understand what I was doing and why I was spending so much time in front of the computer, they backed me up by purchasing books and computers. Little by little I learned more about programming and developing my systems in ASP and only then PHP. Since there weren’t so many websites teaching programming, I created a series of websites that taught others how to create websites and add small functionalities for them, like counters, login area, blinking text, …. At that time, I even created a content management system, that could receive contributions through a form and automatically published them every day at a given time, with a countdown timer in the website telling visitors when the next update would occur. This may be seen as trivial today, but at that time it was very uncommon. Those were really fun days, where I spent several nights learning new things and talking to other people who had the same interest in IRC on the deceased Brasnet network. If you are curious to learn more, check out my interview at WordCamp Belo Horizonte 2016 (content in Portuguese). First contact with WordPress When the time came to choose my undergraduate, there was no doubt that it would be something related to computers. So I chose a Computer Science degree from Federal University from Parana (UFPR). During college, I also wanted to dabble in other fields, so I decided to create a blog in which to write movie reviews. Looking for a platform in which to easily publish texts, so I wouldn’t have to worry about coding because I already was doing this every day at school, I discovered WordPress. It didn’t take long and, in 2009, I launched my first public blog about movies, which after one year became interrogAção (content in portuguese), a cultural hub on cinema, literature, and comics, with collaborators from several cities in Brazil. As in the case with my first tutorial websites and IRC conversations, many of these people I only knew virtually, but we had an intense contact while exchanging know-how. Even though my focus was more on content creation and editorializing, I began to learn more about how to create themes and features in WordPress to customize the website. In one of these researches, I found out that an event focused on WP was going to happen in my city. Even not knowing a lot about the platform, I decided to attend and learn more. First contact with the community The event was WordCamp Curitiba 2010 (content in portuguese) and I still remember how amazed I was at it being so cheap, I think it was R$60 or less, offering so many souvenirs and snacks. Other tech events I had attended had always charged more than double and hadn’t offered half of these things. The talks were amazing, and everyone was always very kind and available. I was so excited about everything that I promised myself that I would volunteer during the next edition and also try to be a speaker. As I didn’t know anyone at the event, I challenged myself to talk with at least three people — I was extremely shy back then. Since then two of them have become lifelong friends. At the end of the event, I found out that there was an after-party called WordCana (a joke with the word “cana”, from sugarcane, that is used to make distilled spirit). Even though I didn’t drink alcohol, I decided to go and it was awesome! There, I got to know the event’s speakers, organizers and attendees. Everyone talking as equals. And the fact that I didn’t drink alcohol didn’t change at all my interaction with them. From attendee to WordCamp organizer The promise I had made during that event came true! Less than two years later, I was helping to organize the next edition, WordCamp Curitiba 2012 (content in portuguese), which was where I also gave my first public talk (content in portuguese). I was still very shy and, during the talk, I was so nervous that I couldn’t hold the microphone near my mouth. Because of that, even though it was a small room, people were having a hard time listening to my voice. Nevertheless, it was an important overcoming experience that has kept me desiring to improve my public speaking skills for future talks to this day. From user to entrepreneur Since I was a kid I had dreamt about opening my own company. Therefore, when I graduated in 2011, as I have always liked creating websites, I had little doubts about my next step: creating a web development company. I named it Spirallab, because of my passion for spirals and imagining turning it into a creative project lab. In the beginning, I didn’t define a direction and I worked with various systems and programming languages. Soon I realized that giving maintenance to these different solutions was a lot of work. So I opted to use a single platform, WordPress, due to its ease of use for my clients and the possibility to create various types of websites. This decision allowed me to dive even deeper into the system, making better and faster-to-deliver solutions for my clients. As time went by, I also increased my services within the platform, adding support, maintenance, courses, consulting and optimized hosting for WordPress, which at that time was extremely hard to find. This allowed for a broader client range. It also enabled us to specialize in the platform, getting to better know all of its facets. Even being a small company, never going beyond four people, I made sure to find ways to contribute to the WordPress community. After all, I managed to support my business without paying a single cent to use the platform. That is why I sponsored several WordCamps and meetups. This created a curious situation: Spirallab’s name was side by side with other sponsors that had 10 to 50 times its size. I wondered why there weren’t more companies doing the same. The sponsorship quotas started with a very low price tag, sometimes R$250. Considering the annual revenue of a company that uses WP as its main solution, I believe that this cost or investment could be easily included in its annual budget. I wish more companies, regardless of their size, would do that. Besides that, I’ve talked at several meetups and WordCamps, where I shared what I learned in my day-to-day life. It was always and still is a big pleasure to be able to make these contributions. During the events, I gave away some stickers from my company that had an illustration of a digital alchemist (a kind of modern wizard). Because of that, and my looks (long hair and beard), I ended up being nicknamed the WordPress Wizard. Eight years after Spirallab’s foundation, I decided to close the company’s activities and start a new chapter at Pipefy in 2019, where I currently work as a WordPress Development Coordinator. The return of Curitiba’s WordPress Community After WordCamp 2012, Curitiba’s community became inactive. But the urge to continue with the events stayed with me. It took me three years to take the first step. So I got in touch with other people from the Brazilian community that I had met at WordCamp, to find out what was needed to restart the meetings, which are called meetups, in Curitiba. Coincidentally, I found out three people who wanted to do the same and we started planning the event through Slack, a text chat software. In less than a month, we organized the first event, on August 5, 2015. The most curious thing was that we were able to do all of the planning virtually, and only met for the first time in person on the day of the event. Due to the speed in which we were able to organize this event, it may seem that we already had experience with this type of organization, but in fact, we didn’t have much, if any. So the first thing we asked ourselves was, “What would be nice to have included in the event if we were attendees?”. And two things stood out: having food and fun. So we ordered food (pizza, for convenience) and we tried to make something funner and without many formalities. We didn’t want to have those events where hardly anyone talks to anyone and after the talk, everyone leaves like they’re running away from something. Keeping anyone from feeling lost, we made a brief presentation with slides at the beginning of the meetup, explaining what the event was and how it was organized, asking everyone to introduce themselves. This structure was maintained during all future events. Little by little, we carried out several experiments, such as a section where everyone could share news, themes, or plugin tips, or a classified section, where people could say if they were looking for or offering a particular service. Among the organizers, we always pre-arranged tips to be shared, in order to encourage others to participate. At first, few people engaged, but over time, they ended up becoming an important part of the event. As I was extremely shy, getting in front of people to introduce the meetup was not easy. I was very nervous and ended up speaking very low, even stuttering a little. I wanted to change that and knew that the only way was to practice. I believe the meetup is a great place for this, as it is a small group of people with a common interest: learning. This makes everyone more receptive, creating a safe environment to participate in a variety of ways. By the way, this is something very important to me: making the events an environment where everyone feels welcome and safe to ask questions and share experiences. Therefore, I always welcome new participants and encourage them to participate and talk to other people. Sometimes I retell the story of my first WordCamp, where I challenged myself to talk to three strangers. Nowadays, although I’m still a reserved person, I’m not so shy anymore and can speak in public without as much difficulty. Because of this personal achievement, whenever possible, I encourage others to give their first talk and also share all the tips I used, and still use, to make better presentations. I get very happy when I see people overcoming these challenges and growing personally and professionally. Despite having changed a lot, I still set a personal challenge to always do something to take me out of my comfort zone in each and every talk. Sometimes it doesn’t have the expected effect, but at least I have one more funny story to tell. It’s been more than six years since the first meetup (there was even a commemorative video) and throughout this time the WordPress community in Curitiba has held monthly events. I confess that it is not easy to maintain this consistency, but it is very rewarding! From developer to WordPress content creator I’ve always enjoyed reading technology newsletters, but there weren’t any specific to WordPress in Brazil. After much contemplation (and procrastination) I decided to create a newsletter that prioritized the spreading of content in Portuguese. And, on June 22, 2019, I published the Zero edition of PainelWP (content in portuguese). Since then, I’ve searched and published the main news, tutorials, tips, events, and WordPress jobs weekly. My main goal with the newsletter is to inspire more people to create content about WP in Portuguese. As I learn a lot from reading tutorials and articles, this year (2021), I also started writing content regularly about WordPress on my blog (content in portuguese). One of the publications I’m doing on behalf of PainelWP is to write about how to use WordPress’s native PHP functions (content in portuguese), with code examples. Writing regularly is quite challenging, but it’s very rewarding and I learn a lot. I recommend creating a blog and posting on it regularly to all professionals who want to improve their knowledge. One idea is to keep a record of what you are learning on the blog. In addition, all of this is published under the Creative Commons BY-SA license, almost an equivalent of free software license for content. I chose this license because it makes it easy for content to be shared and used, like the WordPress source code. The Importance of the WordPress Community I believe that the great advantage and differential of WordPress, in addition to the numerous plugins and themes available, is its community. Because it’s an open platform and makes it easy to create websites, it attracts people with very different technical levels and backgrounds. This diversity helps create an open space for exchange, where everyone has something different to teach. This creates a connection both online and in person. It’s very satisfying to meet people in person at community events. From these encounters, I’ve made several lasting friendships. These contacts also have helped me a lot professionally. I’ve received several job referrals from them and I’ve also referred several people. An important tip I’ve learned in the WordPress community is: every time you’re in a conversation circle during events, leave a free space for a new person to join the circle. This format is also called the Pac-Man Rule. If you’re not yet part of the WordPress community, I recommend looking for a meetup in your city, or nearby, to join. There are also several community meetings online now, which is a great opportunity to exchange knowledge with people from other cities. Hope you’ve enjoyed my story and see you at the next meetup or WordCamp! Histórias de um colaborador em série Oi! Meu nome é Daniel Kossmann. Utilizo WordPress desde 2009, sou um dos organizadores da Comunidade de WordPress de Curitiba, criador da newsletter semanal PainelWP e escrevo regularmente sobre WP em meu blog pessoal. Esta é a minha história antes e depois de começar a participar da comunidade do WordPress do Brasil. Boa leitura! Primeiros contatos com a internet Desde criança já gostava bastante de computadores e videogames, mas a internet abriu um mundo totalmente novo para mim. Fiquei tão fascinado que aos 11 anos, por volta de 1998, lendo tutoriais e analisando códigos HTML criei o meu primeiro site (sobre James Bond, eu era um grande fã). Nesses primeiros anos, apesar de meus pais não entenderem direito o que eu fazia e porque passava tantas horas em frente ao computador, eles me apoiaram comprando livros e computadores. Aos poucos fui aprendendo mais sobre programação e criando meus próprios sistemas em ASP e depois em PHP. Como existiam poucos sites em português que ensinavam programação, criei vários sites que ensinavam outras pessoas a criarem sites e adicionar pequenas funcionalidades neles (como contadores, áreas de login, textos piscando, …). Nesta época, também cheguei a criar meu próprio gerenciador de conteúdo, que aceitava o envio de conteúdo por colaboradores através de um formulário e fazia a publicação automaticamente todos os dias em um determinado horário (com um contador no site avisando quando seria a próxima atualização). Isto pode parecer bem trivial hoje em dia, mas naquele tempo ainda não era nada comum. Esta foi uma época bem divertida, onde passei várias madrugadas aprendendo coisas novas e conversando com outras pessoas que tinham o mesmo interesse no IRC, na falecida rede Brasnet. Se você ficou curioso para saber sobre essa época, veja a entrevista que o WordCamp Belo Horizonte 2016 fez comigo. Primeiros contatos com o WordPress Quando chegou a hora de escolher um curso superior, não tinha dúvidas que seria algo relacionado à computação. Então entrei no curso de Ciência da Computação na Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR). Durante a faculdade, também queria experimentar outras áreas e decidi criar um blog para escrever críticas de filmes. Procurando por uma plataforma que fosse fácil de publicar textos para que eu não tivesse que me preocupar com códigos (já via isso todo dia no meu curso), descobri o WordPress. Não demorou muito e em 2009 criei meu primeiro blog público sobre cinema, que depois de um ano se transformou no interrogAção, um portal cultural sobre cinema, literatura e quadrinhos, com colaboradores de várias cidades do Brasil. Assim como nos meus primeiros sites de tutoriais, e conversas do IRC, muitas dessas pessoas eu só conhecia virtualmente, mas tínhamos um contato intenso de troca de conhecimento. Apesar do meu foco estar mais voltado para criação e editoração de conteúdo, comecei a aprender mais sobre como funcionava a criação de temas e funcionalidades no WordPress para poder personalizar o site. Em uma dessas pesquisas, descobri que iria acontecer um evento só sobre o WP na minha cidade. Mesmo não sabendo ainda muito sobre o sistema, decidi me inscrever para poder aprender mais. Primeiro contato com a comunidade O evento era o WordCamp Curitiba 2010 e ainda lembro do quanto fiquei impressionado por ele ser tão barato (acho que foi R$60 ou menos), oferecer tantos brindes e ter lanches. Os outros eventos de tecnologia que havia participado sempre custaram mais que o dobro e não ofereciam nem metade dessas coisas. As palestras foram ótimas e todo mundo era sempre muito gentil e disponível. Fiquei tão empolgado com tudo, que prometi para mim mesmo que iria ajudar na próxima edição e também tentar palestrar nela. Como não conhecia ninguém no evento, defini como desafio pessoal falar com pelo menos três pessoas (eu era extremamente tímido). Duas delas acabaram se tornando amizades de longa data. No final do evento, descobri que haveria uma continuação chamada WordCana. Mesmo não gostando de beber, decidi ir e foi sensacional! Lá, conheci mais de perto os palestrantes, organizadores e participantes do evento. Todos falando de igual para igual. E o fato de não beber, não influenciou em nada minha interação com as outras pessoas. De participante para organizador do WordCamp A promessa que fiz durante o evento deu certo! Menos de dois anos depois, estava ajudando a organizar a próxima edição, o WordCamp Curitiba 2012. Nele também fiz minha primeira palestra pública. Eu continuava sendo muito tímido e durante a palestra, fiquei tão nervoso que não conseguia deixar o microfone perto da boca. Por conta disso, mesmo em uma sala pequena, as pessoas tiveram dificuldades para me escutar. Mesmo assim, foi uma importante experiência de superação, que me ajudou a continuar querendo melhorar minhas habilidades de falar em público em futuras palestras. De usuário para empreendedor Desde criança sonhava em abrir minha própria empresa e como gostava de criar sites, quando me formei em 2011, não tive muitas dúvidas sobre qual seria meu próximo passo: abrir uma empresa que desenvolve soluções para a internet. Chamei ela de Spirallab, por conta da minha paixão por espirais e pensando em torná-la um laboratório para projetos criativos. No início não defini muito um foco e trabalhei com vários sistemas e linguagens de programação diferentes. Aos poucos percebi que a manutenção dessas diferentes soluções estava ficando muito trabalhosa. Decidi que deveria utilizar apenas uma única plataforma e escolhi o WordPress, porque era fácil de ser utilizado pelo cliente e permitia a criação de diversos tipos de sites. Esta decisão me permitiu aprofundar muito mais no sistema, fazendo com que criasse soluções melhores e mais rápidas de entregar para meus clientes. Conforme o tempo foi passando, também aumentei as opções de serviços oferecidos em volta da plataforma: suporte, manutenção, hospedagem otimizada para WordPress (na época era extremamente difícil achar algo assim), cursos e consultorias. Isto permitiu uma diversificação maior de clientes. Também possibilitou uma especialização na plataforma, conhecendo todos os aspectos que a envolviam. Mesmo sendo uma empresa pequena (nunca passou de 4 pessoas), fiz questão de encontrar maneiras de contribuir com a comunidade do WordPress. Afinal, eu estava conseguindo sustentar o negócio sem precisar pagar nenhum centavo para utilizar a plataforma. Por isso ajudei a patrocinar vários WordCamps e meetups. Isso criava uma situação curiosa: o nome da Spirallab ficava ao lado de outros patrocinadores que tinham 10 ou 50 vezes o tamanho dela. Ficava então me perguntando porque não haviam mais empresas fazendo o mesmo. As cotas desses patrocínios iniciavam com um valor bem baixo (muitas vezes em R$250). Se formos considerar o faturamento de uma empresa que utiliza o WP como solução principal, acredito que este custo (ou investimento) poderia ser facilmente adicionado ao planejamento anual. Gostaria muito que mais empresas, independente do tamanho, fizessem isso. Além disso, palestrei em vários meetups e WordCamps, onde compartilhei o que havia aprendido no meu dia a dia. Sempre foi (e ainda é) uma satisfação muito grande poder fazer estas contribuições. Durante os eventos eu distribuía um adesivo da minha empresa que tinha a ilustração de um alquimista digital (uma espécie de mago moderno). Por conta disto, e do meu visual (cabelo comprido e barba), acabei ganhando o apelido de o Mago do WordPress. Oito anos depois da fundação da Spirallab, decidi encerrar as atividades da empresa e iniciei um novo capítulo na Pipefy em 2019, onde trabalho atualmente como coordenador de desenvolvimento WordPress. O retorno da Comunidade de WordPress de Curitiba Depois do WordCamp 2012, a Comunidade de Curitiba ficou inativa. Mas a vontade de continuar com os eventos continuou na minha cabeça. Demorei três anos para dar o primeiro passo. Então entrei em contato com outras pessoas da comunidade brasileira que tinha conhecido no WordCamp, para saber o que era necessário para voltar a fazer os encontros (também chamados de meetups) em Curitiba. Por coincidência, descobri que mais três pessoas estavam querendo fazer o mesmo e começamos a planejar o evento através do Slack (software de bate papo em texto). Em menos de um mês, organizamos o primeiro evento, no dia 5 de agosto de 2015. O mais interessante foi que conseguimos fazer tudo isso virtualmente. Só no dia do evento que nós nos encontramos pessoalmente pela primeira vez. Pela velocidade que conseguimos organizar este evento, pode parecer que já tínhamos experiência neste tipo de organização, mas na verdade não tínhamos muita (ou nenhuma) experiência como organizadores. Por isso, a primeira coisa que nos perguntamos foi: o que seria legal ter, caso fossemos participantes? E duas coisas se destacaram: ter comida e ser divertido. Então pedimos comida (pizza, pela praticidade) e tentamos fazer algo mais divertido e sem formalidades. Não queríamos aqueles eventos onde quase ninguém fala com ninguém e depois da palestra todos vão embora como se estivessem fugindo de algo. Para que ninguém se sentisse perdido, no início do meetup fizemos uma breve apresentação com slides, explicando o que é o evento e como ele é organizado, pedindo para cada um se apresentar. Essa estrutura se manteve durante todos os próximos eventos. Aos poucos fomos fazendo vários experimentos. Desde uma seção onde todos podiam compartilhar uma notícia, dica de tema ou plugin, até um espaço para classificados, onde as pessoas poderiam dizer se procuravam ou ofereciam determinado serviço. Entre os organizadores, sempre combinamos previamente dicas para serem compartilhadas, de forma a estimular outras pessoas a participarem. No começo poucas pessoas participavam, mas com o tempo, estes momentos acabaram se tornando uma parte importante do evento. Como eu era extremamente tímido, ficar em frente a várias pessoas para apresentar o meetup não era nada fácil. Ficava muito nervoso e acabava falando bem baixo, até gaguejando um pouco. Queria mudar isso e sabia que o único jeito era praticar. Acredito que o meetup é uma ótima oportunidade para isto, por ser um grupo pequeno de pessoas com um interesse em comum: aprender. Isso faz com que todos sejam mais receptivos, criando um ambiente seguro para participar de várias formas. Aliás, isto é algo muito importante para mim: tornar os eventos um ambiente onde todas as pessoas se sintam bem vindas e seguras para fazerem perguntas e compartilharem experiências. Por isso, sempre dou boas vindas para os novos participantes e os incentivo a participarem e conversarem com outras pessoas do evento. Às vezes, conto a história do meu primeiro WordCamp, onde me desafiei a conversar com três pessoas desconhecidas. Hoje em dia, apesar de continuar sendo uma pessoa mais quieta, não sou mais tão tímido e consigo falar em público sem tanta dificuldade. Por conta desta superação pessoal, sempre que possível, incentivo outras pessoas a darem sua primeira palestra e também compartilho todas as dicas que utilizei (e ainda utilizo) para fazer melhores apresentações. Fico muito feliz quando vejo pessoas superando essas dificuldades e crescendo pessoalmente e profissionalmente. Apesar de ter mudado muita coisa, ainda utilizo como desafio pessoal fazer sempre algo para me tirar da zona de conforto em cada palestra (às vezes não tem o efeito esperado, mas pelo menos tenho mais uma história engraçada para contar). Já se passaram mais de seis anos desde o primeiro meetup (teve até um vídeo comemorativo) e desde lá a comunidade de WordPress de Curitiba faz eventos mensalmente. Confesso que não é nada fácil manter essa consistência, mas é muito gratificante! De desenvolvedor para criador de conteúdo sobre WordPress Sempre gostei muito de ler newsletters sobre tecnologia, mas não havia nenhuma específica de WordPress no Brasil. Depois de muito contemplar (e procrastinar), decidi criar uma newsletter que priorizasse a divulgação de conteúdo em português. E, em 22 de junho de 2019, publiquei a edição zero do PainelWP. Desde lá, semanalmente procuro e divulgo as principais notícias, tutoriais, dicas, eventos e vagas de WordPress. Meu principal objetivo com a newsletter é inspirar mais pessoas a criarem conteúdo sobre WP em português. Como aprendo muito lendo tutoriais e artigos, também comecei a escrever regularmente este ano (2021) no meu blog conteúdo sobre WordPress. Uma das publicações que estou fazendo por conta do PainelWP é escrever semanalmente sobre como utilizar funções nativas em PHP do WordPress, com exemplos de códigos. Escrever regularmente é bem desafiador, mas é muito gratificante e aprendo bastante. Recomendo a todos os profissionais que querem aprimorar seus conhecimentos, criar um blog e postar regularmente. Uma ideia é manter um registro do que você está aprendendo no blog. Além disso, tudo isso é publicado sob a licença Creative Commons BY-SA, quase um equivalente do software livre para conteúdo. Escolhi esta licença pois facilita que o conteúdo seja compartilhado e utilizado, assim como o código fonte do WordPress. A importância da comunidade de WordPress Acredito que a grande vantagem e diferencial do WordPress, além dos inúmeros plugins e temas disponíveis, é a sua comunidade. Por ser uma plataforma aberta e facilitar a criação de sites, ele atrai pessoas com vários níveis técnicos e históricos muito diferentes. Esta diversificação ajuda a criar um espaço aberto para trocas, onde cada um tem algo diferente para ensinar. Isto cria uma conexão que se dá tanto online quanto presencialmente. É muito gratificante encontrar pessoas pessoalmente em eventos da comunidade. A partir desses encontros, fiz várias amizades duradouras. Estes contatos também me ajudaram bastante profissionalmente. Já recebi várias indicações para serviços a partir deles e também já indiquei várias pessoas. Uma dica importante que aprendi na comunidade de WordPress é: toda vez que estiver em uma roda de conversa durante os eventos, deixe um espaço livre para que uma nova pessoa possa se juntar à roda. Este formato também é chamado de regra do Pac-Man. Se você ainda não faz parte da comunidade de WordPress, recomendo procurar um meetup na sua cidade (ou próximo dela) para participar. Também há várias comunidades fazendo encontros online agora, que são uma ótima oportunidade de trocar conhecimento com pessoas de outras cidades. Espero que você tenha gostado da minha história e nos vemos no próximo meetup ou WordCamp! by Daniel Kossmann at November 24, 2021 11:00 AM WPTavern: WordPress, Blogging, and the Things We Are Thankful For On Saturday, one side of my family held our pre-Thanksgiving reunion. It had been two years since we were able to do it. I offered to host this year when our previous venue’s loss threatened to sideline the event for yet another year. Needless to say, I was exhausted by the time my last cousin and his wife got in the car and drove off toward their home in south Alabama. Sunday, the day after, was the first relaxing day I had taken in weeks. But, I am not one for spending the entire day dedicated to watching TV — except when Squid Game was released. Dusting off my rarely-used personal blog, I began to pen an update post on my National Novel Writing Month progress. Instead of actually doing that, at least until later in the night, I looked over years of published blog posts. There is a rich history there, at least to me. My blog is a journal of my personal memories going back to 2003. For 18 years, I have been writing something, spitting out words into what can sometimes feel like an endless void. That naïve 19-year-old kid who was just setting foot into the online world was not thinking he would still be doing the same thing all these years later. He was just blogging. It was one part an extension of the angst-ridden notebooks he had filled as a teen. It was another part of a new and exciting journey. For around an hour or so, I simply clicked and read and clicked and read. It is an extraordinary time to be alive, to take part in this moment in history where anyone from all over the world could live those same memories with me. And I can read their blogs. I can read about their hopes and dreams, view galleries of their pets, or catch up on their goals for the new year. This is one of the reasons I subscribe to people’s personal blog feeds more so than news or development sites. At the end of the day, everything we do here is about people. I took a deep dive through my archives, caught up with some fun moments I had shared with the world, and read over some of my old WordPress development tutorials. I even scanned through my obsession with Marie Kondōs tidying rules. I was only disappointed that there were many moments that I decided not to share. I perused some of the notes from unpublished drafts of various instances of #WPDrama, discussions where I decided to keep my thoughts to myself rather than rock the boat. I skipped over headlines for books I had read but never reviewed. I remembered some life-changing moments that I never bothered to even write a draft about. Aside from reminiscing over the past half of my life, I realized that my blog is older than many people who are just starting their own blogging journeys. WordPress, which also turned 18 this year, is older than its next generation of users. I also realized that I simply enjoy blogging. I had never given it much thought before — the why behind my continued participation in this artform. Perhaps it is because I have something I want to say from time to time. Maybe it is simply therapeutic. In the end, it might not matter. However, I am grateful that we have platforms like WordPress that allow us all to do it, regardless of our reasons. As we close shop for the week for some much-needed rest, I am making a note to read through the bookmarked blog posts I have not gotten around to (thank you to everyone who has shared). I want to dive into the backlog of personal blogs I have yet to catch up on. I always check out every Tavern commenter’s website when they leave a URL in the form. I do not always get around to them immediately, but I have found many blogs that I genuinely enjoy reading this way. Heading into this year’s U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, I am reminded of how fortunate I am to be a part of the WordPress community. It is a living, breathing ecosystem that has always remained true to its blogging roots. The platform allows millions of people to share their voices while owning their content. That alone is something worth being thankful for. by Justin Tadlock at November 24, 2021 12:05 AM under Opinion November 23, 2021 WPTavern: WordPress 5.9 Revised Release Date Confirmed for January 25, 2022 Last week WordPress 5.9’s release leads found a consensus for delaying the release after missing the deadlines for Beta 1 due to significant blockers. At that time they proposed a schedule for moving forward, and that is now confirmed. Beta 1 is planned for November 30, 2021, with subsequent betas in December. RC 1 is scheduled for January 4, 2022, and the official release is anticipated on January 25. For the past decade, Matt Mullenweg’s deadlines are not arbitrary philosophy has guided core development, preventing releases from being delayed by the desire to squeeze in one more feature: Deadlines are not arbitrary, they’re a promise we make to ourselves and our users that helps us rein in the endless possibilities of things that could be a part of every release. Deadlines make it possible for agencies, product developers, and hosting companies with millions of WordPress customers, to prepare for upcoming releases in a predictable way that ultimately enables more sites to update regularly. The situation with WordPress 5.9 is unique, because the effort involves shipping a set of interdependent features that also provide the foundation for a new way of theming. “As the FSE features are very closely intertwined, removing some of its pieces would risk making the release unstable,” 5.9 Core Tech Lead Tonya Mork said in a post announcing the new schedule. “To avoid delivering a sub-optimal experience, moving fixes to a 5.9 minor or 6.0 was ruled out.” Mork said the team considered punting full-site editing (FSE) and the Twenty Twenty-Two theme that depends on it to 6.0 but saw more benefit in shipping the collection of features sooner. “The 6.0 release isn’t due until April 2022—too long for the community to wait for them,” Mork said. “After processing this list of issues, Core Editor team saw the features could ship in 5.9 with the revised schedule.” Anne McCarthy, who is co-leading testing for the release, is in the trenches with FSE and wrote a summary of why she was proponent of delaying in this instance. She cited improved sustainability for contributors, and the value of users getting access to the whole suite of FSE features rather than smaller pieces, as factors in the decision. “More specifically, if we were to push everything to 6.0, this would delay the Twenty Twenty-Two theme, hold back the launch of block themes in general, and delay a ton of user value in exploring ways to edit all parts of a site,” McCarthy said. The decision to delay 5.9 to January 2022 has been met with positive feedback from all sides, and many following the progress have expressed their appreciation of the team’s transparency throughout the decision-making process. It’s reassuring to see the release leads acting in the interest of users and contributors, instead of forcing something half-baked forward. In the meantime, if you want a sneak peak of some newer features coming in 5.9, check out the video the release team published today. It showcases the amazing flexibility of the upcoming Twenty Twenty-Two theme and how much more you can do with WordPress without having to change to a different theme. If you want to be part of the team making FSE better for everyone, jump in and start testing the new features ahead of the beta release. by Sarah Gooding at November 23, 2021 11:20 PM under WordPress WordPress.org blog: A Look at WordPress 5.9 WordPress 5.9 is expected to be a ground-breaking release. It will introduce the next generation of themes with Twenty Twenty-Two joining the fun and over 30 theme blocks to build all parts of your site. In anticipation of the January 25th release, we hope you enjoy this sneak peek of 5.9. New design tools will allow you to create exactly what you want, from adding filters to all your images to fine-tuning the border radius on all your buttons. With WordPress 5.9 providing more design control along with streamlined access to patterns, you can easily change the entire look and feel of your site without switching themes. No matter what you’re editing, whether it’s crafting a new post or working on a header, improvements to List View make it simple to navigate content regardless of complexity. More improvements and features for everyone are to come in this release and we can’t wait to see what you create with WordPress 5.9! Stay Tuned Stay tuned for more updates as the date draws near. If you want to help, the best thing you can do is test everything! For all the details, check out this Make Core post. Video props: @annezazu (also co-wrote the post) @michaelpick @matveb @beafialho @javiarce @critterverse @joen. by Kelly Hoffman at November 23, 2021 09:02 PM under Features WPTavern: GoDaddy Data Breach Exposes 1.2 Million Active and Inactive Managed WordPress Hosting Accounts In a disclosure to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that was published today, GoDaddy announced a data security breach impacting its WordPress managed hosting customers. The company discovered unauthorized third-party access to its hosting environment on November 17, 2021, through an exploited vulnerability. GoDaddy’s initial investigations show the attacker gained access using a compromised password beginning on September 6, 2021. Nearly every sensitive data point associated with hosting a WordPress website was compromised, including customer email addresses, admin passwords, sFTP and database credentials, and SSL private keys. GoDaddy published the following summary of data the attacker had access to for more than two months: Up to 1.2 million active and inactive Managed WordPress customers had their email address and customer number exposed. The exposure of email addresses presents risk of phishing attacks. The original WordPress Admin password that was set at the time of provisioning was exposed. If those credentials were still in use, we reset those passwords. For active customers, sFTP and database usernames and passwords were exposed. We reset both passwords. For a subset of active customers, the SSL private key was exposed. We are in the process of issuing and installing new certificates for those customers. GoDaddy has more than 20 million customers but only the managed WordPress hosting accounts were affected by this breach. Looking further into the incident, Wordfence claims that GoDaddy was storing sFTP credentials as plaintext, although GoDaddy has not officially confirmed it: GoDaddy stored sFTP passwords in such a way that the plaintext versions of the passwords could be retrieved, rather than storing salted hashes of these passwords, or providing public key authentication, which are both industry best practices. We confirmed this by accessing the user interface for GoDaddy Managed Hosting and were able to view our own password…When using public-key authentication or salted hashes, it is not possible to view your own password like this because the hosting provider simply does not have it. GoDaddy’s stock tumbled after the SEC disclosure got picked up by major news organizations, finishing down 5.25%. The company emailed its customers to notify them that their accounts may have been compromised during the two months when the attacker had unauthorized access. The incident has damaged customers’ trust and puts developers and agencies in an uncomfortable position if they are required to notify their customers about the breach. Impacted site owners will need to watch for malware, suspicious activity, and potential phishing attacks. Godaddy says it has already taken steps to further secure its provisioning system and is continuing its investigation with the help of an IT forensics firm and law enforcement. by Sarah Gooding at November 23, 2021 04:55 AM under security November 22, 2021 WPTavern: How Do Post Formats Fit Into a Block Theme World? Over the weekend, Nick Bohle asked Ellen Bauer of Elma Studio how post formats fit into the block-theming world. The question was a proposal for her a WordPress theme and FSE chat she held yesterday via Twitter Spaces. I could not attend and see if Bauer touched on the subject, but the question is something I have given a lot of thought to not that long ago. Over the summer, I tweeted out a screenshot of an experiment around post formats. A part of me was trying to figure out if we could revive a dying feature, one I continue to use today. Aside post format archive. I have been using post formats since before they were a thing. “Asides” were one of the precursors to the feature landing in WordPress. I wrote my first on my personal blog back in 2006. I had borrowed some code that WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg had posted two years earlier. It was a concept he had borrowed from others. For me, it was a way to give a unique layout to quick posts and links without all the beefiness of a long-form article. In 2011, WordPress 3.1 launched with a new taxonomy. Users could choose between nine different formats for their posts, assuming their theme supported one or more of them. The goal was to allow theme authors to design custom layouts around each one. For much of the community, it felt like WordPress was chasing Tumblr’s post content feature. The allure quickly wore off after it seemed to have hit a standstill beyond its initial release. Besides a few fixes and trivial enhancements under the hood, post formats never amounted to much. They have remained a niche feature over the years. A few theme authors still add in support. Some of us old-school bloggers who have been using them in some form or fashion are still hanging on. But, post formats have been dead for a long time. Therefore, I decided to try to make them work for block themes. One of the most frustrating things I encountered with post formats in this block-based theme project was how powerless I felt over making them work “the old way.” The dynamic nature of classic theming meant that I could switch post content templates out on pages that listed multiple posts. Query Loop and its inner Post Template block do not allow me to show a different template for a quote or gallery-formatted post, for example. This was frustrating because that part of the design process was out of my hands. If I wanted to do something as simple as show an entirely different design for an aside post within a mix of normal posts, I could not do so as the theme designer, at least not without doing some hacky workarounds. My “light bulb” moment was when I realized that it was OK to not have that control. I needed to get outside of the mindset that the design was mine and mine alone. That is viewing creation through a classic theming lens. My approach was wrong. Instead, I had to start thinking about how to hand over these design tools to the user. The question became: Can I create something that utilizes that original post format concept while giving users the freedom to do what they want? Then, it dawned on me. The following is the response I tweeted to Jeff Chandler, who had asked if I thought post formats would work as patterns: I think of blocks themselves as an evolution of post formats. Video, audio, embeds (basically cool links), quotes, etc. Most of the elements are already there. Patterns just give users an easy way to insert various designs, which could build off those blocks. Maybe post formats as they currently exist are dead. However, the idea of designing a layout around specific types of posts is very much alive. If users want to embed a single video into a post, it is just a matter of copying and pasting a link. To share a quote they found from their favorite author, they merely need to drop it into a Quote block. Other than chat posts (let’s just gloss over those entirely), the concept of post formats has simply been replaced with blocks. However, theme authors still have a role to play. If all the elements for post formats have been essentially replaced by blocks themselves, that means designers can have a field day building patterns around them. Patterns built for post formats. That led me to build off my original idea for asides, my favorite post format. Instead of offering a single design, I built three different patterns for users to choose from. End-users could mix and match how they appeared on the front end. I also built a custom taxonomy-post_format-aside.html template to showcase them on their archive page. It merely displayed the published date and the post content, which the user controls. I went back to the drawing board and built a quote pattern that I liked. Again, it would be up to the user whether they wanted that particular design. They could always go in a different direction. Quote block pattern and custom style. In some ways, post formats were always limiting. The feature was never fleshed out, and there were only nine allowed formats. At the end of the day, each was merely a term within a taxonomy. There were never any rules about how it all was supposed to work. Maybe that is not such a bad thing. Now, posts can be anything users want them to be. by Justin Tadlock at November 22, 2021 11:57 PM under post formats WordPress.org blog: Join us for State of the Word 2021, in person or online! As previously announced, State of the Word will be livestreamed from New York City. That means that you can join the fun either online or in person, on December 14, 2021, between 5 and 7 pm EST! To join State of the Word 2021 online, check your Meetup chapter for a local watch party, or simply visit wordpress.org/news, where the livestream will be embedded. If you would like to participate in person in New York City, please request a seat by filling out the registration form by Sunday, November 28. Not all requests will receive a seat due to venue capacity, but everyone who requests one will receive further notification on Tuesday, November 30. In person attendees will be asked to show their COVID vaccination card at the venue entrance, and are expected to follow the safety measures in place. Because of these safety measures, there is a maximum of 50 attendees. Request a seat Whether you participate in person or online, we are so excited to see you on December 14! Don’t forget, State of the Word will be followed by a Question & Answer session. If you have a question for Matt, you can send your question ahead of time to ask-matt@wordcamp.org, or ask during the event in the YouTube chat. by Josepha at November 22, 2021 09:08 PM under Events November 20, 2021 Gutenberg Times: Creating a Poll Block for Gutenberg, Skins Are Back in Style, WordPress 5.9 in 2022 – Weekend Edition 193 Howdy! I am back from our trip to Chicago. It is a fun city even when it’s cold. I took it as a training run for our Christmas travels to Canada in about four weeks. One afternoon, we walked Michigan Avenue, The Bean and the sculpture and botanical garden in Millennium Park. Another afternoon, we visited the Shedd Aquarium. It is definitely worth a visit should you ever get to Chicago. Their exhibition space is vast and wonderful. My favorite section was the Caribbean Reef with the most colorful corals, algae and fish. The greatest joy was however to spend some quality time with my coworkers at Automattic, Tara King and Ryan Welcher. Turns out we all like beer and scuba diving. Now back to Gutenberg News, WordPress release and State of the Word. I had fun catching up on all the good vibe from the community. Stay warm, stay calm, be brave and wait for the signs.1 Yours, 💕 Birgit 1 Canadian Cree Monday, November 22nd, 2021 at 7pm ET / 00:00 UTC join us for WordPress Meetup organized by the group in Montclair, NJ. I will talk about What is Full-Site Editing? and answer questions from participants. I am looking forward to seeing friends there and make new ones. RSVP and get the Zoom Link Table of Contents The Gutenberg Minute Gutenberg Team and Core WordPress updates Gutenberg 11.9 and 11.9.1 has been released. Theme Builders and Block Themes Developing for Gutenberg and Building Custom Blocks Gutenberg for Site Builders and Content Creators WordPress Events The Gutenberg Minute As part of the WP Minute podcast, we record a minute of Gutenberg updates to be added to the show. Here is this week’s content. Gutenberg Minute November 2021 for this week’s WPMinute episode WordPress Theme Repository – List of Block Themes Update theme.json schema to refer to wp.org URL Add API to access global settings, styles and stylesheet Call for Testing: Site Editing Safari Big Thank You to Matt Medeiros for including the segment every month. Updates: The Full-Site Editing will come to WordPress 5.9, however not on December 14th. There are now 28 block themes in the WordPress repository. Gutenberg Team and Core WordPress updates The Beta 1 for WordPress 5.9 release has been moved to November 30th, 2021, due to not enough time to fix FSE interface issues for users. This also moves the date for the final release to January 2021. The new proposed schedule has January 25th, 2021 as release date. Tonya Mork, Core Tech Release lead posted more details on the Make Core blog. Robert Anderson, Editor Tech Release lead, posted the list of pending issues and blockers. Sarah Gooding posted WordPress 5.9 Delayed Until January 2022 If you want to assist in testing Beta and release candidate versions, Courtney Robertson, held a panel discussion with Core Contributors George Mamadashvili, Andy Fragen and yours truly on the various options to test upcoming versions. The recording is available now Testing the latest features in WordPress with resources and links. After the Beta 1 release, you only need to install the WordPress Beta Tester plugin and set it to channel Bleeding Edge and stream Beta/RC Only. Setting WordPress Beta Tester Plugin for testing Beta and Release Candidates during the release cycle of an new WordPress version. Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s main (trunk) branch? Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know. Gutenberg 11.9 and 11.9.1 has been released. Just before the Feature Freeze of the WordPress 5.9 release cycle, Gutenberg 11.9 was released. Andrew Serong published the release notes in What’s new in Gutenberg 11.9.0 (10 November). Justin Tadlock posted the details as well: Gutenberg 11.9 Focuses on Navigation Menus and Block Theming In Gutenberg Changelog newest episode (#55), Grzegorz (Greg) Ziolkowski and I discuss Gutenberg 11.9, WordPress 5.9 and Navigation Block. Surprise guest: Riad Benguella. Listen in and write us a review. Subscribe to the Gutenberg Changelog podcast 🎙️ Spotify | Google | iTunes | PocketCasts | Stitcher | 🎙️ Pod Bean | CastBox | Podchaser | RSS Feed “Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2021” A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. Updated by yours truly. Theme Builders and Block Themes Ellen Bauer wrote an Introduction to Theme.json and explained how the configuration choices work together to manage a build a block theme, like Aino and can be used in Classic themes as well. Bauer also invites you to a Twitter Spaces conversation on November 21, 2021 at 2pm to the WordPress FSE & block theme chat In his article “Skins” Are Back in Style, Proposal for Themes To Bundle User-Selectable Design Variations, Justin Tadlock commented on a Proof of Concept by Riad Benguella, who explored “a way for extenders to offer multiple global styles variations and the user would be able to pick up one of the variation for its site.” (on Github). Channing Ritter also experimented and explored the possibility of switching out different style settings within the Global Styles panel. In the comments, Ritter mentioned that a feature like that could make it fairly quickly into the Gutenberg plugin for users to test. Developing for Gutenberg and Building Custom Blocks The latest Decode Podcast episode is titled Gutenberg with Jason Bahl. Kellen Mace and Will Johnston, talked to Jason Bahl, creator and maintainer of WPGraphQL plugin and ecosystem, about the benefits of Gutenberg, what’s lacking in Gutenberg’s current implementation, and what implementations exist for rendering Gutenberg in headless WordPress. Matt Watson shared his experience in Creating a Custom Block for WPOwl. The task was a Link block displaying and image a text blurb and a URL. Watson then described his implementation journey and covers these steps: Building a Reusable Block, Convert it to a Block Pattern Why use a Block instead of a Pattern Create a Block WordPress Script Write the edit.js and save.js functions Create Block Styles and Variations. The final block is now used on the WPOwls newsletter. You can study the code via the public GitHub repository Editor Maciek Palmowski announced the WPOwls Challenge for the WordPress community to build a similar block with different tools. Besides the version built as Block Patterns and Native Custom Blocks (ReactJS) they already have versions built with ACF Blocks, and via Block Builder plugin. There are other tools available, for instance you could us Genesis Custom Blocks or Lazy Blocks or a Dynamic Block. Ryan Welcher live-coded again this week. He walked us through the first part of Creating a Poll Block for Gutenberg using React Google Charts and the native WordPress Create Block script. Joe Hoyle, co-founder and CTO of HumanMade, published an experimental library to render custom Gutenberg blocks built in React (front-end) on the server (using PHP V8JS). Hoyle wrote in the Readme file of the repository Block Editor SSR “Building blocks that will render as a React-app on the front end has many possible architectures and solutions. Block Editor SSR expects blocks to be built in a certain way (the way that made most sense to me). Before detailing how Block Editor SSR will server-render and hydrate your custom React block, first let’s go over how building custom blocks in React (front end) is expected to go.” Gutenberg for Site Builders and Content Creators Kathy Zant, new product marketing manager for KadenceWP, introduced the new premium plugin, Kadence Conversation, as a no-code interface to create lightweight and performant popups, modals, slide-ins, and banners for your site. At the time of this post, the plugin is available via Black Friday sale at 40% off. In his tutorial, Ben Dwyer explains how to use the plugin Create A Blockbase Child Theme and employ the existing tools to modify a Blockbase theme, and then export a bundle of templates and theme.json as a new child theme. Justin Tadlock wrote about it, too. Block Theme No 28 was added to the WordPress Theme repository. Justin Tadlock took it out for a spin and shared his findings: Wowmall: A Free Experimental WooCommerce Block Theme. Tadlock wrote: “For an eCommerce theme, it is much cleaner than others I have seen, and it leverages almost every piece of the block system. It ships over 30 block patterns.” WordPress Events November 22, 2021 – 7pm ET / 22:00 UTC Meetup Montclair, New Jersey What is Full-Site Editing? w/ Birgit Pauli-Haack November 23, 2021 – 10:00 am EST / 15:00 UTC WordPress Social Learning Discussion: Discovering theme.json for WordPress themes with Daisy Olson November 27th, 2021 WordCamp São Paulo December 11 + 12, 2021 WordCamp Taiwan December 14th, 2021 – 5:00 pm ET / 22:00 UTC WordPress News State of The Word w/ Matt Mullenweg + Q & A February 4+5, 2022 WordCamp Birmingham, AL Call for Sponsors and Speakers are open now. March 4th, 2022 all day WordFest 2022 a 24-hour festival of WordPress. Call for Speakers is open. Deadline Dec 6th, 2021. On the Calendar for WordPress Online Events site, you can browse a list of the upcoming WordPress Events, around the world, including WordCamps, WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups. Don’t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? Type in your Email address to subscribe. Subscribe We hate spam, too and won’t give your email address to anyone except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition Thanks for subscribing. Featured image: “Baby Blocks” by Bessie Ely is licensed under CC0 1.0 by Birgit Pauli-Haack at November 20, 2021 06:42 AM under News November 19, 2021 WPTavern: Automattic Theme Team Releases a Plugin To Build Blockbase Child Themes On Wednesday, Ben Dwyer announced a new block-based plugin on the Theme Shaper blog. The Automattic Theme Team had built a child theme creator for its Blockbase WordPress parent theme. Blockbase has quickly started filling the role of Underscores, a starter that many developers used to create custom themes in the classic era. For block templating and global styles, something fresh was needed. It is both a launchpad and educational tool for theme authors who want to test the block theme waters. The approach is different now than in the past. Instead of using Blockbase as a customizable starting point, which is still a valid use case, the Automattic Theme Team is leaning far more heavily into child theming. It is a single parent to raise a legion of children, and the family has grown at a rapid pace. Since releasing Blockbase on WordPress.org, the team has already launched five child themes for it. Their themes repo on GitHub shows several others in progress. With the talent in the team’s arsenal and the Create Blockbase Theme plugin at hand, they could spit out design after design after design. Of course, the child themes might begin to lose some of their flavor if the team moved too fast. Dwyer created a custom theme called Typewriter, which is downloadable via the announcement post. For my test, I did not go quite as far with customization and relied on one of the pre-existing color schemes from Blockbase. I primarily wanted to get a feel for how the tool worked. After a bit of tinkering, I had something that still felt much like its parent with some simple changes. To use the plugin, users must install and activate the Blockbase theme. Until WordPress 5.9 is released, the Gutenberg plugin is necessary too. Currently, there are two places to make stylistic changes. The first is in the site editor. I made some adjustments to the header template part and index template. I also changed a few global styles. Customizing the index template and global styles. The second place to modify the theme’s design is via the customizer, which Blockbase enables (it is not accessible by default with block themes). The long-term goal should move all of these extra customizations to the site editor when it handles all the necessary use cases, such as a web fonts API. After switching the color scheme and selecting a couple of custom fonts, I had everything in place. Selecting a custom font. After I had all the customizations I wanted, I headed over to Appearance > Create Blockbase Theme in the admin. The page has a handful of fields to fill in — just basic theme info. Once I was finished, clicking the “Create Blockbase Theme” created a downloadable ZIP file. Generating a Blockbase child theme. Everything worked. The only issue I ran into was with the theme folder slug when using a multi-word theme name. Tavern Test became tavern_test.zip. It is standard practice to hyphenate theme folders instead of using an underscore to separate multiple words. The plugin does add a blank screenshot.png file. Creators will want to change that if they intend to publicly release their custom child theme. This is the sort of future I have long imagined for the WordPress theme space, one that can empower anyone to create designs of their own. It is a future where an end-user, even a non-coder, can tinker around for a while, export whatever they have built, and share it with others. We are not at that point with WordPress itself. The site editor currently allows users to export their templates. However, I hope that this same functionality is extended to exporting a fully-installable parent or child theme in the future. The basis of democratizing design means that everyone can give it a go without learning to code. by Justin Tadlock at November 19, 2021 11:42 PM under Themes WPTavern: WordPress 5.9 Delayed Until January 2022 photo credit: Tom Woodward WordPress 5.9 has been delayed due to significant blockers that could not be resolved in time for Beta 1, which was previously scheduled to be released November 16. The 5.9 release team came to the decision after a lengthy deliberation on the impact a delay will have on users and contributors. Robert Anderson, Editor Tech Lead for 5.9, published a summary of the blockers that were found while testing full-site editing in core this week. They are identified as either blockers for beta 1 or blockers for 5.9. “Historically (and even in the linked post), ‘deadlines are not arbitrary‘ has referred to the ability to cut features that aren’t quite ready yet, and include them in a future release,” Gary Pendergast commented on the post announcing 5.9 beta 1 as delayed. “Are there particular reasons for why this philosophy has been re-interpreted?” Tonya Mork, Core Tech Lead for the 5.9 release, responded with an explanation that FSE is going to have to be a package deal. “Removing those areas that need fixing were ruled out as they are too intertwined into FSE and would make it unstable,” Mork said. “Punting fixes was ruled out as these meant delivering a ‘half-baked’ experience. “The choice is between shipping these major features in 5.9 with a delay or moving these major features to 6.0 to ship in the spring. “Impacts were assessed. Shipping these major features sooner than later were determined to be more beneficial with less impact.” Others commenting on the post shared concerns about the features possibly being rushed after seeing the list of blockers. “My initial reaction when reading the Overview of WP 5.9 pending issues and blockers -issue on Gutenberg repository was ‘holy smokes, there are so many open issues and blockers,'” Timi Wahalahti said. “Nevertheless, from the viewpoint of a developer working in an agency and having 150+ client sites to look after, I do have similar concerns that Gary and Addison (in the Gutenberg repo issue) have already shared about rushing features out. After seeing the blocker list and reading how new major features are still under works, I’d be very uncomfortable on updating to 5.9 after releasing it, knowing that some features were probably finished in a hurry.” Contributors on GitHub cautioned that the new flows for FSE features have not been adequately tested and should not be shipped just days after landing major changes. “I think there are some large red flags here that some things are not ready for 5.9,” Gutenberg contributor Addison Stavlo said. “Overall, it seems like right now we are rushing things in a dangerous way. We targeted 5.9 as the release for these items in core but too many things are just not ready, hence the rushing to change so many things at the last minute. Wouldn’t it be better to miss the expected target date than to rush potentially regrettable decisions and brand new flows into core WP at the last minute?” The new proposed schedule, which has not yet been officially confirmed, is as follows: Nov 30 – Beta 1 (2 weeks from now) Dec 7 – Beta 2 Dec 14 – Beta 3 Dec 21 – Beta 4 (optional) Jan 4 – RC 1 (5 weeks from Beta) Jan 11 – RC2 Jan 18 – RC 3 Jan 25 – Release date At the time of publishing, all 18 contributors who weighed in on a poll in the 5.9 release leads slack channel are in favor of the proposed new schedule. More blockers are being resolved and should continue throughout the weekend, but the delay to Beta 1 makes it inevitable that the stable release will be pushed back to January. The remaining consideration is whether or not FSE will be on track for inclusion in 5.9 or if it will need to be shipped in 6.0. “If for some reason progress does not advance on track or something unknown / unexpected happens to cause further delays, then FSE features and TT2 theme are at risk to be punted to 6.0,” Mork told the Tavern. The team is working to put safeguards in place to protect the release from further delays. “FSE is a collection of features with some that are interconnected,” WordPress 5.9 Testing Co-Lead Anne McCarthy said. “This release includes a selection that are interconnected including Styles, Block theme flows, Navigation Block, etc. In order for them to really shine, it makes the most sense for them to be released together, making it hard to just delay shipping one. They need more time to be refined in order to be shipped together.” The release team plans to publish an update on Monday with confirmation of the schedule moving forward. McCarthy noted that contributions have been lower this year, which has contributed to the delay. “We need to recognize the very Human situation we’re in right now both in terms of larger cultural moments coming up with various holidays/celebrations and the reality of still being in the midst of a pandemic,” McCarthy said. “Delaying provides sustainability to get this release right without potentially burning out the remaining contributor base.” by Sarah Gooding at November 19, 2021 11:07 PM under WordPress 5.9 WPTavern: BuddyPress 10.0.0 Beta 1 Delayed, Stable Release Rescheduled for December 24 The upcoming BuddyPress 10.0.0 beta 1 release was scheduled for November 20, but contributors have decided to postpone the beta by two weeks, due to lack of time for adequately testing recent improvements to the planned features. The stable release has been rescheduled for December 24. This version will require WordPress >= 5.4. The delayed beta gives BuddyPress plugin developers more time to update the way they add custom tabs in admin screens, as version 10 will make changes to the layout of the Settings and Tools Administration screens. A short tutorial for how to update custom tabs was published in a recent BP dev note. Version 10 will add a new site membership requests feature, which changes the registration process so that a site admin must manually approve requests. Approval sends an email to the user with a link to activate their account. Administrators can turn the feature on by disabling “Anyone can register” and enabling membership requests. Improvements to site membership requests are still under review and need more testing, which was one factor in the decision to postpone beta 1. Contributors are also still working on extending no content activities with images and call of actions, a feature that needs some refinement to the initial approach. Unrelated to the postponed beta schedule, BuddyPress contributors are now discussing a proposal regarding the core BP blocks. “I was thinking we should probably stop adding blocks to BP Core and instead create standalone blocks into the WordPress plugins directory,” BuddyPress core developer Mathieu Viet said during the most recent dev chat. One advantage of not packaging them with BuddyPress is that they can be updated independently of core updates, which happen less frequently. One contributor, Varun Dubey, noted that this will increase the number of active plugins on sites and suggested the team consider bundling them in a block collection plugin instead. Anyone with a strong opinion on the matter is encouraged to share it as a comment on the most recent BP Dev Chat summary post. by Sarah Gooding at November 19, 2021 05:03 AM under News Post Status: The Open Web Manifesto Accessibility, Creatibility, and Connectibility — these are the three things that define the Open Web in its ideal state. It can be accessed by everyone, anyone can freely create on it, and the communities that form there can sustain themselves and grow. WordPress is critical to the Open Web as an indicator of its health, an ecosystem for business growth, and a path for people to contribute to the health, growth, and future of the Open Web. We want to guide, connect, and elevate our members — WordPress businesses and professionals — as they grow. And we want to make sure we share, nurture, and replenish the common resource we have in the Open Web. by Jonathan Wold at November 19, 2021 12:44 AM under Planet November 18, 2021 WPTavern: Donate to Big Orange Heart, Become a Self-Proclaimed Winner in the WP Builds WordPress Awards 2021 Flipping the usual popularity contests WordPress-related award systems on their heads, Nathan Wrigley has created something where we can all be a winner. What started as a joke to crown his WP Builds podcast as the best quickly took a positive turn that has seen several charitable donations in the past week or so. The awards “contest” is simple. Anyone can donate the minimum amount of $10 to Big Orange Heart and show their receipt via the submission form. They can then create a new award category for the WP Builds awards page and claim themselves as the sole winner. There are 27 days remaining to enter. Awards page and submission form. While I certainly want to be charitable, I saw this as an opportunity to crown myself as the Best WordPress Halo Player in 2021. I have already won, so no one can dispute it. In all seriousness, Big Orange Heart is a worthy cause in which to donate, regardless of whether you claim your award. The charity organization focuses on mental and physical health for remote workers. It offers coaching, mentoring, workshops, and other resources to over 14,500 members. “So I really did not come up with this,” said Wrigley. “It was an accident. I saw a few posts about a variety of awards polls (both inside WordPress and outside too), and I thought that it would be funny to create an Awards poll of my own. It had only one question, which was ‘Best Podcast called WP Builds’ and there was only one option to choose from, which was, erm…WP Builds. I thought that this was enormously funny because somewhat humorless dad jokes are the level that I’m on.” He then posted on Twitter and got 30 votes for the joke award poll in which his podcast could be the only winner. “A day later, I got a tweet from Jamie Marsland of PootlePress who said (jokingly, I expect) that he’d give me £10 if I would add a new question of ‘Best WordPress Tennis Player’ and him as the only possible winner. Now, I know nothing about tennis (or WordPress, if the truth be known), and so I thought about this for a moment. I imagined all of the things that I would do with Jamie’s £10. The new Bond film at the cinema, some new tennis balls, a billionth of a Bitcoin…Then I remembered Big Orange Heart.” Thus, a new fundraiser and faux awards contest had been born. Wrigley described Big Orange Heart as a charity that’s really close to his heart. He told Marsland to donate to the organization to earn his spot. A $25 contribution and a screenshot of a receipt later, and he had become the unofficial best WordPress tennis player. Not to be outdone, Nigel M Rodgers later won the “Bestest Best WordPress Tennis Player” award. It is all in good fun. “So this silliness had taken a new turn,” said Wrigley. ” A silly idea had generated $25 for Big Orange Heart. My heart was racing; this could be huge. I went to bed. In the morning, I woke up and sent out a new tweet.” If you donate $10 to @aBigOrangeHeart I will make you a 100% certain winner of a category of your choosing in "The WP Builds WordPress Awards 2021". It's money well spent. You'll feel like a winner! https://t.co/L8i8O4Ayog — Nathan Wrigley (@wpbuilds) November 10, 2021 “I had set a new low for Awards,” he said. “I will allow you to donate/buy your way into winning whatever category you choose for yourself in exchange for a guarantee that you’ll win!” The WP Builds WordPress Awards 2021 is, without a doubt, unique. Now that we are just ahead of the holidays, it is always a welcome time to donate. Michelle Frechette “is actually triplets masquerading as one person” reads one award. Leanne Mitton is the “Best Gnome Collector in the WordPress community.” Isaac Coleman is “The Most Awesome 13 Year Old in the World” — there could be a proud parent involved in that one. And, there are many others to read through just for laughs. Wrigley does not yet know if he will run it in 2022. He is waiting to see how this one turns out. With enough support from the WordPress community, it could be fun to keep up with every year. For now, Big Orange Heart is the only accepted charitable organization. However, I asked if Wrigley would be open to others in our space in the future, assuming he keeps it up next year. “I’m sure that there would be ways to allow the person making the donation to choose alternative charities,” he said. “This seems like a great idea! I’m open to suggestions about which charities we could include.” Note: Nathan Wrigley runs the WP Jukebox podcast for WP Tavern. by Justin Tadlock at November 18, 2021 07:12 PM under donations Follow our RSS feed: WordPress Planet This is an aggregation of blogs talking about WordPress from around the world. If you think your blog should be part of this site, send an email to Matt. Official Blog For official WordPress development news, check out the WordPress Core Blog. 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