This question depends on one of two things: Do you want to build classic themes with block support or full-blown block themes? How you approach projects going forward will depend on the answer to that. It was unclear which direction you prefer from your question, so I will tackle both.

It also seems like you are more interested in child theming. For clarity, I consider “starter” themes a starting point for building standalone or custom parent themes. My guess is that you want something closer to a blank canvas parent theme that does not have an opinionated set of default styles.

As for your tools, I have almost zero experience with any of them. I suspect you can maintain a similar process by sticking to classic themes with block support. However, with block themes, you will likely want to switch over to visually designing in the upcoming site editor and exporting the templates. It would cut out a lot of the steps you usually take.

Classic With Block Support

I tend to hype WordPress theming with blocks, but let us be realistic. Most theme authors will not take that step forward when WordPress 5.9 rolls around. And, there is no reason for everyone to dive face-first into something that is not 100% on par with what you can build going the traditional route. So, classic themes are the safest bet for a while.

Starter themes or frameworks are a dime a dozen in the classic theming world. My advice is to continue using what suits you best. Adding block support is mostly a matter of some style adjustments and possibly a theme.json file.

If you want to ease yourself into integrating with blocks, start learning the global styles and settings system (i.e., theme.json). It works with any type of theme, so you do not have to transition entirely over to block theming if you are not ready. This also allows you to continue using whatever setup you are accustomed to with one additional file. It has also been a part of WordPress since 5.8, so you can use it now without relying on the Gutenberg plugin or waiting for 5.9 to launch.

If you really need a starting point or parent theme in the classic + blocks space, I recommend Go by GoDaddy. The block-first project gets routine updates, supports CoBlocks and WooCommerce, and has a large enough user base to keep the ecosystem around it going.

Building Block Themes

If you want to move forward and put yourself in a solid position for WordPress’s future, block theming is the way to go. Sooner or later, almost every theme author will need to build on top of it. In this context, it also makes it easy to answer your question. And, I have two options for you.

The go-to choice for many theme authors is to learn and build from the latest default WordPress theme. In this case, it is Twenty Twenty-Two. It was supposed to be ready by December 8, along with WordPress 5.9. However, the official release date is now January 25, 2022.

While it has not officially launched yet, it is a solid starting point if you want to release a child theme in the next couple of months on top of the latest default.

The goal is for Twenty Twenty-Two to ship with alternate color palettes and fonts. However, this feature is not ready yet. In the meantime, these custom designs are available as child themes that you can tinker around with. They are just as good of a starting point as any.

However, you may be looking for something a bit more mature — as mature as anything can be for something yet to officially launch. Automattic’s Blockbase parent theme is the easy choice.

Blockbase has a low-key design that makes it easy to overwrite via child themes. It was literally built for this purpose. The Automattic Theme Team rolled out the Videomaker child theme for it yesterday. That makes six altogether, which are available via the company’s WordPress.org profile. Not only is it a good starting point, but it has plenty of examples to learn from.

Plus, you do not need to dirty your hands with code if you do not want to. By installing and activating the accompanying Create Blockbase Theme plugin, you can build child themes directly from the site editor and export them.

In October 2021, the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) initiated a lawsuit against Vizio, an American TV manufacturer, for shipping products with copyleft licenses but refusing to provide the source code after multiple attempts at contact since 2018.

The lawsuit is historic in its approach, because it focuses on consumer rights conferred by copyleft licenses and SFC is filing as a third-party beneficiary.

Vizio has responded by filing a request to remove the case from the California State Court and move it into US federal court. The company contends that the computer programs and source code at issue in VIZIO’s SmartCast operating system “fall within the ‘subject matter of copyright.\'”

Vizio’s legal representation cited several past cases involving open source licenses that were litigated within the scope of federal copyright law:

The Software Freedom Conservancy published an update on the lawsuit, speculating on Vizio’s intent based on its initial response:

SFC Executive Director Karen Sandler and Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn, who co-penned the update, said they expected Vizio held this position since the company ignored their requests during discussions in the past years. They characterized Vizio’s recent filing as “a disturbing step further.”

“Vizio’s strategy is to deny consumers their rights under copyleft licenses, and we intend to fight back,” SFC representatives said.

This software version is still under development. Please do not run this software on a production site. Instead, install it on a test site, where you can try out the newest features to get a feel for how they will work on your site.

Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).

Option 3: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1 to Beta 2 on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:

The current target for the final release of 5.9 is January 25, 2022, which is just seven weeks away. Your help testing this version is a vital part of making this release as good as it can be.

Some Highlights

Since Beta 1, 24 bugs have been fixed. Here are a few of the changes you will find in Beta 2:

Also, note that some users testing 5.9 Beta 1 faced some fatal errors upon upgrade. In turn, these errors revealed the need for some extra work on the filesystem and upgrader. Those fatal errors are no longer a problem, and the enhancements will be part of version 6.0.

How You Can Help

Testing for bugs is vital for polishing the release in the beta stage and a great way to contribute.

If you think you’ve found a bug, please post 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.

Where can I get more information?

Tickets for the first-ever WordCamp Taiwan are now available! WordCamp Taiwan is a regional online WordCamp happening on December 11-12, 2021. By purchasing a ticket, you can attend the event online OR participate in a local in-person watch party of the camp organized by a local WordPress meetup group in Taiwan.

And yes – you guessed it right, tickets for WordCamp Taiwan 2021 are completely free!

The following local meetups are organizing watch parties for WordCamp Taiwan! If you are based out of Taiwan, join us for one of these events:

WordCamp Taiwan 2021 is a two-day event and has one session track and one workshop track. You can also watch live streaming for the session track on YouTube. However, our workshops are exclusive for attendees who have tickets. Check out our event schedule to learn about all the exciting sessions we have in store for you.

The online event including networking will also take place on Gather Town (a virtual networking tool). By joining us on our Gather Town space, you will be able to roam in WordCamp virtual world and connect with fellow attendees while watching sessions online. You will need a free WordCamp Taiwan ticket to gain access to our Gather Town space.

We have sold most of our available tickets already and we only have a few more tickets left. So why wait, get your ticket now, and join us for WordCamp Taiwan 2021!

Gravatar is fielding questions today after “Have I Been Pwned,” a data breech checker service, tweeted “New scraped data: Gravatar had 167M profiles scraped in Oct last year via an enumeration vector. 114M of the MD5 email address hashes were subsequently cracked and distributed alongside names and usernames.“ It claims 72% of these email addresses were already logged with the service.

The tweet referenced a BleepingComputer article from October 2020 titled, “Online avatar service Gravatar allows mass collection of user info,” which explains how the hashes were originally obtained. After Italian security researcher Carlo Di Dato was unable to get an answer from Gravatar, he demonstrated to the publication how one could access user data by using a numeric ID associated with each profile to fetch it. He then wrote a test script that sequentially visits profile URLs from IDs 1 to 5000 and said he was able to collect JSON data of the first 5000 Gravatar users with no issues.

Many Gravatar users were startled and upset by notices from Firefox Monitor and Have I Been Pwned this morning, stating that their information had appeared in a new data breach.

The BleepingComputer article has gained more attention after Have I Been Pwned’s disclosure today, spurring Gravatar to respond on Twitter:

Gravatar does not consider the incident to be a data breach, which is why the service did not disclose the changes made in response to the security researcher in 2020.

The Automattic-owned service is used across WordPress websites, GitHub, Stackoverflow, and other places online. Security researchers and privacy advocates have warned about privacy attacks on Gravatar for years. Many have demonstrated how readily available user information is and how easy it is to scrape it.

In July 2013, Dominique Bongard spoke at Passwordscon in Las Vegas about De-anonymizing Members of French Political Forums. He explained how a custom crawler could be written to acquire MD5 hashes for forum users and demonstrated that an attack with custom cracking software was able to recover 70% of Gravatar users’ email addresses.

Bogard noted that de-anonymizing members of political forums can be particularly dangerous in places where the forums’ users have no constitutional right to free speech, or where participants may be likely to get harassed or attacked.

Wordfence founder and CEO Mark Maunder explained how using email address hashes can lead to people to googling the extracted hash to find other websites and services that an individual is using.

“For example: A user may be comfortable having their full name and profile photo appear on a website about skiing,” Maunder said. “But they may not want their name or identity exposed to the public on a website specializing in a medical condition. Someone researching this individual could extract their Gravatar hash from the skiing website along with their full name. They could then Google the hash and determine that the individual suffers from a medical condition they wanted to keep private.”

Many Gravatar users were not satisfied with the service’s explanation that all of the information users entered was public, which disqualified the incident from being labeled a breach. In the same explanation, however, the service claims the API was abused, instead of admitting that it was vulnerable and could have been better protected.

After years of researchers demonstrating that this was possible, is scraping Gravatar an unethical data acquisition because the scraper is abusing the service’s architecture? Or is it unethical that Gravatar made it possible to harvest profile data en masse for years?

“If someone is able to use an API for other than its intended purpose and can gather information which otherwise wouldn’t be available through ‘standard’ means… it’s a breach,” Twitter user @RegGBlinker commented on the matter.

Gravatar undoubtedly wants to minimize the damage done by the breach notices sent out this morning to its users, but making this an issue of semantics was not reassuring. Most users did not intend to share their Gravatar emails with whoever has the motivation to scrape the data that was exposed for harvesting. Even if that data was dumped through “abuse” of their API, it feels like a breach to those who expected that user data would not be available for distribution elsewhere.

The incident serves as a reminder that, as Gravatar emphasized today, the data users choose to share publicly is made available by the service’s API and is not private. As a user, there are risks to enjoying the convenience of not having to upload your profile photo multiple times across various websites. Publishers who want their sites to offer a more privacy-conscious option should look to alternatives like Local Gravatars or Pixel Avatars.

Automattic’s latest Blockbase child theme landed in the WordPress.org directory today. Videomaker is aimed at film directors and video creators. I have put it through its paces in the last week as it waited for approval in the review system.

At first glance, there is not much that separates Videomaker from any other plain ol’ block theme. Aside from a different color scheme, it looks and feels like its parent, Blockbase. It takes some digging to figure out what this theme brings to the table. Once you find its block patterns, it is evident that it would work well for indie filmmakers.

WordPress block themes have a pattern-discoverability issue. I have been noticing it for a while. So many often seem lackluster until you begin tinkering with their patterns, applying them to pages, and seeing what you can build. Custom patterns are where block themes will shine the most, and these need to be front and center when a user activates one.

The most straightforward solution is for themes to bundle a custom front page template out of the box, giving users a small taste of the included patterns. Starter content could also help, but the ticket for making this compatible with block themes is still open.

I almost bypassed Videomaker because I could not see its potential. After some time with it, I enjoyed how much thought the design team put into its patterns. While the theme can be used for anything, its block patterns are specifically geared toward film directors and creators in the indie space.

The theme focuses on two areas. The first is the creator. It includes a few layouts that allow the site owner to show who they are, such as the About pattern:

The second focus area is on the art itself. There is a full-width homepage for showcasing a trailer or film, and there are patterns for the film description, credits, and more.

One of my favorite patterns was one for a film poster. This one stood out in particular because I could have used this back in college when I was going through my filmmaker phase — no, do not ask to see my $0-budget, half-finished vampire picture. I built my film posters in Photoshop back then via on-campus computers. It would have been fun to visually edit them in WordPress.

The theme never overcomplicates things. It offers a variety of 16 patterns for quickly throwing together a film-related website.

I particularly like the addition of the seemingly-minor sections. For example, the Awards pattern is a simple columns layout that allows users to showcase their film’s awards:

There is nothing especially groundbreaking about the pattern. It is just a Cover, Columns, Images, and Paragraphs. Creating something like this in the classic era would have been overly complex. Users would have likely had to input a shortcode without any chance of seeing it live, at least until they previewed the page. Or, it would have existed as a customizer option and limited to wherever the theme allowed.

Looking back, it is crazy how something so simple was so complicated in the past. With patterns, theme designers can have a lot of fun adding these little touches to their themes, and users reap the benefits.

One area that could be improved would be the addition of featured media. Creators should not be required to manually edit their video list as shown in the following pattern every time they have an update. It should simply automatically show their latest video posts.

WordPress has allowed featured images for years, but video and audio are a no-go. I have a bookmarked ticket that proposes expanding into “featured media” from 2020. There has not been any movement toward a solution. It turns out, the Automattic Themes Team had commented about the need for featured videos when they had started work on Videomaker.

This is not an issue that is best solved via the theme. While it was easier to do with classic, PHP-based theme projects, WordPress should provide the capability out of the box.

I only found one significant issue with the theme. Its default page template currently displays both the post date and featured image. I am hazarding a guess that this was an unintentional copy-paste error during development. Typically, these items are not desirable on pages. One of the best things about block themes is that users can adjust these problems — intentional or not — via the site editor. Don’t want the post date and featured image on pages? Just remove them.

Outside of that, I like seeing the continued experimentation from the Automattic Theme Team. I am waiting to see what they tackle next.

Anne McCarthy announced Round #11 of the FSE Outreach Program on November 11. The latest test, dubbed Site Editing Safari, calls on volunteers to run through a step-by-step list to find strengths and weaknesses around the upcoming WordPress 5.9 site editor. Volunteers are still welcome to provide feedback until Tuesday, December 7.

This is actually my second attempt at Round #11. The first was right when the testing began nearly a month ago. As always, I was excited to jump in and contribute in some small way to the project. So, I made sure I updated everything and loaded up my test environment. Then, the entire experience rocketed downhill.

I became frustrated after the template navigation was removed from the site editor. So, I simply threw in the towel. The one feature I had been waiting on for months felt useless. I pointed out these frustrations in my review of Gutenberg 11.9 — let’s just say there were a few drafts of that post that were far less kind.

Shortly after, template navigation was re-added to Gutenberg and should land in WordPress 5.9.

Calls for using the TT1 Blocks theme are also demotivating. I have become burned out testing it and hope to never see it again. On the other hand, Twenty Twenty-Two is far more exciting. Plus, it will be the theme that showcases what FSE can do. So, I installed it instead. Yes, I began breaking the rules before I even hopped over to the first step of testing.

The following is a screenshot of the final homepage customization after running through the tests:

I jumped ahead and started from the header-editing section at the end of the test. The header area is the first thing you see in the editor, so it felt natural to begin there.

I started by removing the Page List block from the Navigation menu in the header. I have 90+ pages on my install, and it is always irritating when themes list them all by default. There also does not seem to be a way to limit that to top-level pages or a max number. I opted for a few custom links instead.

Then, I added a Search block, but its options were far too limiting to fit it into the design. There was no way to edit the colors or typography of the input field. It would also be nice to have a search text input that expanded or popped up when clicking the search icon.

Eventually, I just dropped it all and added a Social Icons block. They were a bit less boring than run-of-the-mill links.

The biggest issue I hit was with the Group block. By default, the Twenty Twenty-Two theme adds an 8rem (that’s pretty big) bottom margin to one of the Groups within the header area. That pushes everything on the page after it down. The trouble is that there is no way to customize that space because the block still does not support margins.

I ended up adding an intro section to balance out all of the whitespace between the header and content areas:

Based on the current direction of an open ticket, Group margin support is unlikely to land in WordPress 5.9. The suggestion is to rely on the Spacer block to do the work.

When I jumped back to the first section of the testing steps, I wanted to put the Post Featured Image block through its paces. It has improved, but it is still missing the vital Image Size option, which would allow users to select a theme-registered size.

I also wanted to add a border, but the option does not exist for the block. Instead, I had to wrap it in a Group block to create the effect. I took it a step further by adding padding and background color, essentially creating a two-color border.

The purist in me cringes at wrapping an image in a <div> element just to add a border. Users should be able to add it directly to the Image block.

This very much feels like where the state of the block and site editing is overall. Many pieces are exceptional, but after digging beneath the surface, you find that you need workarounds for some essential design needs.

During testing, I ran into a few features I would like to have, such as a word-count limit for the Post Excerpt block and a button-style design for the “more link.” I am sure there are already tickets to address these, so I did not dwell on them.

The biggest, ahem, hiccup that I ran into wiped all of my progress when editing my header. I tried to transform one of the outer Group blocks into a Cover to give it a background. It wiped everything in the header area clean, and the “undo” button did not seem to work. I just started over.

I ran through all of the tests without any other issues. The site editor and global styles interfaces feel close to ready for their version 1.0 release in WordPress. The system works well enough for those willing to accept some frustration to play around with a suite of new toys.

For many of us it’s Christmastime, a time for family, friends, and love, anticipating the holidays and the New Year. As the German poet Erick Kästner wrote: “Will it better? Will it be worse?, one asks every year. But let’s be honest: life is always life-threatening.” ¹ Happy 2nd Advent!

¹ “Wird’s besser? Wird’s schlimmer?, fragt man alljährlich. Aber seien wir ehrlich, Leben ist immer lebensgefährlich.” — Erich Kästner

WordPress 5.9

The test team published instructions on how you can test this release and help ensure it’s the best version that can be shipped in January. Help test WordPress 5.9 Features. The post covers the best test environment for all skill levels, and some tips for testing. For each feature, you can read a brief description with the suggested testing focus. As many features were built for users to build sites without touching code, the emphasis is on workflow and ease-of-use for WordPress users. Any feedback from this test will be welcome as it could improve the final version considerably.

Gutenberg 12.0.1

Ryan Welcher was also our special guest for the Gutenberg Changelog episode 56 when Grzegorz Ziolkowski and I discussed the Gutenberg release

📢 New Episode #56 is now available! 🎙️
Birgit Pauli-Haack and Grzegorz Ziolkowski discuss Gutenberg plugin release 12.0 with their special guest Ryan Welcher, developer advocate at Automattic.

All things Block Themes

For the Episode 21 of the WP Briefing podcast, executive director of the WordPress open-source project, Josepha Haden Chomphosy invited Jeff Ong and Maggie Cabrera from the Theme team. They discussed the future of theme building and the upcoming WordPress default theme Twenty-Twenty-Two. They also clarify additional terms around themes.

Ben Dwyer of the WordPress Themes team compiled this week’s Digest: Gutenberg + Themes: Week of November 29th, 2021 – the 74th weekly round-up of important theme topics, issues, and PRs that could use community input and review. Dwyer changed the format a bit. Instead, a list of PRs and Issue titles and numbers, he provides a summary of the various topics, this is certainly helpful for theme developer keeping in touch with Gutenberg.

Alex Lende published more details on how VS Code works with Theme JSON Schema for Code Validation, Tool Tips with hints, and Auto-Complete. The demo GIFs also show the short-keys to use to make it all work. Very nifty!

Michael Burridge informs developers via the WordPress Make Blog that “the directory names in block-based (FSE) themes are changing. The name for the directory containing template files will be templates, and the name for the directory containing template part files will be parts.” You can read more details in his article: New directory names for block-based (FSE) themes

Fränk Klein shared what he learned building a Hybrid Theme. After some definition of the terms, Hybrid theme, Universal theme and block theme, Klein takes you along his journey to explore how theme.json and PHP can mix. How can WordPress 5.8 features help refactor existing themes and bring them more inline with the block editor? Even if they don’t fully embrace full-site editing, there are ways to make classic themes work better. It’s also not without challenges. Klein has some insight here, too.

David McCan wrote in his article Full Site Editing and Custom Post Types: What You Need To Know about what tools you need to create the single and archive templates for Custom Post Types. McCan concluded: “The big deal with Full Site Editing is that the ability to create templates for Custom Post Types is being built into WordPress core.” You will still need third-party blocks that support custom fields, thought. McCan has tested a few shared what he learned.

“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. The index 2020 is here

Full-Site Editing

Anne McCarthy published a walk-through the new, powerful Navigation Block site builders will soon us with full-site editing experience: Exploring the Navigation Block for WordPress 5.9. McCarthy wrote: “The Navigation Block is an advanced new block that enables you to edit your site’s navigation menu, both in terms of structure and design. This video seeks to give an initial look at this new block, provide a demo to help you explore it on your own, answer some top questions, and share some context around what’s to come next.”

FSE Program Testing Call #11 until Dec 7

Building Blocks and developing for Gutenberg

This year’s array of year-end post starts with Brian Francoeur‘s post WordPress: Where It’s Headed in 2022 He wrote: “WordPress is fighting back with genuine innovation, evolving the WordPress core and ecosystem to meet the needs of its users” and he doesn’t mean just the block editor. He gave us a view on all things that are happening in the space, including performance team, and decoupled WordPress (others call it headless).

DJ Billings wrote about an exciting new use case for Gutenberg: Newsletters. She wrote “Newsletters are back, and they’re on the rise” and identified Gutenberg as “a powerful email builder”. You might have guessed it, Billings then turns fast to Newsletter Glue as a Gutenberg-first tool to use WordPress to also composed emails. Full disclosure: For the last twelve months, we have been assembling the weekend edition also with Newsletter Glue.

WordPress Social Learning events

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.

Open Source Initiative, the organization that stewards the Open Source Definition, has launched a new survey on the usage of open source, in collaboration with OpenLogic by Perforce. The survey takes a broad look at the trends and challenges organizations and users experience when adopting open source software today.

“In the 2022 State of Open Source Survey, OpenLogic and OSI will gather information about the use of open source software, the level of open source maturity and strategy within organizations, and the larger trends shaping the open source ecosystem,” OpenLogic OSS Evangelist Javier Perez said.

The survey takes approximately 7-10 minutes and is applicable to users at every level. A few of the questions are aimed at gauging participants’ reservations about using open source software, which should yield some interesting results. It also asks about support challenges and reasons for adopting specific open source technologies.

As a small incentive, participants can enter an email address at the end for a chance to win a $200 Amazon gift card. The survey will close January 7, 2022, and the results will be published in the 2022 State of Open Source report at the end of January. This information will help OSI continue to be an advocate for a healthy open source ecosystem.

The organization has also recently launched a new, free membership level with limited capabilities.

“Not everyone can provide financial support, but we want your participation, too!” OSI’s newly appointed Executive Director Stefano Maffulli said at launch. “Voting privileges are not included at this level, but you do receive the cool digital member badge to show your support of OSI.”

New signups will receive an email with discounts on open source technology courses and open source hardware manufacturers, and a link to a membership page with a script that generates a unique digital badge.

Full membership costs $40 per year and includes voting rights to influence OSI’s programs. Launching a free membership level on top of this is a strategic move for the Open Source Initiative that allows the organization to solidify its supporters and periodically appeal for financial support across a wider base.

At the end of November, prominent members of the PHP community formed a new PHP Foundation as a non-profit organization, “to ensure the long life and prosperity of the PHP language.” The founding members include Automattic, Laravel, Acquia, Zend, Craft CMS, Private Packagist, Tideways, PrestaShop, Symfony, and JetBrains—a group of companies with products that rely heavily on PHP.

In just 11 days, the Foundation has has secured an estimated annual budget of more than $280,000 through donations and monthly commitments using Open Collective’s transparent funding platform.

JetBrains, leading the charge with a promise to contribute $100,000 annually, announced the formation of the foundation. It stated that the organization will not seek to influence PHP language decisions but will leave those to the PHP Internals community. The donations will be used to fund developers to work on PHP:

The loss of a longtime prolific contributor Nikita Popov, who is moving on to work on LLVM with significantly less time on PHP, was one of the major contributing factors for the formation of the foundation.

“Losing one of the main contributors to PHP is a blow to the community, because he is the bearer of a lot of knowledge and expertise,” PhpStorm marketing manager Roman Pronskiy said. “It puts the language that powers 78% of the Web in a fragile position. Not to mention an overwhelming burden on the maintainer, which unfortunately in the world of OSS often leads to people burning out.”

Despite enormous contributions from Zend by Perforce on various initiatives for nearly two decades, along with other corporations invested in the future of the language, PHP is too important to the web to risk going without vital support for its maintainers.

“By continuing to fund full-time and part-time developers on the PHP project, Zend has helped ensure the ongoing prosperity and modernization of the PHP language, and its continued use for mission-critical application development,” Pronskiy said.

“We were proceeding rather leisurely, thinking that the problem was not critical. However, Nikita’s decision forced us to intensify our work on the foundation.”

The 26-year old programming language continues to be immensely popular today, thanks to its easy learning curve and the relative ease of finding hosting for PHP-based sites. It powers 36% of the top million websites and 49% of the top 10K according to BuiltWith. With such a massive footprint, formalizing support for the future of the PHP project is long overdue.

“PHP quickly became my choice of language, and while some folks mock it for not being a ‘real’ language – whatever that means – it can be strongly typed and structured if you choose – but more importantly, PHP has enabled the innovation and explosion of the web, largely through projects like WordPress, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, and Laravel,” Automattic engineer Jeffrey Pearce wrote in a recent essay about how he found PHP. “These projects all had a low barrier to entry and made writing software accessible to the masses.

“Hacking away through a PHP file, mixing classes and inline code, functional and object orientation, and discovering the joys of MVC frameworks – you could really move fast and break things.”

At WordCamp Europe in 2019, when Matt Mullenweg was asked how he plans to balance chasing the new and shiny with all of WordPress’ existing legacy APIs, he said, “PHP is going to be crucial to us for many years to come.” WordPress owes a great deal to PHP, which keeps getting faster and better with each release. Behind these releases is a community of people who need reliable support.

Any contributor can apply to the Foundation for funding part-time or full-time work. Positions are not permanent and can be canceled at any time. Applications are still open for the next two weeks and the Foundation’s administration will use its expertise to decide which contributors will receive funding.

“We are trying to bring our community to the world.” —Eric Chuang

In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David chats with two organizers from the upcoming WordCamp Taiwan 2021 — Eric Chuang 莊桓亦 and Hend Chen 陳瀚宇. Learn what the WordPress community is like in Taiwan, and how they\'ve dealt with restrictions on in-person events. Eric and Hend crafted a “hybrid” approach to their WordCamp and hope having English sessions will bring more talent and influence to Taiwan\'s WordPress community.

$\"🔗\"$ Mentioned in the show:

$\"🙏\"$ Sponsor: iThemes

Take the guesswork out of building, maintaining, and securing WordPress websites. Professional plugins and training from iThemes help you create and manage your sites. Secure, back up, and manage them quickly and easily. Master leading-edge WordPress skills to grow your business and make more money. Learn and grow with the experts at iThemes.

Transcript

Eric Chuang: [00:00:00] Yes, I\'m sorry. I accidentally click leave the meeting.

David Bisset: No, it\'s okay. Some people get a look at me and then hear my voice and then they instantly dropped the meeting. It\'s fine. I\'m not trying not to take it personally. Just think about how my wife feels. She can\'t do that. She lives with me. So it\'s been a while.

Eric Chuang: About almost a year, I would say maybe, or maybe, oh yeah. Last year in November.

David Bisset: Yeah. how did I get involved in that. Did you invite me? You must have, because I really don\'t like sticking my nose in other people\'s business.

Eric Chuang: First I joined the mega meetup and yes, I thought it was brilliant.

So I just emailed you with, without any, without. Any notification, I guess I just emailed

Yeah. Just like how my kids asked me for money. It comes out of the [00:01:00] blue and say, Hey, hi, I need some of, I need some of this blank. Yeah. The mega meetup was actually pretty. It was pretty good. We\'re still doing it off and on here and there.

What are, and I remember now you inviting me in, was a nice, great meetup that we had. I\'ve been there. I think it was twice or three times over the. What are your local meetups like right now? Are you able, are you able to meet in person over there now? Or how what\'s the situation over there?

Eric Chuang: So this year in Taiwan, we actually had raised our alerts from we have the level one to actually, we went to level three and oh, in person gathering. Abandoned. We\'re yeah. We\'re post. So we were not allowed to hand hold any in-person meetup, but things have been better now.

And now we have [00:02:00] restarted our Tahlia and meet up again. And we started, we restarted from last month. Yes. So now we can still. Present.

David Bisset: Oh, that\'s fantastic. And about how many people sh so you\'ve had one since then one meetup or how many?

Eric Chuang: Currently in Taiwan we have one in-person meeting, but we have to, we actually have two this month.

David Bisset: And did you have meetups consistently through the pandemic? How is the strength of your local WordPress community?

Eric Chuang: Oh actually we try to make it virtual as well. We, yeah, we it was that time that I started to I started to I started to connect people virtually.

We used we used [00:03:00] virtual value, gathered how to make people participate and we can check. By groups. Yeah.

David Bisset: So what\'s your background? I\'m sorry, go ahead. No. I\'m interested a little bit about you. And I don\'t I don\'t know how many people know about you and hint. Hint is also on the call.

He\'s just very quiet. Care to just tell us a little bit about yourselves before we go into.

Hend Chen: WordPress? I enjoy WordPress two years ago and I seen WordPress we\'re friends, like big family because we can help each other in emit app and social media.

David Bisset: Do you find it\'s easy to find people, other people who know WordPress in your area?

Hend Chen: Baby, because we know each other big we joined meet app and know each other use pressed. [00:04:00]

David Bisset: Yeah. You say it\'s like a big family. You must not know my family. We constantly fight actually.

It\'s beginning to, yeah. It\'s beginning to get my, like my family in that a little bit. Eric, how long have you been in WordPress again?

Eric Chuang: I would say maybe four years. Four years since I was, yeah, since I first joined a WordPress meetup in Taipei and yeah.

Eric Chuang: as, for, as for organizing meetups it has been three years, so I joined the WordPress community in 2017 and in 2018 we have, we had our first work camp in Taiwan.

David Bisset: Yeah. So what\'s the what\'s the word press community in the community that associates with you folks in [00:05:00] Taiwan? Is it like a lot of developers, a lot of WordPress, beginners or users? Are they people trying to build websites or just what\'s the mix like?

Hend Chen: I think there are different job in our bid up that developer designer we, we Clare to different job join us. So in our bid, Oh one they are, they have different jobs. One is CIF and one is no year

In your own meetup. So these people are from different backgrounds, not necessarily developers they\'re business owners. It sounds or they\'re working for themselves.

Is it more beginner stuff or is it Gutenberg or is it plugins or what\'s the usual, what\'s the typical?

Eric Chuang: It actually depends on which meetups in our local meetup where in Korean. And usually we have some. Beginners oriented topics, like how to troubleshooting your website, how to install plugins or how to start with block editors, that kind of stuff.

But the Dean Taipei which is another meetup and Taiwan there are more like SEL managers or developers or. Plugin sharing.

David Bisset: Yeah. I\'m really trying to interrogate you, you to please forgive me. [00:07:00] What we talk a lot about in the recent, the WordPress community has talked a lot about like young people in the next generation to continue to like WordPress getting bigger and growing.

Do you see a lot of young people in your communities and the last couple of years, or is it mostly old folks?

Eric Chuang: By definition, I think David, you are, you\'re young people, correct answer,

David Bisset: but then now that you read the card I gave you correctly do you see like school, age, teenagers, college people.

Do you see any of that coming through or do you tend to. Do you see it? Do you see any trends in far as the age and the kind of people that come in, do you think its like a younger fresher crowd or do you think it\'s like an older, more mature? Oh

Eric Chuang: actually I recently I found there are couple of couple of younger generations join us.

For example, we have. We actually have a member, a young, enthusiastic who is in his third year of high [00:08:00] school. And he tried to, we actually have him to. Co-organized our local meetups. Wow.

Eric Chuang: blood. Yeah. So he, current he\'s currently helping us with the meetup venue.

David Bisset: Whatever skin moisturizer you\'re using keep going, because wow. I think my kids are, my kids look older than you. Of course, maybe this, maybe it\'s the stress of being my, me being their father.

Let\'s talk about work camp Taiwan now. How many is how many work camp Taiwan\'s have there been? Is this the second? Did I remember that?

Eric Chuang: With this third word camp or in Taiwan, but if the [00:09:00] first word camp Taiwan, we had two war camps type. Hey, before.

David Bisset: Ah, yes. So this means like this mean that covers the entire country.

Which implies that how did this get started? Especially with the COVID stuff coming through. When did you decide, or when was there a decision made that an in-person meetup was possible that it could happen and who was involved in that?

Eric Chuang: Actually I was inspired by a deputy work press community, deputy code Harry.

David Bisset: okay. Sorry. I was thinking Harry and the Hendersons for a second that this didn\'t take well. Okay. You were inspired by a deputy. And what did that deputy do that inspired you?

Eric Chuang: He was asking whether Taiwan is doing, do you have a hybrid word camp?

Because in Taiwan our authority allows us to have [00:10:00] in-person gathering. Within 50 people and 50

Eric Chuang: 50 people in honor. So that means we can legally hold our in-person meetups while we make those meals. Watch show of a watch party of WordCamp fishing. So he was asking whether we can try this kind of hybrid format of four camp.

David Bisset: Wow. So first before we go any further, what\'s the date of the word campus?

David Bisset: So I don\'t have a calendar in front of me. Is that a Saturday or a Sunday or is it a Friday or is

David Bisset: Okay. Yeah. You still have Saturdays and Sundays over there, just like we do. Yes. Thank you. Thank [00:11:00] you, Mr. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Brain. So you mentioned before, I was about to ask you what the challenges for organizing and running events like this are not just because of COVID in health, but because of there are, I was, I\'m glad you brought it up.

Cause I didn\'t know a way to bring up government the government. Every government\'s got something, no matter where you live, but I know yours was particularly picky in particular, and I\'m guessing the number of physical people meeting together is one of those things. One of those challenges how are you going to do that with this work camp?

Are you going to have, who\'s going to show up physically and who\'s not, or how does that work?

Eric Chuang: Actually in our idea of hybrid war camp the men session will be online. It will be a virtual word camp as usual. It\'s still a virtual workload camp. So every everyone in the world can do.

Watch the word came online while [00:12:00] we use we asked some meetup organizers to organize their meetups. So there will be five meetups during the event and all meetups will be a watch party of our work camp session. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. In that case we can still have some offline interactions and while we make while we make sure that we fit the work camp sideline, because yeah, because it wasn\'t allowed before.

David Bisset: Yeah. So it\'s kinda there\'s a hub of. Of a group of people that are meeting in person that are that\'s like a, that\'s like a work camp, but all the watch parties or the meetup groups are interacting with that. And that collectively altogether is where is the work camp?

Taiwan. It sounds like to me. [00:13:00] So the, you have these people, not only from around the country, but all the way around the world, whoever wants to join in yes. How many people from the meetups together about is that. 50 or a hundred or

They estimate that there will be 20 or 30 people and we estimate how many hands you journey. Try

David Bisset: A it\'s a nice, good social sizes, right? Yeah. So what are you planning on? Spoil us a little bit. What are you planning? What\'s your speaker lineup look like? Or what\'s your look like so far?

Eric Chuang: work camp Taiwan is going to [00:14:00] be a few days after the release of word, press 5.9. We

David Bisset: actually, can we check the calendar on that? Cause that date\'s been shifting at the time of just, you may want to look at I\'m not sure I\'m a little foggy right now, but 5.9 has been shifted around a little bit but anyway, let\'s just assume, let\'s just assume so far.

Eric Chuang: And so we actually invite a member from core team too, to demonstrate what 5.9 is going to be. And it will be our keynote.

David Bisset: Oh, wow. You\'re not going to tell me a name. Aren\'t you. You\'re going to keep it a secret. Aren\'t you who that is? That\'s okay. I\'m used to people keeping secrets from me.

Are you, is how many is it? Is it. It\'s two days. So is attracts both days. Is there are anything dealing with contributors or what\'s the schedule like?

Eric Chuang: [00:15:00] We\'re going to have two tracks. One is the regular session track and the Ardagh is a workshop. So actually we have three workshops. So far, yeah, we have three, three workshops.

One is about localization. One is about security and cure two or four focusing on security. Yeah.

David Bisset: And then you\'re going to have like normal speakers, non workshop speakers, giving their presentations. Yeah. So on both days, Oh, so is it going to be how much of it is going to be in English and how much of it is your Nate is the native language.

Eric Chuang: So there will be four English speakers and one English workshop and the rest. They are Excuse [00:16:00] me that we calculate. So there are two Mandarin workshops and

David Bisset: excuse me. Oh, it\'s okay. I\'ve run out of fingers to count on my own. I\'m trying

Eric Chuang: to I\'m bad. I\'m bad at math. Okay. So we have 10 mandarins. We have 10 mentoring sessions and to two workshops.

David Bisset: Yeah. So you met her? No, go ahead. Go ahead. No, go ahead. No. So it\'s Mandarin and English.

David Bisset: Did I say Mandarin? I don\'t know. There\'s a show here called the Mandalorian. I\'m just impressed. I didn\'t say Mandalorian. Why do you have English involved in your conference? Is there enough people apart of your groups that speak it or you, or are you doing it for the sake of the outside world?

Eric Chuang: We\'re at [00:17:00] FC have, we\'re actually getting more. Foreign speakers involved because we try to get the Taiwan, WordPress community. We\'re trying to bring our community to the world. So yeah, one of, one of the purposes is to have other like foreign attendees to join our work camp.

David Bisset: Taiwan to no. Why bringing the speakers to Taiwan? Why is that important for you?

Eric Chuang: English is still the most understandable language out around the world and having English speakers can [00:18:00] make can make this work camp more inclusive to people.

David Bisset: language. Do you also think that it brings some knowledge. Bye. I can only speak from experience. I run board camp, Miami. It\'s an America, it\'s, the English is the only language, unless there\'s a little bit of Spanish in there, but one of the reasons why I like to bring people to work camps locally from out of town is because our local community doesn\'t have someone who knows about this subject.

Or this subject, we\'re a big, we\'re a bigger community, but that doesn\'t mean we know everything. And, there are people that are community that want to hear about developer topics, certain developer topics, or certain marketing topics. And they just don\'t get that from the local people in the area, because a lot of our people have been new their beginners or their users or their chefs or their lawyers.

They don\'t have. Yeah. They want some, they want to talk to [00:19:00] someone or see someone face to face who has this knowledge. So if we can\'t find it locally, we ship it in. We get people to speak. And a lot of those people are well-known in the WordPress community. We don\'t just grab people cause they\'re big names and put them on our stage.

We, just to make ourselves look good. Oh, look at who we have on stage. It\'s because our local community, we want our local community to have this, these talks and this information and it\'s online, but also it\'s better. It\'s also just as good as to have it inside the work camp in person, in front of everyone, in an audience.

Do you feel that, do you feel that way sometimes with your community? Like you like to bring in people because you want to expose the community to these ideas and these thoughts from these people?

David Bisset: You\'re a man of few words. I like highlight you. You agree completely. But no, from one word camp organizer to another, I think that\'s, if you\'re thinking about the good overall of your local committee, [00:20:00] Then, word camps are supposed to be highly local, but if you\'re stuck, not stuck, stuck as the wrong word, but if you\'re in a place geographically or language wise there\'s a little bit of a barrier, whether it\'s physical or language or something else, then how do you get your WordPress community to grow or in knowledge and in.

And I think you have one of, I think one of your ideas, pretty good. One, get someone from core to do the keynote, explain about WordPress, get people, making, by making some of it English at all. It\'s easier to allow certain speakers to be able to give talks at your event. I\'m just glad that many people can understand and or translate that.

I listened to talk sometimes from speakers and my English. And so I\'m, I almost need a translation and it\'s still English. So speaking of the global community what do you feel, how do you feel Taiwan has been [00:21:00] considered by the global WordPress community? Do you feel like it\'s been okay.

Or do you feel like there, there should be more attention to your general area of the globe? Do you feel like that there\'s, there\'s too much, there\'s not enough attention being put in your, in, in that area. I was talking with Mary from word camp network camp, Mary Jo from Africa last week.

And we had the same conversation, the same question about, do you do you feel like I\'m a little underrepresented in the WordPress community globally? Are you, or are you happy or what do you wish. The WordPress community can do to shine a better spotlight on your area because there\'s some great talent everywhere, including your area.

Do you feel a little awkward or do you feel like you\'re not missing anything in Taiwan from the WordPress community standpoint?

Eric Chuang: I think due to some. Language barrier. I think [00:22:00] Taiwanese people are nuts. Taking part into taking part in the global WordPress community proactively.

And meanwhile I think the world has a. Thing how the potential, what the potential of Taiwan community can bring. And that\'s the reason why we\'re, we are actually trying to bridge the global WordPress community and the local, the Taiwan, local WordPress community. Yeah. And But actually Taiwan is a tiny island.

And we\'re not a very big market here. I think we\'re a part of the Southeast Asia and I think, that\'s how did I say. I think that\'s also a chance for us to work with this [00:23:00] region.

David Bisset: Yeah. Yeah. There\'s, I\'ve never been in that part of the world. I always wanted to though there\'s always some beautiful places in Taiwan and Japan and all those islands in that area, then there is what can, the people in the WordPress community do to help.

Eric Chuang: I think I think what you what people can outside can do is to. To join, to respond our invitations. If we try to reach, if we try to reach this like speakers and but actually I think the men problems is still inside. As I mentioned, we haven\'t been proactively participating in the.

So I wouldn\'t say, I think the [00:24:00] resource from the global community is currently I think it\'s enough because whatever I want to look for, I want to look for, I can get the answers. Yeah. So I think the support from outside is enough and. That\'s that brings to another point of mine.

I think what our local community country can do is to do more localizations, to to encourage people to encourage people to. Join to follow the guideline, to know what WordPress community really is and so on.

David Bisset: And if we, if anybody in the WordPress community can help to make that better and easier for you, that would be a good thing.

And I\'m sure some of the speakers would like some of the speakers could Lost my train of thought, this will be edited out, but [00:25:00] some of the, some of those people that need to be able to hear your invitations to, to come that word can be spread. And there is a lot of whether you\'re a small island or your, a big continent, I think like Africa or Asia, I think there\'s enough diversity in thinking.

That we\'re missing so much potential in the WordPress community as a whole, and it can make us stronger if we listen to those voices and participate in those communities. That\'s, and that\'s why we did those mega meetups very early on because a lot of the meetup organizers with dealing with the first year of COVID, a lot of people had a lot of famous.

Things they needed to take care of, mental stress issues. So we thought, why don\'t we just get one virtual meetup together? And then once we figured out these people were coming from all these different countries like yourself, then you know it\'s a global community, but it\'s, it really puts the global and the [00:26:00] global community.

Because like before, before COVID we always could communicate with people outside of our local areas or our country. But some people now depended on it now in the last year or two, to be able to meet new people or explore or get new ideas. And I\'m very happy to hear though that the WordPress information that you\'re able to find is available to you.

Not everybody has. That privilege, if I\'m assuming that you mean you, is there, if somebody doesn\'t speak English and it\'s Mandarin, is there enough Mandarin information in WordPress for most people?

David Bisset: working on. That\'s the translation. Are you part of the translation team or work with them?

David Bisset: that\'s okay. I haven\'t had my coffee either. What time is it or.

David Bisset: Oh, wow. [00:27:00] See, that\'s past my bedtime. Yeah. How, if people wanted to sign up for work camp Taiwan, what\'s the best way to do it? Actually

I think people can find us on the WordPress dashboard because we\'re now on the dashboard. And if anyone wants to find us on the Twitter, Yeah, our account is word camp Taiwan. Straight-forward

David Bisset: oh, good. You didn\'t try any fancy, a naming convention. Sarah, you almost fit it perfectly.

We\'re going to drop a link for the Twitter account and the website into the show notes as well. So whenever people read the podcast, there\'ll be able to click on all of this. If you have personal accounts to both of you, please share them with me and I\'ll put them in. And the show notes as well.

[00:28:00] Is there anything else that you would like to share with the WordPress community?

Eric Chuang: Oh I want to make some, make a correction. I hate to do but I have to do yeah, we\'re actually working teed up. Yeah. It\'s the, ah, making the Taiwan. Yeah. Okay. MTW yeah, TW

David Bisset: it wasn\'t that long couldn\'t fit those characters in there after all.

Okay. That\'s fine. I\'m sure people will figure it out. It\'s been a pleasure and an honor, and it\'s good to see your face. It\'s good

Eric Chuang: to see you and yes. And we are very, it\'s our honor to, to be on your podcast.

David Bisset: First of all, it\'s not my podcast. And second of all, I don\'t know what you call a definition of honor, but I\'ll let that stay.

I look forward to the time where we can see each other in person safely, whether that\'s at a work camp outs, in the west, or, there\'s some day, I truly believe. Not to say that you would go to Asia because I\'m not, it\'s closer to you than it is to me. That\'s the reason why I bring it up.

[00:29:00] Working up Asia may be a reality someday. Again, they were close, they were closed before. But yes, I would love to be able to see you, both of you in person and be able to meet you and greet you and so forth.

Luke Carbis and Rob Stinson, two of the three-person Block Lab team that WP Engine picked up in 2020, are back together on a new project. This time, they are joined by Byron Keet. The trio is taking on the WordPress charts space via a suite of blocks named Hello Charts.

“Some folks launch deals on Black Friday,” wrote the team last week in only its second tweet since July. “We’re launching an entire product!”

Carbis pointed out that the team strived to create a block-editor native plugin. There are no admin screens or settings pages, and the user just works from the editor.

The marketing material on the website homepage claims that Hello Charts is “the first charts plugin built block editor first.” However, SB Charts has been around for nearly a year, and Chart Block landed in the WordPress plugin directory several weeks ago. Charts Blocks for Gutenberg, which supports CSV imports, got its initial release half a year ago but has not been updated since.

The claim of being first is, perhaps, a slipup in marketing. The only reason I spotted it immediately is that I have been keeping a close eye on similar plugins for a while, hoping to find a decent charts solution for the block editor. While Hello Charts may not technically be the first to land, it offers the best user experience yet.

For most cases, I rely on bar and line charts. However, the plugin offers five block types in total:

Each works almost the same when entering data and customizing the output. There are a few options and controls that are specific to each type. Plus, users can transform from one chart block to another and back again at the click of a button without losing data.

After familiarizing myself with the options, I built a three-year product sales data chart by month. I started with the Bar Chart Block, which made the most sense. Each of the blocks has an “Edit Chart Data” button. Clicking it opens an overlay on the screen that works like a typical spreadsheet program.

Users can tab through each cell, adding data and creating new datasets or rows. There are options for duplicating datasets or adding new ones before/after by clicking the ellipsis button. It all felt straightforward for someone who has not spent a lot of time working with spreadsheet software since high school computer class.

After a couple of minutes, I had a bar chart. All I needed to do was adjust it to use my theme colors.

The plugin’s customization options were plentiful but balanced enough to not become overbearing. I just wanted it to match my theme’s design without a lot of fuss, and it did not take long to make that happen.

I added a Line Chart block to the editor using my existing data. The only adjustment I needed to make was the “Curve” option. I wanted my lines to look straight instead of flowing in waves. I was already wondering if the team had thought of everything before I knew I even needed it at that point.

For good measure, I tested out the Pie Chart block. It is a chart type that I may get the occasional use out of. Overall, it performed as well as the others.

The feature I missed was printing the data for each of the pie segments on the screen. The data is available via a popup on hover or focus, but visitors cannot see all of the segment data at once.

Admittedly, I did not spend much time with the Polar Area Chart and Radar Chart blocks. My experience with them is non-existent in real-world scenarios, so I do not have a solid grasp on whether there are features that others might want. I simply tested them to make sure they worked. Like the other blocks in the set, I hit no issues.

I would like to see a title or caption option integrated into the plugin’s blocks. However, both are easily added with a Heading or Paragraph block. To match the background, wrapping in a Group block helps, as shown in the following screenshot:

A couple of other welcome features would be color options for the X and Y-axis lines and the data text along with block-gap or margin support. The legend spacing left a little to be desired, often butting up too close to the chart output. It has several positioning options, but it needs some extra whitespace, especially when it sits at the top or bottom.

Overall, I could not find much to complain about. Hello Charts is a plugin I would recommend to anyone who needs a chart solution that works like it was built for the WordPress block system.

Purchasing Flow and Setting Up

You can get a bit of mileage out of the current free block plugins, but Hello Charts is well worth the price upgrade. It may even be underpriced for the value. If the team builds in CSV imports, it would be an outright steal.

Users can buy the five individual block types for $4 individually or upgrade to get them all for $16. These offer lifetime updates for a single site with no support. There is a heftier $199 tier for unlimited sites and a year of support.

There is only a single plugin that users must install. Each of the block types is bundled in the plugin. Users are technically buying a license key to activate each one.

Carbis offered me discount codes to test how this purchasing flow worked and provide feedback. The team wanted to take a different route with purchasing blocks. Instead of creating an all-or-nothing deal for users, they could just purchase what they actually need. “So if you need a bar chart, just buy a bar chart block,” said Carbis. “Or you can get all the chart types as a set.”

I had no problems going through the purchasing flow. I began with the Bar Chart, a block that I would need more often than the others. Then, I upgraded to the entire set.

The only hiccup I had at first was figuring out how to activate the licenses since the plugin did not have a settings page. The license field is actually on the Plugins admin screen.

The downside to having separate licenses for each block type is that users must enter the key for one, submit it, wait for the page to reload, scroll down to the plugin, and start all over again with another license. The process was so painful that I wanted to forego testing the chart types I had no interest in. However, I pressed forward, entering license key after license key.

Yes, I am exaggerating a tiny bit, but it would be far easier to enter multiple license keys at once or not wait for the page load. This just happened to be one part of the experience that did not live up to the standard set by the rest of the plugin.

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.

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.

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:

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

Gutenberg releases: 11.9 and 12.0 are out

State of the Word 2021: Join a watch party in your local community

Team updates: Nominations for some team representatives are still underway

Feedback/Testing requests: Test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1; Take the 2021 Annual WordPress Survey to share your experience

Keep an eye out for WordCamp Taiwan and Sevilla, along with several WordPress workshops in December 2021

Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out this form.

WordPress journalists and 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 host a conversation with several members of the WordPress news community: Matt Medeiros (Matt Report Media), Joe Howard (WPMRR), Birgit Pauli-Haack (Gutenberg Times), and Sarah Gooding (WP Tavern). Find out how these WordPress journalists and news commentators understand their roles, how they view the WordPress community, and what they see for the future of the project.

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.

$\"🔗\"$ Mentioned in the show:

$\"🙏\"$ 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.

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.

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

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,

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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

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,

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]

Matt Medeiros: I wasn\'t until Sarah just said it way better than I could have.

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,

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,

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

[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.

[00:11:07] 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.

[00:15:45] 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.

[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.

[00:27:26] 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.

[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.

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?

[00:38:35] 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.

[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.

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:

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.

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:

In the announcement, Haden Chomphosy stressed the importance of participating for WordPress users and professionals:

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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?

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A New Navigation Block

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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:

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.

“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.

“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.

“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.”

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.

Block Styles Previews

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

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

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.

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.

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

References

Transcript

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

I also think it’s a good example. Maggie, did you have anything that you wanted to add to that?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

So mostly for developers, everyone who heard me just talking about how it was a great thing for users, ignore it.

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.

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.

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?

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,

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.

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.

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.

So, Maggie, Jeff, thank you both for joining me. And I’m sure that we’ll talk to you all again soon.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ryan Welcher, Developer advocate, sponsored by Automattic.

Community Contributions

WordPress 5.9 updated Schedule

Gutenberg 12.0

What’s discussed and in active development

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Hello, and welcome to our 56th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog Podcast. In today’s episode, we will talk about Gutenberg 12.0, the updated WordPress 5.9 release schedule, navigation block site editor, and so much more. I’m Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times. And I’m here with my co-host, Grzegorz Ziolkowski, JavaScript developer at Automattic and WordPress call contributor. Our guest today is Ryan Welcher. Developer advocate at the Open Source Project and sponsored by Automattic. Hi, Ryan. Thank you for joining us today. How are you?

Ryan Welcher: I’m good. Hi, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Hello, Ryan, and hello Birgit. I’m fine. It’s a little bit dark outside because the winter is coming to Poland, which means that about 4:00 PM, you don’t see anything outside. So it’s just a little bit depressing, but I’m happy that we have a lot of exciting things to discuss today.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So we all have to have our sun in the hearts. Right?

Ryan Welcher: Yes. You can’t see it, but I’m wearing a toque right now during the recording of this.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I have one of those and I need to take them to Canada when leaving.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So Ryan, you just completed your first Gutenberg release from the release candidate last week to this week’s final version. What did you learn?

Ryan Welcher: It was a fun experience. I’d never done it before. I went into it with my imposter syndrome kind of pinging in the red, I have to say. I learned that it’s pretty foolproof. You click a button and wait for the actual process of creating the release and the zip file and all that. Really, it’s all done in GitHub actions, which is really. It was really, really simple. I did a live stream of both, and it was a lot of fun, but it was like a lot of action, and then nothing while we waited.

And so, it was a lot of me like trying to fill in the awkward silences, and then things would go, and then, we’d be done. Probably the biggest, the most amount of work on my end was definitely the changelog, was sort of organizing the release notes and moving some things around and making sure that the various pull requests were in the appropriate locations and all that sort of stuff. But I had a lot of help from a couple of folks at Automattic that had done releases before to give me a hand, sort of know what to look for.

I also learned that I don’t need to know, as the release lead, you don’t need to know what every commit did and how, like it’s not your job so much to make sure that the code works, because at this point, the code should be working and as automated process is in place that will flag things if stuff’s not working. So that was probably the biggest sort of learning for me was that like, I don’t… I wasn’t going to break 42-1/2% or 43% of the internet by pressing this button, it was by this point things are usually good. So yeah. It was a fun experience though. I’m looking forward to doing it again.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: All right. Good. Good. I know that there are always a few more contributors wanted to do releases to walk us through. And so, I’m glad that you are here and tell us that it might not be, and we should all put us on imposter syndromes and just get started because there are some security nets there not only for security technology, but also for, it’s a safe place to get started contributing.

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. One thing I did want to mention is that not anybody can just go and click the buttons. You have to be part of the contributor team, the Gutenberg contributor team, which you do by just getting involved, doing a couple pull requests, getting some eyes on your code. And then, it’s pretty straightforward to get added. You just have to put in a bit of work to get some sort of clout, I guess, behind you to get that that ….

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Right. But it’s not the first good issue kind of contributing is definitely a progression. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So we will also talk about a new section, the change up a little beta, a little bit later. A little beta. It’s a nice kind of-

Birgit Pauli-Haack: A little bit later. It’s called the developer experience and we’ll talk about it as I said. So before we head into the changelog and the announcements and everything, I want to take the opportunity to introduce you to our listeners and also discuss briefly some of your great work of the last couple of months. So how long have you been working as developer advocate and what did you on before you came to Automattic?

Ryan Welcher: Well, my road to developer advocacy was a long one. I haven’t been a developer advocate professionally for, well, since I started at Automattic. This is my first official role as a developer advocate. I’ve always wanted to try it out. I remember, I tell this story to anybody that will listen. But way back in the day when I was doing flash work back in 2005, something like that. I saw this guy at a conference, and he was doing all this really cool stuff. I’m like, “That’s the coolest job in the world. You just go around doing cool things and showing people.” And that’s what I thought developer advocacy was.

So, yeah. So I joined Automattic, I guess, it was in, I think it was August of this year. So that’s how long I’ve been a developer advocate. I’ve been a developer for about 17 years. Prior to joining Automattic, I was at 10up. I was there for about six years. And then, before that I worked at various places where I’ve done a lot of… I had my own agency. “Agency,” if you want to call it that. And yeah. Done all kinds of developing stuff.

Ryan Welcher: 10up, I left as a lead web engineer. So my job was to be the technical lead for many… Well, all the projects that I was on, I was usually the technical lead. So doing a lot of estimating and kind of like driving, sort of like guiding the ship as far as from a technical standpoint. Got to do some really cool things with Gutenberg. Really, really, really cool things with Gutenberg. I did a standalone Gutenberg implementation that was tied in the Larabel that was it was so much fun to put together.

I can’t say the client or anything like that, but it’s lots of, they do really cool stuff there. So yeah. That’s what I did there. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So I know that you, because you are on the same team as I am and you started the same time as I did, and we had our Chicago meeting and we were talking a little bit more and you were doing some great work on the Gutenberg examples repo. What was that about?

Ryan Welcher: The examples repo is an awesome resource for learning how to do blocks, how to build blocks basically. It was very out-of-date. So what we did was we just, we updated it. And I live streamed it all. We updated all the blocks so they use the most recent versions of the block API. So now they all support block JSON, and they’re using the most recent version of WP-scripts and take advantage of all the sort of built in CSS stuff and all the goodness that really comes with the tools that we have available to us as WordPress developers, right?

We have some really cool ones like scripts package, the EMV package for just quickly spinning up a development environment, which is like such a pain point for so many people. Like, “What do I use?” And I don’t want to install VVV or docker or whatever, right? Well, I guess you need docker for EMV, but some of these more complicated things, right? And so, that was the effort.

The effort was to get the examples repo up-to-date and get some more examples in there. We added one for a slot fill, which we didn’t have before, which is great. Yeah. And I’m super excited about it. Super proud of all that work and it’s been a really good, a lot of people in the community have really kind of like jumped on the bandwagon with that and been really supportive of keeping it up-to-date.

I know that there was talk of maybe retiring the repo, but I think it’s been referenced in so many places across the internet that I think we just need to keep it up-to-date and keep it moving forward.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And I think that’s a great tool to really get into the examples and see how it’s actually done. And then, transfer that to your own Gutenberg block building experience. Yeah. So you mentioned your Twitch streams. I think people kind of watch that. How often do it? Do you have any additional plans?

Ryan Welcher: Well, it started out as an experiment. I always wanted to… I’ve always thought I’ve never really seen a Twitch stream for WordPress specific stuff. I know there are a couple of streamers out there that do like one that they might do something with WordPress once or twice in a month or something, or maybe less. But I stream every Thursday, 10:30 Eastern, usually. Try to do it for about two hours.

Still, I’ll do some ad hoc ones now and again. You can find me at Ryan Welcher codes on Twitch, and also on YouTube. So I stream to both Twitch and YouTube at the same time. And, yeah. I mostly just fight, struggle through writing code live. And people get to watch me type horribly and do write really bad CSS, because I am not a front end developer. So hopefully, it’s… I’m sure it’s tarnishing my reputation as a developer, which is great. But also, I hope that it’s showing people that like, people, even folks like me who’ve been doing it for a long time still have to look up how to do like a ray filter, right? Or how to float something left, which you don’t even do in CSS anymore. That’s how long it’s been since I’ve written CSS.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. It’s a real pleasure for me when I get the time to watch your stream because you have a similar correction on typing that I do. I kind of have two or three times. So it kind of takes care of my imposter syndrome as well.

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. Totally. I hit the daily key more than I hit any other key on my keyboard like without a doubt.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Yeah. So did you stream… So we are recording this on Friday, November 26th. And did you do a stream yesterday?

Ryan Welcher: I did. I did a stream yesterday. It’s a part two, actually, Birgit, you gave me the topic of creating a pole block in Gutenberg. And so, we did. This is the part two, and there’s going to be a part three, because it’s actually a pretty complicated block. More complicated than I was expecting, but this series is going to be fun because I think I approached it one way in the first stream that we did last week. And it was bad.

It kind of worked, but it really demonstrated the power of inner blocks. And because I didn’t use inner blocks, basically what I wanted was a block that allowed you to put in options and you create as many or as little options as you wanted. So I was kind of rolling my own solution. And that’s never a good idea, not when you’ve got really powerful tools already available to you.

So in last week or sorry, yesterday’s. I refactored the block to use inner blocks and it went so much smoother. And now, I’m just trying to get the front end working, and so that’ll be next week most likely so.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Front end is the most difficult because that’s something that it’s a new territory. That’s not so much exercised, especially by the core team. And we are looking at that, like started looking into that for the comments form block, which is also a quite complex thing to move to front, and then to the block concept. And yeah, so like I’m looking forward what you come up with just to like see and what the ideas you have and how people have to struggle with that today.

So, yeah. So I just want to also thank you for updating the Gutenberg examples repository, because we just didn’t have contributors that would actively work on that one. And the way you did it with live streams was just amazing so people can see everything how it works. And also, a good way for people to, and bring up-to-date their own configuration and use the latest and the most great approaches for the goal.

Ryan Welcher: Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. I really enjoyed doing it and I think… I don’t have a huge following on Twitch. I think I have something like 60 subscribers or whatever, but I really feel like it’s helped a little bit to get a bit more exposure to some of the great tools. Like I said before, some of the fantastic tools that Gutenberg and WordPress have available. So build processes are pain. Well, we have scripts package. It just handles it for you. You don’t need to worry about it, right?

And so, I think as part of updating that, I think I hopefully got a bit of sort of exposure for those tools and just how powerful they are.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Awesome. Yeah. So I’m so glad that you’re here and let’s get a little bit further into the show.

Announcements

So dear listeners, if you haven’t heard it yet, WordPress 5.9 release has been postponed to January 25th, 2022. A few modules needed two more weeks to get it into the release before the feature freeze. So instead of the first beta to come out on November 16th, it’s now scheduled for November 30th, 2021, because of the holidays in America and Europe, the release schedule now spans a bit longer. And instead of December 14th, the WordPress version is not to be released until end of January.

In the show notes, I have two, three links for you. One is from Tonya Mork. She’s the core release lead for this release and she published on the make blog, the decision making process about the postponement. She shared links of the issues list, and also the reasoning, the why the postponement was favored over removing the features was that weren’t ready yet.

And then, Anne McCarthy. She’s the FSE program manager, but also core release lead on this release for testing, posted a personal blog post with her thought process on why she voted for the delay. And in her post she also walks us through the issues and why it made sense to give them a few more days to land in the core release rather to rip out the whole FSE from the release, and then release it in 6.0. Turned out that the release lead from editor, Robert Anderson’s also was, of course, he found that it would be almost more work to rip out the features from the core than just wait two weeks and finish the little things that needed to be added to that.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yes. And in fact, all the blockers are already resolved so there is no more risk that the release would be further postponed. So you don’t have to worry about that at all. And one more note about that, if there wouldn’t be a holiday season, New Year and such, then we just have a two-week delay. And because of that making sure that everyone can get back to work after New Year’s, like then don’t have to rush and update their website and prepare for all the things that are usually connected with that so people will have much more time.

And I guess I also saw some opinions from people that they are happy that it’s happening in January, because it’s not so tight schedule before the New Year and Christmas and holidays. And so, depending on the parts of the world what people celebrate.

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. I’m in a few different sort of communities that are not in WordPress Slack, but across the place or the internet. It’s either been like everyone’s sort of like, “Yeah. That’s the right decision,” or in some of the more… Hostile is not the right word. In some of the more lively places, it’s silence. Which usually means that it’s good. So if no one’s complaining, then that’s probably a good thing.

So I think it was the right move. Obviously, everyone seems used to be on board with it. And it’s just going to move us to a much more stable release. It’s very cool.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And I really heard a collective big sigh of relief from the WordPress e-commerce community to spread, to be spared yet another major WordPress release during the biggest e-commerce time of the year of the holidays. Yeah.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Oh that’s a good note, because in the past when I was in the e-commerce business, like there was a feature freeze of on everything in December and sometimes even in November. So I now can relate to that. So I see where it comes from.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Although I think John Baptiste Audras who has been a core team rep, he had a comment on one of the comments on the release, first release blog post, who said, “Well, in the life of WordPress, we had 46 releases in December before, and there will always holidays and there will always, and yeah. It’s a global community.” And yeah. So there is a sense of, “Okay, it’s not only the American holiday or the European holiday season there are other holidays that are not, they are not so much in that are considered to blocking a WordPress release, so why should this one?” But I get it.

So if you need a fast overview of what will come for WordPress 5.9, the WordPress team published a fabulous video on the news section to show that you can or watch yourself, but also then show your clients, meet up members and others. So it’s really fabulously made. I also will have a link for you to a little longer video by Anne McCarthy about some of the full site editing features a little bit more in detail, also in the show notes. So the show notes will be quite big now.

Community Contributions

So for the community contribution, I wanted to point out Marcus Kazmierczak kicked off an interesting discussion and you mentioned it as well, Ryan. Discussion about what would be a, should be a WordPress recommended development environment in view of the Dockers change of license for the desktop app. This developer discussion certainly can use your voice, you listeners as well.

Ryan Welcher: Really interesting. Sorry. And unfortunate that Docker’s going to a paid model for their Docker for desktop app. I thought we had a good thing going with the E&V in environment like the WordPress/E&V package. I hope there’s something similar. I have a feeling we’re going to end up, we, being the community, will end up kind of rolling another solution, which is unfortunate because the more solutions you have, the sort of more diluted the waters get, and that it’s hard to kind of support all sorts of things.

I know VVV was used a lot. Having used it, I wouldn’t, I don’t really want to go back to that personally. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. It was just, if you’re doing a lot of sites, just the way that the… And this may have changed in the time it’s been since I’ve used it, but it took up a lot of space on your computer. And there’s a running joke about hit up, and then run them. And then, go have a coffee and watch a movie and come back and it’ll be done. But yeah. No. I hope that we can… I hope something changes there, but maybe not. I don’t know. What do you think, Grzegorz?

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. I think that’s very interesting what’s happening here because my initial thought would be that the post is about unifying everything and like picking one of the solutions. The benefit of WP/E&V and using Dockers is that it works out of the box on Linux. So all the continuous integration that we use with Gutenberg, and now also with WordPress core, it just doesn’t need any special handing. It just works.

And by installing this single command, WP/E&V install, you recreate the same setup on your local machine, which is like just amazing, because you can easily go back when something wrong happens and that was the whole idea. And it’s like Marcus mentioned that in call, we use a bit different setup, however, it’s also based on Docker. And there is something else used in one of the different products that is also used to by the WordPress project.

And yeah. So basically, it’s also a bit strange because the license for Docker allows open source usage, but with a special remark that if you work for a company and you are a paid contributor, if the company has over 250 people, or it turns like over $10 million revenue, then you need to pay for the license, which means like, for the most of the contributors from the committee, it’s not a blocker, however, there is no paid contributors like us, which we can afford the license, but for some people from different companies, the policy might be different so that creates friction.

So that’s really unfortunate that it happened, because instead of picking a right solution, now we need to decide what to do about Docker like for the whole community.

Ryan Welcher: Well, do you think that this reminds me a bit of when React’s license conflicted with WordPress? I wonder if there might be some conversations that could happen down the road? I’m not sure. I mean I think this is a fairly recent licensing change. Is that accurate?

Ryan Welcher: I mean WordPress can’t be the only community that has paid contributors that this is going to affect. So maybe there’ll be some changing of the wording in the license. I don’t know. I mean I’m being cautiously optimistic that there’ll be some adjustments that will allow the usage to continue. Because I mean from a project point of view, it’s very hard to have that argument of we’re going to keep using this tool, but some of the people in our community have to pay for it and others don’t. And that’s kind of goes against the whole free, and what am I trying to say here? The open source.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So to be continued and to see what’s happening, but chime in on the discussion on the make blog post. So your opinion will be heard as well.

What’s Released – Gutenberg 12.0

So now we are coming to our what’s release section and Gutenberg 12.0 was released. Do you want to do the honors, Ryan, and start us off going through the changelog?

Ryan Welcher: Sure. I can do that. Yeah. So 12.0 was released on, I guess it would’ve been the 24th of this week. And then, there were 86 pull request it looks like. So we can start with the enhancements. So there’s 28 enhancements. We can go for the start with the block library. There’s a move WP Rest block navigation areas controller from Gutenberg to core. I should actually backtrack and mention that this release has a lot of sort of maintenance style releases.

So there’s a lot of like little bug fixes and little things. And so, some of these features might not be, or some of these enhancements and things might not be super newsworthy, but they’re all needed.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And we won’t go… Yeah. For our listeners, we won’t go through all 86. We highlighted a few, each one of us to kind of see what we want to talk about. And so, just kind of make sure you’re not preparing for a two-hour listen.

Enhancements

Ryan Welcher: I’m not going to read through every single one. Okay. Great. So for the block library, there was some changes of some verbiage from website to site. One of the ones that we probably should talk about are the featured image. The featured image now looks like a placeholder, which is a really nice addition. So if you remember the featured image block prior to this release would have sort of a placeholder where you could click a button and upload something, but it didn’t really give you a sense of what it would look like in the post.

And so, they’ve changed that now. So now there’s a nice sort of like mountain scape dotted line graphic and it actually does respect the height attribute as well. So it’s a lot more representative of what it’s going to actually look like in your site layout, which is really nice.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. The featured image block is actually one of the theme blocks for the post template in the query loop. So if you’re not using any block themes, you won’t see that yet, but I really like how it kind of adapts to the dimensions the width and the height. So cool. Yeah.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: It also has a border that is always visible. So even if you unselect the block, you will still see the shadows of the feature image. And also, I want to mention that is the similar approach was taken previously for the site logo block. So if you are familiar with that, it’s just the same concept.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So the next item on our list is the navigation block now has enabled previews for the link blocks. We saw this on other editors, but now it’s also in the site editor for the navigation block. So when you hover over a link, it shows you a preview of the text, the image and the excerpt, if it’s available in a little popup window there. So you know exactly, okay. Oh yeah. That post is, or that page that I link to is the right one without having go to it and looking it up kind of thing. So this really enables a few more faster user interface for checking up on the links.

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. And I think changes like that, which this release has a sort of a lot of sort of visual changes for the user. I think they’re great. I mean it makes, like WordPress historically has been a lot of like save it and hope for the best. Right? And these things kind of get us further away from that close. Much more to like a true what you see is what you get editing experience, right?

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I like how Helen calls it, “The save and surprise.”

Yeah. Helen’s great. I guess there’s a few more in there. The next one that we wanted to sort of talk about was the paragraph block. We’ve merged the typography settings all in the same one. Specifically the drop cap setting had its own kind of section in the block inspector sidebar. Now that’s been moved into the typography panel, which I think is a nice, again, it makes sense.

It’s a typography change. It should go with the rest of the typography control. So that’s a nice little feature in there.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: That we also pointed out for the people who are looking for it now, and don’t find it. You find it in the typography panel, which might not be expanded when you open up your sidebar.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Unless the team author decided that you shouldn’t do that and they disabled that, because now we have this possibility and that’s a really great feature of block teams that basically any control can be disabled, like removed from the view in the sidebar.

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. If you want to test this, I was testing this this morning actually with the TT1 theme blocks and that the drop cap is enabled. It’s in there and it’s good to go. And I believe drop cap is really the only block that really supports… Well, I shouldn’t say supports it. The block that you’d find it in the most is paragraph. I don’t know of any other blocks that have drop cap off the top of my head.

Ryan Welcher: And just a side here. The way that they’re handling the typography and the borders, and there’s a new component. Well, it’s new to me. I think it’s tool… No. What’s it called? It’s the component that you click the three dots and you get the… It’s the tools, the tool panel? I think it’s… Yeah.

Ryan Welcher: It’s very, very slick. I think that’s such a really nice way of combining lots of controls that I’m going to… You know what? I’m going to do a live stream where I use that in a block, because I think that would be super, super handy. Because historically, you would have the sort of the inspector controls and every little thing would, every panel would line up and you have a really long, like really tall, tall experience with a very complicated block. And I think this is going to be a really nice sort of tool for the block developers’ toolkit to be able to put lots of complicated related things together and not take up the entire screen.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. The idea we discussed this on the show previously that the idea is to have more control over that. So block authors could also register their own controls that would be displaying one of those groups. So to have even better organization there.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I got a question from some of the, from someone in the community, if there is an idea to actually, or is that in the future that you, as a user can change the order of those panels that maybe the featured image can go a little higher in the priority rather than being on the bottom of things, because it’s some, like in a post editor controls?

Ryan Welcher: I can kind of speak to that a little bit. I’ve done a fair amount of work with SlotFill. And one of the things that I was in a lot of conversations with was this concept of, because… So in the post editor, there’s a SlotFill that allows you to insert a custom panel just below the publish panel. And we had this idea of priority, because what if there was five panels, how do you set the order?

And so, that devolved into a different conversation, but the idea… I think it’s a fantastic idea that those panels be sortable by the user. I mean I don’t know if anyone’s actually tried to do that, but that’s where that conversation of SlotFill priority ended up was first, we should allow the user to pick the order. And then, we can have… Then, we don’t need to worry about it. Then, they can order anything including panels that have been added by slots. So that doesn’t answer that question, but I think it’s on people’s radar. It’s definitely a fantastic user experience that we should probably be moving towards.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So I’m going to scout out that issue and assuming it was in an issue discussed, kind of see if we can surface it again and another-

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. I remember that discussion. And the blocker that we had was that if that said developers’ tool that not necessarily would be in favor of user when those priorities would be set. So we were in favor of having more organized way, like the groups we have now and giving the power to users to move those panels however they want. So that’s like something definitely some rather, and always being discussed this way.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: All right. Let’s continue. And the site editor, it comes now with a welcome guide that gives you four panels, I think, and explains a little bit where you find things on the new site editor for the full site editing experience.

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. You get a pop up when you first load the site editor. And then, when you first click on the little icon for the global styles editor, you’ll get a secondary sort of walkthrough there.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Right. Yeah. For those styles specifically. Yes. Awesome. Yeah.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. I think it has four steps the last time I saw it, like it walks you through the different concepts of the site, which is pretty handy for new users.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Sooner or later we will find a place where, or find a way to actually put this on the user data instead of in the local storage, because those are going away. And then, you see all the welcome guides, again, when you come in with a new one, but that has been an ongoing issue or maybe now that most editors like the widget editors done, the site editors done, the post editors done, there’s one more coming that’s the navigation editor. And maybe after that, there might be a unifying idea on how to store that on a user basis.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. The next thing I would like to highlight in there is the styles. And there we have now in the section with blocks, we have now icons. So it just like a nice visual change that helps you to much easier to find the block you are looking for if you are familiar with the icons.

One thing that I miss there is like the section to get to there is like blocks. It doesn’t have an icon. So I had trouble in trying the place in the sidebar. So that’s could be next enhancement on the-

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. When I was looking at that issue before this, I was also like, I don’t know how to get there. I’m just going to ….

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Sometimes things are right in your face like a welcome guide and sometimes things are very subtle and I think it’s more like the… It’s still in the process of getting better. Yeah. So you don’t want to… Yeah. It’s not that you want to point people to it when it’s going to change a lot, but what it does, it’s in the style section of the style editor and you could with that do a side wide configuration or settings for any of your blocks. But right now it’s the core blocks, so you can say, “Okay, which is the default style for my heading? And which is my default topography for the paragraph?”

If your theme doesn’t do that, you can change that or you can override your theme, because you don’t like how the theme does your quotes, for instance, or something like that. So there is a place to make those changes for the full site, but on a block, individual block basis. So that’s for those who have done adventure into the full set editing experience with 5.9.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: The next feature that we want to cover is for the block stars. In the past, we would have in the cyber of the block, for instance, the quad block is a good example. It has several styles to pick from, and you would see the currently selected, like the preview for the currently selected block version.

And the change now is that instead of showing that, you are presented with buttons, and once you hover or you go with the, when you are using keyboard and you move focus to the button. Then, the preview is shown, which is pretty nice, because it was a bit too much, because it was too prominent and that’s not definitely something that’s the most important for the block. So that’s a nice change.

It also like the PR was quite big. So the changes were also included in the transform, like drop down menu. So when you go to the block tool bar, if you click on the icon of the block, you are presented with the ways how you can transform, for instance, the paragraph block, you can transform to the least, to the quote, and so on and so on.

And for some blocks, if they have block stars, there is also a list of possible options to pick from. I believe that before when you would hover over the option there, you would see preview. At the moment there is no preview. I don’t know why it happens. So I couldn’t identify that information. And yeah, but definitely something that would be just unified and the people will look the same at some point, at least this is what I hope for.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I read through this and I think the biggest hurdle was that, so what I like is that it’s in both places, it’s in the sidebar and the styles are also in the transform on the block toolbar. So if the sidebar is not open, you still have the choices to go to the styles. And that there has no preview. It seems that there is a little bit of a placement issue there that all of a sudden, this gets really disjointed when you have the toolbar, and then you transform and have another preview kind of on that block tool.

So that is a little harder to solve them, but this PR had a lot of comments and different explorations on how to solve that. And it really made me realize that there is, even for the smallest things, there are a lot of things that need to be considered and there are quite a few people who have a lot of experience with that still trying to figure that out. So even if it’s a small, yeah, if it’s a small line item kind of show style preview over hover and focus, but there’s a lot of thought that goes into it, and even if you….

Yeah. So I really marveled on that that how people or designers and developers can articulate all the different things that they need to think about when you do that for. As Ryan mentioned, 42 million, 42% of the internet, these are heavy decisions to make. All right, Ryan, do you want to take the next one?

Ryan Welcher: So the next one we have highlighted is the allow additional props on tools panel. I think this is just a nice little developer addition, be able to add whatever you need in there. I’m not that familiar. It’s a pretty small PR, looks like just basically spreading some props in there. So that one, again, I love it that this is sort of like thinking about the developer experience as well. Like one more tool for the toolkit so to speak, right?

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Right. Yeah. If the developer has a custom block or something like that, and I need an additional top for the tool [crosstalk 00:39:34]-

Birgit Pauli-Haack: … Yeah. Then, now there’s a relatively easy way to accommodate that through that component. Yes.

Bug Fixes

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. Bug fixes. There we go. First of all, it’s fixed background colors nested sub menus. I’m not that familiar with that particular PR. I’m just going to take a quick look at it. I don’t know. It just looks very, very, very small. So one liner, my favorite type of PR.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Right. But it solves a big problem, because the background [crosstalk 00:40:11]-

Birgit Pauli-Haack: … from your sub menus should be propagate over all those sub menus. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: And quite a few have noticed that that’s not handled, even if it’s handled by the theme. Yeah. You still need to have it actually work on the core rather than every theme handling that problem. Yeah.

Ryan Welcher: Next one here is the page list using entities instead of direct API Fetch, which I think is really nice, because we have it available to us to use the entities and why kind of not use what’s already there. So that’s a nice little change too.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And that if you go and as you listen, if you go and look at the PR that’s three, six, five, three, one, and you see the difference of what the effect of it is, and that is on the second load, there is no going back to the server and get it again. So there is no delay on the editor side, so which are… That’s pretty much the promise that the block editor has for, even for dynamic content that comes in that it’s immediate and it’s, doesn’t have another one at the server grabbing the information.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. It’s also start locally so whenever some other part of the code base wants to access the same data, it’s already there, unless there is some update that’s going from the server, there will be still the same data source used. So which is always a great improvement in terms of performance.

Ryan Welcher: It also allows you to tie into some of the other, like some of the other tools like invalidate resolver, if you wanted to update this query, you can just pull, because we know how this query is built inside of get entity records. It’s sort of there’s a standardized approach. You could invalidate that and have it reload.

And also, the pull request has more removals than additions and that’s always a nice little pull request when you have less code. When you’re taking code out, but making it better. That’s always a good way of approaching things.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. There’s one which I don’t think that should be counted as back fix, because it’s a feature for the full site editing, and in part for the theme JSON, you now are able to opt out of color palette. So in your theme JSON, in the setting sections, if you go and you use update the color subsection, there is no color palette and color gradients, two fields that you can set default, which basically will disable the default color, probably have some gradients.

And you can go the other way around and use the same concept to enable that for a given block. So you it’s up to you. You can disable that for the block, enable for everything. It’s like you just can decide whatever is good for your team.

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. That’s really interesting. I wasn’t aware, like I know that… I just did this whole deep dive into theme.json to kind of get an idea of what block support and what don’t, what they do and don’t support and all that stuff. And I didn’t realize that, I knew that you could turn it off currently, like before this release on a per block basis, but I didn’t realize that you couldn’t do it at the sort of the settings level.

So that’s nice. That’s a really nice enhancement, because there’s definitely going to be times where you don’t want to use that or maybe you only want to opt-in in certain places. So that’s really nice. That’s definitely an enhancement, I think. I don’t think it’s a bug.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I feel the same way that that is really a good new feature kind of thing for the theme developer. But if I understood that correctly though is that the core color palette is still available on the back end of it. Because thinking about a theme switch, if the color palette of the thing goes away there’s still a color palette from core that will pick up some of the colors when the theme is a different theme and your content wouldn’t go just all white or all black or depending on the background.

Yeah. So what it switches off is the use of panel on the sidebar for the blocks as well as for the site editor.

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. So if I understand it correctly, if you have a theme and it defines a palette, you could also say, “Here’s my palette, but also let’s use the core ones.” And then, yeah. And then, like you said, “You can opt out on a per block, but a basis.” But you’re right. You won’t lose anything to just get the core palette by default, I guess.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Hang on. I had one that we skipped over it and there’s use… So the block API now also has use first child and last child when parsing lists from MS Word. That’s not so much a bug fix. It’s more like an enhancement of the parsing when you write something in MS Word, in Microsoft Word, and then copy-past it into the block editor. You now have a better list experience, because it uses these new, what is it, functions? So you can have a better parsing experience. That’s just for the content creators and those who are not writing in the block editor. So now it’s up to you. Back to you, Grzegorz.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yes. So in the block editor there was a block fix solution, which has change that add WebP extension in file past handler and get by even data, which for like visibility, for the same experience you mentioned with Microsoft Word, like when you copy and paste if you want, remove, you may just start use those extensions. Before, it was just removed or just like sanitized by the parser.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So now it can handle images at all of the WebP format, before it wouldn’t be a good image file.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. It was added to WordPress core so it just a sequence of that, that it has to be rolled out to all other places and it was easy to miss.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Okay. And there was some CSS and styling done now also for the code block, which didn’t get a lot of love before. So now you can do a few more things with the code block then. And your theme JSON, I would think or maybe it’s mostly to take the code out. Oh it’s still… Yeah.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. The code lock needs much more love from the core contributors. It’s a very complex topic because all the codes like the JavaScript or CSS style that you need to load is gigantic so that’s why we didn’t come up with a good solution so far.

Documentation

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Which brings us to the documentation section and there were quite a few updates in the handbook concerning the theme JSON file. Do you want to talk about it, Ryan? I think you quite a few….

Ryan Welcher: Well, yeah. The theme in block.json has been sort of my… I’ve been kind of focused on it myself and Marcus and Greg as well. Well, many people, not just us. But we probably talked about this a bit more in the developer experience as well. But some of these documentation things just sort of indicate things like there’s a schema entry that you can put into the theme in block.json. That is only for… Like it’s VS Code specific. You don’t need it if you’re not using VS Code, but VS Code is used by, I don’t know. I don’t even know what the percentage of people using VS Code would be.

Yeah. A lot of people. And we’re just sort of referring to this, they have to do the gif, the schema. We actually have it posted on like there’s a WordPress URL for it, which I can’t remember what it is wp.org. So it’s just updating that. It’s also hosted on schema store, but they’re all connected. So, yeah. So if you refer to it from the host and there’s more in the developer experience. I’ll talk about that but later.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: And also updated that, and I just want to point it out for our listeners. There is a contributor handbook page that has a list of which version of the Gutenberg plugin landed actually, in which WordPress version, because there’s always a little bit of a disconnect like we have now Gutenberg 12, and only some pieces of that make it into the 5.9. But when 5.9 comes out in January, there might be about four more Gutenberg plugin versions and the people need to look up, especially a plugin developer is it kind of, what can I expect with sites that have 5.9 versus the plugin?

So that page has been updated and it’s in the developer.wordpress.org block editor contributors section. And so, you can make that a bookmark or something like that.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. It’s very handy because I already forgot which one goes, the last version of Gutenberg blog that fully goes to the WordPress 5.9 release.

Ryan Welcher: And 12 didn’t make the cut, but who knows? Maybe there’ll be some features.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, I saw a few of the PRs on 12 that had the labeled backboard to 5.9, and that made it, I think this morning or Eastern time or no, Australia time. I think they were already rolled into core now. They are the backboard ones. So if you want to look at that, look at the release handbook, the release project to kind of see which made it in, which of the PRs from here made it into 5.9.

Developer Experience

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. So this is a new section that’s been added to the changelog. Recently, a lot of contributors have been spending time trying to improve the developer experience. That’s something that, as a developer advocate, we hear a lot that the documentation could be better. We need more examples. We, being like the royal we of developers who work with WordPress are like struggling a bit to get the information.

And so, yeah. So that’s what we’re doing here so like probably the biggest thing that we’ve done is the schema for block.json and theme.json. And that might not seem like a big deal, but when you are dealing with something like a theme.json file that has so many entries and so many possible combination of entries, having sort of a common source of truth, where in your editor, you start typing and it prompts you and shows you what can go in there.

That’s such a big win, both for ease of use and also for learning. And I think that’s really going to help a lot of people really get their head around… Like I’ve been spending a lot of time in theme.json lately, and I still don’t really get what goes where. And it just can be a lot. Right?

And so, some of the things that have been added is there’s a schema definition for block.json that was added. Block.json also supports custom blocks. So we’ve added sort of like a RegX to have a name in there. We’ve updated the schema URL to wp.org domain, which is really cool. Just a couple of fixed things like the attribute type can be an array, as well as some other things. Fixed schema tool allow for custom blocks and theme.json.

So there’s a lot of really nice enhancements, and we’re still working through some more enhancements. It’s kind of become a bit of a pet project of mine. There’s an open issue right now where we’re talking about valid versus supported when it comes to blocks. So for example, the button block. If you were to go into the button block, and then in its settings, go to border and turn off all four items. There’s only one of those items that actually affects anything in that block.

And so, the question becomes, technically that’s valid, because that setting, that border object supports four entries. But for this block, three of them don’t do anything. So that’s kind of a confusing developer experience. So how do we handle that?

So we have sort of have a conversation around making the schema a bit more granular. It’s more work, but it’s going to mean that when I, as a developer, sit down to start, trying to customize some of my blocks in theme.json, and I put an entry in, and I get that little squiggly green line that says, “This is wrong.” It’s because that block doesn’t actually do anything with that thing. Right? So anyways, lots more on the horizon there. That’s not part of this release, but I just wanted to go on a bit of a tangent there. So thank you for indulging me.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: And we welcome that. Yeah. So I also want to add that there’s now… So GitHub discussions have been open for maybe three months now to get a little bit closer to the developers and get questions answered, but there’s now a separate sections that’s called Developer Experience. And I really appreciate that, because I think the problem that a lot of extenders have, so extenders or developers for plugins and themes and agency developers is that so many new things come with each plugin release that it’s really hard to keep up.

And the developer, none of our tools really accept a changelog, and you have to study them really carefully and to find those things that are actually relevant to your own work. There is no way to bubble that up into the… This is new section and this replaces that. So if you use the old one, yeah, like what you said, updating the Gutenberg examples, when you have the older method on how I’m doing things, which is still valid and it still works, but it’s so much easier to use some of the new tools that can be surfaced here in the developer experience section as well, much easier.

And so, I’m really happy that we have that. I still need to curate the things for people that come in three months later and don’t, can’t go through all the discussions there. But that’s a different problem solve. Yeah.

Ryan Welcher: I’m also excited because it does, it gives us a place where people, like a sort of a central repository for people to drop stuff. And be like, “I don’t want to do that.” It’s not support. It’s not like, I don’t know how to do this. It’s more like, I don’t know how to find this or I don’t know where… The documentation is confusing. And that’s the kind of stuff that me, as a developer advocate, if I hear that. I’m like, “Well, show me where and let’s make it work.” Right? Because if it’s a small fix that brings so much joy to developers then we can make it happen. Right?

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: So the GitHub discussions, the motivation for that was also to give a space for people to propose some ideas? And because creating an issue is not something that is actionable if you don’t have the solution. So you need to first do some sort of research, discuss with other people, exchange opinions, and then that could be solidified and you can come up with a final solution and file an actual issue that people can work on.

So I really like this whole concept of discussions that GitHub introduced some time ago. And I’m glad that we finally have that on the Gutenberg repository. And one more note, there is also for the issues, there is also the same label developer experience, which is used to generate in the changelog those items that I uncover.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So what else is in the… Did you see anything in the code quality section or in the tool section that you want to talk about today?

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. I think TypeScript… I mean people come into WordPress from the JavaScript community are probably very familiar with TypeScript. I mean I’m not that familiar with TypeScript. It’s sort of, I mean I want to learn it, and like I know what it is. I just haven’t played with it that much, but I think it’s… If that’s what the JavaScript community is doing, then, I think it’s really cool that we are trying to get that into Gutenberg.

I do know that many of the packages do support TypeScript now. They do to some TypeScript definitions. There’s one package that I can’t remember which one it was that was written entirely in TypeScript. But getting that, trickling that into like block development or theme development and using TypeScript inside of that, I think will be really interesting.

I’ve even gotten on my Twitch, I have a repository for my Twitch streams, and someone is like… Like literally yesterday, someone opened up an issue saying, “Hey, it’d be really cool if you could show us how to do TypeScript with block development.” So I immediately closed it and ran away screaming, but no, I’m kidding. But I think that that is something that is probably, will that drive adoption? Will that drive… So people coming here with really strong JavaScript backgrounds, will that make it easier for them to get into block development, theme development, and things like that? I think it’s an interesting, it’s definitely an interesting tool. And I think there’s a learning curve, of course, but yeah. What do you think on that?

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: So we already have TypeScript support in Gutenberg. So that the idea if someone is using WordPress scripts, they might want to use the same setup. I mean we do not entirely rely on TypeScript in the Gutenberg. So it’s like it’s mixed. Anyways, it’s possible so why not to open the same door for everyone else and they can benefit from TypeScripts? And if they are familiar, they will definitely be happy to start using that.

And this one is in WordPress script. So it’s not yet published to NPM. So you need to wait probably a few bit, more weeks because of the delay of WordPress 5.9, and the way how we do NPM publishing that is tied to the major WordPress releases, but once it’s out and something that people can explore. And the idea came from Marcus Kazmierczak, who opened a repository with an example of the block written in TypeScripts. So I just like look at the code and it didn’t seem to be very complex to replicate.

Ryan Welcher: Yeah. Well, maybe I’ll just steal Marcus’ repo for my live stream. Or get him to come on maybe. Maybe we can do it that way, give him some credit. Yeah. I think that could probably have gone in developer experience as well, to be honest. I mean I think that’s a, even just to… This is what’s coming. It’s not published, it’s not ready in scripts yet, but it’s there. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: All right. So I’m taking it that this is kind of the end of our changelog discussion. I don’t have anything else and I’m looking at our time, we are quite into it already. And it’s so good to have you on this show, Ryan. So before we end the show, have any of you a final announcement or reminder that you want our listeners to know about?

Ryan Welcher: For me, just if you’re interested in watching me code or type badly while I write code, check me out at Twitch. I’m Ryan Welcher codes on Twitch. I’m also Ryan Welcher codes on YouTube. Yeah. And there’s a repository associated with all my streams where if you want to see a specific topic, you can add an issue, mark it as a topic idea. And I love getting topics from the community. I’d rather do it that way than kind of come up with my own, because that’s speaking to what people need rather than what I think they need. But yeah. So yeah. I’d love to have you all drop by.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Awesome. And I’m looking forward to the part three of your full block.

What in Active Development or Discussed

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Me as well. So I have one small thing also to mention. So we spoke a lot about developer experience. So this year, because I started that in January, I was exploring. I think react fast refresh to the WordPress script. So that’s basically allows you to write something in the code editor. And once you save that, it’s automatically gets updated or React code, and then also CSS, which is pretty nice when you are developing with WordPress scripts.

So yeah. I had breakthrough this week, actually, today in the morning and it’s all working and we are preparing this and together with the TypeScript changes, we mentioned in a few weeks that will be a part of WordPress scripts. And I hope that will improve the experience for all the people that develop blocks.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. And I will leave the link to the pull request so people can check and see what’s that about.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. That’s great. I saw it kind of flowing by this morning, so I definitely want to dive into that. So last week I participated in a webinar with wonder for contributors, George Mamadashvili and Andy Fragen. And we talked through the various ways you as listeners, you can test Gutenberg and the workers releases and help us get, help the contributors to find all the little bugs and big bugs and how to test PRs.

George demonstrated that. You can use the Gutenberg nightly from the Gutenberg times to test what’s already emerged into Gutenberg, but not yet in a plugin. And then, you can test upcoming WordPress releases like the beta release and the release candidates by using the WordPress beta tester plugin that Andy Fragen and other contributors update all the time.

And if you’re new to testing, this webinar will hopefully get you started. And if you have questions, all three of us, George, Andy, and I are reachable via the WordPress Slack? And I’ll keep those links also on the show notes. So speaking about reachable, Grzegorz and Ryan, how can people get in touch with you?

Ryan Welcher: Okay. Sure. Yes. I’ll go first. You can find me basically everywhere. I am @RyanWelcher. I’m @RyanWelcher on Twitter. I’m on make WordPress Slack. You can find me in there. I’m on post status, basically my full name, Ryan Welcher. My website’s ryanwelcher.com. And like I said, I am Ryan Welcher Codes on Twitch and on YouTube. So feel free to reach out. My DMs are open on Twitter and I’m always up for a conversation.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: The same for me, like most of the places where I’m @GZIOLO. So that would be Twitter, GitHub, WordPress.org, WordPress Slack. So you can DM me or just shout at me publicly and ask of everything related to WordPress Core.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Excellent. And yes, I’m reachable on Twitter @BPH as well as the WP Slack @BPH. And as always, the show notes will be published on gutenbergtimes.com/podcast. This is episode 56 and if you have questions, suggestions or news, you can also then via email. That’s a blast from the past, but email at changelog@gutenbergtimes.com. That’s changelog@gutenbergtimes.com.

Well, thank you, Grzegorz. Thank you, Ryan. It was a great fun to have you again and talk to you about this nerd and gig out over all the good things Gutenberg. Thank you all for listening. This is goodbye for me.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: And thank you, everyone, for spending with us another hour. And hopefully, see you in two weeks.

Ryan Welcher: Thanks for having me. I really appreciated it. And thank you for indulging all of my tangents on today’s podcast.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Good. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Let’s get out of here. You take care. Bye.

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!

Updates on WordPress 5.9

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.

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. “

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 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.

A huge thank You to Álvaro Gómez Velasco who mentioned the Gutenberg Changelog as one of his Favorite podcasts in 2021.

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.”

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!

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.

FSE Program Testing Call #11

WordPress Events

December 14th, 2021 – 5:00 pm ET / 22:00 UTC
WordPress News
State of The Word w/ Matt Mullenweg + Q & A

“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.

$\"🔗\"$ Mentioned in the show:

$\"🙏\"$ 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.

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.

Why organize a watch party?

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).

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.

What else do I need to know about organizing a State of the Word watch party?

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? $\"🙂\"$

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

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

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:

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Gutenberg 11.9 and 11.9.1 has been released.

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

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:

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.

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.

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

December 14th, 2021 – 5:00 pm ET / 22:00 UTC
WordPress News
State of The Word w/ Matt Mullenweg + Q & A

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.”

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.

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.

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.
\n

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.

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.”

“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.”

“I expect the hallway track to be pretty busy during this event.” —Nathan Ingram

In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David talks with special guests Nathan Ingram and Ryan Marks about WordCamp Birmingham 2022 — one of the first in-person WordCamps after almost two years of no live events anywhere in the world. With 200+ people expected to attend, Nathan and Ryan talk about the safeguards that will be in place, how they are managing expectations, how their sponsorships are being handled, the role of hybrid events, and how WordCamp Birmingham\'s reboot is being received in the WordPress community.

$\"🔗\"$ Mentioned in the show:

$\"🙏\"$ Sponsor: SpinupWP

Spin up your own extremely fast WordPress server in minutes with SpinupWP. Use any cloud hosting provider you want, and manage your servers remotely with a simple but powerful control panel. Get the security and performance of managed hosting without losing the independence of hosting your projects and your clients yourself.

Some new data from a recent Core Web Vitals (CWV) technology report produced by the HTTP Archive shows WordPress sites running newer versions have lower CWV pass rates.

The original report was published in July by Rick Viscomi, one of the maintainers of the HTTP Archive. The site provides a permanent repository of web performance information, giving researchers a common set of data for researching and understanding trends. Contributors’ efforts are sponsored by Google, Mozilla, New Relic, Etsy, and other companies.

One of the most notable findings in Viscomi’s report showed that just 22% of WordPress-powered origins pass the Core Web Vitals “Good” threshold.

WordPress core committer Adam Silverstein wanted to dig a little deeper into this data set to see if he could extract more information about WordPress sites’ CWV performance that wasn’t represented in the initial published graphs. He proposed an analysis that would compare Core Web Vital performance across WordPress versions:

Silverstein worked with Viscomi to create a query that would extract performance data grouped by WordPress version. He found that core additions like native image and iframe lazy loading, and WebP image support have had no measurable improvement on CWV scores in the wild.

“Lazy loading may be too aggressive as it is applied to all images,” Silverstein said, noting that lazy loading can be detrimental if over used. This should be remedied soon. Google-sponsored WordPress core committer Felix Arntz opened a ticket to improve lazy loading, which will be included in WordPress 5.9.

“WebP adoption in WordPress has been growing since the 5.8 release, however users need to manually convert their images to WebP before uploading to take advantage of the format,” Silverstein said. “Landing WebP as the default format for sub-sized images which was started in this ticket will have a much bigger impact by automatically converting uploaded images to WebP.”

Silverstein anticipates this analysis will provide the basis for tracking major improvements in the future. The Google-sponsored WordPress contributors on his team are active in certain core projects and are leading WordPress’ new performance team with the goal of improving core performance as measured by Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics.

“Basically I wanted to create a way to measure the impact of core WordPress improvements on WordPress sites (at scale),” Silverstein told the Tavern. “My team at Google is focused on helping improve the performance of the web at scale, and WordPress is a huge part of that! You may have noticed us working on features like lazy loaded images and iframes, WebP image support and now helping start the performance group. I wanted to find a way to see if our work is having a measurable impact – and not just on a vanilla WordPress site you might set up for testing, but in the wild, or real world websites that upgrade to the latest version of WordPress. That is the goal of the dashboard.”

The new dashboard, which tracks WordPress CWV performance by version, is available to the performance team for monitoring their progress with each new WordPress release. Google-sponsored contributors are using it to measure the impact of their efforts across various performance initiatives.

Last week, the popular Rank Math SEO plugin received a major update that includes a new artificial intelligence system. The Content AI feature is a SaaS product that behaves like a personal writing assistant to boost search rankings.

“We built Rank Math’s Content AI feature to revolutionize the content production and optimization process with proprietary AI that gives SEOs and content marketers a competitive edge,” said Bhanu Ahluwalia, Rank Math’s CMO.

The system allows users to research what their content should look like based on a keyword. Each keyword analysis costs one credit. This data is stored on the user’s server, so the same keyword used on multiple posts does not cost extra. Users get five free credits after signing up for a user account with Rank Math. However, they must upgrade to one of the three commercial plans, ranging from $59 to $499 per year, for more.

Each of the commercial plans comes with a specific number of credits. They are marketed as free extras, but they are not “free” for users who want to upgrade for credits alone. The team says they are working on a pricing solution to address this.

Users should see a new Content AI module that they can enable from the plugin’s Dashboard screen. Turning this on creates a new tab under the plugin’s General Settings page for further configuration.

The Content AI feature works with the WordPress editor, the classic editor, Elementor, and Divi. However, the team plans to extend this support to other page builders in the future

Users can then enter a focus keyword from the post-editing screen and click the Content AI button. From there, they can research their chosen keyword, and Rank Math pulls up suggestions from their system.

The scoring system is easy to understand. Above 80 (in the green) is considered “good.” Anything below might need some work based on the plugin’s recommendations.

The primary suggestions from the Content AI center on total words, links, headings, and media. When asked how the numbers were figured, Ahluwalia said, “This is a computation performed based on the top-ranking content in search engine results pages (i.e., characteristics of content that ranks).” It is a proprietary system, so maybe the team is not ready to give away the exact details.

The feature also lets users copy related keywords to use in their posts, offers questions that the content should answer, and lists potential links to use.

Are Content Scores a Good Thing?

I am admittedly skeptical of any claims from SEO tools. There is value in most of the plugins in the space, and Rank Math is no different. However, I also want end-users to take SEO or content scores with a grain of salt. Hitting a specific word, link, heading, or media count is not going to make or break you. These should be guidelines, not goalposts.

When asked how the score was calculated, I was pointed to a knowledgebase article on the Rank Math website. Nothing in the Content AI section explicitly explains the “math” behind the score. Essentially, the documentation references how the AI analyzes search results for various factors and describes how the tool works. There is some generally solid advice throughout, but it does not answer how those scores are calculated.

One particular area of concern was the recommended media count for each post. I had access to a full demo of the feature with a few dozen posts to check. Nearly all that I ran through the Content AI had a recommendation of using 18 media. The number felt off. While I cannot claim to be an SEO guru, I do not see why a typical 1,000 or 2,000-word post should need that many images or videos. Even with web-optimized media, that could bring page-loading speed to a crawl for many site visitors.

“That entirely depends on the focus keyword that you had set for your post,” said Ahluwalia on how the recommended count is determined. “Page speed is a ranking factor, but the media count and its associated guideline there is a super simple way to quickly see and consider whether that’s something that you need to do to rank as well. If we’re, for example, looking at the keyword ‘SEO tools,’ the recommendation is as high as 26, which is unsurprising because the majority of ranking content hasn’t just covered essential SEO tools, they’ve covered the 15, 20, or even 109 ‘best SEO tools.’

“This concern with using media in content as it relates to page speed is surprisingly common, but the reality is that content without design doesn’t typically perform particularly well (even if it ends up ranking, then not from a conversion/social sharing perspective because people leave with the impression of encountering a wall of text). A lot of the content on our site wouldn’t be the same without the images in the posts to paint the full picture and distill what are complex SEO processes/ideas into something that’s super simple for people to understand.”

I generally agree that sites should use media alongside text. Looking over one of the demo posts I had access to, the content did not seem to warrant the recommended count.

This particular post had 1,199 words and 32 paragraphs. It also had six images, which presumably played a significant role in the 20/100 score. Content AI recommended 18 instances of media.

Had the post met the recommended media count, there would have been one image for at least every two paragraphs. Even with half that number, visitors would unlikely think they are just “encountering a wall of text.”

Maybe the analysis is correct. Perhaps it will help sites rank. But, that much media mixed in with text strikes me as a sub-optimal reading experience.

My primary concern with tools like Content AI — this applies to SEO plugins in general — is that site owners are trying to make sure they are in the green. Instead of writing for readers, they are writing to rank. The two things are not mutually exclusive, but when end-users take recommendations as gospel, it can lead to stunted prose.

“We completely agree, and while AI content has come a long way, we’re very much also still fans of well-researched content that’s put together by humans like you and I (as is all of the content on our own blog),” said Ahluwalia. “The goal with Rank Math’s Content AI is assisted content production and optimization (streamlined by software).

“Broadly speaking, as you say, traffic-light style scores or numerical scores don’t paint a full picture for most content. This was a very big motivation for the new content optimization suggestions that go beyond typical scoring (that is the same no matter what you’re writing about). When writing something that isn’t search-driven at all (i.e. targeting a keyword and search intent that has little demand and no competition with a thought leadership piece, for example) you’re not writing for searchers, you’re writing for a specific set of people you have in mind. This content is still incredibly valuable though.”

He went on to say that for what the Rank Math team calls “search-driven” content, there are specific elements that well-ranking competing content has in common.

“It goes without saying that when using content optimization tools the consideration for still writing good content that’s helpful has to be there for the end result to be truly exceptional,” he said. “With the aim here being to aid the creation of content, ensuring it addresses search intent, and meets what search engines deem valuable and useful content.”

Birgit Pauli-Haack, Grzegorz Ziolkowski discuss Gutenberg 11.9, WordPress 5.9 and Navigation Block. Surprise Guest: Riad Benguella

Announcements

What’s released:

Gutenberg 11.9

What’s in active development or discussed

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, hello and welcome to our 55th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast, recording on November 15th, 2021. In today’s episode, we will talk about Gutenberg 11.9, WordPress 5.9 coming up to a WordPress instance near you and then about navigation area block on Full-Site Editing and all the good things that come to WordPress.

I’m Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator of the Gutenberg Times and WordPress developer advocate. And today, I have two co-hosts. You all know Grzegorz Ziolkowski, JavaScript developer at Automattic and WordPress core contributor. And our surprise guest today is Riad Benguella, one of the lead developers on Gutenberg and also code wrangler at Automattic. I am delighted you are here with us Riad, thanks for joining us.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Hi, Birgit. Thanks for having me. It’s an honor for me to join you and Grzegorz on the show, and help spread the Gutenberg love to the community.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, yeah. It’s good. Yeah. Well, your passion for it is really contagious when I saw you before at WordCamp US and so when we met, it’s always nice and yeah patiently explaining things to me. So are you both on a team retreat? Where are you right now in the world and how are you doing?

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Hola, qué tal? That means greetings from Spain. So I’m so happy that Riad joins us today to discuss the latest 11.9 Gutenberg plugin release and the upcoming COR press 5.9 release.

Riad Benguella: Yeah. It’s so great to be able to meet colleagues again, we are kind of learning to travel again. Right?

And yeah, I’m also, so looking forward to be able to join the community in upcoming word camps in-person events. We miss these a lot.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: The one is happening in Seville in December. That’s going to be fun.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: I’m not it’s the connection to Seville is bad for me, but I know that some of my colleagues from Spain, which will be there from Automattic.

Riad Benguella: Personally I’m so looking forward to word camp Europe in Porto in June, hopefully.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, me too. Me too. And I’m so excited. I was excited two years ago when it was supposed to happen and now I’m even more excited to come to Portugal and to see everybody from Europe again, it’s going to be such a great event. And I hope that all the people that are still hesitant about vaccinations, that they get their shots, also the booster shots so we can all be together. Because I found that in-person meetings are so much richer than even though an online meeting like this, it’s good to help out and kind of bridge the gap. But the in-person meeting, even with family, we visited the family for five weeks in August and September. And there was such a relief to finally be together in one room again, and just hang out and go out and eat and just sit and chat. Yeah. But back to here.

Announcements

So I just wanted to let you know that November 22 is a WordPress meetup in Montclair, New Jersey, which is a virtual meetup and anybody can join. And I will demo the concept of full-site editing. And I will also take questions, AMA style, ask me anything style and it will take place on 7:00 PM eastern 12:00 AM. I was just going to think, is this am or PM because, it’s 12:00 AM UTC. And if you go to meetup.com, look for WordPress Montclair in New Jersey to sign up for it. Well, of course we will have the link in the show notes but it would be great if you want to learn more about what’s coming to WordPress 5.9 and Full Site editing to join us there.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: And speaking of that, I would like to thank props to Munir Kamal for reminding us on Twitter about the new tag that is in the WordPress teams directory, which called Full-Site editing. And it allows you to see all the block teams that are already there and it looks that we have 27 teams that are marked with this tag.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. That’s great that, tweeting that out Munir. I’m also seeing that’s also a link that I will share in the show notes, of course, and also in the meeting at Montclair and some of the themes that are in there are actually universal themes. They work for a classic theme or a block theme. So it’s quite interesting to see how you can switch it over. But don’t use them on production caveat it’s still a beta kind of feature.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Right. Everything, the whole Internet’s going to change. But only if you want it. Yeah, we don’t want to scare anybody to upgrade to 5.9 because it’s all opt in. And it’s only when you have a block theme available, the Full-Site Editing is actually available to you.

What’s Released – WordPress 5.8.2 and Gutenberg 11.9

So what’s released in last week, we had the WordPress 5.8.2 release, that’s a maintenance and security fix. And if you haven’t updated yet, you definitely should do so now. Most WordPress managed hostings automatically update to a point release, but not everybody is comfortable doing that, but update it. And the other release was of course the Gutenberg 11.9 plugin release with 223 PRs, yes I counted them and they made it into the release.

Riad Benguella: I also counted the PRs for WordPress 5.9, and it’s actually 600 feature PRs and like 400 bug fixes.

Riad Benguella: I don’t know how the community managed to do that, but yeah. It’s very impressive.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Well, thank you for the data. So 600 features and 400 bug fixes. That’s a thousand, wow. Yeah and how many contributors, you don’t know, but we will know in December.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. That’s important. Someone will run the script that will calculate everything for us.

Enhancements

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: So first we start with new blocks, but they are not part of WordPress 5.9’s release. They are still experimental and they are related to comments block, we already have one that is going to be in 5.9, this which is called post comments and is basically everything you see when you go to the comments section under the post. And this one is something brand new. So we are doing it in a way that is more granular and similar to the way how the query loop block works. So the new blocks are comment replying, comment edit link, comment outer avatar, and the comments query loop. There is also comment templates. So the idea is you can combine everything, decide what you want to display and so on.

Riad Benguella: I was going to mention the navigation block and the work that has been performed during this release, which is an important work that was actually answering some feedback from the user testing that happened on FSE. So users were finding it a bit hard to actually reuse navigation across teams and across templates for FSE teams. So an important work went into the navigation block during this release. So now the blocks are actually saved into their own custom post type. They work like template parts so you should be able to reuse navigation menus more easily across templates, and when you switch teams.

Also the same features will allow classic themes to migrate more seamlessly into a block theme. So when you switch from a classic theme to a block theme, all your navigation should probably be retained. And yeah, these are some important change that are coming and actually was important before the beta of WordPress 5.9, which is I think coming tomorrow.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Right. Yeah. It needed to be within the feature freeze. So it makes it in 5.9 and bug fixes will come probably with the next plugin release that will be back porting some of the issues.

Yeah. Thank you for mentioning the navigation block I have, in the last few days before I went to Chicago, tested some of the navigation items, and I’m glad that some made it in there. One is the single placeholder for the block. Where you can actually select the menu when you already have one or add all the pages or start an empty navigation block. And that is really helpful for users to get it all set up. But I also like, and I don’t think it’s in the release note now, but what also helps is that you can add the site title to the navigation or a site logo to the navigation block.

So it’s all kind of one unit that is on the header. That definitely spruces up the FSE, as Riad mentioned, FSE means Full-Site Editing and listeners will know, that referred to the Full Site Editing outreach program, that is run by Anne McCarthy. Do we have anything else? Oh, what I also like is the responsive navigation, there is a way to get the hamburger menu out of the box with a little feature there. And you can decide if you want the hamburger menu by default, also for your desktop site or just for the mobile site. And another tool is there that you can have the menu, have a navigation, an orientation horizontal or vertical. So you could if you wanted to put it in a column block on the left hand side, and it kind of goes down the left hand side, like one of the default themes, I think it was 15 that had a navigation block on the left hand side, yeah. All right and then we had these post comments, but it was interesting to hear that will not come into 5.9. Thanks for pointing that out.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: There, are two things it’s quite confusing because we had a post comments like plural, a post comment, but also post comment, singular block. So the, the one that has that got deprecated was the more or less what we are trying to replicate now with comment template block. But the old one, it was just very limited. And it worked more like a format you had to provide a comment ID, which was very hard to use for you. You don’t know the comment ID of your comments. So yeah.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Otherwise there was enhancement to the post comments blocks that will be included also in Twenty Twenty-Two default theme. And there was some features missing, there was some issues with the marking inside the block, and also in some cases is when the outer of the site decides to close the comments. So we should show proper messaging or you can also on your website decide that after a certain amount of time, you can no longer comment on posts anymore. So these cases are sorted it out and it should work pretty good in those situations.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And I also see that the post comment form that’s now available for block based theme on the post template, I would think. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent.

Then there were some enhancements for accessibility with announcing the formatting change to screen readers also communicate to the screen reader the post title is a text area and some other smaller fixes or enhancements there, which is in all the little things that kind of make a user experience so much richer.

On the block editor we have the enable rich previews in the link UI for the site editor. That is something that had been in the block editor for, I think two versions of the plugin and now it also comes to the site editor. That’s a feature that when you put a link text in a paragraph or in a navigation or wherever you need it and you save it and then come back to it, you come back to update the post or you just kind of continue editing it, and you hover over the link, you get a rich preview with a title, a description as well as if it’s available, a feature image. So, you know exactly if the link is still working or if you need to update it in your content.

Riad Benguella: Yeah. As we get closer to 5.9 the contributors worked more on parity between site editor and post editor. So they brought these features, the link preview, the save keyboard. Now you can press command S and it triggers the saving. And there were some discussions also about the menu item of site editor and where we place it exactly and where it makes most sense. So for the moment, this decision has been to use editor and move it in their appearance. And it’s now worked that way across WordPress trunk. And also the Gutenberg plugin.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Now the controversy is that under appearance, we have editor and a theme editor, so that’s a confusing thing that probably needs to be further discussed among the contributors.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I hear you there. There is a lot of editing going on. Yeah. And the theme editor it’s really hazard because it gets you to the files of your PHP theme. And if you change a code and leave a quote out or something like that, you can actually create fatal error messages on your site. And it’s very hard to get to them to fix it. So I would always suggest to take away the theme editor instead of the site editor, because the site editor is a much safer place to be for someone who is not particularly technical.

Riad Benguella: Makes me wonder if it’s basically the ancestor of the site editor. In classic themes, you cannot edit the theme directly, you have to edit the code. So you go to the theme editor, or you edit the files manually. So now that you have the site editor, maybe we could consider removing the theme editor’s UI entirely. I don’t know if it makes sense anymore to have it there. Maybe some people still would still need it from time to time, but is it something that the user should be exposed then by default? That’s I think a question that could be discussed.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Could be left somewhere, but probably you need to know what to do and finding in one place or when you know the link. And the other things that maybe the only reason why we should keep that exposed is for the CSS code. Maybe at this time, when not everything is covert with global styles. There are some reasons for people to use that.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. It’s a similar case with the customizer. Yeah. When you have a Full Site Editing theme, a block by theme, the customizer itself, link in the appearance menu disappears, but the customizer is still available through the theme card on the theme screen. So you could still use the customizer if there’s something in there that a plugin put in there that the theme doesn’t have a control yet for it. And that could be a similar way to do, okay a Full-Site Editing theme is a block theme, is active. Yeah. Let’s remove the theme editor for that part and see what happens and just let the functionality be in there, but not have it in the menu. I think that will be valid to have that discussion. Yes. All right.

Yeah, and then the next one of Full-Site Editing Enhancement is the Search. Control Component that you can have inside the navigation menu. I really like that. It could use a few more controls to adjust the size of it a bit in relation to the other items in the navigation menu. But that is certainly fixable in a later version, but just having it there, it really helpful.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. This navigation block becomes so powerful, there are so many options. And I really like how it evolves over time also, how it becomes easier to use with every release. It came a really long way from the beginning.

Riad Benguella: And the challenge always with these powerful features is to find the balance between the good user experience, and also continue adding features without deteriorating the simplicity of the block. So, yeah I think we will continue to iterate on these things until we find the right balance there.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I think the other balance is also to strike, what do we want as feature parity to the previous version or the previous way of doing menus? Because there were quite a few extenders who extended the menu controls through plugins and themes and all that. I’m not sure that they all have been tested and kind of migrated over. I think there’s still some experience and some learning to be done, but is there a way to do it differently?

Yeah. Well, and then we have duo tone component there was only one change in the description that the underlying image that is to which the duo tone is applied is not changed. I think that’s a very important distinction because people always fear that something changes that they don’t have any control over and there was something else in duo tone.

Oh yeah. The duo tone now is using transparency as well. So you could have a background and a duo tone and transparency and have the background shine through. So it’s multiple layers of features that you can put on top of it, and I will share in the show notes, a video that Anne McCarthy did to kind of show you how this all works together. And she has some very neat representation of some of her photos now with the different duo tones there. Yeah, you have to see it to actually appreciate it really and not get confused about things, but I really love it. Duo tone. It’s almost like gradients and I love gradients. You could do now gradients in duo tone with transparency, background on cover. So yeah, what else can you need?

Riad Benguella: There’s so many customization control now available on the plugin and the contributors keep adding more and more. And I think it’s an infinite work. You can open your imagination and just make it happen.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Riad in 10 years we will still talk about gradients and where we can apply it. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: And there is now also a change to the tools panel, which is related mostly to the setting sidebar. So the thing that change is the type of section. So in the past, you would have a list of controls displayed at once. Now, you have better control over what’s displayed by default and you can enable more controls or hide some of them when you stop using them. It’s very similar to the dimension panel. That’s already in the plugin for quite a while. And the direction is just to give the same capabilities to all sections. So they work the same way. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: This change also use a, a little bit that you can actually have multiple columns in the theme, in the typography controls, when they’re just small controls, you get two next to each other, and that certainly saves you some real estate or some spool on up and down on that. And, and I like it. It has a more harmonious layout there. So like that. Yeah.

Riad Benguella: The idea with these tools panels is that we should unify how blocks show their different customization option on the sidebar. So typography uses the tools panel color U could use the tools panel. I think there is another one dimensions could use the tools panel. So that way, no matter the block you are using, you could SU similar things on the, on this side. And if you find it too overwhelming, you could show and hide the controls you want.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: It’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of goes a little bit towards what, what we have been discussing on the developer advocacy relations team that can we have some best practices on yeah. If somebody builds a custom block yeah. Best practices on how to distinguish between the side settings and the toolbar settings and all that. I think it’s, it’s time to kind of put some of those best practices in writing. So of people can look it up and I will going to work that’s part of our 2022 kind of plan to figure that out and work with the developers on that. So consistency goes a long way in not having to figure out this for every single block or for every single type of block. How is a car applied cred and applied and all that. Yeah.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: In this case, we are following what Riad did for the block toolbar. So he created groups like for block, for formatting controls and so on. And here we will have also those extension points for dimension colors, typographic easy. You know, it’s not still setting stone, how it’ll end up. So we don’t want to spoil the game and like introduce any hustle to the community. But once everything is ready, then we’ll definitely come up with some recommendations that we share with the community. Awesome.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So the template editor has as a template part focus mode. Now that means that you can separately change the header or the footer in your site editor. There’s also a post available on the make blog/core about those editor improvements and the template part focus mode that you now can use to, when you look in the site editor, you have always the full page, but if you just want to isolate the header and just look at that, you can switch over to the template part focus mode.

Riad Benguella: The next thing is, if you are building a theme, whether it’s classic or block theme and using theme JSON, there is a small change that you could apply to your theme JSON. So for consistency, we removed some custom prefixes from some settings like custom line height, custom margin and custom filing, I think. So you could move to theme JSON version two and remove these prefixes that way you’re on the last version.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: So to do that, you need in your team, JSON, at a new field called, version. Oh, it’s not in new field, but you need to set version to number two. And that basically enables this new updated APIs.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And I know that there were quite a few efforts around the development team to put actually a schema up on schema store and have also the link via.webpress.org. And are those schema already updated to the version two? Do we know?

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Oh, thank you for reminding about that yet. It’s done. It’s ready for both block JSON and theme JSON it’s now in WordPress domain and the new member, the URL, we will show that later in the show notes. And yes, it’s already the old one that you could use will still work because the schema in the schema store it has a very interesting configuration. So it’s now referencing the new URL, so whatever use it will work anyway. And as we found out, someone pointed that out, I don’t remember but anyway, even if you don’t provide the dollar schema field, most of the editors will be able to recognize that based on the name of the file and they will show you hints anyway. So you only need probably to do that for visual studio code explicitly.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Mm. Yeah. That’s interesting to know there’s some learning to be on the editor. So, oh you use it once I know where that was. See here. Yeah, I excellent. Speaking of gradients, now you can show all the colors on the gradient origin in the different panels. So there’s a new panel when you do site editing and color configuration, and it has the core color palette, the themed color palette. And if a user creates their own color palette, it will show there too.

It’s a little bit crowded and I know there’s also an issue posted to find a way to actually remove the core color palette because it has so many colors and when people use it some team developers or agencies definitely would want to remove that. But it’s a nicer interface, but it has the text color 1, 2, 3 core theme and user. And then it has the background color in core theme and user colors. And then it has the link colors as well. If it, theme JSON says, please use the link color scheme as well, and then it will go in there as well. And it’s interesting to see. So I’m looking forward to the user feedback that we are going to get there to adjust an next iteration now.

Riad Benguella: So one of the original reasons for this feature, why do we introduce these different pallets core theme and user is, if you think about patterns, we have now a directory for patterns and theme could provide patterns and we wanted to have some color in these patterns, right? And so how can we make sure that these patterns work across themes, if teams change their own palette, it becomes harder. So the idea is to allow themes to still rely on core palettes, and pattern to still rely on core palettes. So for example, when you build a palette, you should probably only use core colors that way it works across themes, if you want to publish it to the pattern directory. And yeah, in terms of UI, it’s kind of crowded right now, especially in the post editor.

But I think the idea is that it should get closer and closer to how it looks in the global style bar, which is kind of nested navigation. So the idea is that it should look like the global styles view of colors. So you will see at the high level button to go to the link color, another one to go to the button background and another one to go to the text color. And they are not shown every time, all the colors at the same time. So that way it’s less crowded and it allows you to navigate more efficiently. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And I can and see, that’s a very good reason to have the block parents be consistent, not so much depending on the theme color scheme, but so it shows up as you see it in the preview. And I can also see to just switch off the core colors in the user interface, so the pattern comes over, but the user can only use the theme and their own color to modify it and not have the core colors as well. Because the core colors always show up on other places when it’s not a pattern from the repository and using those core colors on other things that might not be wanted by the site owner or the theme author. Yeah.

Riad Benguella: Yeah. Theme authors and agencies also want to control these things more strictly. So yeah there is, they is some work in progress to allow actually to remove the core powers entirely. And yeah it’s going to be sitting in team JSON and you just enable it and it’s gone.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: And there is now also change for the typographic block support. So because we had this change, we discussed about the block tools feature. So now most of the typography controls were added to the existing text blocks, like heading, paragraph and so on. And there are also some default controls enabled for them. So you just go and check those blocks and see how many new options are there now.

Riad Benguella: The next change is another change that is meant to be for WordPress 5.9. So now that global styles are actually the landing in WordPress 5.9, and even the UI, some plugin developers and then some team developers need some API to access these settings and access these styles. If they want to adapt their code. For example, to check whether there’s a global layout or to retrieve whether I don’t know, there’s a color palette or anything, basically any settings in or style in the global style. So a new idea has been introduced, it allows you to retrieve these settings pretty easily in just a function call. You don’t have to go check directly in the theme JSON file or the user settings or anything, you just get the current value. That’s pretty handy, another also global style related API that landed pretty recently is actually arrest API to retrieve modified global styles and also the base global styles for the active team. So this could be pretty handy for plug-in and team authors.

APIs

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: And regarding the API functions that were introduced, they are called get_global_settings, get global_styles and get global_style sheet. So pretty easy to remember and expect a dev note published in a few weeks.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Excellent. Yeah, I think that was the missing piece that we got quite a few questions about in the community. So having that public API available is now so much better. So believe it or not, we’re still talking about enhancements and new features.

Bug Fixes

Now we, I think there were about 80 or so in them, 73 and we didn’t talk about all of them, but the bug fixes also are 73 bug fixes in this release. And some of them are very granular and in the back end of it. But the one that stood out for me was that for the blocks, it fixes the relative URLs for the inline styles. So if you had a style sheet with a background color or a background image and the URL if it wasn’t an absolute URL but only relative like ../ it wouldn’t find that anymore, and that has been fixed. So quite a few developers will say finally!

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: They should still exist in WordPress 5.8. And yeah, this is something we missed because it only happens for the custom blocks and only when you opt in for the option to use those in line styles.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Good. So wasn’t all that big. Okay. So are there any other bug fixes that you wanted to mention here, Grzegorz or Riad?

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: No, it’s like bugs you wanted to forget about them. You don’t want to speak.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, sometimes I find it interesting to, oh yeah that’s a bug from 2018, we finally fixed it. But I haven’t seen any of those here. So yeah, do you want to go to the next section and talk about performance Riad?

Performance

Riad Benguella: Let’s speak about performance actually. Pretty interesting subject and I enjoy working on performance a lot. So on the editor theme, we have this metrics we keep track of over time, the loading time, the typing time and we keep adding new metrics every time. And the interesting one that was worked on during this release was the list view. We added a new metric to measure how the editor performs while the list view is open. And the list view is pretty powerful to navigate the editor, but since it shows a long list of blocks, it can create some performance issues sometimes. So a new technique has been used during this release. It’s called windowing techniques for the technical folks listening to us. Basically it means the list that is currently visible is rendered, but all the remaining items on the list are actually hidden and not rendered at all. Unless you scroll the list and show them. Historically we’ve been avoiding this kind of solutions because they could have some accessibility issues and also it is very hard to get right. But thanks to the work of contributors, I think Carrie worked this a lot, we now have a solution that we think works pretty well and doesn’t introduce any accessibility problems. So now they invite you to test this and if there are any issues, please let us know.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So well, thank you. And yes, indeed. The list view is one of the most powerful tools that would come revamped WordPress 5.9, but going back to performance, I know that you all also had this check and we talked about it on the show before, where you had, 30,000 blocks in a post to kind of see the performance of it and measure it from between the different versions. How many blocks do you have in the list view to test this?

Riad Benguella: Oh, we use the exact same post, which I think it’s a thousand blocks or something like that. It’s a very long post. You can find it on the Gutenberg repository. You can search for large post @HTML. And it’s actually executed automatically in the CI. And every time we check the numbers. And on each release post, you can go to the bottom of the post and you see there’s a table that is there that compares the current release with the previous release and also the current release with the previous WordPress release, so that’s how we keep track of these things. We also have a separate website, which I think at the moment is not working, but I promise I’ll fix it very soon where you see the evolution of the different metrics over time for each actual comment. So that way we can pretty easily find the exact comments, the introduced performance regressions.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah, I saw yesterday that was going back in time and checking the performance for WordPress 5.6 and other major releases, and maybe do you have those results? Because I was pretty excited hearing how it changes.

Riad Benguella: Yeah I do have results. I think loading time improved quite a bit from WordPress 5.7 And to WordPress 5.8, and in WordPress 5.9, it improved a little bit as well, 200 milliseconds or 300 milliseconds out of 3.5 seconds. The typing time also improved, by 20% or something from WordPress 5.8 and WordPress 5.9.

The other metric that improved a lot between these two versions is inserter opening. We did a lot of work there. And now when you opened the inserter, it is actually quite snappy compared to how it was in the previous version. There is also another one, so the only metric that I think we need to work on a little bit more for this release is block selection. We lost 10% time on it, but I think we can improve this one and do better there. And for the inserter it’s actually quite impressive because at some point in the inserter, we had collapsible panels. So we didn’t show a lot of things at the same time when you open the inserter and there’s collapsible panels, it should open quick, right? And now we show everything at once. So there’s a lot of things, but we still manage to make it fast. So I’m pretty proud of about it.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: That’s impressive. Yes. Yeah, because now we have the inserter we don’t only have the core blocks, but we also have the theme blocks in there. And then also block patterns, a tab and then another reusable block tab. Yeah. Your website, Riad, I think you shared the link at one point maybe two or three months ago. And you also did performance testing with plugins. Is that a different project or is that pretty much the same kind of performance?

Riad Benguella: Yeah. So what I did is I was curious to check actually if I enable plugin or not, how it impacts the editor’s performance. So I actually use the exact same metrics. We have these coded up in the plugin, so I can just run the test, enable the plugin, change the plugin and run the test again, right? And then compare the numbers.

Actually, I also spend some time with some plugin authors, because in the initial run I had some issues there and I saw some plugins impacted a lot, and I was very happy to see that they were all pretty receptive and we did some work together. And in the end, I will say the major plugins right now are doing good enough. I think that we can always do better, but we are doing good enough. And I actually encourage plugin authors to check the post if they didn’t see it, because there are their instructions to check their own plugins, to see how their own plugin impacts the editor performance. Because sometimes we get reports that the editor is very slow and I cannot choose the editor or whatever when I type it’s very slow. And sometimes we cannot do anything about it. So we have to check all the possible reasons that could cause this and plug ins can be a reason. So it’s important for both plug in authors and users to be aware of it.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Wow. That’s good to know. I think I will come back to you and kind of talk about this, or at least get all the information for the show notes, but also maybe have a block post about it. That’s a little bit more prominent, because now more and more people are going to use or come on board with adopting Gutenberg and having that resource available is really, really helpful. All right. Well, thank you, Riad, for that little excursion into performance.

Riad Benguella: Thanks I’m always happy to dive there. It’s my personal favorite feature or favorite topic.

Documentation

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So now we are at the documentation section of the changelog and there were two things that stood out amongst typo changes and improving landing pages and all that one was the block schema and documentation has changed or not has changed particularly, but it’s better documented in terms of the block JSON. And that’s the follows the same process as the theme JSON does. Right. Is that what I’m saying, Grzegorz?

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. So the view is a new API option in block, JSON, that will allow authors to provide Java script code. That’s going to be executed only in the front and only when the block is rendered there, so it’s pretty handy thing. And the other change is, because we are preparing to WordPress 5.9. So both features are for the upcoming major WordPress release is that there will be possibility to define more than one style sheet. And the reason for that is twofold. First, sometimes there are some styles that block author would like to apply to more than one block. So this is a way to share them through using style handle. And the other reason is that plugging out, they also want to add their own styles in a batch mode. So instead of doing their own magic, they can just use the existing APIs and inject that to all the blocks they want.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: I like that instead your own magic, use core magic. Yeah, excellent. Well, thanks for letting us know. So there are some features, of course, the theme JSON documentation has been updated with missing settings and styles that is also in preparation of 5.9 and the version change there.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: I think that there was link added for ways to keep up with Gutenberg and Full-Site Editing. I suspect that the link is to your resources that you keep up to date.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yes. So that’s great to see it finally happening because it’s the best page to look at.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: And if you are listening to the show and don’t know what Grzegorz is talking about, in the handbook on core on the make block on the references, there is a page called Keeping up with Gutenberg and it’s an index page with all the block posts from the teams that work on Gutenberg in chronological order. So it starts from the newest to the oldest, but it’s per year. So we started that 2020 in June.

So the last half of 2020 is in the 2020 page. And this year, November, we are coming up to the end of the year, so we have all the editor meetings, what the theme team does, the design team also, publishers, the tests and the summary of the tests from the FSE program and all the other related posts. I started that because the core make block, within a day or two, you have to scroll to the third or fourth page to find something that was published yesterday. And it was really interesting to do that. So keeping up with Gutenberg index, you can actually Google that now, keeping up with Gutenberg and it comes up first. All right, so is there anything else in the changelog? Oh yeah, we have on the tool sections, we have some FSE backboard and core.

Tools

Riad Benguella: Yeah. That another kind of magic. Basically on each WordPress release, we need to backboard all the changes that are on the Gutenberg plugin and include them into core. Maybe a lot of people don’t know that’s a lot of work and that’s a lot of invisible work. We do that in two separate ways. Basically the JavaScript changes are more automatic. So we do a package NP and package release, and then we include them in core, but we also need to check all the PHP changes that happened in the work Gutenberg plugin and move them into core. And sometimes when we do that, some problems happen. For example, a function that exists in the Gutenberg plugin can exist at the same time on core. So at, on this small period of time, we need to make some adaptation, both code based, to ensure they work together. So a lot of changes on this Gutenberg release are related to that. Yeah I want to send kudos to Robert, the editor tech lead for this release. He did an awesome job to make sure everyone is on the same page and works to make sure all the changes are on WordPress trunk at the right moment.

Code Quality

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Something, yeah. I have something in the code quality section, it has 25 items. So that’s great that we still remember about that aspect of work in the lights of the upcoming release and all the work caused by that. So there is new API endpoint it looks like is going to be included in the WordPress core, is it right? So this one is called the WP block V1 URL/details. This one is for the link previews. So this one is getting stable, also plugin authors will be able use to do whatever they need with that.

Riad Benguella: Indeed, that could be useful to show previews or get more information about URLs and exploit that in very different ways for plugin authors.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. That feature is such a small feature when you think about it, but it has so much power that it could definitely be explored quite a bit for plugin authors and even do a list of all this week’s links and then collect them all, might be a good use case.

What’s in Active Development or Discussed

All right yeah, so that’s pretty much it with our Gutenberg changelog this week. Thank you Riad and Grzegorz who get us through it. I think I have only one thing… So where is WordPress 5.9 now headed? What are the next steps?

Riad Benguella: I think as we mentioned to tomorrow is November 16. So it’s the release of WordPress 5.9 beta 1. I think that’s the best time for people to test. So I’m asking everyone just code, download WordPress 5.9. It is the start of a new with Full Site Editing and block teams and all global styles and all navigation on all these features. So go grab your coffee and start a block team and just try things and try to break it and just tell us what goes wrong. And we have a number of weeks to fix all the bug fixes, and we’re looking forward to your feedback on that.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Excellent. Yeah. I just also want to point out there is a WordPress beta test plugin in the repository, so you don’t have to install all that. So you just make it a normal WordPress install and then install the plugin for WordPress beta tester plugin, and the stream would be the point release instead of the daily trunk. But if you are brave, you could also do the daily trunk. There are core committers who actually have run trunk on their personal blogs. They’re quite brave in doing that. So yeah, beta 1 is tomorrow, November 16th, and then a week later, supposedly beta 2, the first release candidate is scheduled. And of course, that all depends on what the test was bringing all back to us or to the team.

Release candidate, we know sometimes there’s beta 3 and beta 4, depending on how that all works, but then there’s a release candidate. One is scheduled for November 30th, and that’s also the date where the field guide with the dev notes come out and where the about page is done, and also the release post is draft and there’s a hard string freeze, means there is no bug fixing anymore. And there’s not a whole lot that can go in there in a release candidate after release candidate is available. And then there will be a dry run for the releasing workers, 5.9 in the 24 hour code freeze December 13th. But if you want to be part of the release party, that’s going to happen December 14th in the slack channel of core.

Riad Benguella: And it’s something else I wanted to mention about WordPress 5.9 Is the dev notes. So after beta one, you can expect a list of dev notes on the make core and if you are a plugin author or an agency or WordPress developer app, update your code accordingly, if there are changes and also use the new APIs.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: You can also subscribe to the Gutenberg changelog newsletter and get the list with all the links directly from Birgit.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Thank you for making a pitch on the Gutenberg Times again. That’s awesome. And if you need instructions on how to test Full-Site Editing, so Anne McCarthy published a test call for the Full-Site Editing outreach program. That’s for the non-techy people who are using site builder or page builders to build sites for others. And it’s called the site editing safari, and you get different scenarios that you can follow along with instructions on how to test this because…

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Good point? No, safari is like the African safari with the giraffes and the rhinos and everything. So one scenario is personalize your homepage and setting your styles. Add some button patterns and use some of the layout controls for that, one set of instructions also is how to add a dual filter and the single post template. Those test instructions are actually also quite nicely to use for exploring the new interface on a more scripted schedule. So you don’t have to come up with ideas on how to test it. So you just use those and it really helps if you would comment on that post on the test block by November 30th. And then what normally happens is after a week or so, the feedback comes in and then Anne writes a summary for the developers working on it so they can see what else then to be changed, or she also puts issues together for the GitHub repository of a box coming out.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: I also want to mention one more thing. So the release date, December 14, it reminded me that it’s also the day when the state of the word 2021 will be by the WordPress projects co-founder Matt Mullenweg.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Excellent. Yes, yes. And that is scheduled for, I think it’s noon Eastern, which is dinner time in central Europe.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Yeah. So it’s 10:00 AM between 10:00 AM and 2:12 PM Eastern time and 5:00 PM UTC, which means at my place, it would be 6:00 PM Central European Time.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Excellent. I’m glad we got it all in. Yes. And so on the webpress.org/news, there is actually a call for of questions because the state of the word is normally about 45 minutes when Matt Mullenweg walks us through the last year and what’s coming up in the next year and then the next 30 minutes or so will be answering questions from the community. And there is some instructions on the webpress.org/newspost instructions, you can send them via a video and how to get them to the people who help prepare for the state of the word.

All right, with that, that’s a very good time to end it. If you like our shows, help us spreading the word by adding a review to your favorite podcast directory. If you have news or suggestions or questions sent them to changelog@Gutenbergtimes.com via email changelog@Gutenbergtimes.com and you can always also reach us via Twitter. So my Twitter handle is at B-P-H. Grzegorz is G-Z-I-O-L-O. And then Riad’s Twitter handle is Riad Benguella. And we will of course share that all in the show notes. So it was wonderful to have you both here. Thank you, Riad for joining us. How do you feel about it?

Riad Benguella: Thank you. I really enjoyed the show and thank you for having me and please do continue to spread the Gutenberg word.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: That was fun. Yeah, to have fun to have Riad on the shows like.

Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Probably that was the best I show ever. We had so much fun together.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, we did. All right. Okay. Well, let’s just get out of here for more fun. Thank you all for listening. Thank you for joining us. And I say goodbye until the next time.

Introduction

As I sit down typing this, I’m wondering what the heck do I write about (am I allowed to say that?)!

It is now October and I’m finally writing this essay. Thank you for being so patient with me and giving me a topic to write about.

How I got into the WordPress

It’s 2017 and I’m bored with work. I’d been working in project management for over 15 years and I was no longer excited about the projects I was working on. My repeat clients could tell this, I did not challenge them on certain processes. Some might say I’d become wiser in picking my battles, but I just no longer wanted to invest my energy. When that happens, you know you need to do something. You don’t want your action, or in my case inaction, to be to the detriment of the client. I knew I still loved working with and in tech but I needed to do something different.

On 29 December 2017, I enrolled on a course covering web development. After covering HTML, CSS, and a bit of JavaScript, I decided to try one of the course options: WordPress. My course instructor encouraged me to go to a WordCamp. She found one was scheduled for the following weekend in Brighton. So I booked my ticket and found an Airbnb. Worst case scenario I get to spend some time on the beach (even if it was a bit chilly). But I couldn’t go to a WordCamp with no knowledge of WordPress – I thought I’d look like an idiot. So I spent that week going through the introductory course, now I was ready. Don’t ask me how much I managed to take in, just know that at least I now knew what WordPress was.

I attended my first WordCamp, a 2-hour drive, in October 2018. WordCamp Brighton (WCBTN) will always hold a special place in my heart. All the people I met (sponsors, attendees, organising team, and volunteers) were amazing. I walked in there all by my lonesome and they were friendly, took time to talk to me, explain things, and Jenny Wong encouraged me to join my local Meetup. I’m not sure if it’s being in a room with like-minded people or being able to geek out (or not for some) on tech but I was excited and had a lot of fun. When I got back to London, I joined my local (well what I like to call London local) Meetup.

At the time that I joined, the team was starting to look for organisers for WordCamp London (WCLDN) 2019. I’m very much a believer in learning by doing and project management involves a lot of organisation. I spoke to Gary Jones told him I was a newbie and offered to help. I was in charge of Sponsors, eek! How the hell do I do that? Don’t be afraid to ask a lot of questions. We were a fairly new team so big thanks to Dan Maby and Barbara Saul for being patient with us and our endless questions. Big thanks to the outgoing team who were available to offer advice when asked. I learnt a lot about the community whilst working on the WCLDN and I had a great time doing it.

Abha Thakor encouraged me to volunteer for WordCamp Europe (WCEU) 2019 and once again it was an amazing experience. I got to visit Berlin, contribute to the Marketing team desk and met even more people. I also got to rock my big yellow exclamation mark fluorescent earrings that scream the 80s at an 80s after party. It was during WCEU Contributor day that I was introduced to Jesse Owens and the Training team. When you contribute, you get to learn more about all the different teams that make up WordPress the project and WordPress itself. It’s a great way to learn and I would encourage you to join one of the Make teams (you don’t need to be a developer) there are teams like Training, Accessibility, Documentation, Marketing, and Polyglots. If you want to test the waters before joining, find a virtual Contributor day (some companies are running them) or join one at a WordCamp when we are able to meet in person. I joined the Marketing and Training team at WCEU and I’m still there today.

In November 2019 Josepha Haden Chomphosy sent out a call for an all-women release squad. I wanted to know more about accessibility so I was assigned to be the 5.8 Accessibility team cohort. The support our release squad got was amazing. The beauty of the WordPress community is that though we are all at different levels on our journey, someone is always quick to help you navigate that journey. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to make us feel welcome, explain things, are patient with us, and offer cake and chocolate when we need it. I’m still part of the Accessibility team and I’m still learning, it’s a big topic. We are a small team so if you’re an expert in that area and have time to spare, you want to teach others or want to learn, I encourage you to come and join us.

Summer of 2020 was the soft launch of Learn.WordPress.org. Shortly afterwards, Courtney Robertson asked for help in preparing for the official launch of Learn. Learn WordPress is a learning resource for anyone who wants to learn how to use, build for and contribute to WordPress. It is an open-source platform that offers a range of materials and opportunities for you to use at your own pace and at a time that works for you. Once again, I put my hand up. Do you see a pattern here? When people have ideas that are of great value to those around them, I can’t help but say yes. Someone always has a great idea and I would love to say yes to everyone but I don’t know how to clone myself yet. Mind you, Michelle Frechette tells me cloning isn’t what I think it is, I need to do more research.

The life it now gives me and why I stay

Since discovering WordPress, I’ve been a part of a lot of different projects within Make and in the community.

I am one of the Training Team Reps. I get to work with folks that I like and be involved in shaping Learn. As Courtney Robertson, my good friend and fellow Training Team Rep, puts it:

I am proud to be involved in a project that is a cross-team initiative, props to marketing, community, meta, polyglots, accessibility, design, training, and WordPress.tv who help shape Learn. Individuals can learn alongside other community members, connecting with the global network of WordPress users, developers and contributors. Check out this post on who learn can help, by Courtney Robertson. If you’re a training provider, business owner, or hiring manager, have a look at our high-level roadmap to learning WordPress development. Join us in:

I am a volunteer and Board member at the charity Big Orange Heart (BOH). I get to be a part of WordFest, a unique 24-hour global online event that is a celebration of WordPress. BOH’s mission:

I get to talk to people from all walks of life, support and help build a community that cares for each other. I get to make an impact for good. If we don’t look out for each other, who will?

I get to enjoy having a global family, learning, meeting new people, developing lifelong friendships and connections, and the extra bonus is that it doesn’t feel like work. I get to stay in the background churning the wheels and come out when needed. I get to have fun doing it!

Samun iyali na duniya

Gabatarwa

A yayin da nake zaune ina wannan rubutun, ina nazari akan wai shin akan wani batu zan ma yi rubutun (amma yarda in fadi hakan ma tukuna?)

Toh akwanakin baya a watan Mayu na wannan shekarar, na samu wata sako daga wurin wani dan taliki da ake kira Topher.

Yanzu dai muna watar Oktoba kuma har na kai ga yin wannan rubutu. Ina gode maka saboda hakuri da kayi da ni da kuma bani batu da zanyi rubutu akai.

Yadda na samu kaina a cikin WordPress

Ana shekarar alib dubu biyu da goma sha bakwai, 2017 kuma ba na marmarin aiki. A wannan lokacin na riga na samu shekaru goma-sha-biyar ina aiki a fannin project management. Ko masu kasuwanchi da ne sun ga chanji a hali na. Wasu za su ce na zama mai hikima kuma na kara wayo a hali. Idan abubuwa haka suka fara faruwa a rayuwar ka, toh dole ka tashi sa’ye kayi wani abu a kai kafin ya kashe ma kasuwa. Ba ni da damuwa wajen yin aiki am’ma ina so in yi wani abu daban.

A ranan ashirin da tara a watan Disamba ta shekaran alib dubu biyu da goma sha bakwai na fara wata sabuwar ilimi na web development. Bayan na kalmala Shashi na HTML, CSS da JavaScript, da na za’bi in gwada daya daga chikin shashin ilimin wato WordPress. Malami na ya bani shawara in shiga WordCamp. Ta sami labari akwai daya da za’a yi a sati mai zuwa a Brighton. Sai na siya tikati nawa kuma na biya wajen kwana. Saboda kada in ba kaina kunya, sai na shiga binciken da karatu a kan ma’anar Kalmar WordPress. A wannan lokachi ina iya bogun kirji na cewa a shirye na ke.

Na shiga shashin WordPress na farko a watan Oktoba na alin dubu biyu da goma sha takwas, na yi tukin mota zuwa kusan awa biyu. WordPress a Brighton (WCBTN) za ta dade a chikin zuchiya ta da abobin ban sha’awa. Duk mutanen da na sadu da su (abokan fatan alheri, dalubai da masu bada umarni) sun bani farin chiki. Na shiga gurin ni kadai amma na hadu da jamma’a da suka yi mun maraba da zuwa, suka yi mun magana, suka bayyana mun abubuwa daban daban sannan wata mata Jenny Wong ta bani shawara in shiga wata kungiyar unguwa na haduwa. Da na koma London sai na shiga kungiyar da tafi kusa da ni.

A lokachin da na shiga kungiyar, suna neman wakilai da zasu taimaka wajen tsara WordCamp London (WCLDN) 2019. Ni na yadda da kara samin ilimi ta wajen hanyar yin project management, domin tana bukatan tsari sosai wajen ambata komai. Na yi magana da wani mutum da ake kira Gary Jones na bayyana mishi cewa ni sabowar zuwa ce kuma ina so in taimaka. Sai na tambayi kaina da yaya zan iya kalmala wannan aikin? Ta wajen tambayoyi. Mun kasance sabuwar ƙungiya mai girma don haka godiya ga Dan Maby da Barbara Saul don haƙuri tare da mu da tambayoyin mu marasa iyaka. Babban godiya ga tawagar masu fita da suka samu ba da shawara idan aka tambaye shi. Na koyi abubuwa da yawa game da al’umma yayin aiki akan WCLDN kuma na yi farin ciki da yin shi.

Abha Thakor ya ƙarfafa ni in yi aikin sa kai don WordCamp Europe (WCEU) 2019 kuma sau ɗaya sake abu ne mai ban mamaki. Na ziyarci Berlin, na ba da gudummawa ga ƙungiyar Talla tebur kuma sun sadu da ƙarin mutane. Na kuma yi jijjiga babban alamar motsin raina ‘yan kunne masu kyalli waɗanda ke kururuwa na 80s a cikin 80s bayan biki. Ya kasance a lokacin WCEU ranar mai ba da gudummawa da aka gabatar da ni ga Jesse Owens da ƙungiyar horo. Lokacin da kuke ba da gudummawa, kuna samun ƙarin koyo game da duk ƙungiyoyi daban-daban waɗanda suka haɗa WordPress ɗin aikin da WordPress kanta. Hanya ce mai kyau don koyo kuma zan ƙarfafa ku ku shiga ɗaya na Ƙungiyoyin Yi (ba kwa buƙatar zama mai haɓakawa) akwai ƙungiyoyi kamar Horarwa, Samun dama, Takaddun bayanai, Talla, da Polyglots. Idan kuna son gwada ruwa a baya shiga, nemo ranar mai ba da gudummawa ta kama-da-wane (wasu kamfanoni suna gudanar da su) ko shiga ɗaya a a WordCamp lokacin da muka sami damar saduwa da mutum. Na shiga kungiyar Tallace-tallace da Horarwa a WCEU kuma ina nan har yau.

A watan Nuwamba 2019 Josepha Haden Chomphosy ya aika kiran a saki mata duka tawagar. Ina son ƙarin sani game da samun dama don haka aka sanya ni zama 5.8 Ƙungiyar haɗin kai. Taimakon da tawagarmu ta saki ya kasance mai ban mamaki. Kyawun al’ummar WordPress shine duk da cewa duk muna a matakai daban-daban akan tafiyarmu, wani yana gaggawar taimaka muku wajen tafiyar da wannan tafiya. Godiya ga duk wanda yana ɗaukar lokaci don sa mu ji maraba, bayyana abubuwa, haƙuri da mu, da ba da kek da cakulan lokacin da muke bukata. Har yanzu ina cikin tawagar Accessibility kuma har yanzu ina koyo, babban batu ne. Mu ƙananan ƙungiya ne don haka idan kun kasance gwani a wannan yanki kuma kuna da lokaci don spare, kana so ka koya wa wasu ko kuma kana son koyo, ina ƙarfafa ka ka zo mu shiga.

Lokacin bazara na 2020 shine ƙaddamar da laushi na Learn.WordPress.org. Jim kadan bayan haka, Courtney Robertson ya nemi taimako a shirya don ƙaddamar da Koyi a hukumance. Koyi WordPress hanya ce ta koyo ga duk wanda ke son koyon yadda ake amfani da shi, ginawa da kuma ba da gudummawa ga WordPress. Yana da dandamali mai buɗewa wanda ke ba da kewayon kayan aiki da damar da za ku yi amfani da su a cikin saurin ku kuma a lokacin da ke aiki a gare ku. Har yanzu, sanya hannuna sama. Kuna ganin tsari a nan? Lokacin da mutane suna da ra’ayoyin da suke da daraja sosai ga wadanda ke kusa da su, ba zan iya ba sai dai in ce eh. Wani ko da yaushe yana da babban ra’ayi kuma ni zan so in ce eh ga kowa amma ban san yadda zan clone kaina ba tukuna. Ka kula, Michelle Frechette ta gaya mani cloning ba shine abin da nake tsammani ba, ina buƙatar yin ƙarin bincike.

Rayuwar da take bani yanzu da dalilin da yasa na zauna

Tun da gano WordPress, na kasance wani ɓangare na mai yawa daban-daban ayyuka a cikin Make da cikin al’umma.

Ni ɗaya ne daga cikin Wakilan Ƙungiyar horo. Ina samun aiki tare da mutanen da nake so da kuma shiga ciki tsara Koyi. A matsayina na Courtney Robertson, abokina na kwarai kuma ƙwanƙwaran horo Rep, yana cewa:

Ina alfaharin shiga cikin wani aiki wanda ke da yunƙurin ƙugiya, mai tallata tallace-tallace, al’umma, meta, polyglots, samun dama, ƙira, horo, da WordPress.tv waɗanda ke taimakawa siffa Koyi. Mutane na iya koyo tare da sauran membobin al’umma, dangane da duniya hanyar sadarwa na masu amfani da WordPress, masu haɓakawa da masu ba da gudummawa. Duba wannan post akan wanda ya koya zai iya taimakawa, ta Courtney Robertson. Idan kai mai bada horo ne, mai kasuwanci, ko ɗaukar aiki manaja, dubi babban taswirar hanyarmu don koyon ci gaban WordPress. Shiga mu cikin:

Ni mai sa kai ne kuma memba na hukumar a kungiyar agaji ta Big Orange Heart (BOH). Zan iya zama bangare na WordFest, wani taron kan layi na sa’o’i 24 na musamman na duniya wanda shine bikin WordPress. BOH ta manufa:

Ina yin magana da mutane daga kowane fanni na rayuwa, tallafi da kuma taimaka wa al’ummar da ta damu juna. San iya yin tasiri sosai. Idan ba mu lura da juna ba, wa zai yi?

Ina jin daɗin samun iyali na duniya, koyo, saduwa da sababbin mutane, haɓaka abokantaka dahadi na rayuwa kuma karin kari shine cewa baya jin kaman aiki. Ina samun zama a bango ina karkata da kafafun kuma in fito lokacin da ake bukata na. Ina jin daɗin wanan aiki.

The Wowmall theme was released to the public today. It is the second 100% block theme that integrates with WooCommerce to land in the WordPress directory. Responsive FSE was the first.

Two weeks ago, a reader sent in a question for the Ask the Bartender column. He wanted to know where the WooCommerce block themes were. Literally one day after publishing that post, Wowmall was submitted to the WordPress theme review system. Maybe it was fate or just luck, but I had no choice but to give it a test run.

The theme adds an admin-side welcome and notice page. The author makes it clear that the project is not currently intended for use on production sites. It is in an experimental state at the moment. It is unclear who is actually behind the Wowmall project. The associated Twitter account has been suspended, and its other social profiles are devoid of information. And, the Wowmall website currently offers scant details.

I will not pretend that Wowmall is one of my favorite themes. The design is far too busy for my tastes. I prefer something scaled back that focuses on content, but I do not fit into this theme’s primary audience.

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. Six of those are headers, and another three are footers. However, the rest are for general use in the content, including call-to-action layouts and hero sections.

It also ships several custom block styles. Some of them offer design variations that make up for things like missing border controls for some blocks. Others, such as the Social Icon’s “Dark” style, would be better left to the existing color options.

The question most people likely want to be answered is how well it works with WooCommerce. From what I have seen, it works like any other run-of-the-mill WooCommerce theme. You know the look, the default design as seen by 90% of the themes built for the eCommerce plugin. Maybe there is a custom color palette or simple stylistic changes. However, at the end of the day, you know it is a WooCommerce shop.

If it works, do not mess with the formula. The most egregious issue I saw with the WooCommerce part of the theme was the output of a comments section on the main Shop page and product category archives. I did not see specific block templates for these pages, so I am taking a wild stab and assuming everything is falling back to a single product or page template that would normally output comments.

Wowmall does not work well as a pure blogging theme. It handles the basics well enough, but it has far too many characters per line for comfortably reading long-form content. A strict 18px font size, a variable-width content area (989px at full-width on my laptop), and a medium-gray text color make it hard to read anything other than short blurbs.

However, this theme is not touted as a blogging theme. It is hyper-focused on presenting an online shop.

Where the theme flexes the most is its selection of block patterns. They are designed primarily for building out a unique storefront. Users can get a lot of mileage out of them.

The breadcrumb trail in the theme is not really a breadcrumb trail at all. It just masquerades as one. Under the hood, it is a Navigation block with a homepage link followed by the current post/page title. At no point does it show the crumbs (e.g., parent pages) that lead back to the site root. Themes have notoriously offered sub-par breadcrumb navigation in the classic era. Perhaps, developers will leave this to plugin authors in their block themes.

As far as I know, there are no breadcrumb navigation plugins on WordPress.org to integrate with. However, there is a proposal to add a block for it in core. And, for transparency, I have such a plugin under development and intend to release it on .ORG.

Wowmall is not claiming this is a finished, production-ready WordPress theme. It is an ongoing project that is expected to improve over time. Plus, we are still waiting for WooCommerce to expand its support of the block system.

What I like more than anything is seeing theme shops push the envelope with blocks. What I see from Wowmall and recent block themes is that many of the limitations of the past year or so are simply no longer there.

WordPress executive director Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced today that the 2021 State of the Word will be held on December 14, between 10 am and 12 pm ET/3 pm and 5 pm UTC. For those who are new to the WordPress community, this event is where Matt Mullenweg reviews the milestones and progress of the past year and shares his vision for the open source WordPress project.

Ordinarily, the State of the Word is delivered as the capstone to WordCamp US in the latter part of the year, with a live Q&A session following the address. This year, WordCamp US was held online in early October and concluded with Haden Chomphosy discussing trends she observed in 2020 and growth opportunities she sees for the WordPress community. In her most recent podcast, Haden Chomphosy confirmed that the State of the Word 2021 will be an in-person event.

“It’s going to join the growing list of in-person events that are on the calendar,” she said. “It will be in New York City but will also be live-streamed across the world as usual.”

When asked about live event, Haden Chomphosy further clarified that it will be more like a mid-sized meetup. Mullenweg will be delivering the State of the Word at Automattic’s New York office with approximately 30 people in-person, which is the capacity for the space.

“We’ll start with NYC community folks, but will try to keep the invitation process as open as possible,” she said. “Vaccinations will be required and more information will be available about that later this week.”

Today’s announcement said that attendees and viewers can expect to hear about WordPress 5.9, Openverse (WordPress’ search engine project for openly-licensed media), and Web3 and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The last topic drew some early responses on Twitter from those who are keenly interested in Web3 and NFTs, as well as those who don’t see any value in the WordPress project promoting or participating in these technologies. As WordPress is closing in on 43% of the web, it will be interesting to see what Mullenweg has to say about what the project’s role is in this potentially polarizing issue.

Viewers will be able participate in the Question & Answer session following the State of the Word by emailing ask-matt@wordcamp.org, or asking during the event in the livestream chat on YouTube. Add the event to your calendar and watch for the livestream to be embedded on wordpress.org/news on December 14.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

This is an example page. It\'s different from a blog post because it will stay in one place and will show up in your site navigation (in most themes). Most people start with an About page that introduces them to potential site visitors. It might say something like this:

As a new WordPress user, you should go to your dashboard to delete this page and create new pages for your content. Have fun!

Who we are

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me", your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Analytics

Who we share your data with

How long we retain your data

If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data

If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

August 2021 $\"📆\"$	Up $\"📈\"$	Down $\"📉\"$	Average $\"😐\"$
All responses	4	3	3

September 2021 $\"📆\"$	Up $\"📈\"$	Down $\"📉\"$	Average $\"😐\"$
Company $\"🏢\"$	4	1	6
Agency $\"🧑‍💼\"$	11	3	5
Individual $\"👩‍💻\"$	7	5	6
Totals:	22	9	17

October 2021 $\"📆\"$	Up $\"📈\"$	Down $\"📉\"$	Average $\"😐\"$
Company $\"🏢\"$	0	2	3
Agency $\"🧑‍💼\"$	2	0	3
Individual $\"👩‍💻\"$	1	2	2
Totals:	3	4	8

Some Highlights

How You Can Help

Where can I get more information?

WordPress 5.9: Expected to release on January 25, 2022

Gutenberg releases: 11.9 and 12.0 are out

State of the Word 2021: Join a watch party in your local community

Team updates: Nominations for some team representatives are still underway

Feedback/Testing requests: Test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1; Take the 2021 Annual WordPress Survey to share your experience

Keep an eye out for WordCamp Taiwan and Sevilla, along with several WordPress workshops in December 2021

How You Can Help – Testing!

Full Site Editing

The Styles Interface

Theme.json

A New Navigation Block

A Better Gallery Block

Focused Template Part Mode

Block Pattern Directory

Twenty Twenty-Two Default Theme

More Improvements and Updates

Showing how WordPress can be used locally

Encouraging others to translate WordPress

Helping to give access to more diverse audiences

WordPress can support your skills and passions

WordPress gives everyone a chance to learn

Contributors

Credits

References

Transcript

Why organize a watch party?

How do I organize a State of the Word watch party?

Online

In Person

What else do I need to know about organizing a State of the Word watch party?

Join a State of the Word Watch Party near you!

Stay Tuned

Credits

References

Transcript

2020 Survey Results

Footnotes:

Thanks and props!

WordPress 5.9: All proposed updates will likely be included

Gutenberg releases: 11.6, 11.7, and 11.8 are here

WordCamp US returned virtually this year with more than 3,600 attendees

Team Updates: Polyglots monthly newsletter, a new Performance team, and more

Feedback/Testing requests: Deadline for redesigned Gutenberg landing page is November 5, 2021

Keep an eye out for WordCamp Spain, Sâo Paulo, and Taiwan 2021

Credits

References

Transcript

Empowered to make a change

Moving forward

The Start of a Web Career

A journey into WordPress e-commerce

Looking back at the journey

Share the stories

Contributors

Credits

References

Digital Citizenship Resources

Transcript

WordPress Translation Day 2021 Celebrations ran for 30 days

WordPress Release updates

Say hi to Gutenberg Versions 11.4 and 11.5

New Guidelines for in-person WordCamps

Important Team announcements/updates

Feedback/Testing requests from Contributor Teams

WordPress Events updates

Further reading

Credits

References

Transcript

Beyond software, meeting the WordPress community

Turning your hobby into your job

Working full time as a freelancer

Meeting the WordPress community

Strengthened by the community

Share the stories

Contributors

Style individual images

$\"🔗\"$ Mentioned in the show:

$\"🙏\"$ Sponsor: iThemes

$\"🔗\"$ Mentioned in the show:

$\"🙏\"$ Sponsor: WP Lookout