This year is set to be transformative for WordPress, yet many decision-makers risk overlooking the immense opportunities ahead. Our new “WordPress in 2025” report highlights why WordPress should be a cornerstone of your long-term strategy. Stay ahead of the curve—read the report now to see how WordPress can drive growth and innovation for your business in the years to come.

Some of the key points we explore:

As proprietary “next-gen” CMS hype fizzles out and enterprise budgets shift priorities, open-source CMSs like WordPress are primed to gain ground in the commoditized CMS space. WordPress’ maturity and extensibility provide a high starting point for innovation.
WordPress’ Block Editor has seen tremendous investment, amassing over 34,000 commits – more than entire competing CMS projects. New capabilities like Full Site Editing (FSE) give enterprises unprecedented ability to enable no-code site building.
Just as being the first user-friendly publishing tool propelled WordPress’ initial growth, AI presents a similar opportunity. WordPress’ contributor community can build not just AI features, but an exciting multi-agent, LLM-agnostic ecosystem representing an intelligent content operating system.
Pure-play headless vendors are working backwards to add no-code editing, while WordPress has long supported robust headless capabilities alongside its mature editor. For complex sites, hybrid architectures leveraging both are the pragmatic path forward.

Download the full WordPress in 2025 (PDF) report directly to learn more.

Don’t miss WP:25, the virtual event.Save your spot at our free event, WP:25, exploring the future of WordPress and featuring key people working with many of the ideas discussed in the report.

About the report’s author, Noel Tock — Having built his first website back in 1995, Noel has long been watching the evolution of the CMS space. As a co-owner at one of the leading enterprise WordPress agencies, Human Made, his belief in the power of open source is as great as ever. Human Made is a WordPress VIP Gold Partner specializing in DXP, headless, AI and more.

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The first major WordCamp of the year is here! WordCamp Asia 2025 lands in Manila, Philippines, from February 20-22, bringing together open source enthusiasts, developers, and WordPress professionals from across the region—and the world.

With three packed days of learning, networking, and collaboration, this year’s event promises fresh insights, dynamic discussions, and plenty of opportunities to connect.

Solutions spotlightThroughout the conference days, multiple presentations will focus on the solutions provided by our amazing sponsors. This is a great opportunity to learn more about their initiatives and solutions.

Explore the solutions spotlightKeynotes, panels, and deep divesThe main conference, which will be held on February 21-22, will feature a lineup of notable keynote speakers, including digital innovation leaders and open-source advocates. Attendees can expect diverse sessions on business strategy, development of best practices, and technical advancements.

For those looking to sharpen their skills, presentations will dive deep into topics like SEO for WordPress, performance optimization, and AI-powered content creation. Plus, don’t miss the electrifying WordPress Speed Build Battle, where developers race to create stunning sites in record time.

YouthCampOn February 22, WordCamp Asia 2025 will host YouthCamp, a pre-registered event designed to introduce young minds to WordPress and its endless possibilities. This initiative aims to engage the next generation of WordPress users, developers, and contributors through hands-on activities and interactive sessions

Closing Q&A with Matt MullenwegWordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg will wrap up the event with a live Q&A session on February 22. Whether attending in person or tuning in online, you can catch his insights live on the WordPress YouTube channel at 4:00 p.m. Philippine Time (08:00 UTC).

After partyAs the sun sets on WordCamp Asia 2025, the excitement continues with the After Party (theme: Island Vibe)! Get ready to experience the vibrant spirit of the Philippines with a lively gathering at The Forum at PICC. Expect a night filled with great conversations, music, and a celebration of the WordPress community.

Get WordCamp-ready* Secure your WordCamp Asia 2025 tickets (if you haven’t already!) * Browse the full schedule of sessions to plan your experience * Follow WordCamp Asia onX, LinkedIn, and Instagram for real-time updates

As always, be part of the conversation! Whether you’re attending in Manila or following along online, share your experiences using #WCAsia and #WordPress.

Manila is calling—see you at WordCamp Asia 2025!

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WordPress 6.7.2 is now available!This minor release includes 35 bug fixes, addressing issues affecting multiple components including the block editor, HTML API, and Customize.

WordPress 6.7.2 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.8 planned for April 15, 2025.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 6.7.2 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site.

Thank you to these WordPress contributorsThis release was led by Aaron Jorbin.

WordPress 6.7.2 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, Alex Lende, Alexandre Buffet, Andreas Pedersen, Andrew Ozz, Ankit Kumar Shah, apermo, Benedikt Ledl, bernhard-reiter, Brian Alexander, Carlos Bravo, Carolina Nymark, Cyrille, Daniel Post, darerodz, David Calhoun, David Smith, Dennis Snell, dhewercorus, Dion Hulse, Doug Wollison, Ella, Eshaan Dabasiya, Fabian Kägy, Fabian Todt, Felix Arntz, Felix Renicks, Francis Cabusas, Frank B., George Mamadashvili, ghinamt, Glynn Quelch, Greg Ziółkowski, James Koster, Jarda Snajdr, Jb Audras, jdnd, jeryj, Joe Dolson, Joe McGill, Jon Surrell, Jonathan Desrosiers, juanwp22, Juliette Reinders Folmer, Karthick, Kazuto Takeshita, Kelly Choyce-Dwan, Ketan Niruke, Lena Morita, levskipg, Maciej Ma?kowiak, Mario Santos, Matthew Boynes, Mayank Tripathi, Michal Czaplinski, Miguel Fonseca, Mitchell Austin, mreishus, Mukesh Panchal, Nadir Seghir a11n, Narendra Sishodiya, Naresh Bheda, neotrope, Nick Diego, Olga Gleckler, Parth vataliya, Pascal Birchler, paullb, Peter Wilson, Pitam Dey, redkite, Rishav Dutta, robertstaddon, rvoigt, Sagar Tamang, Sainath Poojary, seanlanglands, Sergey Biryukov, Scott Reilly, Shyam Kariya, smerriman, Stephen Bernhardt, Sukhendu Sekhar Guria, TobiasBg, Tonya Mork, Vishy Moghan, Weston Ruter, wongjn, Yogesh Bhutkar, zaoyao

How to contributeTo get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core and #6-8-release-leads channels. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

Props to @joedolson, @joemcgill and @audrasjb for proofreading.

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Making great software, great product that stands the test of time and not just survives but thrives through monumental technological shifts is incredibly hard. That challenge is part of the reason I love doing it. There is never a dull day, and the reward of seeing the code you wrote used by the most amazing creators in the world is an indescribable pleasure. When I see what people create with WordPress, some days I feel like I’m grinding pigment for Leonardo da Vinci or slitting a quill for Beethoven.

In open source, one thing that makes it even harder to ship great software is bringing together disparate groups of contributors who may have entirely different incentives or missions or philosophies about how to make great work. Working together on a team is such a delicate balance, and even one person rowing in the wrong direction can throw everyone else off.

That’s why periodically I think it is very healthy for open source projects to fork, it allows for people to try out and experiment with different forms of governance, leadership, decision-making, and technical approaches. As I’ve said, forking is beautiful, and forks have my full support and we’ll even link and promote them.

Joost is a self-proclaimed leader in the SEO space, an industry known for making the web better. He asked for and I gave him WordPress marketing leadership responsibility in January 2019 and he stepped down in June of 2019, I think we would both agree in those 5 months he was not effective at leading the marketing team or doing the work himself.

Karim leads a small WordPress agency called Crowd Favorite which counts clients such as Lexus and ABC and employs ~50 people.

Both are men I have shared meals with and consider of the highest integrity. I would trust them to watch any of my 15 godchildren for a day. These are good humans. Now go do the work. It probably won’t happen on day one, but Joost and Karim’s fork, which I’ll call JKPress until they come up with a better name, has a number of ideas they want to try out around governance and architecture. While Joost and Karim will be unilaterally in charge in the beginning, it sounds like they want to set up:

A non-profit foundation, with a broad board to control their new project.
A website owned by that foundation which hosts community resources like a plugin directory, forums, etc.
No more centralized and moderated plugin and theme directories with security guidelines or restrictions are what plugins are allowed to do like putting banners in your admin or gathering data, everything done in a federated/distributed manner.
The trademarks for their new project will either be public domain or held by their foundation.
“Modernization” of the technology stack, perhaps going a Laravel-like approach or changing how WordPress’ architecture works.
Teams and committees to make decisions for everything, so no single person has too much power or authority.

Karim has a similar post. Joost says he has the time and energy to lead:

So @photomatt – I saw the post by @automattic.

I'm ready to lead the next releases. I am sure plenty of people and companies are willing to help me and we've got plenty of ideas on what we should be doing.#WordPress

— Joost de Valk (@jdevalk) January 10, 2025

Now, as core committer Jb Audras (not employed by me or Automattic) points out, within WordPress we have a process in which people earn the right to lead a release:

Before leading any major release of WordPress, please start with leading a minor one @jdevalk. Then, apply to be Triage Lead or Coordination Lead Deputy for a major release. These are the steps everyone in our community should follow before claiming to run « the next releases ».

— Jb Audras (@AudrasJb) January 10, 2025

However in Joost and Karim’s new project, they don’t need to follow our process or put in the hours to prove their worth within the WordPress.org ecosystem, they can just lead by example by shipping code and product to people that they can use, evaluate, and test out for themselves. If they need financial or hosting support is sounds like WP Engine wants to support their fork:

We appreciate @jdevalk and @karimmarucchi thoughtful call for constructive conversation, change and evolved leadership within the WordPress community. Moments of disruption challenge all of us to reflect and to act.

WordPress’s success as the most widely used CMS is not the…

— WP Engine (@wpengine) December 20, 2024

Awesome! (Maybe it’s so successful they rebrand as JK Engine in the future.) WP Engine, with its half a billion in revenue and 1,000+ employees, has more than enough resources to support and maintain a legitimate fork of WordPress. And they are welcome to use all the GPL code myself and others have created to do so, including many parts of WordPress.org that are open source released under the GPL, and Gutenberg which is GPL + MPL.

Joost also is a major investor (owner?) in Post Status (which he tried to sell to me a few months ago, and I declined to buy, perhaps kicking off his consternation with me), so they have a news media site and Slack instance already ready to go. He also is an investor in PatchStack and appears to be trying to create a new business around something called Progress Planner, both of which could be incorporated into the new non-profit project to give them some competitive distinctions from WordPress.

To make this easy and hopefully give this project the push it needs to get off the ground, I’m deactivating the .org accounts of Joost, Karim, Se Reed, Heather Burns, and Morten Rand-Hendriksen. I strongly encourage anyone who wants to try different leadership models or align with WP Engine to join up with their new effort.

In the meantime, on top of my day job running a 1,700+ person company with 25+ products, which I typically work 60-80 hours a week on, I’ll find time on nights and weekends to work on WordPress 6.8 and beyond. Myself and other “non-sponsored” contributors have been doing this a long time and while we may need to reduce scope a bit I think we can put out a solid release in March.

Joost and Karim have a number of bold and interesting ideas, and I’m genuinely curious to see how they work out. The beauty of open source is they can take all of the GPL code in WordPress and ship their vision. You don’t need permission, you can just do things. If they create something that’s awesome, we may even merge it back into WordPress, that ability for code and ideas to freely flow between projects is part of what makes open source such an engine for innovation. I propose that in a year we do a WordPress + JKPress summit, look at what we’ve shipped and learned in the process, which I’d be happy to host and sponsor in NYC next January 2026. The broader community will benefit greatly from this effort, as it’s giving us a true chance to try something different and see how it goes.

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The modern web has gradually shifted from a vibrant tapestry of personal expression to a landscape of identical designs, where millions of websites share not just similar structures, but identical visual language, spacing, and interaction patterns. As we collectively gravitate toward the same “proven” layouts and “conversion-optimized” designs, we’re not just losing visual diversity – we’re ceding control over how we present ourselves to the world. This matters because genuine self-expression online isn’t just about aesthetics – it’s about maintaining spaces where authentic voices can flourish.

When every blog has the same hero section, when every portfolio follows the same grid, when every restaurant site looks interchangeable, we create an echo chamber of sameness. The cost isn’t just visual monotony – it’s the slow erosion of the web’s ability to surprise, delight, and showcase truly individual perspectives. WordPress, with its emphasis on complete ownership and control, offers an opportunity to break free from this convergence of design, allowing creators to build digital spaces that truly reflect their unique voice and vision.

Think of WordPress themes like album covers. They should have personality and create an immediate visual impact. The web has become too sanitized, with everyone chasing the same minimal, “professional” look.

Great themes should:

Have a strong point of view – like how Kubrick (the classic WordPress theme) defined an era with its distinctive header gradient. Don’t try to be everything to everyone.
Embrace specific aesthetics boldly – whether that’s brutalist design, pixel art, hand-drawn elements, or distinctive typography. Create themes that excite people rather than just working for everyone.
Design for specific use cases – like a theme for photographers that’s all about full-bleed images or a theme for writers that treats typography as art or a theme for musicians that feels like an album cover.
Break some rules thoughtfully – because not every theme needs a hamburger menu. Not every theme needs to be mobile-first. Sometimes constraints create character.

We need more themes that make people say “Wow!” or “That’s different!” rather than “That’s clean and professional.” The web needs more personality, more risk-taking, more fun.

After spending countless hours digging through the WordPress theme repository, searching for designs that break the mold and spark excitement, I came up nearly empty-handed. Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of well-built themes out there. But where’s the daring? The personality? The unexpected?

If you’ve got a wild theme idea burning in your mind – that portfolio theme that looks like a vintage trading card collection, that blog theme inspired by zine culture, that restaurant theme that feels like a hand-drawn menu – now’s the time to build it. WordPress desperately needs your creativity, your weird ideas, your willingness to break the visual rules. The future of the web shouldn’t be a monochrome landscape of identical layouts. Let’s make WordPress themes exciting again. Let’s make the web weird again.

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In order to give myself and the many tired volunteers around WordPress.org a break for the holidays, we’re going to be pausing a few of the free services currently offered:

New account registrations on WordPress.org (clarifying so press doesn’t confuse this: people can still make their own WordPress installs and accounts)
New plugin directory submissions
New plugin reviews
New theme directory submissions
New photo directory submissions

We’re going to leave things like localization and the forums open because these don’t require much moderation.

As you may have heard, I’m legally compelled to provide free labor and services to WP Engine thanks to the success of their expensive lawyers, so in order to avoid bothering the court I will say that none of the above applies to WP Engine, so if they need to bypass any of the above please just have your high-priced attorneys talk to my high-priced attorneys and we’ll arrange access, or just reach out directly to me on Slack and I’ll fix things for you.

I hope to find the time, energy, and money to reopen all of this sometime in the new year. Right now much of the time I would spend making WordPress better is being taken up defending against WP Engine’s legal attacks. Their attacks are against Automattic, but also me individually as the owner of WordPress.org, which means if they win I can be personally liable for millions of dollars of damages.

If you would like to fund legal attacks against me, I would encourage you to sign up for WP Engine services, they have great plans and pricing starting at $50/mo and scaling all the way up to $2,000/mo. If not, you can use literally any other web host in the world that isn’t suing me and is offering promotions and discounts for switching away from WP Engine.

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On a memorable evening in Tokyo, State of the Word 2024 brought together WordPress enthusiasts from around the world—hundreds in person and millions more online. This event marked the first time State of the Word was hosted in Asia, reflecting the platform’s growing global reach. The setting couldn’t have been more fitting: a city where tradition and technology coexist in seamless harmony. Tokyo, much like WordPress itself, reflects a powerful blend of legacy and innovation, craftsmanship and technology, and moments of vast scale balanced by serene stillness.

Tokyo is a city you feel.

Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Cofounder

During the event, the concept of kansei engineering emerged as a central theme. This Japanese design philosophy seeks to create experiences that go beyond function and aesthetics, focusing on how something feels. As highlighted during the keynote, this principle has quietly influenced WordPress’s development, shaping its design and user experience in ways that resonate on an instinctive level.

The evening also celebrated Japan’s deep-rooted connection to WordPress. Nearly 21 years ago, Japan became the first country to localize WordPress, long before a formal translation framework existed. It all started with a single forum post from a user named Otsukare, launching a translation project that helped WordPress become a truly global platform. Seeing how far the Japanese WordPress community has come—both in market share and cultural influence—was a powerful reminder of what shared purpose can achieve.

Wapuu, WordPress’s beloved mascot, was also born in Japan. What began as a simple idea for a fun and friendly representation of WordPress evolved into a global phenomenon. Thanks to Kazuko Kaneuchi’s generous open-source contribution, Wapuu has been reimagined by WordPress communities worldwide, each version infused with local character. This uniquely Japanese creation has helped make WordPress more welcoming, approachable, and fun wherever it appears.

WordPress Growth in 2024WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg highlighted significant achievements that underscored WordPress’s growth, resilience, and expanding global presence in 2024. He shared that WordPress now powers 43.6% of all websites globally. In Japan, WordPress’s influence is even more pronounced, powering 58.5% of all websites. This remarkable statistic reinforces the platform’s enduring role as a cornerstone of the open web and accentuates Japan’s deep-rooted commitment to the WordPress ecosystem and its developers’ significant contributions.

WordPress sites using languages other than English are expected to surpass English-language sites by 2025. German recently overtook Japanese as the third-most-used language, though Japanese remained close behind. Meanwhile, emerging languages like Farsi experienced rapid adoption, reflecting the platform’s expanding multilingual ecosystem. In Southeast Asia, languages such as Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Thai saw substantial year-over-year growth, signaling broader adoption across diverse regions.

Core downloads surged to nearly half a billion annually, with the notable releases of WordPress 6.5, 6.6, and 6.7.

WordPress’s design and development ecosystem flourished as well. Over 1,700 new themes were uploaded in 2024, bringing more than 1,000 block themes to the official repository and reflecting increased interest in modern, flexible site design.

The plugin ecosystem also saw record-breaking activity this year. Plugin downloads surged toward 2.35 billion, representing a 20% year-over-year increase. Plugin updates exceeded 3 billion and are on track to surpass 3.5 billion by year’s end. Notably, the Plugin Review Team made transformative improvements, drastically reducing the average review wait time. Their efficiency gains were complemented by the launch of the Plugin Check tool, which reduced submission issues by 41% while enabling the team to approve 138% more plugins each week.

These accomplishments showcase WordPress’s resilience, adaptability, and ever-expanding influence. As the platform continues to evolve, its global community remains at the heart of its success, driving innovation and ensuring that WordPress thrives as the leading tool for building the open web.

Help shape the future of WordPress: Join a contributor team today!

Make WordPressAdvancing the PlatformWordPress lead architect, Matías Ventura, highlighted WordPress’s evolution through the lenses of writing, design, building, and development, demoing various pieces of new and forthcoming enhancements.

WritingThe writing experience in WordPress saw notable advancements this year, with an improved distraction-free mode that helps users to focus on content creation without interface distractions. Now you can directly select the image itself to drag and drop it where you want, even enabling on-the-fly gallery creation when you drop images next to each other.

Additionally, the introduction of block-level comments in the editor, currently an experimental feature, promises to reshape collaborative workflows by enabling teams to leave notes directly on blocks.

These enhancements all work together to make writing, composing, and editing in WordPress feel more fluid, personal, and pleasant than ever.

DesignAlong with new default theme Twenty Twenty-Five, more than 1,000 block themes offer tailored starting points for different site types, including portfolios, blogs, and business sites. Designers can also utilize the improved Style Book for a comprehensive view of their site’s appearance, ensuring a smooth design process.

Design work isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s also about creating the right environment and guardrails. It’s important that users can interact with their site, add content, replace media, and choose sections without needing to know the layout details. We’re implementing better default experiences to help you focus exclusively on the content or on the design, depending on your needs at the moment.

This all works seamlessly with the zoom-out view, where users can compose content using patterns without having to set up every individual block. Having a bird’s-eye view of your site can really help you gain a different perspective.

These design capabilities scale with you as your WordPress projects grow. WordPress’s approach to design is systematic: blocks combine to form patterns, patterns form templates, and templates help separate content from presentation.

BuildingWordPress’s content management capabilities allow working at scale and across teams. Central to this is the introduction of Block Bindings, which merge the flexibility of blocks with the structured power of meta fields. This feature allows block attributes to be directly linked to data sources like post meta, reducing the need for custom blocks while creating deeper, more dynamic content relationships. The familiar block interface remains intact, making complex data management feel seamless. This connects naturally with our broader work on Data Views for post types and meta fields.

These updates reinforce WordPress’s role as a powerful content management system by connecting its core primitives—blocks, post types, taxonomies, and meta fields—more intuitively.

DevelopmentLastly, Matías showcased a range of groundbreaking tools that empower WordPress developers and streamline their workflows. One of the highlights was the new Templates API, which has simplified the process of registering and managing custom templates. Future updates to the API will allow users to register and activate templates seamlessly, enabling dynamic site customizations such as scheduling different homepage templates for special events or swapping category archives during campaigns. This flexible approach offers developers greater creative control in a standardized way.

The session also explored the Interactivity API, designed to deliver fast, seamless website experiences by enabling server-rendered interactivity within WordPress. Unlike JavaScript-heavy frameworks, this technology keeps everything within WordPress’s existing ecosystem, bridging the gap between developers and content creators. Attendees saw live demos showcasing instant search, pagination, and commenting—all without page reloads—while maintaining a perfect performance score of 100 on Lighthouse. In addition, it was announced that responsive controls will receive significant attention, with new features being explored, like block visibility by breakpoint and adding min/max controls to the columns block.

The WordPress Playground also emerged as a game-changer, allowing users to spin up WordPress sites directly in their browsers, experiment with Blueprints, and manage projects offline. With improved GitHub integration and expanded documentation, WordPress developers now have a more accessible and powerful toolkit than ever before.

An AI FutureReturning to the stage, Matt noted that Gutenberg’s evolution is paving the way for AI-powered site building while keeping creative control in users’ hands. A recent speed building challenge on WordPress’s YouTube channel showcased this potential, with Nick Diego using AI-assisted tools and Ryan Welcher building manually. While the AI-assisted approach won, the key takeaway was that AI isn’t here to replace developers but to enhance creativity and efficiency.

Community Impact and Global ReachWhen WordPress Executive Director Mary Hubbard took the stage, she emphasized WordPress’s commitment to its open-source mission and the power of its global community. Mary shared her passion for defending WordPress’s principles, reaffirming that when users choose WordPress, they should receive the authentic, community-driven experience that the platform stands for. This commitment to clarity, trust, and open-source integrity is central to ensuring WordPress’s long-term sustainability and success.

Mary Hubbard, WordPress Executive DirectorIn 2024, WordPress’s global influence surged through expanded educational programs, developer contributions, and grassroots initiatives. The platform’s social media following grew to 2.3 million, while major events like WordCamps and live-streamed gatherings attracted millions of attendees and viewers, connecting people worldwide.

Learn WordPress introduced Structured Learning Pathways, offering tailored tracks for beginners and developers, fostering a growing network of creators eager to learn and contribute. Grassroots programs flourished, with WP Campus Connect bringing WordPress education to Indian colleges and innovation competitions in Uganda empowering young creators. In Latin America, the Community Reactivation Project reignited meetups across nine cities, fostering a network of over 150 active members and setting the stage for three new WordCamps in 2025.

WordPress’s efforts also advanced through Openverse, which expanded its free content library to 884 million images and 4.2 million audio files, serving millions of creators worldwide and supporting WordPress’s broader mission of democratizing publishing.

Whether through educational platforms, developer-driven innovation, or community-led projects, WordPress’s ecosystem continues to nurture shared learning, creativity, and collaboration, ensuring its growth and relevance for future generations.

Japanese Community HighlightsJunko Fukui Nukaga—Community Team rep, program manager, and WordCamp organizer—noted that WordPress’s prominence in Japan contributes to an economy now estimated to exceed 100 billion yen.

In October of 2024, the Japanese WordPress community celebrated DigitalCube’s IPO on the Tokyo PRO Market, marking a milestone for the local WordPress ecosystem. Major contributors like Takayuki Miyoshi’s Contact Form 7 plugin surpassed 10 million active users, while companies like Sakura Internet and XServer built specialized WordPress infrastructure.

Community events in Japan have also flourished, with 189 local meetups held throughout the year, fueled by dedicated volunteers and organizers. Translation Night gatherings have ensured WordPress remains accessible to Japanese users, reflecting a thriving collaborative spirit.

Matt gave special recognition to Japan’s standout contributor, Aki Hamano, a Core Committer whose exceptional efforts elevated WordPress development over the past year. Hamano-san made an impressive 774 contributions to WordPress core, earning 162 props for WordPress 6.5, rising to 274 props for 6.6 as the second-highest contributor, and securing the top spot with 338 props for 6.7.Other notable Japanese contributors included Akira Tachibana, an active Docs Team member, and Nukaga, recognized for her exceptional community organizing efforts. Additionally, 13 Japanese contributors supported 5.4% of WordPress 6.6 development, showcasing the country’s growing influence in the WordPress ecosystem.

Data LiberationReflecting on the progress since the initiative’s launch last year, the focus remained on ensuring that WordPress not only becomes more powerful but also embodies freedom in its deepest sense—the freedom to move content anywhere, collaborate without limits, and create without constraints. This vision extends beyond individual sites to a broader web where content flows seamlessly across platforms, enabling unrestricted creativity and innovation.

One compelling example demonstrated how easily ePub files could be imported into a WordPress site, integrating seamlessly with existing designs. This represents the initiative’s broader goal: making content migration and integration effortless. WordPress Playground plays a critical role in this vision by enabling easy site migration through a simple browser extension. With Playground as a staging area, migrating and adapting sites becomes intuitive and accessible.

Q&AThe floor was opened to questions in both Japanese and English.

Questions from the audience, including Tokyo Vice author Jake Adelstein, covered the future of blogging, WordPress performance, the impact of AI search, and what democratizing publishing means today. Matt shared his excitement for more open platforms such as Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as his recommendations for optimizing your site for both humans and AI. A common thread throughout was that a personal website is an important part of your digital identity, and WordPress allows you to express yourself in fun and unique ways.

PanelsAfter attendees enjoyed a special performance by the pianist, Takai-san, industry leaders, creators, and innovators took the stage for panel discussions about the present and future of WordPress, moderated by Mary Hubbard.

Publishing in the OpenFeaturing:

Mieko Kawakami, Japanese Author and Poet
Craig Mod, Author of Things Become Other Things
Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Cofounder and Automattic CEO

This first panel explored the transformative power of open-source publishing. Panelists shared insights into how open publishing has influenced their creative journeys, expanded audience engagement, and shaped storytelling across cultural boundaries.

Publishing in the open has defined what I’ve done. All the best connections I’ve made in live have been the result of publishing in the open. – Craig Mod

Publishing in the open, like WordPress, is about building community, mutual connections, and putting power back into the hands of creators.

The Future of WordPress in Japan and BeyondFeaturing:

Hajime Ogushi, mgn CEO
Genki Taniguchi, SAKURA internet Inc. Senior Director
Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Cofounder and Automattic CEO

The second discussion highlighted WordPress’s remarkable growth in Japan and its broader global impact. The discussion covered the drivers behind Japan’s adoption of WordPress, its thriving ecosystem of WordPress-based businesses, and emerging trends in web development.

Compared to other CMSs the WordPress Japanese is much easier to use. – Hajime Ogushi

The group discussed plugins such as Contact Form 7, the affordability of hosting WordPress, and local meetups and events

ClosingThank you to all the guests who joined us on stage, those who ventured to Tokyo, and everyone who tuned in from around the world. Today’s event showcased how a free and infinitely flexible platform, an active global community, open innovation, and a commitment to a fully democratized web make us better at being who we are.

From Tokyo, Arigatou Gozaimashita!

For those interested in exploring past State of the Word keynotes, WordPress has curated a comprehensive YouTube playlist featuring keynotes from previous years. Watch them all here: State of the Word YouTube Playlist. Be sure to mark your calendars for major WordPress events in 2025: WordCamp Asia (Manila, Philippines), WordCamp Europe (Basel, Switzerland), and WordCamp US (Portland, Oregon, USA).

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If you need a little push to start writing this winter, in the comfort of your familiar editor, here it is! You can now use the Block Editor to create electronic books and other documents—all completely offline. What a full circle moment for Gutenberg!

The Block Editor contains so many features I miss when writing in other editors. It produces clean, semantic markup. You can paste in content from anywhere and the editor will clean it up for you, or paste a link onto selected text to auto-link. The List View and Outline panels allow you to easily navigate and inspect the content. And we’re constantly iterating on the Block Editor: more features and improvements are on the way, such as refined drag and drop interactions coming in early 2025.

All this inspired me to wrap our editor in an app that can read and write local files—just as other document editors do. It turns out that EPUB is the best file format to store the content, because EPUB is an open standard for e-books that is essentially a ZIP file containing HTML and media—HTML like your WordPress posts!

And just like that, the WordPress Block Editor can also be used to write books! The cool thing about EPUB files is that any e-book app, such as Kindle and Apple Books, can open it. So even if someone doesn’t have this editor, they can still easily read the content, which makes the files it produces portable.

The editor allows you to create a cover, so you can easily distinguish between the books or documents you write. It will also treat each heading as a chapter so you can easily navigate content when opened in an e-book reader.

The term “book” should be taken broadly. While the file that the Block Editor produces is primarily used for e-books, you can create any document with it. It’s possible to export your document to a DOCX file in case you need it, though the more complex blocks are not supported yet.

It is still very much a nascent project. There’s many features left to be added, such as revisions and the ability to open any externally created EPUB files, or even DOCX files, so keep an eye out for these in the coming weeks and months! If you’re interested in this editor, it’s all open source, and I welcome any kind of help.

For now, the demo editor is installable as a Progressive Web App (PWA) in Chrome. While it’s totally usable without installation, it does give you some nice benefits such as allowing you to open the EPUB files directly from your OS. In the future we might wrap it in proper native apps. Your feedback is welcome on GitHub!

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Openverse.org, the vibrant platform for openly licensed media, has introduced a sleek and modern Dark Mode feature. This new site theme is designed to enhance users’ comfort and style as they explore the extensive library of creative resources. Whether for late-night browsing or simply a preference for darker aesthetics, Dark Mode makes engaging with Openverse easier on the eyes and more personalized than ever.

By reducing screen brightness in low-light settings, Dark Mode offers a more relaxed viewing experience, helping to minimize eye strain. It also caters to users with light sensitivity, creating a more inclusive browsing environment. This thoughtful addition underscores Openverse’s commitment to delivering tools that are as functional as they are visually appealing.

The release of Dark Mode is part of Openverse’s broader effort to innovate and adapt to the needs of its growing community. From the thoughtful interface design to the careful attention to accessibility, every detail was crafted to reflect Openverse’s mission of empowering creativity. By embracing modern frontend implementations like Dark Mode without compromising usability or accessibility, Openverse continues to grow while honoring the brand’s essence. In addition, this update lays the groundwork for future developments aimed at providing even more customization options and improved user experiences.

“Dark Mode marks an exciting step forward for Openverse. We designed and implemented a new user interface that keeps the brand’s essence while providing the same search experience. We’re thrilled to see how this feature fits within users’ preferences and enhances the creative journey.” – Francisco Vera. Designer

Ready to explore Openverse in a whole new light? Head to Openverse.org today and look for the Dark Mode toggle in the site footer.

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WordPress 6.7.1 is now available!This minor release features 16 bug fixes throughout Core and the Block Editor.

WordPress 6.7.1 is a fast-follow release with a strict focus on bugs introduced in WordPress 6.7. The next major release will be version 6.8, planned for April 2025.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 6.7.1 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.

For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site. You can find a summary of the maintenance updates in this release in the Release Candidate announcement.

Thank you to these WordPress contributorsThis release was led by Jonathan Desrosiers and Carlos Bravo.

WordPress 6.7.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

abcsun, Adam Silverstein, Ahsan Khan, Aki Hamano, Alexander Bigga, Andrew Ozz, Ankit Kumar Shah, Antoine, bluantinoo, Carlos Bravo, Carolina Nymark, charleslf, Christoph Daum, David Smith, dhewercorus, Dhruvang21, Dilip Bheda, dooperweb, Eshaan Dabasiya, Felix Arntz, finntown, Firoz Sabaliya, George Mamadashvili, glynnquelch, Greg Ziółkowski, Himanshu Pathak, jagirbahesh, Jarda Snajdr, Jb Audras, Jeffrey Paul, Joe Dolson, Joe McGill, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Jon Surrell, Julie Moynat, Julio Potier, laurelfulford, Lee Collings, Lena Morita, luisherranz, Matias Benedetto, Mayank Tripathi, Michal Czaplinski, Miguel Fonseca, miroku, Mukesh Panchal, Narendra Sishodiya, Nik Tsekouras, Oliver Campion, Pascal Birchler, Peter Wilson, ramonopoly, Ravi Gadhiya, Rishi Mehta, room34, Roy Tanck, Ryo, sailpete, Sainath Poojary, Sarthak Nagoshe, Sergey Biryukov, SirLouen, S P Pramodh, Stephen Bernhardt, stimul, Sukhendu Sekhar Guria, TigriWeb, Tim W, tobifjellner (Tor-Bjorn “Tobi” Fjellner), Vania, Yogesh Bhutkar, YoWangdu, Zargarov, and zeelthakkar.

Thanks to @marybaum, @aaroncampbell, @jeffpaul, @audrasjb, @cbravobernal, @ankit-k-gupta for proofreading.

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Each WordPress release celebrates an artist who has made an indelible mark on the world of music. WordPress 6.7, code-named “Rollins,” pays tribute to the legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Known as one of the greatest improvisers and pioneers in jazz, Rollins has influenced generations of musicians with his technical brilliance, innovative spirit, and fearless approach to musical expression.

Sonny Rollins’ work is characterized by its unmatched energy and emotional depth. His compositions, such as “St. Thomas,” “Oleo,” and “Airegin,” are timeless jazz standards, celebrated for their rhythmic complexity and melodic inventiveness. Rollins’ bold and exploratory style resonates with WordPress’ own commitment to empowering creators to push boundaries and explore new possibilities in digital expression.

Embrace the spirit of innovation and spontaneity that defines Rollins’ sound as you dive into the new features and enhancements of WordPress 6.7.

Welcome to WordPress 6.7!WordPress 6.7 debuts the modern Twenty Twenty-Five theme, offering ultimate design flexibility for any blog at any scale. Control your site typography like never before with new font management features. The new Zoom Out feature lets you design your site with a macro view, stepping back from the details to bring the big picture to life.

Download WordPress 6.7 “Rollins”Introducing Twenty Twenty-FiveEndless possibility without complexityTwenty Twenty-Five offers a flexible, design-focused theme that lets you build stunning sites with ease. Tailor your aesthetic with an array of style options, block patterns, and color palettes. Pared down to the essentials, this is a theme that can truly grow with you.

Get the big picture with Zoom OutExplore your content from a new perspectiveEdit and arrange entire sections of your content like never before. A broader view of your site lets you add, edit, shuffle, or remove patterns to your liking. Embrace your inner architect.

Connect blocks and custom fields with no hassle (or code)A streamlined way to create dynamic contentThis feature introduces a new UI for connecting blocks to custom fields, putting control of dynamic content directly in the editor. Link blocks with fields in just a few clicks, enhancing flexibility and efficiency when building. Your clients will love you—as if they didn’t already.

Embrace your inner font nerdNew style section, new possibilitiesCreate, edit, remove, and apply font size presets with the next addition to the Styles interface. Override theme defaults or create your own custom font size, complete with fluid typography for responsive font scaling. Get into the details!

PerformanceWordPress 6.7 delivers important performance updates, including faster pattern loading, optimized previews in the data views component, improved PHP 8+ support and removal of deprecated code, auto sizes for lazy-loaded images, and more efficient tag processing in the HTML API.

Accessibility65+ accessibility fixes and enhancements focus on foundational aspects of the WordPress experience, from improving user interface components and keyboard navigation in the Editor, to an accessible heading on WordPress login screens and clearer labeling throughout.

And much moreFor a comprehensive overview of all the new features and enhancements in WordPress 6.7, please visit the feature-showcase website.

Check out what’s newLearn more about WordPress 6.7Learn WordPress is a free resource for new and experienced WordPress users. Learn is stocked with how-to videos on using various features in WordPress, interactive workshops for exploring topics in-depth, and lesson plans for diving deep into specific areas of WordPress.

Read the WordPress 6.7 Release Notes for information on installation, enhancements, fixed issues, release contributors, learning resources, and the list of file changes.

Explore the WordPress 6.7 Field Guide. Learn about the changes in this release with detailed developer notes to help you build with WordPress.

The 6.7 release squadEvery release comes to you from a dedicated team of enthusiastic contributors who help keep things on track and moving smoothly. The team that has led 6.7 is a cross-functional group of contributors who are always ready to champion ideas, remove blockers, and resolve issues.

Release Lead: Matt Mullenweg
Release Coordinator: David Baumwald
Core Tech Leads: Peter Wilson, Kira Schroder
Editor Tech Leads: David Smith, Kai Hao, Robert Anderson
Core Triage Leads: Stoyan Georgiev, Ahmed Kabir Chaion
Editor Triage Leads: Nick Diego, Damon Cook
Documentation Leads: Fabian Kägy, Mumtahina Faguni
Test Lead: Ankit K. Gupta
Design Lead: Joen Asmussen
Performance Lead: Mukesh Panchal
Default Theme Design Lead: Beatriz Fialho
Default Theme Development Leads: Carolina Nymark, Juan Aldasoro

Thank you, contributorsThe mission of WordPress is to democratize publishing and embody the freedoms that come with open source. A global and diverse community of people collaborating to strengthen the software supports this effort.

WordPress 6.7 reflects the tireless efforts and passion of more than 780 contributors in countries all over the world. This release also welcomed over 230 first-time contributors!

Their collaboration delivered more than 340 enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all—a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress open source community.

!Benni · 75thtrombone · Aaron Jorbin · Aaron Robertshaw · Aaron Ware · aatanasov · Abha Thakor · abhi3315 · Abhishek Deshpande · Abir · acafourek · Adam Heckler · Adam Silverstein · Adam Wood · Adam Zieliński · Adarsh Akshat · Adrian · aduth · ah72king · Ahmar Zaidi · Ahmed Kabir Chaion · Ahmed Saeed · Ajit Bohra · Akash Dhawade · Aki Hamano · Akira Tachibana · Akshat Kakkad · Al-Amin Firdows · Alan Fuller · Albert Juhé Lluveras · Alessandro Tesoro · Alessio · Alex Concha · Alex Lende · Alex Stine · alex27 · Alexander Frank · Alexandre Buffet · Alexandru Horeanu · alexcu21 · Ali Ali · aliaghdam · allilevine · Alvaro Gómez · Alvi Tazwar · Amin Charoliya · Amir Abbas · Amit Raj · Amjad Ali · Anand Thakkar · Andrea Fercia · Andrea Roenning · Andrei Draganescu · Andrei Lupu · andreiglingeanu · Andrew Hayward · Andrew Ozz · Andrew Serong · Andrey "Rarst" Savchenko · André Maneiro · Andy Fragen · Angelika Reisiger · Aniket Patel · Ankit K Gupta · Ankit K. Gupta · Ankit Kumar Shah · Ankur Vishwakarma · Anne McCarthy · Anthony Burchell · Anthony Hortin · Antoine · Anton Vlasenko · Antonio Sejas · apmeyer · Ari Stathopoulos · Armando J. Perez Carreno · Armands · arnaudbroes · Art Smith · Artemio Morales · Arthur Chu · arypneta · asafm7 · Aslam Doctor · Autumn · Ayesh Karunaratne · Bård Bjerke Johannessen · Béryl de La Grandière · Balu B · Barry Ceelen · Bart Kalisz · Beatriz Fialho · Ben Dwyer · Benjamin Denis · Benjamin Zekavica · Benoit Chantre · Bernhard Kau · Bernhard Reiter · Bernhard Riedl · bernhard-reiter · berubenic · Bhavesh · bijit027 · Birgit Pauli-Haack · blindmikey · bobbyleenoblestudios · Bogdan Nikolic · Brad · brad hogan · Brad Jorsch · Brandon Kraft · Brent Jett · Brett Shumaker · Brian Alexander · Brian Coords · Brian Gardner · Brian Gosnell · Brian Henry · bridgetwes · brobken · Bruno Freiberger Garcia · Cambabutonono · Carlos Bravo · Carlos G. P. · Carolina Nymark · Carsten Bach · cbirdsong · Chirag Mathur · ChriCo · Chris Reynolds · Chris Trynkiewicz (Sukces Strony) · Christoph Daum · Christopher Finke · Christopher Kanitz · Christy Nyiri · Ciprian · codersantosh · Colin Stewart · Corey Worrell · Courtney Robertson · craynor · creativethemeshq · Cullen Whitmore · Cupid Chakma · cweiske · Cyrille · da5f656f · Dademaru · daleharrison · Damon Cook · Damon Cook · Dani Guardiola · Daniel Richards · Daniele Scasciafratte · Danny · dannyreaktiv · darerodz · Dareth NHANG · Darren Ethier (nerrad) · Darshit Rajyaguru · daveagp · David · David Ballarin Prunera · David Baumwald · David Biňovec · David Bowman · David Brown · David Calhoun · David Godleman · David Henriet · David Herrera · David Levine · David Rozando · David Shanske · David Smith · ddewan · Dean Sas · DEBARGHYA BANERJEE · Deepak Rohilla · Deepak Vijayan · Dekadinious · Dennis Snell · Derek Smart · Deryck · designsimply · Devansh Chaudhary · devspace · Dhananjay Kuber · Dharmesh Patel · Dhrumil Kumbhani · Dhruval Shah · Dhruvang21 · Dilip Bheda · Dilip Modhavadiya · Dion Hulse · Divi Banks · dj.cowan · djennez · Doni Kuntoro · Dor Zuberi · Drew Jaynes · Drivingralle · drzraf · Earle Davies · eballeste · eclev91 · Ed Beck · ejnwebmaster · elfu98 · Elio Rivero · Ella van Durpe · Elliott Richmond · Emmanue ATSÉ · Emmanuel Hesry · emmanuel78 · Enrico Battocchi · Enrique Sánchez · Eric Dye · Erik · erikiva · erikyo · Evan Herman · Evan Mullins · Fabian Kägy · Fabio Rubioglio · FahimMurshed · Faisal Ahammad · Faisal Alvi · Faizan Nabi · Farhan Ahmed · Fayyaz · Felix Arntz · Felix Renicks · Fernando Jorge Mota (a11n) · Firoz Sabaliya · Francisco · Fransisca H · fullworks · Gale Wallace · gansbrest · Gareth Elwell · Garrett Hyder · Gary Pendergast · Gaurav Tiwari · gauravsingh7 · Georg · George Mamadashvili · Gerardo Pacheco · Germán Freixinós · gmariani405 · GraemeF · Grant M. Kinney · greentreefrog · GreenWorld · Greg Ziółkowski · Guido Scialfa · Gyurmey · Héctor Prieto · Halil ESEN · hanneslsm · Hans-Gerd Gerhards · Hardip Parmar · Hareesh S · Harper Holsinger · Harsh Gajipara · harshvaishnav · Haz · hectorjarquin · hedgefield · Helen Hou-Sandi · Henrique Iamarino · Himanshu Pathak · hirschferkel · Hit Bhalodia · Hossein · htmgarcia · huubl · Huzaifa Al Mesbah · Ibrahim · Ibrahim Riaz · Imran Hossain (a11n) · Isabel Brison · IT Path Solutions · itapress · Ivan Ottinger · Jack Stevens · Jacob Cassidy · Jacob Smith · jagirbahesh · Jainil Shah · Jakob Trost · James Koster · James Osborne · James Rosado · James Wesley Goedert · Jan Pfeil · janak Kaneriya · Jarda Snajdr · jarekmorawski · Jarko Piironen · Jason Bahl · Jason LeMahieu (MadtownLems) · javad2000 · Javier Arce · Jawad Malik · Jay · Jayadevan k · jbrya029 · JD Ahir · Jean-Baptiste Audras · Jeff Chi · Jeff Ong · Jeffrey de Wit · Jeffrey Paul · Jenil Kanani · Jennifer Farhat · Jenny Dupuy · Jeremy Felt · Jeremy Herve · Jerry Jones · Jesko Bendmann · Jessica Lyschik · jetaldobariya1 · Jigar Panchal · jimmyh61 · Joe Dolson · Joe Hoyle · Joe McGill · Joen Asmussen · John Blackbourn · John Espiritu · John Godley · John James Jacoby · John Regan · JohnRDOrazio · Jon Surrell · Jonas · Jonathan Bossenger · Jonathan Desrosiers · Jonny Harris · Jonny Waters · jordesign · Jorge Costa · Jos Klever · Jose Varghese · Josepha · Joshua Goode · Jossnaz · Juan Aldasoro · JuanMa Garrido · julianoe · Julie Moynat · Juliette Reinders Folmer · Juned Sabaliya · Justin Tadlock · K. Adam White · Kaavya Iyer (woo-hc) · Kadim Gültekin · KafleG · Kai Hao · Kajal Gohel · Kamal Hosen · Kamran Hussen · Karan Gupta · Karol Manijak · Karthik Thayyil · Kartik Mehta · Kartik Suthar · kbrownkd (a11n) · Keffr3n · Kel Santiago-Pilarski · Kellen Mace · Kelly Choyce-Dwan · keoshi · Kevin Behrens · Kevin Taron · kevinswalsh · Khokan Sardar · Kira Schroder · Kishan Jasani · kisquian · Kjell Reigstad · kkmuffme · Knut Sparhell · Kowsar Hossain · kracked888 · Krishna Neupane · kristastevens · Krupa Nanda · Krupal Panchal · Kunal Madhak · Kunjan Gohel · Kurt Payne · Kushang Tailor · Lae · Lara Schenck · lastsplash (a11n) · Laura Byrne · laurelfulford · Lauren · Lawrence Joe · leemon · Lena Morita · Liam Gladdy · lifelightweb · Linkon Miyan · Linnea Huxford · liviopv · Louis Wolmarans · Lourens · Love Soni · Lucas · Luigi Teschio · Luis Felipe Zaguini · luisherranz · lukasbesch · Luke Carbis · Madhu Dollu · madpeter · Maggie Cabrera · Mahmudul Haque Nadim · Mai · Makarand G. Mane · manbo · Manesh Timilsina · Manuel Schmalstieg · Manzoor Wani (a11n) · María Anguas · Marc · Marc Armengou · Marcel Tannich · Marcelo de Moraes Serpa · Marcin Pietrzak · Marco Ciampini · Marco Pereirinha · marcwieland95 · Marek Železný · margolisj · Maria Yohana · Marie · Marin Atanasov · Mario Santos · Marius L. J. · mariushosting · Mark Howells-Mead · Mark Parnell · Mark-k · Martijn van der Klis · martin.krcho · marybaum · mat_ · Matias Benedetto · Matias Ventura · Matt Mullenweg · Matt Robinson · Matt Sherman · Matteo Enna · Matthew Boynes · Matthew Riley MacPherson · Matthias Kittsteiner · mattraines · maurodf · Mayank Tripathi · Mayur Prajapati · mcrisp1972 · Md Abul Bashar · Md Hossain Shohel · Md. Istiaq Hossain · mdviralsampat · megane9988 · Mehedi Hassan · Mehul Kaklotar · Mel Choyce-Dwan · meteorlxy · Micha Krapp · Michael Beckwith · Michael Bourne · Michael James Ilett · michaelpick · michaelwp85 · Michal Czaplinski · Michelle Bulloch · Miguel Axcar · Miguel Fonseca · Miguel Lezama · Mikael Korpela · Mike McAlister · Mike Ritter · mikeb8s · Mikey Binns · milamj · Milana Cap · Mitchell Austin · mklusak · mleathem · mlf20 · Mobarak Ali · Mohit Dadhich · Morgan Estes · Mosne / Paolo Tesei · mossy2100 · mreishus · Muhibul Haque · mujuonly · Mukesh Panchal · Mumtahina Faguni · Nadir Seghir a11n · Naeem Haque · Nagesh Pai · Narendra Sishodiya · Naresh Bheda · Nate Finch · Nate Gay · Nazmul Hasan Robin · Nebojša Jurčić · nek285 · nendeb · neo2k23 · neotrope · Nicholas Garofalo · Nick Bohle · Nick Diego · Nick Halsey · Nick the Geek · Nicole Furlan · nidhidhandhukiya · Nihar Ranjan Das · Nik Tsekouras · Nikita Solanki · Niraj Giri · Nirav Sherasiya · Nithin John · Nithin SreeRaj · Noah Allen · Noruzzaman · nurielmeni · obliviousharmony · Olaf Lederer · Olga Gleckler · Oliver Campion · Olivier Lafleur · Omar Alshaker · Oscar Hugo Paz · p15h · Paal Joachim Romdahl · Pablo Hernández · Pablo Honey · Pamela Ribeiro · pander · Paolo L. Scala · Paragon Initiative Enterprises · Parin Panjari · Parth vataliya · Pascal Birchler · Pat O'Brien · Patricia BT · Patrick Lumumba · Paul Bearne · Paul Biron · Paul Kevan · Paul Schreiber · Paul Wilde · paulcline · Paulo Trentin · Pavan Patil · pcarvalho · Pedro Mendonça · perryrylance · Peter Rubin · Peter Wilson · petitphp · pevogam · Phi Phan · Phil Johnston · Philipp Bammes · philwebs · Pieterjan Deneys · Piotrek Boniu · Pitam Dey · Plamen Georgiev · Pooja N Muchandikar · pooja9712 · porg · ppolo99 · Praful Patel · Pranit Dugad · Pratik Kumar · Presskopp · prettyboymp · prionkor · pwtyler · Rachel Baker · Rachel Winspear · Rafael Fischmann · Rafael Gallani · Rafiqul Islam · Rahmat Gumilar · rahulharpal · Raj Patel · Rajin Sharwar · rajkumar shashwata halder · Ramon Ahnert · Ramon Corrales · ramon fincken · Ramon James · Ramswarup Rathod · Raul Martinez · rcneil · realthemes · Rejaul Alom Khan · Renatho (a11n) · reputeinfosystems · retrofox · Riad Benguella · Rich Tabor · Rick Hellewell · Riddhi Patel · Rishi Mehta · Rishi Shah · Rishit Gupta · rithik56 · Robert Anderson · Robert Biswas · Robert Ghetau · rocket.works - Dominik Friedrich · Rodel Calasagsag a11n · Rodrigo · Rodrigo Primo · Rohan Jha · rohitmathur7 · Rostislav Wolný · Roy Tanck · roygbyte · royho · rpf5573 · rslee · Ruchir Goswami · Rufaro Madamombe · Ryan Boren · Ryan Leeson · Ryan Urban · Ryan Welcher · S P Pramodh · Sébastien SERRE · Sérgio Gomes · Sören Wünsch · sadmansh · Saeed Piri · Sagar Tamang · sahiladit · Sainath Poojary · Sakib Mohammed · Sam Toohey · samiamnot · Sampat Viral · Samuel Sidler · Samuel Silva · Sanne van der Meulen · Sarah Norris · sarahricker · Sarthak Nagoshe · Sathiya Venkatesan · Satish Prajapati · Saul Fougnier · Saulius Vikerta · Saxon Fletcher · Sayedul Sayem · scholdstrom · Scott Buscemi · Scott Kingsley Clark · Scott Reilly · Scott Taylor · scottculverhouse · seanavers · Seif Radwane · Sergey · Sergey Biryukov · Serhiy Zakharchenko · Seth Rubenstein · Shail Mehta · Shalin Shah · Sharon Austin · sheulyshila · Shoe · Showrav Hasan · Shreya Agarwal · Silas Köhler · siliconforks · Simone Maranzana · Siobhan · smerriman · Sneha Patil · Sophie - a11n · Souptik Datta · Sourabh Jain · Sourav Pahwa · staurand · Stefano Minoia · stein2nd · Stephen Bernhardt · Steven Lin · Steven Thompson · Stoyan Georgiev · styleshit · Sudip Dadhaniya · Sumit Bagthariya · Sumit Singh · Sunil Prajapati · Sunny · superchlorine · Sybre Waaijer · Syeda Fahima Jannath · Takahashi Fumiki · Takashi Irie · Tammie Lister · Tanbir Ahmod · Tanvirul Haque · Tapan Kumer Das · Taylor Gorman · tdrayson · thejaydip · thelmachido a11n · them.es · Thomas Kräftner · Thrijith Thankachan · Timi Wahalahti · Timothy Jacobs · Tirth Doshi · tmanoilov · toastercookie · TobiasBg · tobifjellner (Tor-Bjorn “Tobi” Fjellner) · Tom Cafferkey · Tom de Visser · Tom J Nowell · tomhine · tomllobet · Tonya Mork · Toro_Unit (Hiroshi Urabe) · Torsten Landsiedel · tropicalista · Troy Chaplin · Trupti Kanzariya · tunetheweb · twstokes · Ugyen Dorji · Umesh Gupta · Umesh Singh · up1512001 · Uttam Kumar Dash · valer1e · vertisoft · Vicente Canales · Vijaysinh Zala · Viktor Szépe · Vinit · Vipul Ghori · Vipul Gupta · vipulpatil · Vraja Das · vrishabhsk · wbdv · WebMan Design | Oliver Juhas · webwurm · wesrapyd · Weston Ruter · Will Skora · William Alexander · williampatton · wongjn · WPeople · wpsoul · wzieba · xipasduarte · Yani · Yann · Yannis Guyon · Yogesh Bhutkar · ytfeLdrawkcaB · Yui · Yukinobu Asakawa · Yuvrajsinh Sisodiya · Zack Krida · zeelthakkar · zitaruksergij · Zunaid Amin

More than 40 locales have fully translated WordPress 6.7 into their language making this one of the most translated releases ever on day one. Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps make WordPress available in 200 languages.

Last but not least, thanks to the volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users worldwide.

Get involvedParticipation in WordPress goes far beyond coding, and learning more and getting involved is easy. Discover the teams that come together to Make WordPress and use this interactive tool to help you decide which is right for you.

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The third release candidate (RC3) for WordPress 6.7 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC3 on a test server and site.

Reaching this phase of the release cycle is an important milestone. While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.7 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 6.7 RC3 in four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the RC3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use the following WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.7-RC3 | | WordPress Playground | Use the 6.7 RC3 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. |

You can test the RC3 version in four ways.The current target for the WordPress 6.7 release is November 12, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.7 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.7-related posts in the coming weeks for further details.

What’s in WordPress 6.7 RC3?Get a recap of WordPress 6.7’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC2, you can browse the following links:

GitHub commits for 6.7 since October 29
Closed Trac tickets since October 29

How you can contributeWordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

Get involved in testingTesting for issues is critical to ensuring WordPress is performant and stable. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.7. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Search for vulnerabilitiesFrom now until the final release of WordPress 6.7 (scheduled for November 12, 2024), the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Update your theme or pluginFor plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.7 beta releases. With RC3, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.7.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Release the haikuRC3 arrives,
Final polish, last bugs fall,
Six point seven calls.

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @peterwilsoncc, @joedolson, @sabernhardt.

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The second release candidate (RC2) for WordPress 6.7 is ready for download and testing!

You can test WordPress 6.7 RC2 in four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the RC2 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use the following WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.7-RC2 | | WordPress Playground | Use the 6.7 RC2 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. |

You can test the RC2 version in four ways.The current target for the WordPress 6.7 release is November 12, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.7 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.7-related posts in the coming weeks for further details.

What’s in WordPress 6.7 RC2?Get a recap of WordPress 6.7’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC1, you can browse the following links:

GitHub commits for 6.7 since October 22
Closed Trac tickets since October 22

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Update your theme or pluginFor plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.7 beta releases. With RC2, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.7.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Release the haikuSix point seven’s dawn,
RC2 sweeps bugs away,
Sites stand firm and strong.

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @jorbin.

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In nearly 1,000 days, the WordPress community has created 1,000 Block themes—coming together to use the full potential of the Site Editor and unleash new creative possibilities for everyone.

First introduced in WordPress 5.9, Block themes have steadily evolved, improving flexibility and functionality for themers, users, and agencies alike. Now, design tools allow customizing almost every detail. With style variations, users can change the overall look of their site in a few clicks. You can even use curation options to customize the editing process itself. But we’re not done! We can’t wait to keep pushing Block themes even further. Thank you to every early adopter who, by embracing early features with passion, helped shape the Block themes we love today with feedback and testing.

If you haven’t yet explored Block themes, check out some of the resources below to get inspired:

Use one of the 1,000 Block themes available and see what you can create. For an easy way to explore, try WordPress Playground to quickly get started with a temporary site.
Read the Theme handbook to understand types of themes, how themes work, and how to get started building.
Use the Create Block Theme plugin to streamline Block theme creation with a dedicated tutorial on Learn WordPress that will help you get started.
Get inspired by watching and joining community members building themes together. This is a great way for folks new to Block themes to learn, hands-on.

Let’s celebrate and share our contributions! Please comment on the Theme Team’s post dedicated to highlighting this milestone to share your favorite Block theme and thank those who have contributed along the way.

Thank you to @kristastevens for editorial help, @beafialho for the featured image, and @kafleg for reviewing.

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The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.7 is ready for download and testing!

You can test WordPress 6.7 RC1 in four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the RC1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use the following WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.7-RC1 | | WordPress Playground | Use the 6.7 RC1 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. |

You can test the RC1 version in four ways.The current target for the WordPress 6.7 release is November 12, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.7 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.7-related posts in the coming weeks for further details.

What’s in WordPress 6.7 RC1?Get a recap of WordPress 6.7’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement. For more technical information related to issues addressed since Beta 3, you can browse the following links:

GitHub commits for 6.7 since October 15
Closed Trac tickets since October 15

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? These recent posts cover some of the latest updates:

New block type registration APIs to improve performance in WordPress 6.7
Automatic conversion of HEIC images to JPEG in WordPress 6.7
Auto Sizes for Lazy Loaded Images in WordPress 6.7
New Plugin Template Registration API in WordPress 6.7
Developer Notes for Zoom Out in WordPress 6.7
Block Bindings: Improvements to the Editor Experience in 6.7
Internationalization improvements in 6.7
Updates to the HTML API in 6.7
Miscellaneous Block Editor Changes in WordPress 6.7
All 6.7-related developer notes

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Update your theme or pluginFor plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.7 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.7.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Help translate WordPressDo you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. This release milestone (RC1) also marks the hard string freeze point of the 6.7 release cycle.

Release the haikuI See An R.C.
You See A Chance For Testing
Six Seven For The Win!

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @atachibana, @jorbin.

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At the heart of our community is our shared pledge to create a space that is harassment-free, welcoming, and inclusive for all. Our Community Code of Conduct already outlines a clear set of expectations, while also providing examples of unacceptable actions. Today, we are reinforcing our values by adding another element to our list of unacceptable behaviors: Publishing private messages without consent.

Why This Addition MattersThe relationships we build within our community often involve private discussions. These conversations may involve sensitive matters, personal experiences, or simply casual exchanges. Regardless of the content, every individual should feel confident that their private communications will remain private unless they grant explicit permission to share them.

Sharing private messages without consent is a breach of trust that can also lead to unintended harm, including emotional distress or misrepresentation. When members of our community feel they cannot trust others in their personal conversations, it undermines the collaborative spirit that is crucial to our collective success.

How This Change Protects the CommunityBy explicitly addressing the publication of private messages without consent, we are reinforcing an existing unacceptable behavior in our Community Code of Conduct: Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting. Sharing private communications without permission is a clear violation of professional integrity.

This new addition ensures that private messages receive the same level of protection as personal information and that sensitive communications shared in confidence will not be disclosed without prior consent. An important exception to this is when sharing private messages is necessary for reporting incidents or concerns to the Incident Response Team, as part of our commitment to maintaining a safe and respectful environment.

Ultimately, this change encourages honest, constructive engagement across all levels of participation.

Moving Forward TogetherThe strength of our community lies in the trust we place in one another. By clarifying and reinforcing our expectations, we are taking another step toward maintaining an inclusive, respectful, and safe environment for everyone.This new addition will take effect immediately, and violations will be handled in accordance with our existing enforcement guidelines. Together, we can ensure our community remains a place of collaboration, trust, and mutual respect.

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In the midst of our legal battles with Silver Lake and WP Engine, I wanted to take a moment to highlight something positive.

Because of my friendships with the co-founders of Slack, Stewart Butterfield and Cal Henderson, WordPress.org has had a free version of the Pro version of Slack since they started in 2009. We switched from IRC to Slack, and it was like superpowers were unlocked for our team.

Over the past 10 years, Slack has been our secret weapon of productivity compared to many other open source projects. Its amazing collaboration features have allowed us to scale WordPress from running just a few blogs to now powering around 43% of all websites in the world, almost 10 times the runner-up in the market.

As we have scaled from very small to very large, Slack has scaled right alongside us, seemingly effortlessly. WordPress.org currently has 49,286 users on its Slack Business+ instance, which would cost at least $8.8M/yr if we were paying. (And we may need to go to their enterprise grid, to support e-discovery in the lawsuit attacks from WP Engine, which would cost even more.)

This incredible generosity was continued by the enlightened leadership of Marc Benioff at Salesforce when they bought Slack in 2020. However, it has not been widely known or recognized on our Five for the Future page, which only highlights self-reported contributor hours and doesn’t mention Salesforce at all.

This is a grave error, and we are correcting it today. Going forward:

I would like every business in the world to see the amazing collaboration and productivity gains Slack has enabled for our community of tens of thousands of volunteers worldwide and consider adopting it for their own business.
Salesforce will have a complimentary top sponsor slot at our flagship WordCamp events in the United States, Europe, and Asia, which attract thousands of people each.
We will update our Five for the Future program to reflect contributions such as Salesforce’s going forward.

We just want to repeat: Thank you. We hope to deepen our partnership with Salesforce in the future.

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Given the egregious legal attacks by WP Engine against WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, a number of their customers have been looking for alternative hosting, and in return a number of hosts have created specials and promotions for WP Engine customers looking to migrate to a host that has great relations with WordPress.org. Here they are, in alphabetical order.

We’ll update this post if any new offers come online, get in touch and we’ll link it.

Bluehost will cover migration costs, and credit back your existing contract. They offer 24/7 phone support, you can call them at 844-699-3907. Their wp.cloud-powered Cloud hosting starts at $29.99/mo.
DreamHost is offering free migrations, with plans starting at $16.95/mo.
Hostinger offers free migration for an unlimited number of websites with a 24/7 dedicated customer success team. Their relevant cloud plans start at $7.99/mo.
Nexcess has plans starting at $21/mo.
Pressable will credit back your current WP Engine contract and match their pricing, so if you’re in the middle of a long contract with WP Engine, you don’t need to wait until your renewal time.
SiteGround has a special with 83% off and unlimited automated WP migrations, their plans start at $2.99/mo.
WordPress.com will give you a free year of any plan they offer, and donate 5% of your purchase price to the WordPress Foundation. Their relevant plans start at $25/mo.
For large-scale enterprise customers, WordPress VIP will cover the cost of migration. Their plans generally start at $2k/mo.

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WordPress 6.7 Beta 3 is now ready for testing!

This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended you evaluate Beta 3 on a test server and site.

You can test WordPress 6.7 Beta 3 in four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the Beta 3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use the following WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.7-beta3 | | WordPress Playground | Use the 6.7 Beta 3 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. |

The current target date for the final release of WordPress 6.7 is November 12, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.7 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.7-related posts in the coming weeks for more information.

Catch up on what’s new in WordPress 6.7: Read the Beta 1 and Beta 2 announcements for details and highlights.

How to test this releaseYour help testing the WordPress 6.7 Beta 3 version is key to ensuring everything in the release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.7.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta/RCBetween Beta 1, released on October 1, 2024, and the final Release Candidate (RC) scheduled for November 5, 2024, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Beta 3 updates and highlightsWordPress 6.7 Beta 3 contains more than 26 Editor updates and fixes since the Beta 2 release, including 18 tickets for WordPress core.

Each beta cycle focuses on bug fixes; more are on the way with your help through testing. You can browse the technical details for all issues addressed since Beta 3 using these links:

GitHub commits for 6.7 since October 9, 2024
Closed Trac tickets since October 9, 2024

A Beta 3 haikuCode in motion hums,
New features bloom, bugs retreat,
6.7 calls.

Props to @joedolson and @jeffpaul for proofreading and review, and haiku from @colorful-tones.

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On behalf of the WordPress security team, I am announcing that we are invoking point 18 of the plugin directory guidelines and are forking Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) into a new plugin, Secure Custom Fields. SCF has been updated to remove commercial upsells and fix a security problem.

On October 3rd, the ACF team announced ACF plugin updates will come directly from their website. Sites that followed the ACF team’s instructions on “How to update ACF” will continue to get updates directly from WP Engine. On October 1st, 2024, WP Engine also deployed its own solution for updates and installations for plugins and themes across their customers’ sites in place of WordPress.org’s update service.

Sites that continue to use WordPress.org’s update service and have not chosen to switch to ACF updates from WP Engine can click to update to switch to Secure Custom Fields. Where sites have chosen to have plugin auto-updates from WordPress.org enabled, this update process will auto-switch them from Advanced Custom Fields to Secure Custom Fields.

This update is as minimal as possible to fix the security issue. Going forward, Secure Custom Fields is now a non-commercial plugin, and if any developers want to get involved in maintaining and improving it, please get in touch.

Similar situations have happened before, but not at this scale. This is a rare and unusual situation brought on by WP Engine’s legal attacks, we do not anticipate this happening for other plugins.

WP Engine has posted instructions for how to use their version of Advanced Custom Fields that uses their own update server, so you have that option, though the WordPress Security Team does not recommend it until they fix the security issues. You can uninstall Advanced Custom Fields and activate Secure Custom Fields from the plugin directory and be just fine.

There is separate, but not directly related news that Jason Bahl has left WP Engine to work for Automattic and will be making WPGraphQL a canonical community plugin. We expect others will follow as well.

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WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 is ready for download and testing!

This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, set up a test environment or a local site to explore the new features.

How to Test WordPress 6.7 Beta 1You can test Beta 1 in any of the following ways:

| WordPress Beta Tester Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream. | | Direct Download | Download the Beta 1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line (WP-CLI) | Use this WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=6.7-beta1 | | WordPress Playground | Use a 6.7 Beta 1 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. No setup required–-just click and go! |

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 6.7 is November 12, 2024. Your help testing Beta and RC versions over the next six weeks is vital to ensuring the final release is everything it should be: stable, powerful, and intuitive.

How important is your testing?Testing for issues is a critical part of developing any software, and it’s a meaningful way for anyone to contribute—whether or not you have experience.

If you encounter an issue, please share it in the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so via WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general and how to get started? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

WordPress 6.7 will include many new features that were previously only available in the Gutenberg plugin. Learn more about Gutenberg updates since WordPress 6.7 in the What’s New in Gutenberg posts for versions 18.5, 18.6, 18.7, 18.8, 18.9, 19.0, 19.1, 19.2, and 19.3.

What’s New in WordPress 6.7 Beta 1WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 contains over 500 enhancements and over 500 bug fixes for the editor, including more than 200 tickets for WordPress 6.7 Core. Here’s a glimpse of what’s coming:

Meet the Twenty Twenty-Five themeLaunching with WordPress 6.7, the new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Five, embodies ultimate flexibility and adaptability, showcasing how WordPress empowers you to tell your story with a rich selection of patterns and styles. Inspired by glimpses of natural beauty and ancestry heritage, it evokes ideas of impermanence, the passage of time, and continuous evolution–mirroring life’s journey. Experience effortless site creation with Twenty Twenty-Five and follow its progress or report issues on this GitHub repo.

Zoom Out to Compose with PatternsThe Zoom Out view simplifies your editing experience by allowing you to create and edit at the pattern level rather than focusing on individual blocks. Easily toggle this view from the toolbar to streamline your site-building process, making it faster and more intuitive to design pages using patterns.

Media improvements Now supporting HEIC image uploads–automatically converted to JPEG for maximum compatibility–you can add high-quality images without worrying about browser support. Plus, enjoy auto-sizing for lazy-loaded images and expanded background image options at both individual and global levels, giving you greater control over your site’s visuals and performance.

Expanding Block SupportsSeveral blocks now come with expanded support options, enabling even more design possibilities. Notably, the long-requested shadow support for Group blocks has been added, a big win for designers and theme developers!

Preview Options API The latest WordPress release enhances the Preview Options in the block editor, empowering developers to customize content previews. A new API allows plugins and themes to add custom items to the preview dropdown menu, enabling users to see content in different formats or environments. This flexibility enriches the editing experience while maintaining the existing familiar Preview dropdown structure.

Refined Data ViewsThe Data Views introduced in 6.5 continue to be improved. This release is focused on refining the experience with a few new features aimed at making these views more flexible for customization and more functional to use.

Manage Block Bindings DirectlyThe Block Bindings API now features an interface that lets you connect attributes with dynamic data to be bound to block attributes, solving many use cases for custom blocks and powering other features, like overrides in synced patterns. Updates to this API in 6.7 polish the underlying APIs, improving the overall user experience, and add a user interface (UI) that allows you to connect attributes with their binding sources. This new UI makes it possible to create bindings directly in a block instead of needing to use the Code Editor.

Simplified and Smarter Query Loop BlockThe Query Loop block is improved, as it now automatically inherits the query from the template by default, eliminating the need for manual configuration. This means your posts display immediately in both the editor and on the front end, streamlining the process so users can focus on content without extra configuration needed.

Edit and Control Font Size PresetsAn enhanced Styles interface allows for greater flexibility when creating, editing, removing, and applying font size presets. You can now easily modify the presets provided by a theme or create your own custom options. A key feature is the ability to toggle fluid typography, which enables responsive font scaling with additional options for finer control over responsiveness.

View Meta Boxes in the iframed Post EditorA new split view option has been introduced that allows you to access both the editor canvas and metaboxes while editing. This change will provide a consistent WYSIWYG experience between the editor and front end views.

Template Registration APIWith this release, developers can now more easily register custom block templates without complex filters. Streamline your development process and create custom templates with ease.

*The features included in this first beta may change before the final release of WordPress 6.7, based on what testers like you find.*

Get an overview of the 6.7 release cycle and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.7-related posts in the next few weeks for further details.

Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta & Release CandidateThe WordPress community sponsors a monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities. This reward doubles during the period between Beta 1 on October 1, 2024 and the final Release Candidate (RC) scheduled for November 5, 2024. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Just for you: a Beta 1 haikuLines of code arise,
Testing shapes the future path,
WordPress grows once more.

Props to @annezazu, @cbringmann, @courane01, @desrosj, @marybaum, and @preithor for reviewing and collaborating on this post!

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I’ve heard from WP Engine customers that they are frustrated that WP Engine hasn’t been able to make updates, plugin directory, theme directory, and Openverse work on their sites. It saddens me that they’ve been negatively impacted by Silver Lake‘s commercial decisions.

On WP Engine’s homepage, they promise “Unmatched performance, automated updates, and bulletproof security ensure your sites thrive.”

WP Engine was well aware that we could remove access when they chose to ignore our efforts to resolve our differences and enter into a commercial licensing agreement. Heather Brunner, Lee Wittlinger, and their Board chose to take this risk. WPE was also aware that they were placing this risk directly on WPE customers. You could assume that WPE has a workaround ready, or they were simply reckless in supporting their customers. Silver Lake and WP Engine put their customers at risk, not me.

We have lifted the blocks of their servers from accessing ours, until October 1, UTC 00:00. Hopefully this helps them spin up their mirrors of all of WordPress.org’s resources that they were using for free while not paying, and making legal threats against us.

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Any WP Engine customers having trouble with their sites should contact WP Engine support and ask them to fix it.

WP Engine needs a trademark license, they don’t have one. I won’t bore you with the story of how WP Engine broke thousands of customer sites yesterday in their haphazard attempt to block our attempts to inform the wider WordPress community regarding their disabling and locking down a WordPress core feature in order to extract profit.

What I will tell you is that, pending their legal claims and litigation against WordPress.org, WP Engine no longer has free access to WordPress.org’s resources.

WP Engine wants to control your WordPress experience, they need to run their own user login system, update servers, plugin directory, theme directory, pattern directory, block directory, translations, photo directory, job board, meetups, conferences, bug tracker, forums, Slack, Ping-o-matic, and showcase. Their servers can no longer access our servers for free.

The reason WordPress sites don’t get hacked as much anymore is we work with hosts to block vulnerabilities at the network layer, WP Engine will need to replicate that security research on their own.

Why should WordPress.org provide these services to WP Engine for free, given their attacks on us?

WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it, with them getting all of the profits and providing all of the services.

If you want to experience WordPress, use any other host in the world besides WP Engine. WP Engine is not WordPress.

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It has to be said and repeated: WP Engine is not WordPress. My own mother was confused and thought WP Engine was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they’re giving you WordPress, but they’re not. And they’re profiting off of the confusion. WP Engine needs a trademark license to continue their business.

I spoke yesterday at WordCamp about how Lee Wittlinger at Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102B assets under management, can hollow out an open source community. (To summarize, they do about half a billion in revenue on top of WordPress and contribute back 40 hours a week, Automattic is a similar size and contributes back 3,915 hours a week.) Today, I would like to offer a specific, technical example of how they break the trust and sanctity of our software’s promise to users to save themselves money so they can extract more profits from you.

WordPress is a content management system, and the content is sacred. Every change you make to every page, every post, is tracked in a revision system, just like the Wikipedia. This means if you make a mistake, you can always undo it. It also means if you’re trying to figure out why something is on a page, you can see precisely the history and edits that led to it. These revisions are stored in our database.

This is very important, it’s at the core of the user promise of protecting your data, and it’s why WordPress is architected and designed to never lose anything.

WP Engine turns this off. They disable revisions because it costs them more money to store the history of the changes in the database, and they don’t want to spend that to protect your content. It strikes to the very heart of what WordPress does, and they shatter it, the integrity of your content. If you make a mistake, you have no way to get your content back, breaking the core promise of what WordPress does, which is manage and protect your content.

Here is a screenshot of their support page saying they disable this across their 1.5 million WordPress installs.

They say it’s slowing down your site, but what they mean is they want to avoid paying to store that data. We tested revisions on all of the recommended hosts on WordPress.org, and none disabled revisions by default. Why is WP Engine the only one that does? They are strip-mining the WordPress ecosystem, giving our users a crappier experience so they can make more money.

What WP Engine gives you is not WordPress, it’s something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress, but actually they’re giving you a cheap knock-off and charging you more for it.

This is one of the many reasons they are a cancer to WordPress, and it’s important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread. WP Engine is setting a poor standard that others may look at and think is ok to replicate. We must set a higher standard to ensure WordPress is here for the next 100 years.

If you are a customer of “WordPress Engine,” you should contact their support immediately to at least get the 3 revisions they allow turned on so you don’t accidentally lose something important. Ideally, they should go to unlimited. Remember that you, the customer, hold the power; they are nothing without the money you give them. And as you vote with your dollars, consider literally any other WordPress host as WP Engine is the only one we’ve found that completely disables revisions by default.

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WordCamp US (WCUS), North America’s largest WordPress event, hosted over 1,500 attendees from around the world at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, from September 17 to 20.

Over four days, WordPress professionals and enthusiasts came together to explore the latest advancements and use cases, collaborate on open source projects, and strengthen community connections.

A dedicated team of more than 40 volunteers, led by Aaron D. Campbell, Julia Golomb, Katie Richards, and Sandy Edwards, made the event possible.

Building WordPressContributor Day brought together over 400 contributors across 25 teams to support the WordPress project. As with any Contributor Day, participants learned and collaborated while tackling key projects, including triaging issues, exploring performance improvements, advancing the Twenty Twenty-Five theme, and preparing for the upcoming WordPress 6.7 release.

WordPress contributors discussing all things design at WCUS 2024’s Contributor Day.Celebrating WordPressAt WCUS 2024, the inaugural Showcase Day highlighted how enterprises like Disney Experiences, The New York Post, CNN, Vox Media, and Amnesty International are leveraging WordPress across a variety of industries. With 19 sessions, attendees gained diverse insights into WordPress’s wide-ranging capabilities and features.

Showcase day presentation by Alexandra Guffey and Katrina Yates of Disney on Gutenberg’s use in a complex ecosystem of sites.Sustaining WordPressKeynote presenter Joseph Jacks shares thoughts on the future of OSS.Joseph “JJ” Jacks, founder of OSS Capital, kicked off the first day of programming with a keynote about how open source will dominate the next wave of software. In looking at emerging trends in tech, he expressed how closed core, or closed source, software is hitting a plateau. Commercial open source companies are able to disrupt and forge the path for a shift in the space.

Sharing his optimism for the future, JJ highlighted emerging projects OSS Capital is excited about and emphasized that the most successful open source companies thrive by generating more value than they capture.

Learn WordPressThe second half of the conference featured more than 20 sessions and workshops across three tracks. Topics ranged from leveraging AI in WordPress to getting the most out of wp-admin.

Thursday’s dedicated networking session brought attendees to the sponsor hall to explore and connect with the vast ecosystem of hosts, plugins, agencies, and service providers. The WordCamp US Lounge, located within the exhibit hall, held focused discussions on hosting, neurodiversity, inclusivity, and content marketing.

Friday began with a fireside chat between TIME’s CTO Burhan Hamid and WordPress VIP’s CMO Tim Hossain. The duo discussed how TIME’s implementation of reusable components allowed them to scale and support major traffic-generating topics such as Taylor Swift’s Person of the Year, House of the Dragon, and political events.

WordCamp attendees stopped by the Code is Poetry lounge to try their hands at the vintage Smith Corona and have a poem written by the Typewriter Troubadour.Attendees take a break in the center of the exhibit hall at the “campfire” where various discussions were held throughout the event.Q&A with Cofounder MullenwegIn a dynamic keynote, WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg delivered one of his “spiciest” WordCamp presentations, combining insights on WordPress’s open source future with a creative twist. He opened by reading his recent post that explores open source philosophy, touching on themes of freedom, collaboration, and the ongoing influence of open source projects like WordPress. Mullenweg also critiqued companies for misleadingly labeling proprietary models as open source, stressing the importance of true open source licenses for the future of software freedom.

Matt further emphasized WordPress’s ecosystem-driven development and highlighted the Five for the Future initiative, an effort to avoid the tragedy of the commons and ensure that WordPress thrives for everyone. His speech addressed community concerns about companies profiting off WordPress without giving back and urged attendees to support companies that contribute to the platform’s growth.

Before diving into the Q&A segment of the presentation, Matt expressed the importance of recognizing:

“What we create together is bigger than any one person.”

WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg on the main stage at WCUS 2024.Matt Mullenweg and Brian Richards on stage at WCUS 2024.Save the DatesIn his closing remarks, emcee Brian Richards expressed gratitude for the fantastic work the event organizers and volunteers contributed to produce WCUS 2024.

Brian reminded attendees to save the date for WordCamp US 2025, which will once again take place in Portland, Oregon, from August 26 to 29, 2025.

Attendees gather at WCUS in Portland, Oregon.No WordCamp is complete without an after-party, with this year’s taking place at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). Attendees concluded a week of WordPress with refreshments while visiting the exhibits—including a submarine and planetarium—and posing in the photo booth.

Stay connectedWordPress events enable technologists, open source enthusiasts, and community members around the globe to meet, share ideas, and collaborate to drive WordPress and the open web forward.

Mark your calendars for State of the Word (Tokyo) on December 16, 2024, 2025’s WordCamp Asia in Manila, WordCamp Europe in Basel, Switzerland, and WordCamp US in Portland, Oregon!

This post is a collaboration between the contributors who produce content for wordpress.org/news and the WordCamp US Communications Team.

Props to the following contributors for the work reviewing/contributing to this post: @rmartinezduque, @juliarosia, @brettface, @eidolonnight, and @cbringmann. Thank you to the Photos Team for supplying images for this post and the official WordPress social media accounts throughout the event: @gwallace87, @m_butcher, @correliebre, and @zstepek.

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Join us this week as Josepha takes a personal journey down memory lane to her first encounters with WordPress. In this episode, she shares the story of her very first WordPress website, the excitement of getting involved with WordCamps, and how those early discoveries shaped her rewarding path in the WordPress community. Whether you’re a seasoned user or new to the platform, Josepha’s reflections will inspire you with insights from her earliest days in WordPress.

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes Josepha’s Blog * WordPress Playground * Small List of Big Things* + WordCamp US arrives this week (September 17-20) - WP Briefing: It’s your first WordCamp? Welcome! + Upcoming WordPress Meetings - Data Liberation Project + WordPress Events + Make WordPress * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

Transcript[00:00:00] Josepha: 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. Here we go.

[00:00:28] (Music intro)

[00:00:39] Josepha: Folks, this week is WordCamp US, and over the past week or so, I spent a fair amount of time talking to people about that first-time experience. And as with any person who’s talking about their version of a shared experience, I started thinking back to mine.

I think my first experience of WordPress was not typical, though. I had never even heard of WordPress when I first went to a WordCamp. I think, I think most of the time people have heard of it before, but I was just there for the plot. So, like many people in my generation, all of us old people of the internet, I was first online with things like Angelfire and GeoCities.

[00:01:16] Josepha: When I went to college, I was keeping friends and family up to date on what I was up to with a little, like, newsletter? And then Xanga made it to our college campus, and eventually, so did Facebook. And I was one of those kids kind of like half-breaking sites with HTML and CSS I found online. I was changing layouts like every week to suit my mood.

Then, when I graduated and found myself in a city with more talent and more competition than I’d actually accounted for, and started to realize that this online stuff I’d been doing for fun might actually be something that I needed to use as a tool professionally. So, I first went out and reserved my screen name everywhere I could think of.

[00:02:01] Josepha: And we’re talking, like, LiveJournal, WordPress.com, Blogger, all the things, and eventually wound up building my first site on Weebly. And it was super ugly. I’m not able to design things. I have an okay sense for a design that is good, but like, left to my own devices, it’s gonna be what that was, which is like a tie dye background for some reason, and had everything organized into little, like, blocks, I guess? You know, like, old magazine layouts? And it technically had everything that I wanted, but it wasn’t necessarily the best version of any of those things either. I could write a little bit about myself and my services, I could add a few photos, there was a way to contact me, and I could do it all by myself.

And so it was a good place to start. Not long after that, though, I graduated into the need for a more professional-looking website, and it was beautiful. I received a website; someone built it for me. It was beautiful; it had this elegant design. Had a lot of custom functionality, but it was built using ColdFusion. I couldn’t do anything to it. I couldn’t change anything. All minor changes just had to kind of wait until there was enough to make sense to use that maintenance time, that maintenance retainer that I had. It really was just kind of formal. It was an isolated snapshot of all of the sorts of information that was required to be on the web at that time.

[00:03:28] Josepha: And then, later that year, I went to my first WordCamp, and I moved my site over to WordPress. And for the first time, I had that kind of mixture of professional expression that was on top of something that enabled my own expression. And honestly, I didn’t learn much more about the software for a few years. It was doing what I needed it to do, how I needed it to be done, and that’s really what mattered to me.

And when I skip a few years ahead after that, a few years later, when I was learning by organizing Meetups and WordCamps that had speakers that I wanted to hear from, that had topics that I felt like I needed to learn more about, what I remember most about that learning period for me is that I knew that I wasn’t the first person to run into any of my problems, which meant that a solution was probably already out there, and I could find someone to come and teach us about their solution.

[00:04:23] Josepha: And also, I knew that if we were running into a new problem and started breaking things left and right, there was always a way back. I was never really too far away from success. Like I felt like I might be lost, but I still was pretty much findable. And I guess I always want that for new users of the open web now, like new members of our WordPress community.

I want them to feel like the breaking of things is fine and safe and that no mistake is irretrievable. I want us to have some place where perfection isn’t the point. Now listen, I know the software is complex right now. The admin is a little mismatched, your first choices are huge choices, and there are a million places to start.

[00:05:03] Josepha: So, all I can say is, start with what you need, and once you’ve got that, like the back of your hand, move on to what you need next. And keep doing that, bravely and messily, until what you’ve got is all you ever wanted. I’m gonna leave for you, in the show notes, a link to something called WordPress Playground.

It’s gonna launch a little WordPress site in your browser. There will be no host. It’s just all in the browser itself. And it will have the latest bundled theme on it, Twenty Twenty-Four, and the latest version of WordPress. And that’s it. Go in there and click around on the left-hand menu. Start a post, change a page, modify the theme.

Just play around a while. See if it’s something that seems fun to you or valuable, or if it’s something that you can use as a time capsule for your kid because that sounds like a nice little mix of fun and work. And remember, sometimes perfection’s not the point.

[00:05:57] (Music interlude)

[00:06:04] Josepha: That brings us now to our small list of big things.

Folks, as I mentioned at the top, WordCamp US is happening this week. It is September 17th through 20th this year, quite a few more days. But that also means that we’ll have quite a bit more stuff to do. If you have your tickets and haven’t looked at all of the presentations occurring over the four-day event, remember to take a look at the schedule and pick out topics that are interesting. And remember, just because you picked it out before you went doesn’t mean that if you get in there and it doesn’t work for you. You can’t choose a different topic while you’re there. And as a bonus, if this is your first WordCamp that you’ve ever attended, I have you covered. You can check out my previous episode on all the things to remember for your first time attending a WordCamp. And we have a pretty active community as well. If you just have questions or want to get in there and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to a vegan restaurant for lunch; who wants to join me?’ You can do that, and you can definitely find somebody.

Also, there are some upcoming WordPress meetings. So, if you’re not attending WordCamp US but still want to connect with the community, there are a ton of team meetings that are happening. You can find those on make.WordPress.org/meetings, I think. So really, really easy URL to remember. You can join your fellow community members and contribute to the WordPress project there.

[00:07:18] Josepha: And I also wanted to just call your attention to a few really big projects that still need a little bit of help around the project. So, on the one hand, we have Data Liberation. That is still a really big project, but specifically, we are nearly ready to start working on some user-facing elements of that. It is being powered by Playground, and because the data liberation, the migration of one site to another, is so complex, once we get those elements built into Playground, I think it also stands to fix a bunch of the problems that we have across our user flow, our user experience for the project. Things like having better theme previews and being able to get a sense for what a plugin functionally will do for you versus what it says it’s going to do for you. And getting a sense for what the admin looks like, all of those things. And so, anyone who wants to learn more about contributing to Playground or to Data Liberation, I absolutely encourage you to go check out those meetings, see what’s happening, and get your hands a bit dirty with that.

[00:08:26] Josepha: We also have a bunch of stuff happening in our community space. If you had received this podcast from somebody because they were like, hey, I know someone who might like WordPress or who has just learned WordPress and has never been to an event or any other reason that you are listening to this but don’t yet know the community, there is an easier option than just jumping straight into a WordCamp like I did. You can go to a meetup. You can see there’s a widget in your dashboard that’ll tell you what your nearest event is, but if you put your location into that widget, and nothing comes up. Technically, that means that you have an opportunity to bring a bunch of people together to teach you stuff you wish you knew about your site right now. So you can wander over into your dashboard and see those, or you can also head over to the community area on make.WordPress.org and anybody over there is happy to help you get started. And let me tell you, it is a very low-effort sort of thing to do. Here again, perfection’s not the point. And so that, my friends, is your small list of big things.

[00:09:28] Josepha: Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there is a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I am your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. Or tomorrow if we’re all going to WordCamp US.

[00:09:58] (Music outro)

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The reimagined Learn WordPress experience launched just over a month ago. It introduces Learning Pathways, a new approach to educational content from the Training team.

In case you haven’t explored the updated Learn WordPress site yet, take a peek at what you’ve been missing in this short and sweet virtual tour:

The reception of the new experience and Learning Pathways courses has been positive, with the average learner rating at 4.5/5 since the site’s relaunch. Here’s what learners have been saying:

“The beginner course did a fantastic job of introducing all the key terms I needed to know. It really set me up with a strong foundation to build on in the future…”

Carlos S.

about the Beginner WordPress User course

“This series of lessons is exactly what I am looking for: it improves my knowledge at an intermediate level, especially for the newer features in the Site Editor.”

jpgoem

about the Intermediate Theme Developer course

“The Beginner WordPress Developer course provided exactly what I needed to return to web design and WordPress after years of web application development.”

Hugo V.

about the Beginner WordPress Developer course

“This course was a great overview that also gave links for more reading. It’s making learning much more fun, thorough, and structured…”

Heather A.

about the Intermediate WordPress User course

The Training team is working hard to add more Learning Pathways to the existing roster, with the Designer and Intermediate Plugin Developer Learning Pathways already in progress. In the meantime, explore the four Learning Pathways at Learn WordPress.

There’s always more to learn.

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WordPress 6.6.2 is now available!This minor release includes 15 bug fixes in Core and 11 in the Block Editor, addressing issues like unexpected CSS specificity changes in certain themes. For a full summary of the maintenance updates, you can refer to the Release Candidate announcement.

WordPress 6.6.2 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.7 planned for November 12, 2024.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 6.6.2 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.

For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site.

Thank you to these WordPress contributorsThis release was led by Tonya Mork and Vicente Canales, with Aaron Jorbin mentoring us.

WordPress 6.6.2 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, Aaron Robertshaw, Adam Silverstein, Aki Hamano, Akira Tachibana, Akshat Kakkad, Alexandru Horeanu, Amit Raj, andreiglingeanu, Andrew Serong, Ankur Vishwakarma, Anthony Hortin, apmeyer, Ari Stathopoulos, Benjamin Denis, bernhard-reiter, Brian Alexander, Bruno Freiberger Garcia, Carolina Nymark, Colin Stewart, Daniel Richards, David Ballarin Prunera, David Baumwald, David Herrera, Dean Sas, DEBARGHYA BANERJEE, Dennis Snell, George Mamadashvili, Greg Ziółkowski, James Rosado, Jason LeMahieu (MadtownLems), Jb Audras, Jeremy Herve, Joe Dolson, Jon Surrell, Jos Klever, karan4official, Kelly Choyce-Dwan, Kowsar Hossain, kracked888, luisherranz, Marius L. J., mariushosting, Mark Howells-Mead, mattraines, michaelwp85, Mukesh Panchal, munyagu, Narendra Sishodiya, Nick Diego, Nithin John, Nithin SreeRaj, Omar Alshaker, Paal Joachim Romdahl, Pamela Ribeiro, Pascal Birchler, Paul Biron, Peter Wilson, presstoke, ramonopoly, Riad Benguella, Scott Reilly, Sergey Biryukov, Shail Mehta, smerriman, Stephen Bernhardt, Tonya Mork, Vicente Canales, wongjn, ytfeLdrawkcaB

How to contributeTo get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core and #6-7-release-leads channels. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

As a reminder, please see this post for the upcoming security changes for plugin and theme authors on WordPress.org.

Props to @jorbin, @cbringmann, @audrasjb, and @sergeybiryukov for proofreading.

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WordCamp US 2024 rounds out this year’s trio of flagship WordCamps. Starting September 17, open source and WordPress professionals from around the world will touch down in Portland, Oregon, for four days of learning, connecting, and collaborating.

There’s even more packed into the conference schedule this year, with the collaborative spirit of Contributor Day and the introduction of Showcase Day to kick things off.

New this year: Showcase DayShowcase Day will spotlight innovative and impactful projects built on WordPress. Through a curated series of presentations, attendees will gain insights into how WordPress drives success across diverse industries, including enterprise-level implementations for clients such as Disney Experiences, The New York Post, CNN Brazil, Vox Media, and Amnesty International.

Keynotes, presentations, and moreFollowing Showcase Day, two programming days on September 19-20 will feature notable keynote speakers, including OSS Capital Founder Joseph Jacks and TIME CTO Burhan Hamid.

A roster of highly anticipated presenters will also speak on a wide range of WordPress topics, from business strategy to technical insights on WordPress Playground and the Interactivity API. Attendees can learn from case studies across sectors like education and nonprofits and get inspired by the WordPress Speed Build Battle. All the presentations will be live streamed throughout the conference on the WordPress YouTube channel.

A Networking Block will also offer opportunities to connect and explore potential collaborations within the WordPress ecosystem.

Closing session with MattWordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg will close the conference with a live question-and-answer session. You can watch Matt’s Q&A on September 20, 2024, streaming live on the WordPress YouTube channel starting at 3:45 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (10:45 p.m. UTC).

Need help getting WordCamp-ready? * Get your WordCamp US tickets (if you haven’t already) * Check out the full schedule of events * Listen to Executive Director Josepha’s tips for WordCamp first-timers

Don’t miss any of the action—follow WordPress on X, LinkedIn, or Instagram. And when you’re sharing highlights, tips, videos, and photos from the conference floor, remember to tag #WCUS (and #WordPress) to bring everyone along for the experience.

Whether you’ll be joining us in person in Portland or watching online from elsewhere, we’ll see you very soon!

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Discover why WordPress is becoming a cornerstone in student education. In this episode of WordPress Briefing, host Josepha Haden Chomphosy explores the vital role of WordPress in the school curriculum and how it equips students with essential skills for thriving in their future careers.

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes WordPress Briefing Episode 17: WordPressing Your Way to Digital Literacy * WPCampus * WordPress Youth Day 2024 * WordPress YouthCamp 2024 * Uganda Website Projects Competition 2024 * WordPress in Education Showcase * WordCamp Youth Hackathon * Make WordPress Training Team * Learn WordPress + Learn WordPress – Courses + Learn WordPress – Lessons * Small List of Big Things* + The WordCamp US schedule + WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program Cohort (#3) + Ramping up WordPress on YouTube + Important Call to Action: Help Us Reactivate Inactive Meetup Groups by Sept 16 * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

[00:00:28] (Music intro)

[00:00:39] Josepha: It’s been a while since I talked to you about the digital divide. In case you’re a brand new listener, check out episode 17, and actually everyone, just go check out episode 17 because bridging the digital divide, teaching people how to embrace technology fully and how to make it work for you, is one of the primary motivators of my decisions in WordPress.

[00:01:02] Josepha: WordPress’s unique position as both a tool that’s ubiquitous in its use and a community that is all-encompassing in its skill set means that if you know a bit about how open source works, you can use it as a tool to learn digital literacy and practice technical skills. Even though this is one of my primary motivators, I have never actually succeeded at getting WordPress into schools.

It’s not for lack of trying, it’s not for lack of interest from the community; it’s more that it’s hard to fit into curriculum-based learning. After all, we’ve had ways to learn WordPress for as long as we’ve had ways to use WordPress. It’s just that it takes a long time to design instructional material, even when you know the content like the back of your hand.

And open source stuff just moves really quickly. However, that didn’t stop us from spending years refining the content that we do have into the learning pathways you can now find on learn.WordPress.org. If you’re an educator, you can use those almost out of the box. But if you’ve got learners in your home and want to make a case for why their school should bring a little WordPress based digital literacy into the classroom, I’ve got five good arguments for you for why they should give us a chance.

[00:02:16] Josepha: The first one, as I mentioned before, WordPress as a tool is practically ubiquitous. It powers a significant portion of the web, so it’s easy to find examples to aspire to and content creators for guidance. And given that it is so prevalent, knowing WordPress ensures that students are well prepared for a wide range of job opportunities in the digital industry, making them more competitive in the job market overall.

Second is that WordPress is a free and open source piece of software. In our case, it’s free in both meanings of the word. Free, as in no cost and no constraints. That means students have freedom to experiment with the code and with the design, which gives you that feeling of joyous experimentation that a lot of us had at the start of the web before there were CMSs. It taps into a different kind of creativity that results in technical curiosity and, ultimately, growth.

[00:03:13] Josepha: The third thing is that the best way to learn WordPress happens to also align with the concept of project-based learning, which is one of the best methods for learning in general. I believe that to be true. I’m not an educator, but I really believe that project-based learning is the best way to learn complex topics. It’s an active way to learn. You get a bunch of tactical skills in there, like development, alongside the basics of good collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Obviously, these are all skills that are directly valuable in the workplace, but I have also found them profoundly useful in my day-to-day existence. You know, as a human participating in a society.

Number four is a bit of a spicy nugget, but WordPress is essential for creating and managing digital content, which is table stakes right now. That’s a foundational skill for most web dev jobs, but also marketing, journalism, and communications. And beyond that, everyone knows that your best leaders are the people who can tell a compelling story based on the information they have. The ones who can connect the dots in a way that makes it matter to you. This is a spicy, of course, because of the confusing do si do that AI is taking with the content landscape. But I believe that people are the best storytellers, and stories are what keep us all moving forward.

[00:04:34] Josepha: And then the final thing is that there is a whole wide world of open source. There are so many products and projects that use an open source license, right? Like you, listener, I can guarantee I don’t even know who you are, but I can guarantee that you use at least one item a day that has some open source thing in it.

And most of these open source projects are international. They’re developed on a global scale across numerous countries by people with various levels of education. And it’s this vastness of scope, this broadness of connection, that will give you, give your student, a chance to understand how to work across cultures, how to build something that is more than the sum of its parts, and how to embrace the concept of altruistic generosity that leads to a triumph of the commons.

[00:05:26] Josepha: Because just as I’m sure that you, a complete stranger, touched something open source today, I’m equally sure that the people we bring into open source will be able to solve the biggest problems of tomorrow with better connections and more skill because of what we taught them here today. If all of this sounds compelling, but you’re not ready to, like, go into your school administrator, your superintendent, your local, I don’t know, education board.

If this felt right, but you don’t know for sure, and you want a little bit more experience with it before you go advocate for it yourself, I will have in the show notes over on WordPress.org, I’ll have in the show notes of this podcast a series of events that are coming up. We have a couple that have already gone by WPCampus, I think just wrapped up a few weeks ago. But there are a handful of events that are happening across the world that is specific to youth wanting to learn technology, working with WordPress to get that done.

[00:06:26] Josepha: And then educators as well. You can also always stop by the Training Team and ask them questions about how this all works, why it works together their philosophies behind their learning pathways. There are so many ways that you can get answers to the questions that you might have about why open source, and especially WordPress, is worth trying to get your students exposed to and working in and contributing to.

[00:06:52] (Music interlude)

[00:06:59] Josepha: That brings me, now that I have finished with my little soapbox, to our small list of big things. Gosh, I hope you all missed hearing teeny tiny rants about WordPress and open source from me over the break that I took in August, but before you respond to that, feel free to respond to me in any comments. Let’s first get to the small list of big things.

[00:07:23] Josepha: First up, the full WordCamp US schedule has been released, so if you’re planning to attend that, you can take a look and get your schedule, your personal schedule, for the week figured out. But if you’re still on the fence, there might be a speaker or two in there that tips the scales for you.

The next thing is that the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program Cohort number three, the third one, will happen in Q4 this year. The call for mentors and mentees has just been completed. But you should keep an eye out on September 9th, I think. So, at the end of this week, the final list will be announced. This program has been excellent for mentors to give back to the community while enhancing their leadership skills. And the mentees who participate have received personalized guidance and a chance to develop skills and network within the community, and a good portion of them continue to contribute to WordPress itself and other open source projects that we rely on as well.

[00:08:20] Josepha: The third thing is that YouTube has been an essential platform for sharing complex ideas with a diverse audience. And our WordPress YouTube channel is no exception. It has been slowly warming itself up. We have a team that’s warming up the content over there. WordCamp information gets on it now. But in keeping with our commitment to meeting the needs of both current and future users, just making sure that we meet people where they are, I’m excited to announce that Jamie Marsland will be taking on the management of the WordPress YouTube channel. So for anyone who’s attending WordCamp US, stop by and say hello to Jamie in person.

And then, finally, I have a really important call to action. So, we are still working to reactivate our meetup groups. The Community Team is driving that charge, and they need your help to reactivate any group that’s inactive. Last month, a list of groups was shared and marked for removal from our chapter program. And we requested responses by August 5th to keep those groups active, but due to the summer holiday, we have extended it a little bit. We’ve extended it to September 16th, which, if I am remembering my calendar correctly, is a couple weeks from now. So if your group is on that pending closure list, email support@wordcamp.org to let us know if you want to reactivate the group or if you are ready to step down and have a new leader show up, and we can help you figure out how to get that done. Either way, if you’re on the list, email us let us know what your hopes and, dreams, and plans are there.

[00:09:58] Josepha: That, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser or future WordPresser. But if you have any questions about what you heard, then you can share those with me at WPbriefing@WordPress.org. I am your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I’m so glad to be back. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

[00:10:29] (Music outro)

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Learn WordPress has been growing as a hub of educational resources for WordPress since 2020. Now, it’s undergone a transformation in content focus and design with the introduction of Learning Pathways and a reimagined look.

The WordPress.org redesign continues Learn WordPress is the latest section of WordPress.org to receive a design refresh, following other sections like the Showcase and Developer Resources. It brings a unified look and feel that’s modern, visual, and inviting.

Beyond its fresh aesthetic, the new Learn WordPress site prioritizes learners with a revamped user experience consistent with familiar modern learning platforms. It features a new navigation menu, eye-catching thumbnails, and search filters so you can explore and discover content quickly. The clearer and more structured layout helps you easily recognize the resources you need (courses, lessons, Online Workshops) based on your learning preferences.

Introducing Learning PathwaysThis redesign also highlights a new approach to Learn WordPress content, emphasizing what learners engage with the most. The introduction of Learning Pathways lets you grow your WordPress skills progressively. You can start with beginner essentials and then work your way through more advanced concepts at your own speed. This method lets you build a solid understanding as you move through each course. Learning Pathways are geared toward specific learners, like people using WordPress for the first time or those interested in development.

Four Learning Pathways are already launched and ready to explore:

Beginner WordPress User
Intermediate WordPress User
Beginner WordPress Developer
Intermediate Theme Developer

You can look forward to more Learning Pathways in the User and Developer tracks soon. Two additional pathways, Designer and Contributor, are also on the roadmap. For more details about Learning Pathways, listen to episode 83 of the WordPress Briefing.

Get a guided tour of all the exciting Learn WordPress changes from the Training team’s very own Jonathan Bossenger, Wes Theron and Kathryn Presner. Sign up for one of their upcoming Online Workshops on Tuesday, August 6 at 14:00 UTC or Thursday, August 8 at 21:00 UTC.

Education for the future of WordPressWhat started with the Training team’s effort to understand the needs and expectations of current and future learners became a push to create a dynamic learning experience. This next phase of Learn WordPress is an exciting move toward bringing more people into WordPress, whether new users just getting started or established developers looking to add more skills to their toolbox.

If you want to propose a change or report an issue, please do so in the Learn GitHub repository. If you love WordPress and want to contribute to making Learn WordPress an even greater resource, join the #training Slack channel. Want to make an immediate impact? Share Learn WordPress with someone you know.

Thank you (and props) to all involvedThe new Learn WordPress couldn’t have been possible without the effective collaboration of the Training, Design, Marketing, and Meta teams.

@adamwood @agiljulio @arunshenoy99 @bsanevans @burtrw @cnormandigital @devmuhib @digitalchild @dufresnesteven @ervanyuffrizal @faisalahammad @fcoveram @hellosatya @huzaifaalmesbah @indirabiswas27 @ironnysh @itsmhrahman @jinalparekh @joedolson @joen @jominney @keithnoseworthy @kel-dc @lada7042 @laurahartwigdesign @laurlittle @markoserb @mustakim5 @nazmul111 @ndiego @nilovelez @noruzzaman @orangeambition @piyopiyofox @psykro @renyot @rfluethi @rjfrizz @rmartinezduque @ryelle @sakibsnaz @sfougnier @shsajalchowdhury @sierratr @sumitsingh @teuila_mau @webcommsat @webtechpooja @west7 @zoonini

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WordPress 6.6.1 is now available!

This minor release features 7 bug fixes in Core and 9 bug fixes for the Block Editor. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the Release Candidate announcement.

WordPress 6.6.1 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.7 planned for November 2024.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 6.6.1 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.

For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site.

Thank you to these WordPress contributorsThis release was led by Tonya Mork and Ella.

WordPress 6.6.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, Aaron Robertshaw, Aki Hamano, Amit Raj, Akira Tachibana, Andrea Fercia, Andrew Serong, annezazu, Art Smith, Brian Gardner, Carolina Nymark, cbirdsong, Ciprian, Clark, Courtney Robertson, Daniel Richards, David Baumwald, Dennis Snell, Dion Hulse, Ella, Eric-Oliver Mächler, Fabian Kägy, George Mamadashvili, Jarda Snajdr, Jb Audras, Joe Dolson, Joen A., Jon Surrell, laurelfulford, Marco Ciampini, Mario Santos, Mark Howells-Mead, Mukesh Panchal, neotrope, Pascal Birchler, Paul Biron, ramonopoly, Raquel, Riad Benguella, Rich Tabor, Robert Anderson, Sergey Biryukov, Scott Reilly, Sourav Pahwa, Stephen Bernhardt, SunilPrajapati, Tonya Mork, up1512001

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Join WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, as she offers an exclusive preview of the recently released WordPress 6.6, accompanied by special guest Meher Bala, the release’s coordinator. Don’t miss this opportunity for an insider’s look!

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Guest: Meher Bala
Editor: Adam Daly
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes WordPress 6.6 Download * Make WordPress – Core + WordPress Core Slack * Small List of Big Things* + First-Time Attendees: A Key Metric of Success for WordPress Events + The Docs team holds an online Contributor Day every fourth Tuesday. + Reminder: Online workshops are live sessions where you can learn alongside other WordPress enthusiasts. + Recap of the Media Corps Briefing on WordPress 6.6 * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

Transcript[00:00:00] Josepha: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of some of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project and the community around it, as well as get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!

[00:00:28] (Intro Music)

[00:00:40] Josepha: Last week, we released WordPress 6.6, and I had a chance to chat with a long-time contributor and member of the Release Squad about it. Today, I have with me Meher, and she was, well I guess I will let her tell us what she did with the release, but at the time of this recording, yesterday we had the WordPress 6.6 release, codenamed ‘Dorsey,’ and so Meher, welcome to the WordPress Briefing.

[00:01:05] Meher: Hi, thank you for inviting me. It’s nice to be here.

[00:01:09] Josepha: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do in the WordPress project, how long you’ve been contributing, and then the role that you played in our big, big mid-year release?

[00:01:19] Meher: So my name is Meher. I’m a front-end developer. I’m also a CEO of KDC. I’m also a codable expert in WordPress. I started with contributing into the marketing field. Then, slowly, for 5.6, I got to be on the release squad, learned about training, about how the release goes, process happens. From that time onwards, I’ve been part of marketing or, basically, I’ve been part of the marketing team for all the releases. For 6.6, I picked to do the Release Coordinator, something different, something new, wanting to know what goes into it.

[00:02:03] Josepha: That is a big leap from like hanging out in marketing to going to be the Release Coordinator. Before we get into the release itself, just what made you think to yourself, I would like to do that? I would like to stand up and wrangle all of these contributors across the world. Make sure we get a release out?

[00:02:20] Meher: I wanted to try something new. Like even in WordCamp, each role is different. So, even in the release, I wanted to try each different things. And like 5.6, I was in documentation. Then, I was in marketing. So then I got used to marketing, so I stick with my, no, I stuck with marketing.

[00:02:39] Josepha: Yeah.

[00:02:40] Meher: So this time, I want to try something different, and I want to see, you know, how easy was it to be a Release Coordinator because it’s a Release Coordinator, see, you know, it’s, it’s a like a big thing coordinating so many people so many different teams going on, working together, and so yeah, it was fun.

[00:02:58] Josepha: Great. I’m glad that you found it fun. I always worry when people make big shifts. I’m like, did we put enough documentation to make it clear? Are they going to find it easy to get started or not? And I think you did a really great job with it. So congratulations, since that happened just yesterday, less than 24 hours ago.

[00:03:16] Meher: Yes, less than 24 hours.

[00:03:21] Josepha: Yeah, yeah. So, from your position as the Release Coordinator, what are the biggest, like, one or two features that you really were excited to see get in this release?

[00:03:32] Meher: Oh, one of the biggest features was the style override patterns.

[00:03:37] Josepha: Oh, yeah.

[00:03:38] Meher: Which I found very useful because a lot of people are using patterns. So, you know, patterns override; if you wanna change something on a specific page, it’s really useful then just to, you know, recreate a second pattern and then to match up and all. And second, which I liked as a user, was the publish box on the post becoming very clear, very, you know, cluster-free, very minimalistic, and just so comfortable that a normal user will actually understand what is there instead of going to each dropdown and figuring out what needs to be done. So, for me, I think as a developer and user, these two are the fun features, which I like, which 6.5 had, so. There are many other features as well. These are the two great features.

[00:04:28] Josepha: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think that anyone can argue about the importance of making things a little easier to see, a little easier to use. It’s been a little bit since WordPress was like fall into it easy to use. I feel like we have been the easiest of the robust CMS systems for like a long time. I know I said CMS systems. That’s like saying pin number. I know that the S in CMS is systems, but anyway, that notwithstanding, we’ve been the easiest of the complex solutions for a long time, and I think it’s always great when we, when we take a moment to be like, what could we make a bit easier to just like, no instructions required you get in there and you can tell like, what any individual thing will do without necessarily, like you said, having to go into drop downs and reading a bunch of stuff a little guesswork is okay. And also, it’s clear that none of it is dangerous. And so I think that’s, I think that’s a a good change myself. So, I agree with your assessment.

[00:05:27] Josepha: So the style override patterns, that’s part of the suite of design tools that we’re pulling together, right?

[00:05:33] Meher: Yes.

[00:05:34] Josepha: in your experience, you said you’re the CEO of your company, like in your experience, does that feel like something that’s super useful for agencies or particularly useful for freelancers, or should it generally be useful for everyone?

[00:05:47] Meher: It will be useful from a small business point to a freelancer as well because we always try, like, in each page, we always, you know, there is some bits repeated, you know, so, patterns makes it easier, and syndicate pattern makes it more easier so that you can just duplicate and have one place to change. And, like, you have ten pages, you have one pattern across ten pages. The 11th page, you want the same pattern, but little change in that. It’s easier. It’s good because you can just change on that page, one particular thing and still go in the parent and change other things to reflect in that. So it will be very helpful for freelancers, small agencies. I do see big agencies take advantage of it. So overall, it should help everyone.

[00:06:35] Josepha: Good. Good. I, for one, isn’t it great when we can get a feature out that mostly is going to help everyone. But I have been especially interested in the features that we’re trying to get out that help that kind of like small to medium agency area. I feel like we have a lot of folks in the WordPress community who do exactly what you’re talking about. You’re getting something together. You have a mostly what you need across your site. You have one style that’s out there, but there’s this one area that you want to have a little bit more personality or a little less personality, depending on what your client is looking for, like this one is applying for jobs, and it needs to be a little less exciting or whatever it is.

[00:07:13] Josepha: I think that’s great that we have that option. So you don’t have to try to, I don’t know, hack your way through that. I know that we’re not a super get-in-there-and hack-on-it sort of group anymore these days, but I love that we still have that feeling of we’re gonna, we’re going to make this a safe hacking space for you. Just get in there and make it work. So that’s excellent. Excellent. So for you, then, personally, cause you wear a lot of hats, you’ve your front-end developer; you’re running your company, you’re working, you’re a codable expert. You’ve got all these things. So from your perspective, what is the thing that got into this release that was a surprising, like a diamond in the rough for you, like a surprising good feature when you just thought it was like an important feature at some point? Was there one that seemed like it was a good idea but became a great idea by the time it was out?

[00:08:00] Meher: Oh, I would say style variations because I did not expect the final style variation to be what it is. A theme developer can create the theme, can add styles, can add fonts, can give different design elements to the theme as a normal user when they when someone wants to just pull up a website, but they’re not good in design, or they don’t know which font to use. They choose which font, but then it doesn’t work. So if the theme provides an easy option just to shift the different styles they’re using and combining with the fonts. It is a much bigger opportunity for everyone because a normal user can just, they have a black and white site. I want to shift to a colorful site. Just go and see what the theme art has given you and shift it. So I think that I was surprised and I like the outcome. I’m sure my blogger friends also will like it because then they don’t have to depend on a designer to you know, give them color schemes and stuff.

[00:09:01] Josepha: Yes. Yeah. So unrelated. It’s only, it’s kind of related. I shouldn’t say it’s unrelated. It’s all about WordPress. And now it’s about color palettes. So, I have a new design on my blog. And unfortunately I am the sort of person that does need a designer to tell me what I meant by the thing I thought. And so, like, I had this idea of the sort of color palette that I wanted and was searching for color palettes inside themes, which I was not succeeding at. And eventually I had a designer who was happy to help you figure this out and get something out there. And they got me something that’s absolutely perfect. It’s got an excellent color palette and they redid some images for me. So it looks nice and hip and feels kind of modern. I think it’s great. But the one thing that I consistently felt confident to mess with while I was in there, because I think they did some custom work in there too, is all of the stuff that’s included in style variations. Like, I’m not touching colors because I can’t put colors together to save my life. But I was pleasantly surprised also by that particular feature. It gives you a feeling of I can change the face of this through the fonts or whatever it is. And I think that’s a nice, a nice thing.

[00:10:06] Meher: And it’s a, it’s a perfect combination. Color and font. Because a lot of people don’t know today’s time which font is good. Or which font is needed for an industry.

[00:10:16] Josepha: Exactly. Fortunately, I’m a site manager of one. And so I just had to ask myself if I liked the font and moved on from there. So, oh. So, like I said, as we’re recording this, we are less than 24 hours past the release. How was your experience with this release? Was it enjoyable? Did it like expand your horizons? Were there surprises in how a release is run?

[00:10:43] Meher: There was no surprises because I’ve already been a part of a release. So I.

[00:10:47] Josepha: That’s fair.

[00:10:49] Meher: You know, it’s depends on what happens on the day. But yes, behind the scenes, following up, just checking in to make sure, are we on time, do we need more time, or what needs, you know, how much more time is required. It was fairly good, I was only clearly concerned about on the day of the release, because there’s a lot of things to cover.

[00:11:09] Josepha: Yes.

[00:11:10] Meher: Usually, the party of the beta and the RCs finish in less than hour or so. But the final has a lot more detailed steps and many people to ping, to get, you know, them on the day of the release.

[00:11:24] Josepha: Yeah, for folks who have never watched a release happen. So, I think a lot of the folks who listen to this podcast, they find it in the dashboard, they don’t necessarily contribute to WordPress. But, like, if you’ve never watched a WordPress release, we have these release parties for every beta that goes out, every release candidate that goes out, and then the general release. And I always find them so fascinating because, we have hundreds of contributors over the course of an individual release. And then we have probably 50, 60 people who show up at, for some of you all, in the middle of the night and are just being directed, like their attention is just being directed here and there.

[00:12:06] Josepha: And I love watching it because I, I’m always in the release channel. I’m in the core channel. All of these are in Slack. And then I’m also in the admin channel where you have to do the flipping of switches and packaging things. And it’s really interesting to see, almost like a scan of a brain where things are lighting up for various things. Like, you do the pre-testing in the release channel, and then you do the general testing in the core channel. And then we’ve got like a person who’s flipping switches in the back, in the admin area to make sure that it all gets together. And it’s just really interesting to see how it all works. And yeah, it’s a really fun thing.

Dear listener, if you have never, if you’ve never done this, you have another opportunity. And I think the next release is early in November or something. And even if you’re there as like a spectator, not necessarily ready to take part in the release, sometimes it’s kind of nice to see how much effort and how many people are showing up to work on any individual release.

[00:13:01] Josepha: This was your first time to lead the release parties, though, right?

[00:13:06] Meher: Yes. My first time releasing a release party. Also, to the spectators who have never been a part of release, you can just come and say hi. Like, yesterday, on the day of the release, there was one participant who joined for the first time, and she did contribute. And she was amazed by how smooth it went through. And for me, the best part of any release is seeing the green tick when people start testing. So, you know, everything is smooth sailing.

[00:13:34] Josepha: Yes.

[00:13:34] Meher: And we’ll reach the destination.

[00:13:36] Josepha: Yes. It’s, it is a real testament to how well and how closely all of these folks can work together, which if you stop and think about the fact that everybody’s like all over the world, it’s all across the globe that this is happening. It is why WordPress works, right? All of these people, all of you coming together to do this on behalf of this software. How cool that you had somebody who joined for the first time and then they were able to contribute immediately.

[00:14:02] Meher: Yes.

[00:14:03] Josepha: I love that.

[00:14:04] Meher: Also, there are a lot of folks who’ve done it. So they’re always ready to help out. You know, if you’re stuck somewhere, as a first-time release lead, there were certain questions I had. There are a lot of people to guide you to the right direction or to say, this needs to go here, or you need to tell the audience this. A lot of support you get from the squad itself, plus the people who are not on the squad and who’ve done this.

[00:14:29] Josepha: Absolutely. I remember the first release that I led I was the coordinator of it and I believe it was 5.0. I believe it was the one that we put Gutenberg in core with, and it was the most terrifying thing I’d ever done. Not because I hadn’t been watching these releases happening for years, but because it’s different participating and watching and then being the person who is like you said, like making sure that things are still going on time that you understand when you need to say, like, there’s no way that this works for users right now. We have to take it out and all those things. And then, yeah, the day of, the first time that you have to run one of those global meetings, be like, ‘everyone, we don’t have time for this. Move on’. That’s always a really hard first time. Well, cool. That’s so exciting. So I have a last question for you, and that is, you’ve kind of let us into it, for first-time contributors to a release, especially anyone who’s thinking about joining the release squad for the first time, do you have any advice, anything that you wish you had been told when you were coming into this?

[00:15:32] Meher: Come with an open mind and come with a thought that there are people to help you. Ask in any channel. There will be someone or the other who will answer you immediately or a little later, depending on the time zone, and will guide you to the right person or right documentation where you can read up because there is a lot of documentation, good documentation on releases, how it handles and what team is needed, what they are supposed to do. So, you, you have a friendly bunch of people. Just ask.

[00:16:03] Josepha: Excellent. I love it. I love that advice. That was really good advice. Don’t be scared. Everybody has answers, and they want to give them to you. I agree. That is a real strong truth for the WordPress project. Last thoughts: anything you want to share with the WordPress community with our community of listeners here?

[00:16:20] Meher: Looking forward for new people joining the next release and seeing 6.7 new features, which I’m excited about, collaborative phase three coming into picture and excited about it.

[00:16:32] Josepha: Yeah. So you can come join us, make.WordPress.org/core, or you can join us in the Slack instance. You can go to chat.WordPress.org and get signed up for that. We coordinate all of this in the core channel, and we hope to see every new contributor that’s been on the fence. We hope you show up. There’s a new meeting every two weeks just for y’all. Meher, this has been an excellent conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:16:56] Meher: Thank you for having me. It was fun.

[00:16:58] (Music interlude)

[00:17:05] Josepha: Hopefully, you’ve had a chance to download the release and try it out on your own sites. As always, if you run into any bugs, let us know so that we can get them in the next point release.

And that brings us now to our small list of big things. I have a moderate-sized small list. The first one is that WordPress is a reminder, actually. It’s a lot of reminders this week if I get right down to it, but this first one is a reminder that one of our big-picture goals for 2024 was getting new users into our event series. Our goal, of course, is to warmly welcome more first-time attendees and new users, and future WordPressers at all of our events, and that’s something that you can help get done. So, for all of our event organizers, or if you have not organized an event yet and would like to, just so that you can meet the fellow WordPressers in your area or, get to grow your own network a little bit. We’ve got a few best practices that can help you to make sure that you have a good experience for first time attendees. For one, you should always consider some thoughtful event design. Craft your events with some first-time attendees in mind. You have to consider their needs and interests and potential barriers to participation. Second, it helps to have some targeted messaging. Ensure that you have promotional materials that highlight the benefits of attending, but also what new knowledge, skills, or professional connections folks will gain when they come. It’s also good to share success stories of past first-time attendees. And then just kind of a final note for that on outreach strategies. You should experiment with a range of marketing channels to reach professional new attendees. You can partner with local schools, professional organizations, and online communities who can help to spread the word.

[00:18:52] Josepha: The second thing on our small list of big things is a reminder that the Docs Team holds an online Contributor Day every fourth Tuesday. They’ve been doing this for about a year now. And I think that it’s one of the most engaging and fun new contributor experiences we have, which I realize might sound odd for documentation, but it’s a great team. It’s got a great number of team reps in it. And they’re looking for you. They’re looking out for you to come and join for your first time on a Contributor Day. The next one is actually tomorrow, July 23rd. I’ll have a link for that in the show notes.

[00:19:29] Josepha: And the third thing on our list is a reminder about online workshops. These are live sessions where you can learn alongside other WordPress enthusiasts, and they’re, you know, safe spaces where you can come as you are, develop new ideas, explore issues that you’re having, ask questions, network over shared interests, exchange theories, collaborate, and honestly, thrive on a bit of problem-solving together. New workshops are happening all the time. You can check out the schedule to join in on a live session and even watch some of the previous sessions to see if it’s for you.

[00:20:03] Josepha: And the final thing on our list is that there is a recap up of the first Media Corps Briefing that was held on June 27th, and it provided media partners with an overview of the Source of Truth and updates that were planned for WordPress 6.6, that was released last week. Obviously, we just talked to Meher about it. But that particular session featured guest Anne McCarthy, who explained and demoed some of the upcoming features and answered a bunch of questions from the participants. The briefing was recorded and published on the WordPress YouTube channel. Apart from the recording, you can also find a summary, the full transcript, and other relevant links from the link in the show notes.

[00:20:42] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard today, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I am your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. And I’m taking a little break from the podcast in August, and so I will see you again, my friends, in September.

[00:21:15] (Music outro)

View Details

Say hello to WordPress 6.6 “Dorsey,” named after the legendary American Big Band leader, Tommy Dorsey. Renowned for his smooth-toned trombone and compositions, Dorsey’s music captivated audiences with its emotional depth and vibrant energy.

Let your heart swing, sing, and sway to the deep brass notes of Dorsey’s Big Band sound as you explore the new features and enhancements of WordPress 6.6.

Hello, 6.6!WordPress 6.6 delivers on the promise of a better web by bringing style, finesse, and a suite of creative possibilities to your site-building experience. This version helps you do more with ease, putting enhanced tools at your fingertips and giving you unprecedented power behind the scenes. You will find more ways to create beautiful, coherent design elements across your site, a new layout for quick page previews in the Site Editor, and the safety of automatic rollbacks for failed plugin auto-updates—among many other highlights.

In addition to the new features, “Dorsey” continues to deliver the performance and accessibility gains you can expect from every WordPress release. Explore what WordPress 6.6 has to offer and get ready to let its features take your sites to new heights.

Download WordPress 6.6 “Dorsey”What’s insideAdd more design options to block themesCreate color or font sets to multiply design combinations across one theme. These sets offer more contained design possibilities, allowing visual variety within the site’s broader styling guidelines.

Simplify your workflow with a new layout for pages in the Site EditorSee all of your pages and a preview of any selected page with the new side-by-side layout in the Site Editor.

Auto-update your plugins with peace of mindEnjoy the convenience of plugin auto-updates with the safety of rollbacks if anything goes wrong—offering your site a new level of security, enhanced functionality as it becomes available, and almost no time or bandwidth from you to make it happen.

Customize content in synced patternsMake content changes in each instance of a synced pattern while maintaining a consistent style across them. Set these overrides for Heading, Paragraph, Button, and Image blocks when placed in a synced pattern.

PerformanceWordPress 6.6 features important updates like removing redundant WP_Theme_JSON calls, disabling autoload for large options, and eliminating unnecessary polyfill dependencies. Other highlights include lazy-loading post embeds, a new data-wp-on-async directive, and templates in the editor that load approximately 35% faster overall.

AccessibilityThis release includes 58 accessibility fixes and enhancements. These focus on foundational aspects of the WordPress experience, particularly the data views component powering the new site editing experience and areas like the Inserter, which provide a key way of interacting with blocks and patterns.

And much moreVisit the feature showcase for a full overview of all the new features and enhancements in WordPress 6.6.

Check out what’s newLearn more about WordPress 6.6Explore Learn WordPress for quick how-to videos, online workshops, and other free resources to level up your WordPress knowledge and skills.

The WordPress 6.6 Field Guide contains detailed technical information and developer notes to help you build with WordPress and get the most out of this release. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Developer Blog for updates, tutorials, and other helpful WordPress content for developers.

For information about installation, file changes, fixes, and other updates, read the 6.6 release notes.

The 6.6 release squadEvery release comes to you from a dedicated team of enthusiastic contributors who help keep things on track and moving smoothly. The team that has led 6.6 is a cross-functional group of contributors who are always ready to champion ideas, remove blockers, and resolve issues.

Release Lead: Matt Mullenweg
Release Coordinator: Meher Bala
Core Tech Lead: Jb Audras
Editor Tech Leads: Ella van Durpe, Vicente Canales
Core Triage Leads: Olga Gleckler, Nazmul Hasan Robin
Editor Triage Leads: Fabian Kägy, Damon Cook
Documentation Leads: JuanMa Garrido, Jenny Dupuy, Josep Morán
Marketing & Communications Lead: Mary Baum
Test Lead: Anne McCarthy
Design Lead: Rich Tabor
Performance Lead: Adam Silverstein

WordPress 6.6 reflects the tireless efforts and passion of more than 630 contributors in at least 51 countries. This release also welcomed over 150 first-time contributors!

Their collaboration delivered more than 1,900 enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all—a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress open source community.

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More than 60 locales have translated 90 percent or more of WordPress 6.6 into their language. Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps make WordPress available in 200 languages.

Last but not least, thanks to the volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users worldwide.

6.6 haikuSix-point-six is here.
Make it all gorgeous; keep it
On brand, and relax.

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WordPress 6.6 RC3 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, please evaluate RC3 on a test server or a local environment.

Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a worthy achievement. While release candidates are considered ready for release, your testing is still vital to make sure everything in WordPress 6.6 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 6.6 RC3 in four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the RC3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use the this WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.6-RC3 | | WordPress Playground | Use the 6.6 RC3 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. |

Please test WordPress 6.6 RC3 in one or more of these four ways.The target for the WordPress 6.6 release is next Tuesday, July 16, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.6 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.6-related posts in the next few weeks for further details.

What’s in WordPress 6.6 RC3?Thanks to your testing (and many other contributors‘ up to now) this release includes eight bug fixes for the Editor and 18 tickets for WordPress Core.

Get a recap of WordPress 6.6’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC 2, you can browse the following links:

GitHub commits for 6.6 since July 2
Closed Trac tickets since July 2

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? You might want to make your first stop The WordPress 6.6 Field Guide. Then, check out this list:

Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition)
All 6.6-related developer notes

You can contribute. Here’s howWordPress is the world’s most popular open source web platform, thanks to a passionate community of people who collaborate on its development in a wide variety of ways. You can help—whether or not you have any technical expertise.

Get involved in testingTesting for issues is critical to keeping WordPress speedy, stable, and secure. It’s also a vital way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.6. If you’re new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can also report it on WordPress Trac. Before you do either, you may want to check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Search for vulnerabilitiesFrom now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.6 (scheduled for July 9), the financial reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities doubles. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Update your WordPress productIf you build themes, plugins, blocks, or patterns, your efforts play an integral role in adding new functionality to WordPress and helping bring new people and ideas to the most vibrant (and massive!) open source community in the world.

Thanks for continuing to test your products with the WordPress 6.6 betas and release candidates. With RC3, you’ll want to make sure everything is working smoothly, and if it’s a plugin, update the “Tested up to” version in its readme file to 6.6.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Help translate WordPressDo you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本語? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.

The RC3 haikuOne week to go. Then:
Open the paintbox! Try the tools!
Play a new jazz tune.

Props to @meher and @audrasjb. for peer review.

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Discover how Learning Pathways can guide you through your WordPress journey with clarity and purpose. In the latest episode of WordPress Briefing, host Josepha Haden Chomphosy welcomes special guest Wes Theron to discuss the newly introduced Learning Pathways. These curated lesson sets are tailored to various experience levels, roles, and use cases, ensuring a personalized learning experience for every WordPress user.

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Guest: Wes Theron
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes Learn.WordPress.org + Beginner WordPress Developer + Beginner WordPress User * WordPress Playground * Learn WordPress YouTube Playlist * Small List of Big Things* + WordPress 6.5.5 is now available! + WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program Q4 2024 + WordPress 6.6 Official Release - What’s new for theme developers in WordPress 6.6 + Upcoming WordPress Meetings * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

[00:00:28] (Intro music)

[00:00:39] Josepha: As a steward of the WordPress community, one of the big overarching questions that I grapple with is how to make sure people who have just found out about us know how to get around. Obviously, there’s the contributor path, which is important to me because I am especially concerned with the longevity of our little open source community, but there’s also a path for folks who are learning how to use the software.

[00:01:03] Josepha: And so, joining me today to talk through a project called Learning Pathways is Wes Theron. Wes, welcome to the WordPress Briefing.

[00:01:11] Wes: Good day. Thank you very much for having me. It’s a pleasure.

[00:01:13] Josepha: Before we get into this project that we’re talking about, do you want to just tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do with the WordPress project?

[00:01:22] Wes: Yeah. So, as you know, my name is Wes Theron. I’m based in New Zealand, and I’m an instructional designer. And, I am part of the Training Team. So, most of my life revolves around creating learning content for learn.WordPress.org.

[00:01:38] Josepha: Oh, that’s quite a life. Teaching people how to use WordPress.

[00:01:42] Wes: Yeah, I teach WordPress. We run online workshops. I create video tutorials, courses, and now, of course, this great project we’re working on, Learning Pathways.

[00:01:52] Josepha: Yeah. So, I’ve talked about Learning Pathways a few times here on the podcast, but for folks who have not heard me talk about it or who just need a more in-depth understanding, why don’t you tell us a little bit about this project as it stands today?

[00:02:06] Wes: Yeah, so when Learn started out, I think the main goal was to just get learning content on the site. But, in May of last year, we shared an individual learning survey with folks, and we were hoping to basically find out what are the needs of the learners? What are learners after? And from that individual learner survey, we actually learned a few things. We learned that tutorials, courses, and online workshops were the most used content types. We also saw that web-based learning is the most popular learning method. And then there was a clear need for a structured way of consuming learning material. And that’s basically where the Learning Pathways project was born; to create Learning Pathways that basically target various types of learners, but also various skill levels. So July of last year, we started with outlines, creating outlines for these learner pathways.

[00:03:10] Wes: And then, in October of last year, we actually started creating content. So, the first learner pathways we started working on was the User Learning Pathway and the Developer Learning Pathway. And what that entails is of course, creating a Learning Pathway for beginner users, intermediate users, and then advanced users.

So that’s how we kind of broke it up. And last week, the Beginner Developer Pathway was actually published, so that’s very exciting. And a few weeks before that, the Beginner WordPress User Pathway. And yeah, of course, we’ve got many other pathways in the pipeline that we want to work on. For example, a Designer Learning Pathway and even a Contributor Learning Pathway.

[00:03:57] Josepha: Yeah, when we’re talking about pathways, what we mean is, like, we are figuring out what you probably need to know when you first arrive and then helping you to identify what you build on based on what your goals might be.

[00:04:11] Josepha: Like, obviously, the beginner user, the goal is basically just like, learn how to get WordPress doing stuff at all. Like that’s, that’s an easy goal to understand. But when you all were doing the work to figure out what needed to be in the pathway for a beginner developer, and as you’re looking towards doing the work around intermediate and advanced topics, like how are you all able to determine what most likely you need in those various steps in the learning process?

[00:04:42] Wes: So, of course, a lot of research went into that. When we created the outlines for these Learning Pathways. We shared it with the community. We asked for feedback. And yeah, a lot of research was done to make sure we cover all the all the bases.

[00:04:59] Josepha: I know that there were a couple of different proposals about how to, like do skills assessments, maybe? There was something where like we were talking with companies that employ WordPress folks in the ecosystem, and then we were talking to WordPressers who were currently trying to make sure that their skills were advanced enough to get those jobs. And we were trying to figure out like the distance between those and where we actually have some concerns around like the language choices that they need, like basic developer language choices and jargon that goes in there and stuff like that.

[00:05:34] Josepha: So this, if I recall correctly, the research for this has been going on for like maybe two or three years, right?

[00:05:42] Wes: Yeah, definitely. And we’ve reached out to many stakeholders within the WordPress community. And as you say, even agencies, and businesses, you know, trying to find out what do they want people to know when they employ them. And yeah, then of course, speaking to the community, speaking, speaking to folks at WordCamps reaching out to folks an online workshops.

[00:06:04] Wes: So, yeah, it’s definitely been an ongoing process and also seeing what resources are lacking and what needs to be there.

[00:06:12] Josepha: Yeah, so, the very first, the very first iteration of any training that the WordPress project was offering on, I think it was on learn.WordPress.org, but I don’t actually know for sure, was a troubleshooting workshop, because when you are trying to figure out WordPress for the first time, when you are trying to figure out any software for the first time, being able to figure out what went wrong is a really important part of that. And so that was like the only workshop that existed over there for quite some time. And so it’s really nice to see how we have really, not only created a bunch of resources in general, if you all have not looked at learn.WordPress.org lately, it has, like, workshop outlines that you can use to do a training by yourself at your meetup group or at a school or whatever it is.

[00:07:08] Josepha: But then also, I want to say it was maybe two, three years ago, that you all, as a team, the Training Team, started doing these online workshops. And so, when you created the Learning Pathways, considering like how much time and research has gone into this project overall, did you all have learnings that came from those workshops that you had already done? Is this like a collection of workshops or is this something where you can do it at home and learn by yourself and then go someplace else and learn more about WordPress? Like how does that function in what we have already?

[00:07:45] Wes: Yeah, so maybe I should first, maybe let’s define a learning pathway. So I, I thought about this, but a learning pathway, I would say, is a route taken by learner through a range of modules, lessons, and even courses to build knowledge progressively. So it’s similar to a course, but of course usually covers like a specific topic or subject where learning pathways usually have a larger goal.

[00:08:11] Wes: So I wouldn’t say that the online workshops form part of the Learning Pathways project. And maybe I can also clarify that the teacher notes or the lesson plans that you refer to is something that’s also changing going forward.

[00:08:23] Josepha: Oh, good. Because I wrote some of those, and I am not an instructional designer. And so, ha!

[00:08:30] Wes: We’ve actually decided to move away from having two different content types. So, we had tutorials. You know, video tutorials, and we had lesson plans, and as you said, the lesson plans were notes that somebody could use to run an online workshop or to go to a WordCamp or at their local meetup and use that to teach something. But moving forward for Learning Pathways, we are actually just going to have one content type, namely lessons. And then lessons from part of creating a course or lessons from part of creating modules and then Learning Pathways. The other exciting thing, and something we haven’t mentioned, is that at the end of this month, when we launched the Learning Pathways or the first few Learning Pathways, it actually coincides with a website redesign.

[00:09:18] Wes: So, yeah, beyond the lookout, hopefully, learn.WordPress.org is going to have a brand new face at the end, from the end of July or, yeah, or August. So, yeah, that’s very exciting.

[00:09:30] Josepha: Excellent. Excellent. So, you said that these Learning Pathways are part of a larger goal. Is that a goal for your learners or a goal for WordPress? A goal for the team?

[00:09:40] Wes: I would say all of the above.

[00:09:42] Josepha: Goals for everybody. We’re like the Oprah of goals. Don’t come get me, Oprah. That’s all I got to say about it.

[00:09:48] Wes: Yeah, I think for us as a team, at the end of the day, we want folks to be able to use the content and find the content and utilize all the learning material on learn.WordPress.org. And then, of course, at the end of the day, for learners, we want folks to be able to succeed in whatever they are trying to do. Is it to build their own website? Is it to maybe find a job as a developer? And. Yeah, I mean, the list can go on.

[00:10:21] Josepha: Yeah. So, on the subject of wanting to help people succeed, I think that as far as I hear from the majority of contributors that I have worked with over the years, like helping other people figure out how to do this and making sure that they can succeed is always something that is top of mind for contributors to open source probably in general, but definitely to WordPress. Like, we really care about helping other people figure out how to have the same sort of benefits that we’ve had in the project and with the software. So if you have somebody who is familiar with all the bits and pieces of WordPress and really, really want to like show up and help teach some things. Is it the case that they can take part in like running a Learning Pathway? Is it something where we mostly need people to help us build some content? Like if we’ve got people who are just desperate to help other people succeed in WordPress, what kinds of things can they show up and help do on this project?

[00:11:22] Wes: Yes, please come to the Training Team. There are many ways to get involved. If you just want to review content, you can do that. But yeah, we do have a need for content creators, folks, you know, creating a video lesson or putting their hand up and saying, I will actually create an entire module or an entire learning, a Learning Pathway. We do have some awesome contributors that’s part of the Training Team that are already doing that. Some people are writing scripts. Some folks are actually, you know, creating everything from the beginning to the end. So they are writing the script, they recording the video, publishing the video, et cetera. And then we’ve, of course, have people reviewing content. We’ve got folks running online workshops. If maybe creating video content is not their, is not their forte, they can can run online workshops. So yeah, many ways getting involved.

[00:12:16] Wes: But Josepha, I wanted to point something else out that I haven’t done. I think there was a real need for Learning Pathways because, at the moment, if somebody new to WordPress or new to developing with WordPress wants to find learning content. You know, where do they go? What’s the main platform to go to? I think most people probably go to YouTube, right? But a lot of the content there are, are scattered and fragmented.

So a lot of learning material or learning about WordPress is all over the place. It’s not in one place. And as I said, a place where you can actually learn from A to Z, learn progressively learning in a structured way. Yes, we know there are courses available that you can pay for, but the awesome thing about this project is that we are providing these Learning Pathways, these learning resources, for free for folks to be able to work through at their own time. I know that’s something else you asked earlier on. So yes, this is a course in quotation marks; this is a Learning Pathway that somebody can start whenever it suits them, you know, in the comfort of their own home, and they can work through the Learning Pathway from the beginning to the end. Or, if they feel I actually know everything taught in module one and two, I’m going to start at module three, they can do that. They basically come in at their skill level.

[00:13:43] Josepha: Yes. I think it’s really important to try to meet people where they are. And I know that it’s difficult because, like, we don’t take a lot of data from our users. You don’t have to give us basically anything in order to use WordPress. And by basically, I mean you literally don’t have to give us anything to use WordPress.

[00:14:01] Josepha: And so we always have some difficulty in figuring out what is it that our users need the most in order to succeed the quickest. And so I agree that there was a real need for this not only because, like, there’s plenty of content for getting from, like, some knowledge to a good amount of knowledge. There’s almost no content around, like, I didn’t know CMSs existed until yesterday, and now I need to quickly learn how to do it because it’s become a thing I need to do in my job. There’s some really clear, like use cases for being able to onboard quickly and progressively.

And I understand that, like, having a clear, structured way to learn doesn’t always fit with the idea of meeting people where they are. But I do really think that, that like what you were saying, it can be as structured as you need it to be. But also, if you get into it and you think to yourself, you know, I know this information already. I can move on to the next module. I can move on to the module after that. Similar to the way we do that at WordCamps also. If you get into a session and you thought it was going to be useful for you, and you discover that it’s not once you’re there, you don’t have to stay. You can go to a different room where they’re teaching about SEO if it turns out that you don’t need to learn about JavaScript today.

[00:15:23] Josepha: And I think that that’s, it’s kind of the value that this is hoping to bring, like, because it is a little bit built one on top of the other when you discover that you have already learned something, you can easily try out the next step and know that it’s probably a good next step.

[00:15:38] Wes: Exactly. And if you maybe want to teach this to other folks. The plan is to, you know, we had lesson plans. We have a lot of lesson plans on Learn. But the plan is also to, instead of having, as I said, two different content types, is to have lessons but then add a tab where you can click on teacher notes and actually teach something as well if that is your goal. But yes, our lessons and modules also include quizzes and, hopefully, some practical activities. We’ve incorporated WordPress Playground where, where folks can actually, you know, test out what they’ve learned or test their knowledge. So yeah, I agree with you that you can basically join the Learning Pathway wherever you feel the most comfortable.

[00:16:28] Josepha: So we’ve been kind of in the weeds of the project itself, the program itself, and if you want to like do stuff with that and in that. Let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about just what people who are wanting to join those pathways would need to know. Do you have any advice for somebody who is just today learning about these Learning Pathways and they think to themselves, I definitely want to sign up for one of those. Like, for one, how do they get started? And for two, your like top two or three bits of advice for as they get started?

[00:17:05] Wes: So you can make your way to learn.WordPress.org, and you can basically open the, the pathway, and you can start wherever, wherever you want to. We have made it possible to actually view these pathways or our content without logging in with your dot org profile. The other thing I also wanted to mention is that our content is actually hosted on YouTube now.

So the great thing is we have these pathways within YouTube as well. So, folks can go to the, YouTube channel and see our content. And, of course, that basically reaches a very wide audience. And hopefully some of those videos will also bring people to the dot org site so that they can access the content.

[00:17:57] Josepha: I think it’s great that you don’t have to sign up for a profile. If you are a brand new WordPresser and ran into this in your dashboard and are listening to this podcast now. So dot org profiles are a place where you can kind of log your activity in the WordPress community and the WordPress project. You do not have to have one in order to use WordPress. You don’t have to have one in order to look at these courses or to learn from them. But I always think that it’s kind of nice to get your profile set up so that people kind of know who you are and what you’re doing. And then also your activity shows up. Like, you can see that you enrolled in the course and you get to know for yourself that you made some progress. I know that when you’re getting started, it’s hard to, like, see your progress because you don’t know how far you have to go. And so, like progress when you’re starting out is really difficult to feel is real. And so I like it just so that you have a few reminders to yourself, like, look how far I’ve come as you’re trying to figure out how far you still have to go. And so I like that a lot.

[00:18:58] Wes: You won’t be able to access all the content on Learn without your dot org profile. But one of the things we’ve made possible is to access these Learning Pathways, the new ones being launched without, you know, removing those blockers. So, of course, when you work through a Learning Pathway, you will be able to track your progress, and you will be able to see which lessons you have completed. So yeah, one of the pieces of advice I would give to somebody starting with the Learning Pathways actually to first go through the modules. And go through the lessons to see which things you know and feel comfortable with so that you don’t waste time maybe going through the first module and say, oh, I know this, and you’ve wasted time. Rather do a bit of research, a bit of reading, and then find the right place for you to start the journey.

[00:19:45] Josepha: That’s excellent. I also, just as a learner, I try to always learn some stuff. And also, as you get older, it’s harder and harder to learn things partially because like you’re in a set path, but also, and here’s my advice to new learners: you worry about looking foolish. Like you, you worry, you’re showing up, and you don’t know anything about anybody else in the classroom. And so there’s this feeling of like, what if I’m the only person who does not know how to make this work? What if I’m the only person who can’t figure out what Wes meant by “Playground” or whatever it is? There’s this real feeling of looking silly when you’re doing something like this.

[00:20:25] Josepha: I can’t control what anybody else says or does to anyone else, unfortunately. But what I can say is that I think that there’s never a bad time to start something you wish you had done, right? Like, the best time to have learned how to use your CMS, your website, make your website work was probably a year ago or something, but the second best time is today. And so, like, why not go ahead and get started and be part of that small group of adults that are learning new things every single day? I think that’s great. And so that’s my tip is to just embrace looking silly sometimes because you’re making some choices about your future, and that’s always a good choice.

[00:21:04] Wes: And I would also say test your knowledge. So you’ve mentioned WordPress Playground. And as I said, we’ve incorporated into the Learning Pathways, but sometimes you watch a video, or you read something, and you feel like, oh yeah, I know this, but you know, the proof is in the pudding. So go and test it out. Use a test website or use WordPress Playground and test yourself to see if you can actually implement this or do something. So yeah, that’s definitely one of the other tips I want to highlight; you know, they also say you, you learn by doing.

[00:21:38] Josepha: Yeah, absolutely. And also, like if you have gotten to a point you’ve done the learning, you’ve done some practicing, you think you’ve got it and want to like try to figure out what other things can be done with it. I recommend this is how I did a lot of my early WordPress learning to organize an event with your local meetup.

Like, I did not know enough about WordPress when I started organizing WordPress meetups. I literally knew nothing. And I basically brought people in and was like, hey, we need people to teach us about this, us being half me. Come in and teach us. And, and that can be a really good thing, partially because, like, you get to know your local folks and see what’s going on and get a sense for, like, what is out there, especially if you’re learning this in order to run a business or to accomplish something for your job that you already have, like knowing what’s out there is super helpful. But then I find that once you embrace the fact that sometimes you will look silly, and that’s the only way that we can know we’re learning something. Like once you’ve embraced it, having some people who are willing to look a little silly with you is kind of, kind of fun, kind of nice. Also, like we’re all going to look at this problem that we definitely don’t understand and hopefully look like, at the end, we know what we’re doing, but between looking at it the first time and at the end of this meetup, we’re all going to look a little bit silly, ask silly questions. And I think that that’s a really helpful thing, too. But yeah, knowing some basic information is a great place to start before you do that, especially if you get anxious about looking silly. And I think these pathways are going to really help to get folks a little bit of a leg up on those big questions that they have as you’re starting to learn how to use WordPress.

[00:23:18] Josepha: So we talked about, like, tips and tricks for learners in general. But if you had something that you wanted to share with us that, like, you’re really excited about for either the Training Team or for the Learning Pathways in general, I think the Learning Pathways are slated to be shipped by, like, end of September or something. So, like, a lot of them are coming quite quickly.

[00:23:38] Wes: So I am most excited about the website redesign and the new look and feel of the website. And also, you know, one of the goals for us as a Training Team is for learn.WordPress.org to be one of the places people come to and learn about WordPress. And I feel these Learning Pathways and the new website redesign and all the hard work that’s gone into this project is hopefully going to, make that happen. As I said, our content is also available on YouTube. So we’ve really tried to make it easy for folks to find our content and also now to digest our content in a progressive and in a structured way. Because, you know, learning is hard. And hopefully, these Learning Pathways have made it easier for folks to, as you said, to build on your knowledge. You know, a lot of times, there’s knowledge gaps. And I think that’s what makes learning so hard. And hopefully with these pathways, you can build that knowledge one step at a time.

[00:24:44] Josepha: Yeah. And as is the way with open source, like we can only make these pieces of content better if you all show up and help us like try it out, learn some stuff, and tell us what was confusing. Tell us what was too big a step. Cause yeah, you’re right. There are some knowledge gaps and when you’re on the other side of knowing something, it is so hard to tell how big a step is, you know?

[00:25:11] Wes: Exactly.

[00:25:12] Josepha: And so we need y’all to come in here and tell us very plainly as a new learner like that was eventually what I needed, but this part here was especially confusing. This part over here was too like too many little steps like we just we’re trying to make sure that it works for you WordPressers, future WordPressers of the world. And so yeah, come build some learning with us over here on the Training Team.

[00:25:35] Wes: And yes, please, we want feedback because, as you say, as we iterate, we want to improve. So there will be a place where you can provide feedback, and at the end of the pathway where there will also be a satisfaction survey for folks to to complete.

[00:25:50] Josepha: Great. Well, folks, we’re gonna have a bunch of links in the show notes. There’s so much stuff out here to learn with and about WordPress. Wes, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:26:01] Wes: Thank you for having me. And I will see you all on Learn.

[00:26:05] (Music interlude)

[00:26:12] Josepha: That brings us now to our small list of big things. Although I have to say we have a bunch of links that we’re going to share in the show notes. If you’re listening to this in a place where there are not show notes, you can head over to WordPress.org/news. That’s where we keep all of those. If you are lucky, we also will help you find it on Twitter/X, but I think that it’s hard to find things over there these days. So WordPress.org/news is your best bet. Now, it is time for the small list of big things.

So, first up on my list is that WordPress 6.5.5 is now available. It’s got a few fixes in it, some maintenance things and some security fixes as well. I recommend that you update your sites immediately. You can download it from WordPress.org/download, or you can just visit your WordPress dashboard. If you’re on a managed host, they may have already done this for you, too. But auto-updates, manual updates, CLI updates. However, you want to get it done, get it done. But it is recommended to do this as soon as possible. 6.5.5.

[00:27:16] Josepha: The second thing on my list is that the WordPress Contributor Mentorship program has a call for interest out. This is a program that we launched about a year ago as well. And we had such a good bit of success at the end of the first round in February that there was significant interest in doing another cohort. So, that program connects seasoned WordPress contribution experts with folks who are new to contributing and offer a fantastic opportunity for mentees to gain hands-on experience contributing to WordPress while their mentors share their expertise and improve their leadership skills. So, most of the time, what you are going to be contributing to is probably a release of WordPress, but there are also a lot of opportunities to contribute to things like the Training Team that we’ve been talking about today and other teams as well. Not everything is focused all around our release cycle. We have things happening in the WordPress project literally all the time. It is a project that never sleeps.

[00:28:17] Josepha: Speaking of projects that never sleep, our next official release, our second release of the year, is coming out. WordPress 6.6 is coming out just about a week from now. It is the second major release of 2024 and has a lot of things in it that you will want to check out. If you have not yet seen the hallway hangout where we take a look at what was happening in the release, what we intended to get into the release, take a look at it. And if you haven’t tested it yet, if you are one of our plugin developers, if you are building something on top of WordPress core, now is the time to check that out and test it against your products.

And then the final thing is that it’s a new month, my friends. Here we are in July, and we have a ton of things happening in the project. That’s the theme of my small list of big things: the project that never sleeps. But we have a lot of team meetings that are happening. If you haven’t attended one in a while or even if you have never attended one of these meetings and you were trying to figure out when to start, now is as good a time as any. You can join your fellow community members and contribute to the WordPress project. And there are ways that you can do that from home and from your computer and for some parts of the project, like from your phone, if you are taking photos out and about and submitting those. So check out make.WordPress.org/meetings. It’ll give you a sense for everything that’s happening. Do not get overwhelmed by that calendar. You can just choose which team you think is most interesting to you.

[00:29:45] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Your small list of never-sleeping things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

[00:30:15] (Music outro)

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WordPress 6.6 RC2 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, please evaluate RC2 on a test server or a local environment.

You can test WordPress 6.6 RC2 in four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the RC2 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use the this WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.6-RC2 | | WordPress Playground | Use the 6.6 RC2 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. |

Please test WordPress 6.6 RC2 in one or more of these four ways.The target for the WordPress 6.6 release is July 16, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.6 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.6-related posts in the next few weeks for further details.

What’s in WordPress 6.6 RC2?Thanks to your testing and many other contributors‘ up to now, this release includes more than 19 bug fixes for the Editor and more than 20 tickets for WordPress Core.

Get a recap of WordPress 6.6’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement. For more technical information related to issues addressed since Beta 3, you can browse the following links:

GitHub commits for 6.6 since June 25
Closed Trac tickets since June 25

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? You might want to make your first stop The WordPress 6.6 Field Guide. Then, check out this list:

Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition)
Hallway Hangout: Section styles and other block style variation updates
Recap Hallway Hangout: Exploring Grid Layouts
Editing custom fields from connected blocks
Updates to the Interactivity API in 6.6
All 6.6-related developer notes

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Update your theme or pluginIf you build themes, plugins, blocks, or patterns, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your products with the WordPress 6.6 beta releases. With RC2, you’ll want to finish your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.6.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Release the haiku6.6 draws near.
In two weeks the final’s here.
Test. Test. Then test more.

Props to @juanmaguitar, @meher, @desrosj and @atachibana for peer review.

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The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.6 is ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, please evaluate RC1 on a test server or a local environment.

Reaching this phase of the release cycle is a worthy achievement. While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing is still vital to make sure everything in WordPress 6.6 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 6.6 RC1 in four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the RC1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use the this WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.6-RC1 | | WordPress Playground | Use the 6.6 RC1 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. |

Please test WordPress 6.6 RC1 in one or more of these four ways.The current target for the WordPress 6.6 release is July 16, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.6 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.6-related posts in the next few weeks for further details.

Two notes about changes in the RC periodHard string freeze: From now until July 16, there is a hard string freeze in place—no strings may change, and no new strings may be committed. That’s to give the Polyglots team time to translate WordPress 6.6 into as many languages as possible before final release.

Two-committer signoff: Commits in the RC period also require two Core committers to sign off on every merge. Since release candidates are supposed to be ready to go, only major fixes and blessed tasks should merge at this late date.

What’s in WordPress 6.6 RC1?Thanks to your testing and many other contributors‘ up to now, this release includes more than 40 bug fixes for the Editor and more than 40 tickets for WordPress Core.

Get a recap of WordPress 6.6’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement. For more technical information related to issues addressed since Beta 3, you can browse the following links:

GitHub commits for 6.6 since June 18
Closed Trac tickets since June 18

Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? These recent posts cover some of the latest updates:

WordPress 6.6 CSS Specificity
Site-wide background images in WordPress 6.6
Section Styles
Roster of design tools per block (WordPress 6.6 edition)
The WordPress 6.6 Field Guide
All 6.6-related developer notes

How you can contributeWordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people who collaborate on and contribute to to its development. The resources below outline a wide variety of ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, whether or not you have any technical expertise.

Get involved in testingTesting for issues is critical to making sure WordPress is speedy and stable. It’s also a vital way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.6. If you’re new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Search for vulnerabilitiesFrom now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.6 (scheduled for July 16), the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities doubles. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Update your theme or pluginIf you build themes, plugins, blocks or patterns, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.6 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to finish your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.6.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Release the haikuWe’re here already?
RC1 means three weeks left.
Have some fun—come test!

Props to @meher, @audrasjb for collaborating on this post.

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WordPress 6.5.5 is now available!This release features three security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. This minor release also includes 3 bug fixes in Core.

You can download WordPress 6.5.5 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

WordPress 6.5.5 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.6 which is scheduled for July 16, 2024.

For more information on WordPress 6.5.5, please visit the HelpHub site.

Security updates included in this releaseThe security team would like to thank the following people for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities, and allowing them to be fixed in this release:

A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability affecting the HTML API reported by Dennis Snell of the WordPress Core Team, along with Alex Concha and Grzegorz (Greg) Ziółkowski of the WordPress security team.
A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability affecting the Template Part block reported independently by Rafie Muhammad of Patchstack and during a third party security audit.
A path traversal issue affecting sites hosted on Windows reported independently by Rafie M & Edouard L of Patchstack, David Fifield, x89, apple502j, and mishre.

Thank you to these WordPress contributorsThis release was led by Aaron Jorbin.

WordPress 6.5.5 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance and security fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, Alex Concha, Andrew Ozz, bernhard-reiter, Colin Stewart, David Baumwald, Dennis Snell, Grant M. Kinney, Greg Ziółkowski, Jb Audras, Jonathan Desrosiers, Matias Ventura, Miguel Fonseca, Peter Wilson, Rajin Sharwar, Scott Reilly, Tonya Mork

How to contributeTo get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core Slack channel. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

Already testing WordPress 6.6? The fourth beta is now available (zip) and it contains these security fixes. For more on 6.6, see the beta 3 announcement post. Learn more about testing WordPress 6.6 here.

Props to Paul Kevan, Ehtisham Siddiqui, Alex Concha, Tonya Mork, and Angela Jin for reviewing.

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Big events create big moments, and WordCamp Europe 2024 was no exception. Join host Josepha Haden Chomphosy on this episode of the WordPress Briefing as she shares her top insights and favorite highlights from the event. Discover what the WordPress community focused on during this exciting three-day gathering.

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes WordCamp Europe * Small List of Big Things* + WordPress 6.6 RC1 (and upcoming schedule) + WordPress Project Contributor Handbook v2 + The Sustainability Team’s Handbook for Events is here! + Volunteering at WordCamp US 2024 * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

[00:00:28] (Intro music)

[00:00:40] Josepha: My friends, another WordCamp Europe is in the books. We had the second-highest number of tickets sold in the history of our event series, with the first being WordCamp Europe in Berlin. But even with that number of tickets sold, that number of people gathering together to talk about WordPress and related things, there were still a lot of people who didn’t get to join us.

[00:01:01] Josepha: For some, that came with experiencing FOMO, but some of you embraced the JOMO of it all. Either way, at this point, there are a good collection of wrap-ups and round-ups going around, so I’m here to tell you a bit about what was buzzing in the hallway track.

Firstly, everyone was so excited to see old friends and make new ones. Everywhere I turned, I saw WordPressers in clusters catching up, most included new to the crew faces. So we know that we were using the Pac-Man rule that we love so much. But even while they were catching up on the last two, three, four years, they were also talking to each other about how to get more folks to things like this.

Since we all generally agree that your first time meeting other WordPressers can be a truly pivotal moment in your WordPress journey, it was a delight to hear so much brainstorming focused on that. From mentorship to community introduction and the future of our events, the question of how to keep our ecosystem healthy and thriving was a big topic. Does any one of us have all the answers to this? No, but fortunately, we’ve got a global set of thinkers working on this global question. So, together, I’m sure we can come up with some good guesses to try out.

[00:02:21] Josepha: Secondly, I saw a ton of talks and discussions about career development, not only about how to learn more but also how to be a champion for open source in your company, how to advocate for contribution as a best business practice. And what other communities can teach us about how they commit to their user’s continuing education, for lack of a friendlier term.

And boy, do I love a good conversation about how to make working in open source easier, make it more meaningful, and more impactful. I’m in favor of anything that helps to dignify our profession. The front-facing, easy-to-use experience of WordPress, in particular, has been misunderstood to mean that we are a simple piece of software for simple tasks. And that is the way with our mission really. If we succeed at democratizing publishing or learning or commerce for that matter, we are taking the arcane and making it mundane. But simple to use doesn’t mean simple to create. And I want all of our future employers and clients to see that.

[00:03:24] Josepha: And then the final thing that I saw lighting up the hallway track was the idea of bringing life and excitement back to the web. WordPress has been fighting against closed systems for a long time, but as Matt alluded to in his keynote, merely having an open web is still not quite as fun as having an active and dynamic one. And we saw that both in general desire to bring fun back to being online, but also in the fresh variety of demos and workshops that we saw in the fun that was brought to the event. There were new and shocking implementations of Playground, I must say. Which, as far as I can tell, will basically be able to run everything one day.

[00:04:03] Josepha: But at WordCamp Europe, it ran; it powered our second massive hybrid translation event, where we translated something like 50,000 strings. We also had an amazing speed-building duel with an accepted future challenge between Jessica Lychik and Matt Mullenweg. And not for nothing; the way we designed; the way the event area was put together included ways to stop and just have fun.

There was a little grassy area with yard games and smaller pods of chairs for those quick hallway catch-ups that you just don’t get anywhere else. And for me, it was simply lovely to see everyone embracing the fun that was there, but also hearing about how much they wanted to help the web embrace the fun that could be.

[00:04:48] (Music interlude)

[00:04:55] Josepha: Thanks for listening to my hallway track recap. Hopefully, it caused JOMO, not FOMO. And now, let’s turn our attention to the small list of big things.

[00:05:05] Josepha: First thing on my list is WordPress 6.6 update. So we are reaching the release candidate phase tomorrow. WordPress 6.6 RC1 will be released, so download and join the community helping us to get this release out the door. It is scheduled for July 16th. If you have plugins or themes or any sort of business that uses WordPress, now is the time to get in and test it on a test site. I don’t recommend putting it in production at any point, but come and test it. Help us break it so that we can make sure that it doesn’t break for other people, for the, you know, 43% of the web that uses it when we get it out the door on the 16th.

The second thing on the list is that we have a WordPress Project Contributor Handbook V2 out there. It aims to be the quintessential resource for everyone in our community. And it will provide a bird’s eye view of where to find key information and different aspects of our community. How it all kind of connects together. And, just like a release, we really need some feedback from you. There is the repo on GitHub where you can go and kind of make inline comments, join the discussion about it. It can be a go-to resource if we look at it together and make sure that it has as much information as clearly stated as you wished you had when you were learning your way around WordPress for the first time.

[00:06:27] Josepha: The third thing on the list is actually another handbook. So, the Sustainability Team has put together a handbook specifically for events. It’s their first version, and over the past few months, members of that team have been sharing their ideas and experiences on how WordPress community events can be held more sustainably. All this input created a first draft, which eventually became this first version. And so we’ll put a link in the show notes, wander over there, take a look at it, see what some best practices for sustainable events are in the WordPress ecosystem.

[00:07:02] Josepha: And then the final thing on my list is about WordCamp US. I realize this is a podcast about WordCamp Europe right now. And so it’s odd to think that I’m moving right along into WordCamp US. However, there is a deadline coming up. July 1st is the last day to sign up to be a volunteer at this event. It’s taking place this year in Portland, Oregon, on the west side of the US. And it should be a really fun time. It’s middle of September. Come on out there. Learn about WordPress. Learn about contribution. Maybe get some voodoo donuts. You know, the important things.

And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I am your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

[00:08:06] (Music outro)

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WordPress 6.6 Beta 3 is here! Please download and test it.

This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites—you risk unexpected results if you do.

Instead, test Beta 3 on a local site or a testing environment in any of these four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the Beta 3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use this WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.6-beta3 | | WordPress Playground | Use a 6.6 Beta 3 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. This might be the easiest way ever—no separate sites, no setup. Just click and go! |

Four ways to test WordPress Beta 3.The target release date for WordPress 6.6 is July 16, 2024. Your help testing Beta and RC versions over the next four weeks is vital to making sure the final release is everything it should be: stable, powerful, and intuitive.

If you find an issueIf you run into an issue, please share it in the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so via WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

The bug bounty doubles in the beta periodThe WordPress community sponsors a financial reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities. That reward doubles between Beta 1, which landed June 4, and the final Release Candidate (RC), which will happen July 9. Please follow the project’s responsible-disclosure practices detailed on this HackerOne page and in this security white paper.

The work continuesCatch up with what’s new in 6.6: check out the Beta 1 announcement for the highlights.

Beta 3 packs in more than 50 updates to the Editor since the Beta 2 release, including 39 tickets for WordPress core:

GitHub commits for 6.6 since June 11
Closed Trac tickets since June 11

The beta cycle is all about fixing the bugs you find in testing.

Do you build themes? Feedback from testing has already prompted a change in the way you offer style variations to your users.

In Beta 1, if you made preset style variations for your theme, it automatically generated a full set of color-only and type-only options your users could mix and match across the different variations.

In Beta 3, your theme no longer generates those options automatically—you do. So you can present a simpler set of choices, curated to guide users’ efforts to more pleasing results. For more insight into the rationale, see this discussion.

Thanks again for this all-important contribution to WordPress!

Props to @meher, @rmartinezduque, @atachibana, and @mobarak for collaboration and review.

A Beta 3 haikuBeta ends at 3
One more week, then comes RC
When we freeze the strings!

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2,584 attendees participated in the 12th annual WordPress event in Europe, held at the Lingotto Conference and Exhibition Centre in Torino, Italy.

The Mole Antonelliana in Torino, illuminated to celebrate WordCamp Europe 2024From June 13-15, 2024, WordPress enthusiasts from across the globe gathered in Torino to explore and celebrate the world’s most popular web platform. A dedicated team of 250 volunteers, led by WordCamp veterans Wendie Huis in ‘t Veld, Juan Hernando, and Takis Bouyouris, organized and produced the event.

Impact in Action on Contributor DayContributor Day brought together 726 contributors working across 25 teams to support the WordPress project. Their accomplishments included translating 79,059 “strings” for the WordPress user interface across 29 languages, updating documentation for the forthcoming 6.6 release, onboarding new contributors for the support forums and testing teams, and identifying ways to improve plugin security.

Contributors gathering during WCEU 2024 Contributor DaySustainable open source is the futureKeynote presenters, Joost de Valk and Juliette Reinders FolmerJoost de Valk and Juliette Reinders Folmer delivered the event’s opening keynote address on sustaining open source software projects. Their keynote covered funding open source, contributing beyond code, and convincing buyers in commercial enterprises that open source is a viable alternative to proprietary platforms.

Two days of engaging sessionsFriday and Saturday saw 60 presentations and workshops held across three tracks. Topics included WordPress development, accessibility, design, business, community, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity.

Speed Build SessionConnect SeriesA youth workshop gave younger attendees hands-on opportunities to build WordPress websites, explore new tech, and learn about internet safety. Meanwhile, a wellness-themed track included yoga lessons and walking tours of Torino, encouraging attendees to step away from their screens and explore the beauty of this year’s host city.

Mid-year project updateWordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg shared a mid-year project update on WordPress and concluded by fielding questions from the audience on various topics, from Gutenberg Phases to the WordPress Playground, and acknowledging a request to escalate a bug fix.

Matt’s presentation highlighted the success of the contributor mentorship program and WCEU Contributor Day, demoed Translate Live, and shared an update on the Data Liberation initiative.

Matt also covered the latest innovations with WordPress Playground, highlighted performance gains, and previewed features anticipated in future releases, like rollbacks for auto-updates and zoomed-out view.

WordPress Cofounder Matt MullenwegAcknowledging an exciting new trend in the WordPress community, Mullenweg discussed “speed build challenges,” where onlookers watch WordPress experts build websites in real-time, showcasing tips, shortcuts, and best practices. One such event took place during a WCEU session, and in the Q&A portion of Matt’s presentation, he was invited to participate in one–an invitation he accepted!

Matt reflected on WordPress reaching its 21st anniversary since he and Mike Little launched the first version in 2003. He shared 11 things to ensure that WordPress remains sustainable for decades to come:

Simple things should be easy and intuitive, and complex things possible.
Blogs and dynamic sites are better.
Documentation should be wiki-easy to edit.
Forums should be front and center.
Plugins and themes with community infrastructure.
Great theme previews and diverse aesthetics.
We can’t over-index for guidelines and requirements.
Feedback loops are so important.
Core should be opinionated and quirky.
If you make WordPress, use WordPress.
Stay close to our end-users

Watch Matt’s project update on the WordPress YouTube channelClosing remarksIn their closing remarks, the event organizers expressed gratitude for the endorsements of the European Parliament, the city of Torino, and Turismo Torino, the regional tourism board. The volunteer team was celebrated for their hard work in producing the event.

Closing out a robust three days of programming, the organizing team announced that WordCamp Europe 2025 would be held in Basel, Switzerland, from June 5 to 7, 2025. The announcement was met with hearty applause and plans to meet in a year’s time.

Attendees gather for a photo at WCEU in TorinoStay connectedWordPress events enable technologists, open source enthusiasts, and community members around the globe to meet, share ideas, and collaborate to drive WordPress and the open web forward.

Mark your calendars for WordCamp US (Portland, Oregon, United States), State of the Word (Tokyo), and next year’s WordCamp Asia in Manila!

This post is a collaboration between the contributors who produce content for wordpress.org/news and the WordCamp Europe Communications team.

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WordPress 6.6 Beta 2 is here! Please download and test it.

Instead, test Beta 2 on a local site or a testing environment in any of these four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the Beta 2 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use this WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.6-beta2 | | WordPress Playground | Use a 6.6 Beta 2 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. This might be the easiest way ever—no separate sites, no setup. Just click and go! |

Three ways to test WordPress Beta 2.The target release date for WordPress 6.6 is July 16, 2024. Your help testing Beta and RC versions over the next five weeks is vital to making sure the final release is everything it should be: stable, powerful, and intuitive.

The bug bounty doubles in the beta periodThe WordPress community sponsors a financial reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities. That reward doubles between Beta 1, which landed June 4, and the final Release Candidate (RC) that will happen July 9. Please follow the project’s responsible-disclosure practices detailed on this HackerOne page and in this security white paper.

The work continuesCatch up with what’s new in 6.6: check out the Beta 1 announcement for the highlights.

Beta 2 packs in more than 50 updates to the Editor since the Beta 1 release, including 40+ tickets for WordPress core:

GitHub commits for 6.6 since June 4
Closed Trac tickets since June 4

The beta cycle is all about fixing the bugs you find in testing. Thanks again for this vitally important contribution to WordPress!

Props to @priethor, @dansoschin, @davidb, @atachibana, @meher, @webcommsat, and @juanmaguitar for collaboration and review.

A Beta 2 haikuTesting is vital:
It makes everything better.
Let’s find all the bugs!

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Get ready to dive into the vibrant world of WordCamps with this special episode of the WordPress Briefing, hosted by Josepha Haden Chomphosy! This episode is designed for first-time attendees; we’ll explore what to expect, from Contributor Day activities to mastering the art of socializing and networking. Whether you’re aiming to contribute to the WordPress community or simply looking to make new connections, this episode will help you navigate your first WordCamp with confidence and excitement. Join us for a fun and informative guide to ensure you’re prepared and energized for all the activities these dynamic events have to offer.

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes WordCamp Asia * WordCamp Europe * WordCamp US * Upcoming Smaller WordCamps * Learn WordPress
Small List of Big Things* + Gender Equality in WordPress Businesses Survey + WordCamp Asia 2025: Dates and Venue Revealed + Try the Contributor Wizard Questionnaire + Five for the Future Program Updates: May 2024 * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

[00:00:28] (Intro Music)

[00:00:40] Josepha: A pivotal moment in my WordPress journey was when someone invited me to a WordCamp. I was sort of aware of WordPress, but certainly not aware of the community or the ways of open source. And when I look back, there were a few things I wish I had known going in. I am, of course, an unapologetic extrovert and therefore unstoppable at events, but if you are headed to your first WordCamp and are feeling a little nervous or confused, then pop in some earbuds because the next 10 minutes are for you.

[00:01:11] Josepha: We’re going to first take a look at some basic tactical things about WordCamps, and then I’m going to tell you a few, like, human things about being a human going to events. If you’re a dog going to these events, I think that your prep is different, but also that is not my area of expertise. So the first thing, some tactical stuff about going to WordCamps. All of this happens before you even get in the front door. And so this is stuff that you can do in the comfort of your own home, on your own time, using your own computer. If you’ve got questions, you’ve got a search engine nearby to take some quick searches. Make sure you know what you’re talking about.

But first things first, the shape of a WordCamp. All WordCamps have at least one day of talks, one social event, and sponsors to connect to. Some also have extra events that you need to sign up for, like Contributor Days, workshops, things like that. But we’ll start with the main event, right? We’re going to start with the day of talks and things.

[00:02:09] Josepha: So when we’re looking at the main event of a WordCamp, what you should do is you should head to the WordCamp’s website and check out the schedule. I suggest that you plan for two, maybe three things that you might want to learn and look around at the schedule to see if there are any presenters or presentations that look like they fit those things that you think you might want to learn. Because if it’s not working for you, if it’s not teaching you something, then you don’t necessarily need to be in that one. Even if you’re not sure about a session a talk that you’re planning to go to, I recommend that you stop by, and then if you find out that it’s not for you, you can leave again. That’s fine. But I do encourage you to go to at least one thing that feels a little bit outside of your comfort zone. Even if you feel lost right now. It at least gives you an idea of what to search for once you do get to that point. I would never have known the things to search for early on in my learning of WordPress without going to at least one or two sessions that were just way over my head.

[00:03:14] Josepha: Second thing is don’t forget to check when lunch is available. And if you have dietary restrictions, let them know ahead of time. I realize this sounds silly, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t focus when I’m hungry. But also, it’s really a great, low-stakes networking time, and I think one of the overlooked networking times as well. I mean, everyone’s gotta eat, right? And it’s easier to strike up a conversation over a meal than just out of thin air or, you know, in the middle of a presentation when you’re supposed to be listening to a talk. So yeah, check out when lunch is happening! And yeah, make a friend or two, sit down at a table, and ask somebody what they’re doing with WordPress and how long they’ve been doing it.

And the third thing that I would recommend that you do when you’re looking at kind of the main event for a WordCamp is to schedule in time to wander around and meet the event sponsors. They are all experts in some WordPress problem or other, so probably they have a solution to a problem that you have got. But they’re also how we keep our prices super low, so even if you have no problems or you think you have no problems. Still, check them out. They’re also staffed with wonderful people that are building really cool stuff with WordPress and so you might just get some inspiration out there.

[00:04:28] Josepha: Now for the side events.

So the side events, we’re going to kind of start close to the main event and work our way out. So you’ve got generally three types of side events if you don’t count the networking things, which, in this case, I’m not. But just know that almost every WordCamp has some networking event, either an after-party or, like, a happy hour, a social that happens before the event.

You’ll get emails about those if you have signed up for updates on the website. Also, you can look on the website directly. Just check out the schedule. Always go to those. The networking is the best at a WordCamp. But the side events—we’re talking about specific types. Like I said, we’re going to start close and work our way out.

[00:05:11] Josepha: So, workshops. These are just what they sound like. They’re classroom-style opportunities to practice the things you’ve learned at meetup events or on learn.WordPress.org, depending on how you found your way to this WordCamp. They mostly happen during the WordCamp itself. in a separate track, and there are like stacks of workshops in that track in that series of sessions. But a lot of them do require preregistration simply so that the trainer has an idea of how many people to expect. Again, if you get in the workshop and it’s way over your head, you feel like you absolutely cannot get it done, you’re always welcome to leave and check out some other area. But, in general, the workshops that we have WordCamps are pretty solid.

So a little bit further removed from that are our Youth and Teen Days. So this is more of an event series that is specifically designed for teens or kids who are trying to learn more about WordPress and other related business and entrepreneurial topics. It’s kind of a catch all but also has a lot of WordPress content in it. They have age limits, of course, and require separate registration for safety and planning purposes both. And those, in general, are either half-day during the WordCamp itself or a full-day during that WordCamp.

[00:06:32] Josepha: Which brings us then to the big one, the major side event. This is a full-day side event called Contributor Day. If your WordCamp has a Contributor Day, it will happen either the day before or the day after the WordCamp itself. It is an entire day where attendees come together to learn how to contribute to the future of the WordPress open source project. Now, if you are listening to this as part of, like, you’re getting ready to go to a WordCamp, and you don’t know what I meant by open source or open source project or WordPress open source project, that’s fine.

[00:07:08] Josepha: You’re going to learn all about it at the Contributor Day if you go, but the TLDR is that this software that you are about to choose to build your website on is built by thousands of people across the planet who are looking for the best solutions to problems that they have in their businesses that probably you will encounter or have encountered before. There’s no new problems under the sun, and open source methodologies kind of use the collective wisdom of everybody who has ever worked with a WordPress project or site and ran into a problem that they had to solve on their own, like this open source project, this community of people just make sure that that wisdom is collected and standardized and made available for all of eternity.

That’s all you need to know. Low key. I’ve made Contributor Days sound so calming. However, that is a whole day thing. It happens before or after the WordCamp. It has separate registration so that organizers of your WordCamp can plan for how many folks need to be there to teach new and returning contributors, what to do. If I’m going to be honest, if you’re going to get overwhelmed at any WordPress event, it’s going to be one of these, but they are well worth the effort.

[00:08:30] Josepha: Even if you just make a single contribution and never return, which I hope is not the case for you. I hope you do return. Even if you make a single contribution and never return, there’s something really grounding about seeing how much expertise and time, and care goes into this software that is, against all odds, completely free. So that’s all the tactical stuff, or a lot of it anyway.

It at least gives you a sense for what you’re getting yourself into for your first-ever wonderful WordPress weekend. But I promised you some human stuff too. So here is my considerably shorter list of stuff to bring as a human being going to a WordCamp. There’s an optional one. I’ll start you off with an optional one. Come with an idea of what you think you want to learn. You don’t have to come with that if you don’t want to. Some of us don’t know what we don’t know yet, and that’s fine too. But if you have a sense for what you think you need to learn, you’ll have an easier time figuring out how to spend your time while you’re here.

[00:09:30] Josepha: So, the non-optional things. Bring some way to exchange information. It can be QR codes, business cards, or pen and paper. It doesn’t really matter as long as it’s something that works for you to be sharing information with people that you meet. Because you never know when you’re going to meet your business soulmate, but the odds that you’re going to do it at a WordCamp are pretty dang high.

The second thing to bring is bring what you need to be comfortable. Bring your water bottle, a change of shoes if you need it, spare battery for your phone, your glasses. This day is going to be long enough without worrying about small inconveniences. So bring what you need to make yourself comfortable.

[00:10:09] Josepha: And finally bring your bravery. You will not know by looking at someone whether they’ve been doing WordPress stuff for two years or two weeks. But you can know that at some point, they were in the first two days of trying to figure this all out. One of the most endearing things about this community is the zeal they bring to solving a problem. So if you get lost or stuck, just ask the person next to you. We all remember what it was like to know nothing, and we are rooting for you to succeed. And that’s it. That’s your whole list. That’s everything you need to know to be the most prepared first-time attendee to a WordCamp ever. If that all sounded more overwhelming than just showing up, don’t worry.

You can also just show up. That’s what I did. And even though I knew next to nothing, those WordCampers made me feel welcome and included and kept me coming back to learn more.

[00:11:04] Josepha: Ah, WordCamps. Gosh, I love those things. So glad that we’re all getting back together for them.

[00:11:10] (Music interlude)

[00:11:18] Josepha: That brings us now, my friends, to our small list of big things. If you’re a first-time WordPresser, if you’ve never been to a WordCamp, and you don’t know what any of these things are, don’t worry; you can still go take a look at them, or you can wait until later when you’re less overwhelmed.

Either way, but this is our small list of big things for middle of the year 2024. First thing on my list, the gender equality in WordPress businesses survey is still open. It aims to gain critical insight into the gender composition of leadership teams, the experiences of women and gender-diverse leaders and employees, and also take a look at the challenges and barriers to their career success. I care deeply about making sure that we have a way for folks who are traditionally and historically underrepresented in technology have a way to get into our space. Obviously, women and nonbinary folks are an area that I feel particularly called to help build those on-ramps for, but I have a great concern for that across the entire ecosystem and any intersection that we run into as we get more and more users into our space.

[00:12:30] Josepha: If you are a woman, if you work with women, if you work in WordPress, if you work in a WordPress business, go take that survey, and let’s see what we find out about what it’s like to work in this space, as somebody that we normally don’t see.

The second thing on our list is that WordCamp Asia 2025 dates and venue have been revealed. So WordCamp Asia 2023 and 2024 were both major successes, and we are excited to share that the dates and venue for next year will be February 20th, 21st, 22nd in 2025 in Manila, and you’ll be able to go over to that website, take a look at it, we’ll have a link in the show notes as always and maybe start planning your your next big Asian adventure.

[00:13:13] Josepha: The third thing on my list is this new contributor wizard questionnaire. So, there are more than 20 teams to contribute to in the WordPress project. They all show up at those Contributor Days that I talked about. But there are more than 20 of them. They work on different parts of the WordPress project every day. And our passionate community offers contribution opportunities for everyone. I know, we know, that finding the right team is the key to a meaningful contributor experience. So, our interactive questionnaire is here to help you determine where to start. It is sometimes difficult to know whether you can contribute to a software if you are a designer, if you are a writer, if you are in marketing.

And it turns out that you can contribute to WordPress with a bunch of skills that you otherwise would not have realized. So, we’ll have a link to the questionnaire in the show notes again. Also, it’s probably going to pop up on WordCamp sites, Contributor Day sites, anything that helps you all understand where you might find a little bit of success as a contributor is a good place for it to be. Take the questionnaire, see where you land, the WordPress sorting hat.

[00:14:18] Josepha: And item number four. So we’ve made some updates, not we’ve made some updates, we have some updates from the Five for the Future program. So the Five for the Future program has a long history in the WordPress project. There are a couple of different episodes in this podcast where you can learn more about it.

But, to bolster transparency and openness, we have an update on the current state of WordPress contributions as of the end of May 2024. In the past few months, we’ve made a lot of efforts to improve the program and contributor experience in WordPress. We’ve also done a little bit of work to kind of clean up the pledges that are in there for, people or companies or teams that have found that they couldn’t continue their contributions over time. That is fine too. But we’ll have a link to that update in the show notes as well.

[00:15:09] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I am your host, Josepha Haden Chomposy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

[00:15:36] (Music outro)

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WordPress 6.5.4 is now available!
This minor release features 5 bug fixes in Core. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the Release Candidate announcement.

WordPress 6.5.4 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.6 planned for July 2024.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 6.5.4 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.

For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site.

Thank you to these WordPress contributorsThis release was led by Tonya Mork, Colin Stewart, and Aaron Jorbin.

WordPress 6.5.4 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, adrianduffell, Andrew Ozz, Andy Fragen, Beau Lebens, Bernhard Reiter, Brian Alexander, Colin Stewart, Darren Ethier (nerrad), David Baumwald, Enrico Battocchi, Estela Rueda, John James Jacoby, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Kevin Hoffman, Louis Wolmarans, Md Abul Bashar, Miriam Schwab, Mukesh Panchal, Narendra Sishodiya, Pascal Birchler, Peter Wilson, Pooja N Muchandikar, Sarah Norris, Scott Reilly, Syed Balkhi, Tonya Mork

How to contributeTo get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core and #6-6-release-leads channels. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

Props to @afragen, @hellofromtonya , and @angelasjin for proofreading.

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WordPress 6.6 Beta 1 is here! Please download and test it.

Instead, install Beta 1 on local sites and testing environments in any of these four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the Beta 1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use this WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.6-beta1 | | WordPress Playground | Use a 6.6 Beta 1 WordPress Playground instance to test the software directly in your browser. This might be the easiest way ever—no separate sites, no setup. Just click and go! |

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 6.6 is July 16, 2024. Your help testing Beta and RC versions over the next six weeks is vital to making sure the final release is everything it should be: stable, powerful, and intuitive.

How important is your testing? Features in this Beta release may be changed or removed between now and the final release. Early attention from testers like you is critical to finding and reporting potential bugs, usability issues, or compatibility problems to make sure developers can address them before the final release. You don’t need any contribution experience, and this is a fantastic way to begin your WordPress contributor story!

Want to know more about testing in general, and how to get started? Follow the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Like every version since 5.0 in 2018, WordPress 6.6 will integrate a host of new features from the last several releases of the Gutenberg plugin. Learn more about Gutenberg updates since WordPress 6.5 in the What’s New in Gutenberg posts for versions 17.8, 17.9, 18.0, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, and 18.4. The final version will also include Gutenberg 18.5; the Beta 2 post will link to that.

WordPress 6.6 Beta 1 contains 97 enhancements and 101 fixes for the editor, in a total of about 206 tickets for WordPress 6.6 Core.

The vulnerability bounty doubles in the beta periodThe WordPress community sponsors a monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities. That reward doubles during the period between Beta 1 on June 4 and the final Release Candidate (RC) that will happen June 25. Please follow the project’s responsible-disclosure practices detailed on this HackerOne page and in this security white paper.

What’s coming to WordPress 6.6?This year’s second major release is about polish and finesse. Features that landed in the last few releases have new flexibility and smoother flows—and a few new tricks. And of course there are a few brand-new features.

Data Views updatesPart of the groundwork for phase 3, Data Views get new and improved experience of working with information in the Site Editor. A new layout consolidates patterns and template parts, gets you to general management views in fewer clicks, and packs in a wide range of refinements.

Overrides in synced patternsWhat if you could keep a synced pattern‘s look and feel everywhere it appears—keeping it on brand—but have different content everywhere it appears?

For instance, maybe you‘re building a pattern for recipes. Ideally, you want to keep the overall design of the recipe card consistent on every post that will have a recipe. But the recipe itself—the ingredients, the steps, special notes on technique—will be different every time.

And perhaps, in the future, other people might need to change the design of the recipe pattern. It would be nice to know they can do that, and that the content in existing recipes will stay right where it is.

In version 6.6, you can make all that happen, and overrides in synced patterns are the way you do it.

See all the blocksUp to now, when you had a block selected and then opened the block Inserter, you only saw the blocks you were allowed to add to your selected block. Where were all the others?

In 6.6, when you have a block selected, you get two lists. First, there’s the list of blocks you can insert at your selected block. Then you get a list with all the other blocks. So you can get an idea of what you can use in your selected block, and what other blocks you could use in another area. In fact, if you select a block from that second list, WordPress 6.6 will add it below your block, to use in whatever you build next.

A new publish flowVersion 6.6 brings the post and site editors closer together than ever. So whether you’re writing for a post in the post editor or a page in the Site Editor, your experience will be about the same.

Style variationsIf a block theme comes with style variations, 6.6 vastly expands your design options right out of the box, without installing or configuring a single thing. Because in 6.6, your theme pulls the color palettes and typography style sets out of its installed variations to let you mix and match for a whole world of expanded creative expression.

Section styles Do you build themes? Now you can define style options for separate sections of multiple blocks, including inner blocks.

Then your users can apply those block style variations to entire groups of blocks, effectively creating branded sections they can curate across a site.

A note about CSS specificityTo make it easier for your variations to override the global styles CSS, those styles now come wrapped in :root. That limits their specificity. For details, read the full discussion on GitHub.

A native Grid layoutGrid is a new variation for the Group block that lets you arrange the blocks inside it as a grid. If you’ve been using a plugin for this, now you can make your grids natively.

Better pattern management in Classic themesYou heard right: You can do everything with patterns in Classic themes that you can in a block theme. You can see all the patterns available to you in a single view and insert a pattern on the fly.

Negative. Margins.They’re here: negative margin values, so you can make objects overlap in your design. As a guardrail, you can only set a negative margin by typing an actual negative number, not by using the slider. That’s to keep people from adding negative values they didn’t intend.

Rollback auto-updatesNow you can have the convenience of setting all your plugins to auto-update and the inner peace you get from knowing that if anything goes wrong, 6.6 will do a rollback. Automatically.

This post reflects the latest changes as of June 4, 2024.

Again, the features in this first beta may change, based on what testers like you find.

Get an overview of the 6.6 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.6-related posts in the next few weeks for further details.

Just for you: a Beta 1 haikuNegative margins
Embellish all the new ways
To design and build

Thanks very much to @meher, @audrasjb, @fabiankaegy, @colorful-tones, @davidbaumwald, @dansoschin, @desrosj, @atachibana, @ehtis, @adamsilverstein, @joedolson, and @webcommsat for reviewing and collaborating on this post!

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WordCamp Europe 2024 kicks off on June 13, gathering WordPressers from across the globe to Torino, Italy.

The highly anticipated conference has a packed schedule starting with Contributor Day and will feature a notable roster of speakers. Other highlights will include engaging workshops covering a variety of disciplines (including one for youth and teens) and WordCamp Connect, a dedicated space for attendees to meet and network with additional community-led sessions.

The conference will conclude with an exciting mid-year project update from WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg, including a live Q&A session. You can watch Matt’s presentation on June 15, 2024, streaming live on the WordPress YouTube channel starting at 4:30 p.m. Central European Summer Time (2:30 p.m. UTC).

What: WordPress Project Summer Update + Q&A Session with Matt Mullenweg
When: June 15, 2024 at 2:30 p.m. UTC (Start of live stream)
Where: Lingotto Conference and Exhibition CentreStreaming: Watch the live stream on the WordPress YouTube channel.

Have a question for Matt?If you’re unable to attend WordCamp Europe 2024 in person, you’re welcome to email your questions instead. Given the number of questions expected both in-person and online, only some of the submitted questions may be answered live.

Whether you’re touching down in Torino or streaming from elsewhere, see you very soon!

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Welcome to another episode of the WordPress Briefing! In this episode, your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, delves into the incredible resources available to help you broaden your WordPress expertise. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to deepen your skillset, these tools and tutorials offer something for everyone. Join us as we explore how Learn WordPress can be your guide on the journey to mastering WordPress, providing invaluable support and community connections along the way.

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes WordPress Events * Learn WordPress + Online Workshops + Tutorials + Lesson Plans * Small List of Big Things* + WordCamp Europe Youth & Teen Workshop Registration is Open + Roadmap to WordPress 6.6 + WordCamp US 2024 Showcase Day + Share Feedback with Meetup.com * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

Transcript[00:00:10] Josepha: 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.

Here we go!

[00:00:28] (Intro Music)

[00:00:40] Josepha: My friends, I don’t know about where you live, but where I live, it’s graduation season. Students all across the region are either gearing down for a little bit of a brain break or gearing up for the next big adventure in their lives. And as I watch these students discover the next phases in their lives, whether it looks good or bad, whether it feels fearful or faithful, I can’t help but think back to my last big change.

[00:01:07] Josepha: The one that brought me here to WordPress. I was working in insurance at the time and investing in a side hustle. And as is often the case with side hustles, discovered that knowing something about marketing myself was going to be key. Now, this next bit, I know that a lot of you will understand immediately. After that realization, I entered a period in my life where I was learning how to invest in my hoped-for side hustle so that I could realize my hoped-for dreams while also having to succeed at the job that I was using to pay my bills.

By some singular coincidence, I wound up being introduced to the WordPress project, where I found not only the tools it turned out I needed but also people who were willing to help me learn them. For me, during that time, the cost to get access to both the tool and that support was basically zero. Like the whole cost to me was get those WordPress people together in a room to talk about WordPress for an hour.

[00:02:04] Josepha: And that’s something that I always want to do anyway. I always want to get people together. And if what we’re talking about is WordPress, and that is what I need to learn about, then so be it. I realize that there is a little bit of privilege in that story and a whole lot of persistence. It’s not like I discovered it, and overnight, everything worked out well, and perfectly, and correctly.

However, all of the struggles to get what I got accomplished done aside. One of the things that I love the most about how the WordPress project has evolved over time is that we took that already low-cost, low-barrier concept and did everything in our power to take that low-cost, low-barrier and make it available to as many people as possible in as many points in their journey as possible.

So, if you’re at the start of your career or thinking about a bit of a career change, I have some resources for you. Like, stick around. But before we get to the resources, I want to make sure that you hear this. Learning WordPress things, whether that’s the software itself, or how to run a business supported by WordPress, or how to support other businesses by building them WordPress stuff, learning these skills now is an investment in who you want to be.

[00:03:20] Josepha: It’s placing a bet that’s grounded in what you think you can bring to the world before anyone else might have figured out it’s what they need in their lives. And when you do that, in WordPress, you’re accessing and hopefully one day contributing to an equitable framework that doesn’t require you to understand it in order for you to benefit from it.

You can do hard things, and hopefully, these resources make those hard things a little easier. I’m going to take us through a whirlwind wayfinding list. I’ll generally be focused on time required and then kind of like necessary actions or context that would be useful for you to know. But remember that your mileage may vary.

[00:04:01] Josepha: If something sounds close but not perfect, I encourage you to give it a try anyway. The worst that happens is you try something different next time. Or, in the best-case scenario, you create something that other folks also have been missing. There was something that was close for them but not perfect either, and maybe you found the thing that’s perfect for them.

So, here is my whirlwind wayfinding list. Let’s go. Only have one hour a week and prefer a little company in your learning? Check out a meetup event near you. You can find those listed in your dashboard or on events.WordPress.org, but frequently, they happen during the week, after work hours, sometimes they happen on the weekend, they happen like in libraries or coffee shops.

So, there are a lot of different ways that these events come together, and surely, there will be something that is the sort of low-key event that you want. But if not, you can always reach out to your local chapter and see how you can get involved with that, how you can help them create a new meetup event.

[00:05:02] Josepha: The next option, if you only have an hour a week, but you actually don’t want company but still use some external support, I would check out one of our online workshops. There are cohorts for each workshop, and they’re run by facilitators so that you can learn and socialize from the comfort and safety of your own space, or if you really are super strapped for time, that can help with like not having to commute anywhere. Next up on our list, feel like you could average an hour a week, but honestly, would prefer it to be in one big chunk? Check out a WordCamp near you.

Those are a little bit like the meetups but quite a bit bigger and a lot more content, a lot more learning available, and gets you into a different kind of group of people in your local area. Those happen about once a year per city or region, but if there’s not one within a comfortable traveling distance for you, it might be a good chance for you to do a mini business trip, or if you’re doing it as current career development, see if your boss, or your boss self, if you are your own boss, has a continuing education budget available for you.

[00:06:08] Josepha: Have 30 minutes or so a week and don’t need any external motivation? On the one hand, I am a little jealous. I sometimes need my own external motivation. But, if that’s not you, if you can just self-drive forever, then courses over on learn.WordPress.org are just about your speed. We even have a series of learning pathways in development that curate all the courses you need to achieve particular milestones.

You can also help to create those. If you have been all the way through your learning journey and you’re, like, the most WordPressy WordPresser we’ve ever seen, and you just want to make sure that other people have the same opportunities you’ve had, that’s an excellent opportunity to show up and make sure that the knowledge is still available, still free, still can be accessed.

And finally, if you have unpredictable time and also still comfortable being completely self-driven, We have in the WordPress ecosystem countless videos, blogs, tutorials, and a ton of content creators that are behind them that specialize in teaching WordPress basics but also leveling up existing knowledge. And if your type of existing knowledge is in the, like, gathering the network to succeed, sort of area. We even have podcasts and blogs that are dedicated to the more businessy side of WordPress, how to make this function in the WordPress ecosystem.

[00:07:32] Josepha: As always, I’ll have links for everything in the show notes—just myriad links because this isn’t even all that we need to share with you today. And I’m going to say this last thing one more time because I really, really mean it like a whole, whole lot. I know it’s hard, bordering on impossible sometimes, to carve out time to learn new things. But when you’re ready to invest in yourself, I’m pretty sure that these resources will be here to support your hoped-for dreams.

[00:07:58] (Music interlude)

[00:08:05] Josepha: And that brings us now to our small list of big things. First up is speaking of learning, speaking of investing in your future. WordCamp Europe has a youth and teen workshop going on. The registration for that is still open. It is open for students aged 10 to 16. It’s gonna be a hands-on workshop. They’ll get to build their own website with WordPress and then explore some cutting-edge technology from VR to AI and learn essential internet safety skills. We’re going to be running that on June 13th. It will be in both English and Italian. I will leave a link to the registration in the show notes.

And the next thing on our list is pretty much related. It’s kind of related. At WordCamp US this year, we have a Showcase Day. Now, this is new to WordCamp US, and it’s all about pushing the boundaries of what WordPress can do. It will feature presentations, demos, and technical workshops for all kinds of projects, from high-profile, large-scale builds with innovative integrations to more niche creative implementations that still have a big impact. Submissions are now open for it. If you are working on something that is really cool and uses WordPress and want to show it off to the WordPress community, wander over there, submit your project; let’s take a look at it and see if we can get it into that showcase lineup, but if you are looking for inspiration about what WordPress can do, if you’re still figuring out how this can work the best for you, that’s going to be a great opportunity to look at some unusual implementations so that you can get an idea for how big this thing can get.

[00:09:43] Josepha: And just some tactical things. The next two things on my small of big things are two tactical items. One is that WordPress 6.6 is on the move; as always, we have Beta 1 scheduled pretty soon here. So, dig into our priority features. I will leave a link to the roadmap for WordPress 6.6. We’re targeting, if I recall correctly, middle of July for that release. And so it’s coming up faster than you think. And we would absolutely love for you to come in, test the Beta, tell us what’s broken so that we can fix it before it gets out. We can’t fix the things if you don’t tell us they’re broken.

[00:10:17] Josepha: And then the final thing on our small list of big things is that speaking of not being able to fix things that we don’t know are broken. So, we use meetup.com to manage all of our meetup series. Well, most of our meetup series anyway, but they are planning to invest in some product improvements, and they have asked for feedback from the WordPress community. Historically, we are one of the largest, most active communities on their platform. And so, if you could fill out the feedback form, if you’ve been to a meetup, or if you tried to find a meetup using meetup.com and did not succeed, that’s probably also relevant information. I’ll have a link to that here as well. It will go directly to their product team. And hopefully we’ll see some product improvements for the WordPress community in the future.

[00:11:01] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us, follow me on your favorite podcast app, or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode, and if you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks again, and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.

[00:11:29] (Music outro)

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There’s a new initiative in the WordPress community: the WordPress Media Corps. In today’s episode of the WordPress Briefing, you’ll find out how it came to be, first as a nugget of an idea during the pandemic and now as an active experiment. Learn how this shift in focus values the ongoing impact, and often invisible effort, of independent WordPress media—and seeks to help them more easily deliver engaging, high-quality WordPress content to their audiences.

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes Making a WordPress Media Corps * WordPress Media Corps Next Steps * WordPress Media Corps Initial Roadmap * #media-corps Slack channel * Small List of Big Things* + WordPress 6.6 call for volunteers update + WordPress 6.5.3 maintenance release + Openverse Introduces Collection views for Tags, Creators, and Sources + WordCamp Europe 2024 Schedule Released * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!

[00:00:28] (Intro Music)

[00:00:39] Josepha: If you’ve been keeping an eye on the WordPress marketing space for the past few months, today’s topic will be no surprise to you. Today, we’re talking about the WordPress Media Corps. It’s a bit of a controversial topic; there’s no point denying that, so today, I want to take a little journey through its history.

The WordPress Media Corps is an idea that goes back probably four, maybe five years ago. I don’t know what year it is—four years, five, four, or five years ago. It was the height of our COVID isolation. So I was spending a lot of time with our WordPress media folks, people who hosted podcasts, who gathered weekly roundups, and who were writing these nuanced and thoughtful newsletters.

[00:01:19] Josepha: And during the prep phases for these, I was witnessing all the work that goes into them, researching questions and topics, marketing both before and after any appearance, and consistently engaging with the audiences they had grown over time. Over the course of the year, I wound up in two or three different conversations with these hosts about how this does or doesn’t fit in the WordPress project as a way to contribute.

Now, invisible contributions are a persistent concern for any open source project and is one of the problems I am often most desperate to solve. As with so many long-standing problems, if the solution were easy, it wouldn’t still be a problem. And that’s the case here as well. I’ve got a quick side note on why this is a hard problem to solve at the end of the episode. It’s relevant to the overall discussion, but not if you’re only here to learn about how we arrived at the Media Corps. So, choose your own adventure!

[00:02:16] Josepha: So, during one of those discussions, Allie Nimmons reminded me that we have always relied on third-party supporters to share information about WordPress. It was a smaller group than we have now, much less variety in the format, but they didn’t have contribution acknowledgments either, right?

And she was right. They were included in something called the WP Planet. And I remember that I said to her what I wouldn’t give to be able to acknowledge the value that WordPress media folks bring to our ecosystem. These folks who have more flexibility than us can be a little more, more nimble who are canonical power users of WordPress, sharing not only what they are excited about now and in the near future but also the things that they had to learn in order to get the most out of the features and the software.

[00:03:07] Josepha: Like that’s practically a gold standard of the people that we want to have talking about us. And, for folks who’ve worked with Allie, you probably can predict what’s next. You know she’s not afraid to call it like she sees it, and she called me on my excessive dreaming. She asked me what actually was stopping me from getting that done. I don’t recall if I had an answer for her at the time. I, I probably didn’t, but ultimately, I think the answer was, most likely, that I was afraid to try.

So you might be asking yourself, what has changed my mind since then? What has changed since 2020, when I was maybe too scared to get this done? Why does now feel like the right time compared to when I was first thinking through it? Well, for starters, when we look at then, we look at the context of then; it was my second year leading us. It was 2020, the year of COVID. And I was desperately trying to roll out a disaster recovery plan, incomplete though it was.

[00:04:06] Josepha: I wasn’t sure how much more disruption we as a community could stand, so I didn’t want to take any more risks than I had to. Which brings us to today. One of my big obstacles to tackle this year is our plateauing growth. I said it right there in my big-picture post for 2024. Re-engaging those gold standard users who are talking about us while making it clear that their contributions add to the success of the project seems like a high-impact opportunity to me.

We’ve kicked off our initial experiment for the Media Corps. As with many high-impact projects, there’s also a high potential for risk, so I’m trying to get a clear indication of success as early as possible. Because of that, the experiment is time-limited and has pretty strict guidelines up front. It’s also being paired with a pause on the current work with the marketing team, just so that we can focus as much attention to get that signal sooner rather than later.

[00:05:01] Josepha: Not everyone agrees with this plan, which is to be expected. There are so many seasoned marketing professionals in WordPress, myself included, and I mean, our software is a primary tool in so many marketing tool belts. It probably would be odd if we didn’t have any marketers around. So there you have it, a brief explanation of how we got to today’s Media Corps experiment.

Quick side note on why it’s a hard problem is that a good first step to acknowledging invisible work is removing the need for human recognition of the work. I’ve worked with teams, guided them since I got here to define contributions as granularly as possible so that we can find ways to attach automated triggers to them so that you don’t have to do a ton of invisible things for someone to notice them and give you props for them. Obviously, the more automation, the more dehumanization, and of course, the work of breaking things into tiny chunks feels like micromanagement; it feels like value assessment.

[00:06:01] Josepha: It also often felt like kind of a toxic tallying of who was doing what where. None of that is what any of us wanted when I started that work, and it’s certainly not what I want now. But because it is so often misread as a way to, like, separate out good contributions from bad, not all teams have embarked on that journey with me. And for those who have done that with me, not all of them have actually implemented, kind of that definition of the individual types of contributions you can make so that we can do that kind of automated acknowledgment of the work.

[00:06:40] (Music interlude)

[00:06:47] Josepha: Which brings us now to our small list of big things.

First on our list is WordPress 6.6. It’s our next major release. There are still a few volunteer roles that are available. I think documentation lead is one. So, if you are the sort of folk who just loves to write the docs, it’s been a while since you have done that for the WordPress project, with the WordPress project. That’s a great opportunity for you to kind of dip your toe in and see what’s going on in the world of WordPress.

[00:07:15] Josepha: The second thing on our list is a minor release that actually came out last week. It’s a maintenance release, but it’s one of those where it’s really important to get upgraded and make sure that you have the latest security and maintenance releases on all of your sites that are in production.

The third thing on our list is about Openverse. Openverse is now offering a new way to explore our collection. We’ve got over 800 million images and audio files in there. And so, the collection search makes it easier to view works that are belonging to an individual tag, creator, or source. It just kind of helps you filter it out a little bit more so that there are more decisions than there are options available in there.

And the fourth thing on my list is that the WordCamp Europe 2024 schedule has been released. We’ll be talking a bit more about this event as we get closer and closer to it. We are racing our way. It’s like a month away as we go. So take a look, plan your activities, and come and check out our community.

[00:08:16] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

[00:08:44] (Music outro)

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WordPress 6.5.3 is now available!This minor release features 12 bug fixes in Core and 9 bug fixes for the block editor. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the Release Candidate announcement.

WordPress 6.5.3 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.6 planned for July 2024.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 6.5.3 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.

For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site.

Thank you to these WordPress contributorsThis release was led by Aaron Jorbin and Grant M. Kinney.

WordPress 6.5.3 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, Adam Silverstein, adrianduffell, Aki Hamano, Alan Fuller, Anders Norén, André, Andrea Fercia, Andrew Ozz, Andrew Serong, Andy Fragen, annezazu, Arun Sharma, Aslam Doctor, Ben Keith, Ben Ritner – Kadence WP, bernhard-reiter, Brian Alexander, Carolina Nymark, Colin Stewart, CookiesForDevo, Damon Cook, Daniel Richards, darerodz, Dave Page, David Baumwald, David Levine, Drew Jaynes, Ella, Erik, evanltd, Felix Arntz, George Mamadashvili, Grant M. Kinney, Greg Ziółkowski, Isabel Brison, James Huff, Jason Adams, Jb Audras, Jeffrey Paul, Jeremy Herve, Jessica Lyschik, Joe Dolson, Joe McGill, jordesign, Jorge Costa, Joshua Goode, Kai Hao, Kevin Hoffman, Khokan Sardar, luisherranz, Matias Benedetto, Matt Cromwell, Md Sahadat Husain, Mukesh Panchal, Narendra Sishodiya, Nik Tsekouras, Pascal Birchler, Peter Wilson, ramonopoly, Roy Tanck, Sal Ferrarello, Sarah Norris, Sergey Biryukov, Stephen Bernhardt, Steve Jones, Tom Cafferkey, WilliamG, Yannis Guyon

Thanks to @grantmkin, @angelasjin, and @jeffpaul for proofreading.

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Explore the transformative world of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program with guest host Angela Jin and special guest and sponsored contributor Hari Shanker. Whether you’re a long-time WordPress enthusiast or new to the scene, this episode is packed with insights, stories, and tips to help you engage more deeply with one of the most passionate open source communities.

CreditsGuest host: Angela Jin
Guest speaker: Hari Shanker
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry and Nicholas Garofalo
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes Five for the Future * About the Contributor Mentorship Program * Details of Mentorship Program Cohorts * Mentorship Program Cohort 2 Graduation Post – Express interest in the next cohort by leaving comment or sending a message to @harishanker in the Making WordPress Slack * Small List of Big Things* + Brainstorming a Support Team Contributor Ladder - Observations on WordPress Contributor Team Structure + Apply for the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2024 + Upcoming WordPress events: - WordCamp Europe 2024 * Tickets - Find upcoming events in your area on events.WordPress.org * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

Transcript[00:00:00] Angela: 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 insights into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I am your guest host, Angela Jin.

Let’s go!

[00:00:30] (Intro Music)

[00:00:40] Angela: I am delighted to be guest hosting this episode of the WordPress Briefing and to talk about the Contributor Mentorship Program, a community-driven initiative in the WordPress space that is proving to really support contributor journeys. And joining me today is special guest, Hari Shanker, Five for the Future Program Manager. Welcome, Hari!

[00:01:02] Hari: Thank you, Angela. Excited to be here.

[00:01:04] Angela: Now, before we dive into the Contributor Mentorship Program, can you first tell me a bit about yourself? I’d love to know a bit more about your role as Five for the Future Program Manager.

[00:01:16] Hari: Sure. So, my name is Hari Shanker. I live in India in a city called Kochi. And I’d like to share some context to explain what I do. I am a sponsored contributor working full-time on WordPress, and I have been contributing primarily to the WordPress Community Team full-time since April 2020, where I am a Community Program Manager, formerly known as a Super Deputy.

Since September 2022, I have been working exclusively on projects that bolster the WordPress contributor experience. A key part of this work is my role as the Program Manager for the Five for the Future program, where my day-to-day work involves supporting and empowering companies and individuals that have pledged a part of their time to contribute to WordPress.

[00:02:00] Hari: In parallel, I also lead the Contributor Working Group of the WordPress Community Team, which has the goal of making the contributor experience in WordPress the best it can be. Our recent focus has been on running an experimental contributor mentorship program as well.

[00:02:16] Angela: Excellent. Thank you. So, I was recently at Open Source Summit, and figuring out funding and commitments to projects was a very hot topic. And people were really interested in Five for the Future. And so, Hari, would you mind giving us a quick overview of what Five for the Future is, and how it aims to support the WordPress open source project?

[00:02:44] Hari: Absolutely. The Cofounder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, launched Five for the Future in 2014 as a call to action for organizations and individuals who have benefited from WordPress, either the CMS or the community, to contribute up to 5 percent of their resources to the continued success of the WordPress project.

[00:03:03] Hari: In 2019, this idea was formalized as a program with a pledging page that lives in the URL WordPress.org/five. Right now, this program attempts to foster generous collaboration towards the long-term health and stability of our project for the future. So, like any large and successful open source project, WordPress has a lot of big goals and tasks, not all of which can be accomplished by volunteers in that available time.

Here’s where sponsored contributors come in. Sponsored contributors have more time, availability, and bandwidth to make an impact on a lot of these tasks. They also work on some routine but important administrative and housekeeping tasks that are essential to keep the project running smoothly. At this time, the program has 868 contributors from 183 companies, who have pledged 7,722 hours of contribution time per week for the program. I can also share that roughly 70% of contribution activity in WordPress is coming from these sponsored contributors. That is the Five for the Future program in brief.

[00:04:15] Angela: Thanks, Hari. That’s incredible that so much of our contribution comes through sponsored time and clearly is very necessary to keep the WordPress open source project running. Wonderful. All right, well, I would love to dig into the Contributor Mentorship Program. Can you tell us a bit more about how this came to be? What is the Contributor Mentorship Program?

[00:04:41] Hari: Oh, absolutely. It is one of my favorite programs and one of the best things that I’ve worked on personally. So, the Contributor Mentorship Program aims to onboard new contributors to WordPress by providing them one-on-one and cohort-based mentorship for a period of typically four to six weeks. The mentorship program typically coincides a major WordPress release.

[00:05:04] Hari: And the idea behind the program is to help new contributors kickstart their WordPress contributor journey by providing them an in-depth overview of the WordPress project as well. To talk a bit about how this started, it all began in 2022-2023 when I started researching on the WordPress contributor experience. I discovered that there were gaps in the onboarding experience for new contributors. And I did some research on how we can solve this issue.

Now, while those gaps can be fixed by improving the overall WordPress contributor onboarding experience through technical changes or changes in the program. Mentorship really stood out as an excellent solution to solve the problem. Based on my discovery from this research, I worked on revitalizing the WordPress Contributor Working Group of the Community Team. And together, our group we started working on building a mentorship program. We did a few months of collaborative discussions and brainstorming. And as a result, the group put together the idea for a pilot cohort-based mentorship program, which paired up 13 new contributors as mentees with one mentor each. The cohort worked together for four weeks, and 11 of these mentees graduated after making impactful contributions to the project, with over half of the cohort staying on to make long-term contributions. In fact, we just wrapped up the second cohort of the program in February 2024, which had 52 participants, of which 44 graduated from the program.

[00:06:34] Angela: Amazing. Congratulations. And I speaking just for myself, I know how important mentorship was to, to a lot of my journeys, both within WordPress and outside of, and so I think it’s wonderful that we’re able to bring mentorship to this space. What sort of benefits are there to participating in this program, either as a new WordPress contributor or as a mentor?

[00:07:04] Hari: There’s a bunch of benefits for both new contributors and mentors in this program, starting with new contributors. First and foremost, new participants in this program they get to kick off their WordPress contributor journey by making initial contributions. So, in my mind, the biggest benefit that they get is they get a chance to actually make their first contributions in the area of their choice with help from a mentor. The other main benefit that I see is that these mentees or new contributors. They get to learn a lot about the WordPress project and how it works. They get to learn about the WordPress release process broadly. And in short, participants in this program also get a chance to network with and learn from experienced WordPress contributors.

And finally, this program is a great opportunity for mentees or new contributors to pick up a lot of valuable skills that they can use in the real world. For mentors, they also get a lot of benefits from this program. In fact, to share another anecdote, some of our mentors they contributed for the first time to WordPress core in the last cohort.

[00:08:14] Hari: So, that is also something that they also get to learn, which means mentors also get to learn new skills when they be a part of this program. So, for mentors, even they get to enhance their skills, they get to expand the network within the WordPress community, but in my mind, the biggest benefit that they gain is they gain fulfillment from guiding new contributors. And personally, as a mentor myself, it’s one of the most valuable thing that you can gain from such a program. That feeling of belonging, that feeling of, you know, fostering sustainability and innovation in the project. I also feel that mentoring new contributors is a great way to bolster your leadership and communication skills, which is extremely valuable in any professional context.

[00:08:54] Angela: Absolutely. I definitely see that being able to share your experience and mentor others is a really valuable way to help the next generation of WordPressers be successful in our space. Now, you’ve talked a bit about what results you’re seeing from this program, and it’s really exciting to see that so many mentees are successfully graduating from this program. I’d love to hear more about the impact and results that you’re seeing from the mentorship program. Could you give us more details there?

[00:09:32] Hari: Absolutely. So, I shared some numbers earlier. We had 11 mentees out of 13 graduating from the 2023 cohort and 44 outta 52 mentees from the 2024 Q1 cohort graduating. From the first cohort we have six of these mentees continuing to make impactful contributions to the project, but we have more encouraging results from the second cohort, in fact. So, ten of our mentees in the second cohort got props for contributing to WordPress 6.5, and one of our mentees was a noteworthy contributor. That’s about 22% of all the mentees. Fourteen mentees from the latest cohort, which is 31%, they have committed to join the WordPress 6.6 release squad. And the program actually gave eight new core contributors to the project, which includes mentors, as I mentioned earlier.

[00:10:21] Hari: We did pre and post-cohort surveys, and the results are very interesting. I can definitely share some numbers here. So, we had a question on contributor familiarity. The familiarity of contribution for new contributors went up from 53% to 80%, that’s around 26% increase. The contribution confidence went from 57% to 82%, which is around 28%-29%. We asked if the mentees how many of these mentees were satisfied by the program. We heard that 88% of all the mentees were satisfied. 80% of mentees achieved their personal goals as part of the program. A key part of the program experience was that we asked mentees to create contribution plans to make future contributions.

[00:11:06] Hari: 62% of our mentees actually made a future contribution plan. So which means, which is a 30, 60, 90-day plan. So, these mentees they’re gonna follow a plan to contribute to WordPress for the next three months. Finally, we also created a ton of learning materials for these mentees, and we are in the process of releasing them. So these are, most of these are videos, so we plan to release them in WordPress or TV and in the Learn WordPress platform. So, in my mind, seeing these mentees out in the world making impactful contributions that is the biggest impact that I’m seeing. So, having them in the project as long-term contributors. That is, in my mind, one of the biggest impacts that we’ve had from this program.

[00:11:46] Angela: Yeah, that’s really incredible to see that new contributors to WordPress, upon joining this program, able to better navigate this vast ecosystem and make important contributions to our space. And that they’ve made these connections, so they are sticking around and staying with us and continuing to help us build WordPress. That’s incredible.

[00:12:14] Angela: Now, I understand that between the first cohort and the second cohort, the Contributor Working Group made some important updates and iterated on the cohort itself. And one of the big changes, I understand, was to design cohorts around contributor projects. I’m curious now that we’ve talked about how fantastic this program is. Are there plans for future cohorts, and what might those cohorts look like?

[00:12:44] Hari: Absolutely. So, we have received a lot of interest in future cohorts. So, our working group just did a chat last week, and there was overwhelming positive interest and from all our working group members and other participants saying that we would love to be in a future cohort. So, short answer, yes, we will have a ton of these cohorts going forward. And we are, in fact, hosting a new cohort alongside WordPress 6.7. In October-November, 2024. And we will most likely continue to host at least one mentorship cohort every year. Ideally two, but I’m just saying one to make sure that we are sustainable. It is hard to predict how future cohorts will look like, but based on all the discussions our working group has had, I can definitely tell you how the next cohort is going to look like.

[00:13:35] Hari: So, as per current plans, we will have around 20 to 30 mentees supported by mentors. And the cohort will most likely start early on in the 6.7 release process. The idea is that we would like our mentees to be more deeply involved in the 6.7 release as early as possible. We also plan to have a lot more learn-up sessions in the next cohort.

One feedback that we heard was our mentees really enjoyed some of the learn-up sessions, and they would like these sessions to be scheduled in advance as much as possible so that they can attend as many of them as possible. So, more learn-up sessions.

[00:14:14] Hari: And finally, you mentioned projects when you spoke of the latest cohort. We are going to double down on projects in the next cohort. So the hope is to have a host of projects for folks to work on and, ideally, have all mentees work on some project or the other. So, we had projects as an experiment for the earlier cohort. Some mentees did work on projects, while some they were broadly contributing. So, ideally, for the next cohort, every mentee in the program will be a part of some project or the other. It could be a small one. It could be a big one, but there will be some project of some sort for every mentee in the program, ideally. And finally, some contributors in our cohort, they received a scholarship to participate in the last cohort. We hope to expand that. We hope to provide more opportunities for scholarship for contributors.

[00:15:05] Hari: I’m not sure how viable it is, but we did see that the folks who received scholarship, they got a chance to contribute more. So we would ideally like to provide more opportunities for scholarship, especially for folks from underrepresented backgrounds, so that they can contribute to WordPress and, you know, upskill as part of this program.

[00:15:23] Angela: Fantastic. Well, hopefully, we have convinced our listeners today to get involved in the Contributor Mentorship Program. And so, if somebody wanted to get involved, either as a mentee or a mentor, how should they go about doing so?

[00:15:42] Hari: That’s a great question. We have not opened up signups for mentors and mentees for the next cohort yet. As I mentioned, it’s going to happen later this year. However, those interested in the next cohort of the program can comment on the post. I think we can share the link in the show notes. We just published a post announcing the graduation of our mentees, and we had asked folks who are interested in joining the next cohort comment there.

[00:16:07] Hari: So if you’re interested in joining the next cohort, either as a mentor or a mentee. You can comment on that post. Alternatively, you can also DM me. If you’re not comfortable commenting in a public space, my name is Hari Shanker. I am Hari Shanker, which is H-A-R-I-S-H-A-N-K-E-R. That’s my username in the Make WordPress Slack. You can DM me there expressing your interest, and I will make sure that we send you the call for interest form when it’s published.

Additionally, and this is especially to all the mentor applicants, we have a Contributor Working Group, which meets every third Thursday of the month in the Community Team channel on a text chat. It’s called a mentorship chat. It happens every month, and you can find a link to it in the Make WordPress meetings, P2 blog. So, if you’re interested in being a mentor, or if you’re interested in building the Contributor Mentorship Program, or contributing to the Contributor Mentorship Program, I would invite you to join our chat. So, the next chat is being held in May. Please join our next chat. That’s also a great way to contribute to this program, especially if you are interested in being a mentor.

[00:17:10] Angela: Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me today, Hari. It’s been a pleasure.

[00:17:16] Hari: Thank you. It’s been an honor, and thank you for inviting me to be a part of this program.

[00:17:19] (Music interlude)

[00:17:27] Angela: And now it is time for our small list of big things. We’ve got three things for you this week.

The first is a proposal to explore the Support Team contributor ladder. If you are not familiar with the concept of the contributor ladder, it is based on the five stages of volunteering, which examines how a volunteer gets onboarded and steps into progressive roles. By thinking through the contributor ladder, Make WordPress teams are able to improve onboarding, engagement, and connection with contributors and generally improve the health of their team. If this is of interest to you, we have a great overview post about the contributor ladder, and you can see the discussion in action over on the Support Team.

[00:18:14] Angela: Second, is that the WordPress Foundation has just announced the Kim Parcell Memorial Scholarship for 2024. This scholarship is in honor of Kim Parcell, an incredible long-time contributor, and is awarded to a current WordPress contributor who is a woman, has not previously attended WordCamp US, and requires financial assistance to attend this year’s event. The scholarship will provide travel assistance for the recipient to attend WordCamp US this year in Portland, Oregon, and covers travel from your home city, hotel, and your ticket to the event. The application is open through May 30th, and you can apply on the WordPress Foundation page.

Third is a reminder of our next big WordPress event, WordCamp Europe, which will be in beautiful Torino, Italy, June 13th through the 15th. You can still get tickets on their website. If you can’t make it to Italy, never fear. This time of year sees a good number of WordPress events around the world, and they are a great way to connect with WordPress friends and hear all about the latest and greatest in WordPress. You can go find upcoming events on events.WordPress.org to see what events are happening in your area. If there isn’t a WordPress event near you, you can become an organizer and start hosting events locally.

[00:19:42] Angela: And that, friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app. Or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser, or if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those by emailing WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I am your guest host, Angela Jin. Thanks so much for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. In a couple of weeks, Josepha will be back as your regular host for the next episode.

[00:20:21] (Music outro)

View Details

Today, WordPress powers more than 40% of the web. That’s a massive reach—one that comes with a similarly large responsibility. With so many people using the CMS, the WordPress community should always consider strategies for improving the visitor experience. This is where website performance plays a crucial role.

How fast a web page loads, how quickly a page reacts when you click a button, or how smoothly it scrolls can all significantly impact the end-user experience. A more performant site can lead to higher reader engagement and more conversions. Thankfully, over the past few years, the WordPress project has made major performance improvements across the board for the core platform, plugins, and themes.

Many enhancements are available out of the box, with no configuration required. They improve the website frontend’s performance—the part visitors see—and various parts of the administrative experience, such as the editor.

Here’s a partial list of performance upgrades from the past year:

WordPress 6.3 brought several enhancements to image loading. This resulted in an improvement of up to 21% in loading time for any WordPress page with a hero image.
WordPress 6.5 launched with a more efficient translation engine. In benchmark testing, it improved WordPress response time by 23% for all localized WordPress sites. More than 55% of all WordPress sites worldwide use a language other than US English and would benefit from this enhancement.
WordPress 6.5 also included several performance optimizations for the Block Editor, leading to 5x faster typing processing and 2x faster load times when creating or editing content in the site and post editors.

In addition to the Core enhancements listed above, the WordPress project continues to work on several efforts that indirectly benefit the ecosystem’s performance.

For instance, WordPress Core leverages automated tooling for continuously monitoring its performance, covering every product update. This helps measure new features’ performance improvements and enables contributors to detect potential performance problems during the development of a new feature or release so any issues can be proactively addressed long before end users are affected. A project is currently underway to make the same tooling used by WordPress Core developers available to plugin and theme authors as well.

Additionally, the new WordPress plugin checker allows checking any plugin for performance best practices, among other requirements and recommendations. The plugin checker should lead to more performance awareness in plugin authors and, eventually, faster plugins. If you develop plugins, consider integrating this tool into your development and testing workflow.

Last but not least, WordPress 6.5 introduced the Interactivity API, which is a technical foundation that facilitates more performant user interactions. This new infrastructure drastically simplifies the implementation of interactive website features and can even centrally control certain aspects of performance, keeping multiple independent plugins operating efficiently.

These performance updates result from a collaborative effort from all corners of the community, including the WordPress Performance Team. This team, founded in 2021, underscores the WordPress project’s commitment to performance. And the results are substantial: Compared to a year ago, 8% more WordPress sites deliver good load time performance at scale—significantly better than the overall web’s 5.5% load time improvement. The web is getting more performant, and WordPress is leading the way.

WordPress contributors are determined to continue this trend by working on further performance iterations. Whether you’re a WordPress end user, administrator, site builder, or developer, you can contribute to this effort. Anyone can test the performance features before being released in Core through individual feature plugins. Each feature can be tested via the Performance Lab plugin, so please try them! Testing features early helps the team assess their impact and collect valuable feedback.

Are you eager for more WordPress performance news and updates? Then check out the 2024 performance roadmap. Thanks to the entire community for your hard work. Not only does it ensure WordPress’ continued improvement and growth, but it benefits the entire open web.

Thank you to @annezazu @clarkeemily @tweetythierry @swissspidy @westonruter @adamsilverstein @joemcgill for content review and @provenself @dansoschin for editorial review.

View Details

Explore the WordPress Data Liberation project in this exclusive behind-the-scenes episode discussing WordPress migrations. Joining us is WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy, along with special guest and sponsored contributor Jordan Gillman. Together, they’ll look at how the project is expanding opportunities to benefit from the freedom and flexibility WordPress offers. Don’t miss this enlightening discussion!

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Guest: Jordan Gillman
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry and Nicholas Garofalo
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes Idea: translate.wordpress.org tour * WordPress Playground * Want to get involved with Data Liberation? * GitHub – Data Liberation * Making WordPress Slack – data-liberation channel * Small List of Big Things* + WordCamp US 2024 Tickets are now on Sale + WordPress 6.5 Available to Download + Dropping support for PHP 7.0 and 7.1 * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!

[00:00:28] (Intro Music)

[00:00:40] Josepha: Today, I want to talk about the Data Liberation project that we first introduced at State of the Word. It’s a very big project with a lot of philosophical underpinning. So today, I have with me Jordan Gillman, who’s going to help us dig in a little bit deeper.

Jordan, welcome to the show. It’s so great to have you here.

[00:00:57] Jordan: Thank you. It’s lovely to be here.

[00:00:59] Josepha: Before we get started, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? Like what parts of the WordPress project you contribute to, and how long you’ve been hanging around in open source?

[00:01:09] Jordan: Yeah, beautiful. I would love to. My name is Jordan. I live on the east coast of Australia, about an hour out of Sydney—about 10 minutes from the beach, which is a pretty great place to live. My relationship with WordPress began 19 or 18 years ago, I guess. I was tinkering with Movable Type, and they changed their license.

And I went, I need to find something that’s free. And at that point, I had no idea what open source was. I just knew that I could use this WordPress platform for free to you know, tinker around and build websites. At the time, I was a graphic designer and, so web stuff was just fun. But gradually, that kind of took over, and I ended up doing a lot of front-end development and eventually freelancing for about ten years, building WordPress sites for churches and schools and kind of non-profit organizations like that. And through that, I’ve also then ended up doing some support for WordPress and landed being lucky enough now to be sponsored to contribute full-time into the WordPress project. I do a lot of work with the support team, so working in the public forums, particularly on core WordPress plugins and themes like Gutenberg and bundled themes, Twenty Twenty-Four.

[00:02:15] Jordan: But also working with the team itself, trying to make sure the forums are a nice place for people to hang out and answer questions and get their questions answered. And I also help out with a few other things around the place. I have an eye on the work the plugins team’s doing, working with the WordPress Foundation on a few different things. I’m lucky to have my fingers in a few pies but the biggest pie at the moment I have is the Data Liberation project.

[00:02:36] Josepha: Yeah. So let’s talk about that. We’re going to give everyone a quick like starting line. If, for some reason, you have not read or seen anything about the WordPress project plans so far in the last four months, you may not know what the Data Liberation project is, and that’s fine, too. Because Jordan and I are here to help you understand what it is. But, the Data Liberation project is something that Matt introduced to the project at State of the Word last year in December. And you, Jordan, are the one who are really helping us to take this project into a space where we have everything that we need, all the kind of tools and guides that users will need in order to do what exactly? Like, let’s go through what this Data Liberation project is from your standpoint and what made you excited to work on it.

[00:03:27] Jordan: Thank you. Yeah, so the general idea of the Data Liberation project is it should be super duper easy for anyone to bring their site to WordPress. That’s the first main part of it, is that regardless of the platform you are on currently, be it something that’s pretty open, be it something that’s really kind of walls and closed, be it a social media platform, another web building platform, it should be really easy to bring your content over to a WordPress site, because once it’s in a WordPress site, it’s essentially free. You can then take it and do what you want with it once it’s in WordPress, but we want to make it as easy as possible to get it here, basically.

[00:04:03] Josepha: Free as in liberated, not free as in like, now the stuff that was in your mind has no value.

[00:04:10] Jordan: Yeah, free as in liberated, free as in you own it and can do what you want with it. So that’s a big part of it. It’s, let’s get, make it easier for people to come to WordPress. I think it’s also important that if we’re talking about Data Liberation and freedom of content and democratizing publishing, that also means we make it easier for people to take their content from WordPress and use it somewhere else if that’s the decision that they make. And there’s some moves we can make to make that easier and nicer for people as well.

[00:04:37] Josepha: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, recently, we just finished up an outreach period where we were making sure that we were talking to, like, folks in the community and anyone, anyone who uses WordPress that wanted to talk to us about what they needed, what they were hoping for, what issues, what pain points they’ve had when they were looking at site migrations.

So, what, to the best of your knowledge at the moment, like what are the big themes that you got out of that feedback loop? Out of that outreach?

[00:05:08] Jordan: Yeah, thank you. That was really enjoyable, actually. I was lucky enough to, I got to speak to a bunch of people in person at WordCamp Asia, which was great. We’d done some, some online, did a hallway hangout, and we’ve had a survey out for a while to folks predominantly kind of in the hosting agency freelancer space. So, folks who are working with end users who are often the ones doing migrations. We got a lot of feedback about WordPress to WordPress migration and the challenges of different hosting platforms and access from users and a bunch of information, which is useful and interesting but not immediately relevant to the comparison to migrating to WordPress from another platform entirely.

But at the same time, talking to particularly agencies who do a lot of big-scale migrations, there’s a lot of challenges just when it comes to, for starters, getting the content out of the platform. Some platforms are kind of helpful, and they’ll even provide a WordPress formatted export. For every one of those, there are…

[00:06:03] *Josepha:* That’s very helpful.

[00:06:05] Jordan: Yeah, those are super helpful. For every one of those there are probably two or three who aren’t as helpful, and you start to resort to tricks with, you know, manually exporting databases or getting RSS feeds and trying to convert them, or a lot of agencies said, “You know what? Often, we end up just copying and pasting page by page from the source site into a brand-new WordPress site.”

[00:06:27] Jordan: So, there’s challenges about the access to the content. There’s lots of challenges around getting the content from the shape of one platform into WordPress. What constitutes a page? What constitutes a post? How do we handle all of the extra metadata of images and dates and taxonomies, and anything else that might be associated with a blob of content in one platform?

How do we translate that into the way WordPress likes to handle those things? And particularly taking that to another level, even just bringing it into the Block Editor? It was great to hear how many people are just migrating straight to the Block Editor like they want the content in blocks, which is wonderful to hear.

[00:07:05] Josepha: Yay!

[00:07:05] Jordan: But there are challenges. I know it’s great. But there are some, there are challenges with that and getting it to kind of format the way they expect, when it comes in particularly because there’s some kind of functional challenges with that in validating the way the content comes in because it all happens client side in the browser.

It’s hard to do that in big batches. So, there was some really great feedback around all of those kinds of places. It was really interesting to see how much of it centers around that getting the content and then getting the content, and yeah, for the agencies I spoke to, they do a lot of trial and error of, you know, custom scripts, and let’s try it. Oh, that did this. Let’s try again with a few tweaks. So I’m excited to see how we can kind of make that easier for them and, you know, maybe get it happening first time.

[00:07:49] Josepha: Yeah, absolutely. It has been a long time since I migrated any sites personally, but I remember the first time that I tried to migrate a site. So, I was on Xanga before Xanga was on WordPress, and I remember that when I was like, I can’t figure out this WordPress thing, but I think I need some stuff in it so that, like, I know what it’s going to look like.

[00:08:11] Josepha: I know what to move around cause I didn’t know the names for anything in, in CSS or HTML. Like I didn’t know what to look for in the code, but if I had a piece of content in it, I could be like, find the content in the code and then move that. And so I was like, I’m going to export everything because there was an export option in Xanga. And move it into WordPress, and WordPress was like if you can manage to get it out of Xanga, super easy to get it in. But it was actually really difficult to figure out how to get it out. And fortunately, I’d only been writing on it for like four years, three, four years at that point. So there wasn’t like, a huge amount of content, but also, I was a pretty prolific writer. I was a bad writer, but the only way to get better at things you’re bad at is to do it a lot. So, I did a lot of bad writing for three or four years. And I think that in the end, I did, like, just pay some service to scrape everything that was public on it, and then go through and get the private things and pull it out later.

[00:09:08] Josepha: I think later on down the road, I did an actual like full migration when it was easier to get it done and got all the content out, including like drafts and private posts and things. So that’s good. But yeah, it was really difficult then. And then, like, we have the blocks now that are supposed to help get a little bit more consistency in the way that you can move content in and out of a WordPress site.

And is that something that we are then focusing on with the Data Liberation project? Is that something that’s being done in concert with our Gutenberg plugin, or like how are we accounting for that?

[00:09:46] Jordan: That is a great question. The way things are looking at the moment, having come out of this feedback and the way we’re looking at going forward that, that work on getting content coming into blocks is going to be a really, really major part of Data Liberation. And it kind of sits in the middle of things to my mind.

[00:10:01] Jordan: The improvements that we can make with handling the way content is transformed into blocks gives us the potential of wins in a lot of places. So, as long as we can get to the content, this work on HTML to blocks for a better, lack of a better way of putting it, gives us wins with importing from another platform because we can take the content in whatever form it is, turn it into blocks in the post editor.

It gives us wins with migrating from classic editor because, similarly, we can take the HTML of the classic editor generates and turn it into blocks. That already kind of happens, but there’s definitely some work that we can do to keep improving that. It gives us potential wins around the spaces of moving from between proprietary builders and block libraries and things. Because if we start to have a better-standardized set of ways to handle HTML into blocks.

Then, you can essentially move from whatever form your content is in into, you know, core native blocks in the editor. So, I think work there is going to be really important because it gives us a foundation to aim for from whatever the migration is happening from.

[00:11:09] Jordan: So, there’ll be some work there. There’s already work happening on the HTML API. Like, ongoingly and regularly and so we’ll be talking to those folks. There’s obviously going to be a lot of overlap with the work within Gutenberg as well, which is doing you know, parsing of content into blocks. So, it’s going to take a lot of collaboration and a lot of work from everyone, but I’m really excited because if we can get that foundational platform of transforming HTML into blocks really, really smooth, then what we can do is we can, you know, activate contributors in the community say, we’ve got this part figured out. If you can get it to here, it’s going to come in beautifully. So what we want your help with is to say, how do I get out of this platform to a format that we can do the rest? So, hopefully, we’re getting a common flow for a big part of that important migration process. And then we can throw it open to others to say, “You’ve got expertise with this platform. That’s excellent. Can you get us to here? And we’ll take it from there.” And maybe we’ll get some wins by doing that work in parallel, and we’ll really start to see some movement.

[00:12:13] Josepha: And speaking of the, we’ll take it from there. I know that also, in addition to the work that you are doing with Data Liberation and that is happening on the Gutenberg side and WordPress core in general, we also have a little bit of work happening on the after you get it to here point.

So, the folks over at Playground have been doing a bit of research about how to use the guides and tools that are in the Data Liberation repo. To run all of that through Playground so that you can not only like import it, but you can put it into Playground and check it before you launch it in someplace else, which I think is a great user-facing, like, super important thing for an everyday user to be able to have at their fingertips that way.

But then also the tour plugin that was built, I think specifically for the Polyglots team, is where we are looking at using, and I can’t remember which little project we’re doing some research on to make this possible, but we’re looking at taking that tour plugin and making it so that anyone can build a tour on anyone’s version of something in a browser so that you can just say, okay, so I did these things. I got it to here as you requested. I’m moving it to here. But now that I have got it into WordPress, what are the literal buttons I have to press in order to make sure it’s live? What do I literally have to press in order to make sure that I’m in the right time zone? Like, things like that. And we tested it on Wix, and it was able to work.

[00:13:40] Josepha: Not that we’re trying to get anyone to Wix. But on the subject of, like, getting things out of WordPress and into someone else, that sounds counterintuitive for folks, like, you’re here listening to a WordPress podcast, and we’re talking about how and why we want to make it easier for people to get their content to us, of course, but then also, if needed, get it out of a version of WordPress and either into a different version of WordPress with a new host or, whatever.

Or if this is not your long-term destination, which we think it will be once you figure us out, but like, if it’s not, like, how to get out of it, too. So, from your perspective, how does that fit with the basic philosophies of open source or of WordPress in general?

[00:14:24] Jordan: Yeah, thank you. If I may, there’s a couple of things I wanted to touch on from what you’ve said. First of all the other work that is going on in the project at the moment that you mentioned, the tour guide and the Playground, I think both of those are going to be super important to the approach we take to Data Liberation.

I wanted to elaborate just a little bit on the Playground because I’m particularly excited about the potential that gives for two particular scenarios two particular use cases for migration. One is, where I’ve already set up a WordPress site, I’ve got the theme that I’d like, and I’ve got some, you know, some plugins, maybe I’ve got a little bit there, but I want to import content, but I want to check how it is the potential for the Playground to make essentially a staging copy of my site and migrate the content into that staging copy so I can see how it lands in my chosen theme and check everything out and then go, yep, that looks great. And apply it. That’s great for it’s safe. You can check how it looks before it’s, you know, committed. So that’s brilliant. I’m excited about that. I’m also excited about the potential it has for people who don’t know WordPress, or don’t have a WordPress site, or they don’t have a host, they don’t have anything.

[00:15:30] Jordan: But if they can say, I want to see how this would go in WordPress. Playground, through some platform, somewhere, will allow them to just have an immediate in-browser preview of what their site would look like on WordPress. And if they like it, we then move them. We help them find a host. We help them export that in a way that they can use, but it helps the people who already have sites.

But I think, more importantly, it helps those who don’t have a site yet. And they don’t have to set up an empty WordPress install in order to start migrating. They can just get into it.

[00:16:01] Josepha: And also, you don’t have to, like know who your host needs to be before you can take a look at the back end of a WordPress site and see if it makes sense to you. Like I think that that is a huge, huge win on behalf of users, current users, and future users of WordPress.

It’s the try before you buy. Come kick our tires without having to find a server. If you all don’t know what we’re talking about, if you have not heard of Playground yet, you can go to playground.WordPress.net and give it a try. It’s a one-click, serverless local version of WordPress that you can test out themes on and plugins, and just like put all your data into all your content into, and pretty soon also be able to export or just load directly onto the host of your choice. It’s really, really cool.

[00:16:44] Jordan: It’s, it’s pretty much magic, I think.

[00:16:47] Josepha: Yes, I remember the first hackathon where we took it because we took it basically on a hackathon roadshow for six months. I remember the first one we took it to. Routinely, we could get developers, not me, routinely, Adam Zieliński could get a developer to do the thing, and they’d be like, I can do it if you’re next to me telling me what to do, but it’s literal magic. I don’t know what’s happening. And he was like, okay, I’ll come explain it to you. And like, he was using English, but also I was like, that is still magic. I’m so glad someone understands it. It’s brilliant.

[00:17:18] Jordan: Yeah, so the Playground I’m super excited by. I think it’s going to be really important. The tour stuff the tour functionality is going to be really important as well. Because on some level, We’re going to have to wrap all of this work on improving HTML to blocks, the process of taking an export file and importing it into WordPress, the process of telling people how to get the content, all that’s going to have to be ideally wrapped up in a nice user-friendly way so that users aren’t having to, you know, read plain text articles and then going and installing a plugin and all of those kinds of things.

I think the potential for the tours is we may have some kind of wrapper plugin or something which will detect the platform of your existing site if you put the URL in, and it will start walking you through the steps. So, part of that might be action you need to take on your existing platform, and we have some of that information already in the guides on the Data Liberation site at WordPress.org/data-liberation. That information is already there, but I’m hoping that we can start pulling those guides into the WP Admin so you just get walked through it while you’re there. And we can start using the tour functionality to really specifically pinpoint: you need to go here, now you can do this, go and click this, and just walk users through that migration process a little bit more neatly.

[00:18:37] Jordan: I’m really excited that we’re going to be able to utilize a lot of these existing projects that are exciting and happening at the moment. And I think, ideally, they’re all going to make it much easier for users to not have to jump through so many hoops. And the hoops that they do have to jump through, we can hold their hand while they do it.

[00:18:54] Josepha: Yeah, absolutely. Create safe scaffolding for fun, I used to say.

[00:18:59] Jordan: So those are the two projects existing that are happening at the moment that I’m excited about rolling into and working with for the Data Liberation work.

[00:19:07] Jordan: You also asked about the getting content back out, which is something that I’m particularly passionate about, I suppose. Which may be ironic when a lot of the aim of this project is to get people into WordPress. But I’m a really firm believer that if our mission is to democratize publishing, then that doesn’t mean just get everyone onto WordPress and go, yes, now you’re trapped. It’s like the Hotel California, you can never leave. If we’re going to be, you know, fully all in on democratizing publishing, then that means giving folks the freedom to take their content to do with it, whatever they want. It’s fair to say at the moment that that is possible.

So you can export your content from WordPress. We don’t hang onto it. We don’t lock it down. You can take it. At the moment, the format that you get that content in has some limitations. It’s fair to say it doesn’t handle bringing the media of your site particularly well unless you’re turning it into another WordPress site somewhere else.

So, the export functionality is very, very focused at the moment on migration to another host, or to a local site, or to another WordPress installation, basically. But if you want to use that content for something else, maybe another platform. Maybe you just want to have a copy of your blog posts that you can.

[00:20:17] Josepha: Print it into a book.

[00:20:18] Jordan: Yeah, to put into a book. Maybe you want to put it on a thumb drive and put it in a lockbox somewhere. Maybe you want some kind of hundred-year archive of your intellectual property that you’ve written and created. And so I think we’ve got some room to make improvements there. Not only to the way we provide content for other platforms to pick up and bring in but also just in the ways that we provide content to users who just really want to have a physical, digital copy of what they’ve created.

There are some challenges at the moment when you get an export, if you’ve got shortcodes in your content, if you’ve got content that’s generated by plugins, all kinds of dynamic content that is great when it’s a website, and WordPress is wonderful. And there’s all of these options, but if you take an export, you have references to those functions, and you have references to those shortcodes, which aren’t actually fully realized. So I think there’s some room for us to investigate what does a better export for other platforms look like and what does a better export for “I want to print it out or turn it into a book or just have a static version of that” content look like. And so I’m particularly excited about that, even though it’s kind of, bring it in, and we want to let them get it out. But that’s part of the whole liberation of data, I suppose, is, you know, the freedom to do with it what you want.

[00:21:40] Josepha: Yes, absolutely. And everything that increases freedom on the open web, I think we are in favor of. So, I don’t know if you follow many, like WordPress futurists, our people who are out there saying, if only WordPress had these additional 2,500 hours worth of work, then we could do this with it. Like, I don’t know if you follow a lot of them.

[00:22:02] Josepha: But, a lot of them look at that thing that Matt said, like, I want to say, five years ago about WordPress becoming the operating system of the web and putting some thought into what would be required to make that possible. And when we look at composable CMSs, like the option to have something that is a framework and a core of what you are doing in your digital experience of the web. And making it possible to add anything to it required.

I think that also the work that we’re doing with Data Liberation to provide a little bit more consistency and just standardization of the way that content comes in and out, I think, can only help with that potential future implementation of WordPress as the operating system for the web so that you have this basic place where you hold and manage all your content and also not only does WordPress cooperate nicely with all these other tools and applications that you can put on top of it but also all of the content has standard conversational touch points and so everything moves quickly in and out including the dynamic content that is maybe being created inside your WordPress core itself. I think that is also a really important not primary focus, but certainly future-like, if only we could get to that state kind of focus.

[00:23:31] Josepha: I’m really interested. I think that the Data Liberation project is big, and I know that we expected primarily only new contributors to work on it, but honestly, we know that’s not the case. It’s you’re working on old WordPress in here and so not necessarily new contributors. But I think that you’re right that the place for new contributors to help us is saying like we can get the content to here, we can get the data to here, and then we need help getting it into WordPress or help getting it into something else.

So, as like a last question here, or if you have things to add to that, and then I can do last question.

[00:24:04] Jordan: Okay, so to loop back to your conversation about futurists and moving content and stuff, I am really excited about this idea that the open web at the moment, I think, is really, really exciting. I just started mucking around with federating my content in the fediverse. Again, recently, I tried it a little while ago and really struggled, but I’ve just started again, and it’s sitting really comfortably with me, and it’s, it’s feeling like it’s a great time for posting and owning your content, and then syndicating it elsewhere. I have seen a couple of really interesting conversations about what you were saying about, like I’ve seen the conversations in the past about, you know, operating system of the web, but also some talk and ideas recently about what would it look like if we stored all of our data in a WordPress instance?

What if all of my photos aren’t on Instagram? They are on my WordPress site. What if I pull in my Fitbit or my Strava information and just store it in WordPress so that I can do with it what I want once it’s there? What if I, I don’t know, what if I pull in kind of all of my different sources of data and I, and I house them in WordPress and then I can do with them what they want, would do with them what I want.

[00:25:08] Jordan: And that is when the Data Liberation stuff becomes especially important because if it’s your everything, you want to take your everything somewhere else. But I’m really excited for kind of all of that kind of space at the moment and giving people the freedom to own that data and when they create stuff.

In actual fact, this is one of the things that you said in your talk at WordCamp Asia, which has really stuck with me was, and I can’t remember the exact phrase, but you said if you’re going to do all of this work of creating something, you may as well do it somewhere where you own it and can keep it. And that, for me, is just such a strong driver for getting people onto WordPress. Particularly from, at the moment, social media platforms. I’ve got two young daughters who are just getting to the age where they’re creating videos at home, which aren’t being published anywhere, but they’re starting to. They’ve got friends who are doing YouTube channels, and they’ve got friends on Instagram.

And I’m looking at all of that going, I get the urge to create, and I get the urge to publish, but I want them to have an alternative to do all of that so that in five years’ time, ten years time, whatever it is, when they go, wow, I did all of this stuff. I don’t want that owned by someone else. I’ve created all this, and I’m excited by the possibility of having that become a simpler, more user-friendly, accessible option to folks, where it becomes just as easy to have a WordPress site, which is your Instagram feed or a WordPress site, which is your YouTube channel or something like that, where you own it, and you just create it, and it exists. And Data Liberation means you want to take a copy of all that stuff, go for it, download an archive, you know, print out the photos, do whatever you want, but they’re yours. You have them. And so, it’s really feeling like all of that is coalescing together a little bit at the moment. I think it’s a really exciting time.

[00:26:52] Josepha: And also, like, since we’re just meandering around in philosophical spaces, two philosophical thoughts. One, I really, really feel like it’s important and valuable for people to document their lives. I have a pretty private social media presence; mostly, if you’re following me on social media, it’s because, like, you have literally been in my living room or you’re looking for WordPress news. Like that’s it. But I am constantly am documenting my life just for myself, like the folks who are listening, which is everybody, because we don’t do video, will not know that I have back behind me a shelf that is nothing but journals from my leadership journey, like from the moment that I realized that like leadership was something that was a skill and could change people’s lives like I’ve done nothing but document like I ran into this problem. This is the research that I did to figure out what was happening and not, and just like it’s really mundane things in my work now. But the work and the process of documenting, like, what’s happening for you and with you in your life and how you’re interacting with it, like, it’s just important for your mental health and for your understanding of the passage of time.

[00:28:05] Josepha: But then also you were talking about, like, having a hundred-year archive of your thoughts and things, like, there will be a point at which digital information being ephemeral because it’s just electricity wandering around between screens, like, it’s prone to getting lost in the same way that physical things are prone to getting lost, but the loss is less acute in the moment.

And so you can accidentally lose it. And I think that that’s a real long-term not problem for society necessarily, but I think it is something from a societal standpoint where we’re gonna, at some point in the near future, realize that some of us have huge missing gaps where we, like just got rid of everything that we ever documented because we had a moment on social media or because it seemed like the only way to reclaim our content or our data or our privacy or whatever it was. And so I have a yeah. I love it. I love everything that we’re talking about, about the speculative future and WordPress. And so yes, now, well, now everybody knows all my thoughts on speculative WordPress.

[00:29:06] Jordan: There’s an interesting philosophical conversation which we’re like coming towards of what’s the equivalent in a hundred years, in 200 years of now, of the Library of Congress for philosophical and powerful writing. There is so much great stuff that is written on the web, and it just exists there.

In a hundred years, when people are writing about the early work of an artist or a politician or, you know, a notable figure, we don’t, we’re not going to have handwritten letters. We’re not going to have correspondence. But we’ll have tweets. We could have blog posts. Like, it interests me to think, like, the stuff that we take for granted of historical creation is happening digitally now. And so, equivalently, in the future, how, how is that gonna get retained? How much amazing knowledge and thinking is gonna just, you know, have their hosting account expire and get removed? And it’s an, it’s it’s a big conversation, but it’s an interesting one.

[00:30:09] Josepha: Yeah. Oh, what a fascinating discussion we’ve had today. So, by way of wrapping up our discussion here, why don’t you give us a sense for, like, if you are a user of WordPress and you were like, this sounds really interesting, I want to learn more, where can they go? But also, if you are someone who wants to learn how to contribute to WordPress and this sounds like a good opportunity for you to get started with that. Where can people find more about this project, about how to get started, how to contribute, all that stuff?

[00:30:38] Jordan: If you are someone who is hearing about this for the first time and coming to it pretty fresh and haven’t been working in the WordPress community much before. The best place to go will be WordPress.org/data-liberation, that will give you not only access to the tools and guides that exist but also some information on where the development and discussion is happening.

That’s the easiest pathway to find your way into those conversations as well. For folks who already have a little bit of experience and, it may be contributed code or a part of discussions already. The place to go to would be github.com/WordPress/data-liberation. That’s where there’s a lot of discussion. That’s where the existing tools and guides are being managed and worked on. So, if you really want to dive in. Please come and join us there. There are discussions to be had. There are ideas to be floated. That’s where all of the boots-on-the-ground work is going to be happening.

[00:31:25] Jordan: The other great place is within the Make WordPress Slack organization. And we have a Data Liberation channel in there. That is primarily where we have higher-level conversations, and we chat about stuff, and I’m hoping that becomes a real hub for work-adjacent discussion. So GitHub is going to be for all of this is where all the work’s happening, but the Slack channel is where people can share their thoughts on what’s possible, and big picture ideas, and that kind of stuff. So those will be the three best places. WordPress.org/data-liberation for the overview, github.com/WordPress/data-liberation for where the work’s actually happening, and WordPress Slack in the Data Liberation channel. If you want to come and chat more about the possibilities and, you know, helping get the future of the open web happening.

[00:32:17] Josepha: I mean, that is an enticing call to action. We’ll have links to all of the, all three of those in the show notes, as well as links to everything that we kind of mentioned over the course of our conversation. But Jordan, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:32:32] Jordan: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been great.

[00:32:34] (Music interlude)

[00:32:41] Josepha: And now it’s time for our small list of big things. I’ve got three things for you this week.

The first thing on the list is that WordCamp US tickets are now on sale. So that event is happening from September 17th through the 20th in Portland, Oregon. There are general admission tickets and micro sponsor tickets available. And if you have seen the cost of the ticket but had not quite noted the length of the event, I just want to assure you that the cost per day is the same now as it was and has been for years. It’s still that same 25-dollar-a-day ticket that you’ve got; it’s just that it’s four days long this time. We’ll have a link to the tickets in the show notes, but then also you can always wander over to us.wordcamp.org, and it’ll take you right there.

The second thing on our list is that WordPress 6.5 is here. It is named Regina. If you listened to our show last week, you know that it was a huge release and kind of has something for everyone. So, if you have not yet downloaded it to take a look at it, do that. If you have not updated your sites yet, run a backup because you should always do a backup and then get that on your site and start testing everything out.

And the third thing on our big list, our small list of big things, is actually that we’re looking at dropping support for PHP 7. 0 and 7. 1 in upcoming releases of WordPress this year. It should not be too disruptive a change. However, it is going to take a lot of people to test it and make sure that everything’s working as we want it to work and as we need it to work. And so while we head toward that, I want to make sure you’ve got the resources that you need to know what’s happening, where it’s happening, how it’s going to affect you. I’ll leave some resources in the show notes for that as well.

[00:34:27] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser, or if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

[00:34:54] (Music outro)

View Details

Note: Due to an issue with the initial package, WordPress 6.5.1 was not released. 6.5.2 is the first minor release for WordPress 6.5.

This security and maintenance release features 2 bug fixes on Core, 12 bug fixes for the Block Editor, and 1 security fix.

Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. Backports are also available for other major WordPress releases, 6.0 and later.

You can download WordPress 6.5.2 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

WordPress 6.5.2 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.6 and is currently planned for 16 July 2024.

Security updates included in this releaseThe security team would like to thank the following people for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities, and allowing them to be fixed in this release:

A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability affecting the Avatar block type; reported by John Blackbourn of the WordPress security team. Many thanks to Mat Rollings for assisting with the research.

Thank you to these WordPress contributorsThis release was led by John Blackbourn, Isabel Brison, and Aaron Jorbin.

WordPress 6.5.2 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance and security fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, Aki Hamano, Andrei Draganescu, Artemio Morales, Caleb Burks, colind, Daniel Richards, Dominik Schilling, Fabian Kägy, George Mamadashvili, Greg Ziółkowski, Isabel Brison, Jb Audras, Joe McGill, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Lovekesh Kumar, Matias Benedetto, Mukesh Panchal, Pascal Birchler, Peter Wilson, Sean Fisher, Sergey Biryukov, Scott Reilly

How to contributeTo get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core channel. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

Thanks to John Blackbourn, Ehtisham S., Jb Audras, and Angela Jin for proofreading.

View Details

Join WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, as she offers an exclusive preview of the upcoming WordPress 6.5 release, accompanied by special guest Dave Smith, one of the Editor Tech leads for this release. Don’t miss this opportunity for an insider’s look!

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Guest: Dave Smith
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry and Nicholas Garofalo
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes WordPress Download * WordPress 6.5 Development Cycle * Unblocking WP6.5 – Font Library and Synced Pattern Overrides * Data Views * WP-Admin Redesign * Font Library * An Introduction to Block-Based Mega Menus * Dave on WP + These TINY Link Editing CHANGES Just Made WORDPRESS 6.5 So Much Better * Interactivity API in 6.5 * Opportunities to Test WordPress 6.5 * Small List of Big Things* + Asia Meetup Revival Project 2024 + Upcoming WordPress Meetings + Making a WordPress Media Corps * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!

[00:00:28] (Intro Music)

[00:00:39] Josepha: Dave, I’m so excited to have you here with us today. Welcome.

[00:00:42] Dave: Thank you. I’m really excited to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me on.

[00:00:46] Josepha: Yeah. So before we get much further, how about you tell us a little bit about what you do on the WordPress project? And if I recall correctly, that you have a role on the release squad. So just let us know a bit about what that role is and what that looks like.

[00:01:00] Dave: Sure. Absolutely. Well, obviously said I’m Dave Smith. I’m from England in the United Kingdom, and I am full-time contributor to WordPress. I’ve focused primarily on the Block Editor during that time. And I’ve been doing it for about three years now. And fortunately for me, I am sponsored by Automattic, so that allows me to contribute full-time to the project, which is fantastic.

But my history of WordPress goes back a fair way longer than that, and I used to work in agency land, and so I used WordPress for making things for a living before I worked in WordPress if you see what I mean.

[00:01:35] Josepha: I, no, I definitely understand. I also was agency before WordPress.

[00:01:40] Dave: I think it’s a common origin story, if you see what I mean. And yes, you’re absolutely right. I’ve been fortunate enough in this release, WordPress 6.5, to be the Co-editor Tech Lead. Obviously alongside my colleague which is Riad Benguella. Some of you may know him. He is the lead architect of Gutenberg. So yeah, it’s been fantastic to work alongside him.

[00:02:00] Josepha: Yeah, excellent. One of these days, I’m going to get Riad on here. I think I’ve never had him on.

[00:02:05] Dave: Oh, you should definitely.

[00:02:06] Josepha: He’s so kind and reasonable. And I was just gonna tell a personal anecdote about Riad, and I don’t know that it makes any sense, but I’m gonna do it anyway. I’m gonna do it anyway. I saw him at an event like right after he came back from his most recent sabbatical, and he was like, it was great being away, but also like, I had forgotten what kind of energy events like this really bring in.

And he has always struck me as an introvert, but I think maybe he’s like an outgoing introvert or something. Cause normally, like, introvert introverts are not like, this gives me so much energy. They’re like, I know that this is important work, and I’m here. And so that’s my personal anecdote about Riad, I am, gonna get him on here someday, but be that as it may, we’re delighted to have you.

So, 6.5 is coming out are you excited, number one?

[00:02:54] Dave: I am very excited. Yeah, it’s been a long road into this release. As you may know, well, as you do know, it’s, it was delayed by one week. That was actually, I think was, was a good decision. We’ve had a lot of work needing to go into the Font Library feature. I’ve seen a few posts saying there were bugs.

[00:03:09] Dave: I think mainly it was a decision about where to upload fonts to, which seems quite amazing when you think about it. I was talking to my wife about it the other day, and she said, really, you’re delaying a release because of where to upload things. But, yeah, this is software that runs a considerable part of the web.

So when we make these decisions about where things uploaded, we’ve got to be really confident that they are the right decisions. And so, yeah, that decision to delay the release has been good. And we’ve had an opportunity to make sure the release is fully robust and ready to go out. So yeah, I’m super excited to see it land.

[00:03:40] Josepha: Yeah. I have some follow up questions about just like, how doing all of that work in public feels. But probably, we should get through the bulk of the sorts of things that people tune into this episode for, so like, let’s talk about some of the big features that are going into 6.5 so that folks have a sense for that.

And then we’ll take a look at just like things that you’re excited to get in, things that I’m excited to get in. And maybe like if there’s a hidden surprise for users, things that will be really beneficial to users, but they don’t quite see it yet. We can maybe cover that too, but like, what are the big things going into this release from your perspective?

[00:04:17] Dave: Sure. There’s some highlights, I think that the key highlights, and we should probably cover them. So the first one we’ve already touched on it is the Fonts Library. And this has been brewing for a while now, and it’s finally come to fruition. And it basically allows you to manage, install, and upload custom fonts for use on your website. And it’s really, really powerful. It’s, I think it’s going to really change the way people create themes and create their websites. It is unlocking a lot of power for users.

[00:04:46] Josepha: And for folks who’ve been listening to this podcast for a long time, you have heard me say for, I think, like a year, basically every release podcast where we’re looking at what’s coming up. I’m like, and this time it’s fonts. I’m so excited. And so I’m saying it again this time, ’cause it’s really happening this time.

[00:05:03] Dave: It’s finally here. Yeah, it’s a great feature. There’s a lot of work gone into it. It’s really, really good.

[00:05:07] Josepha: So much work. We’ve been working on it for like two or three years. And it’s at the point where like getting it out in front of people is the only way to figure out where the remaining problems will be. And it is the most scary part of any software release, I assume, the things where you’re like, this is time for people to tell us how it’s broken. Please look at it and break it for a while.

[00:05:29] Dave: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve been working on resolving any bugs that we could find, but there’s always going to be things we haven’t noticed. So yeah, we can’t wait for users to get their hands on it. Exactly. Other than fonts, we’ve also got revisions that are now in place in the Site Editor. And this is more than just undo, redo that people may be already familiar with in the editor.

It actually gives you the ability to fully revert your site back to any state that you previously had it. So you could make some changes in the editor. You could completely close down your computer, go away for a week, come back. And you’ve still got the opportunity to say, “Ah, do you know what? I don’t like the way that looks. I’m just gonna; I’m gonna roll that back.” And there’s a nice UI that shows you what it will affect. And you can even roll back styles, you know, like style changes. So it’s, it’s super, super powerful. And it’s just something we’ve been waiting for for such a long time. Just, it’s fantastic to see it land.

[00:06:17] Josepha: I’m really excited about this one personally because I have been to so many meetup events with like new users being taught how to do things with WordPress. And invariably, in the last two or three years, the people who are presenting to new users are saying consistently like, “You can do any experimental thing that you feel like you need to do with your sites because there’s an undo button. WordPress wouldn’t let you do things that fully break your site.”

Like there is a lot of trust in our kind of like time machine, roll-it-back kind of implementations. And so I’m really excited about this one. I think that for all of our new and mid-level users. Who like, have a little bit of fear, but mostly joy around it. Like, this will only increase that and so I’m super excited for this one to go in there.

[00:07:09] Dave: Yeah, it’s really nice. Other than that, the two things I wanted to touch on as well, which is we’ve got these new views now for key objects in WordPress. So things like pages, patterns, templates, and template parts in the Site Editor. You can now view these in a sort of a table layout or in a grid layout. So it gives you a much easier way to sort them, find them, filter them. And I think it points us forward to the possibilities we’ve got in the future for the editor sort of taking some parts of WP Admin and making them more accessible without having to leave the Site Editor. And it’s extremely powerful; you can search in real-time, find things very, very quickly, do all the things you’re used to from the post listing screen, but all within the Site Editor. And it’s for these key objects that you use quite a lot of the time. So I think it’s going to be really, a really great thing for users to get hold of.

[00:07:55] Josepha: Is this related to the Data Views work that we’ve been doing in the first part of the year here?

[00:08:00] Dave: Exactly that exactly. The Data Views work has been a major feed into this, and this is where we see the fruits of all that work coming to the fore for the first time. And I expect to see more of that in future releases as well.

[00:08:12] Josepha: Yeah. For folks who are really, really watching, like, our administrative side of things, you probably are aware that we, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say that we paused the phase three roadmap for this, but I do think that we made a clear choice to get this Data Views work done first so that we could, in parallel with phase three, do a bit of work on the WP Admin redesign, the dashboard redesign, which we all know, like, we love this dashboard, but also this dashboard, it needs a sprucing up, it needs a little bit of, of polish and a little bit of 2024 style I was going to say design. I don’t know if the design folks would love if I just was like, it needs to be modernized that way, but also like it, it does, right?

[00:09:00] Dave: Yeah, and I mean, you know, we all know that the Site Editor is being used more and more. If you’ve got a Block theme, you’re using the Site Editor increasingly, and you’re spending less and less time sort of going between screens in WP Admin. So it makes sense that, you know, these things are accessible within that one interface of the Site Editor. So, yeah, it’s only going to be a good thing for users going forward.

[00:09:20] Josepha: Yeah, absolutely. I probably should have like a whole episode about Data Views and what it’s intending to do, what it’s actually doing, what it’s going to look like as it goes because that’s such a big project. And so many things rely on it. And so, note to self and all listeners, that’s the thing that you should keep an eye out for. We’re going to get it done. But you said you had a final thing also.

[00:09:40] Dave: Yeah, I’ve got one more which is this is for our users of classic themes. We haven’t forgotten about you. Basically, we now have support for appearance tools. So in prior releases, the Block themes have got these really cool design tools like ability to set border colors, border radius, link colors, you name it. We’ve got all these tools, but they haven’t been always available to classic themes. And classic themes can use the Block Editor; they may not be using the Site Editor in the same way, but they can use the Block Editor. And we’ve not made those things available in the same way, but there’s been work going into this release to allow that to happen.

[00:10:11] Dave: So now you can opt into those if you so wish. And it is an opt-in basis. So none your themes will break out of the box if you’ve got classic theme or classic site. But it is a powerful tool to those people who are using classic themes, and that’s completely legitimate.

[00:10:26] Josepha: And so is the opt in like something that you can do for yourself or something that your developer needs to do?

[00:10:32] Dave: You would need to do it in your theme code. So you’d need to do that with PHP. So, your theme developer, if they choose to update their theme and provide support for these things. Then, they would obviously need to test their theme works with those new tools, make sure it’s ready, and then they would ship that update.

And so maybe after 6.5 is released, you may see some themes incrementally adding support. My understanding at the moment is that the core themes, the Block themes, will not automatically add those straight away. I think they need more time to allow them to bed in and more time to get them ready for prime time if you see what I mean, but you know the fact that they’re there and ready means that the wider theme audience and theme developers can start taking advantage of them.

[00:11:15] Josepha: Nice, nice. I have been wondering lately, this is only marginally related, but I’m gonna wonder it out loud anyway. I’ve been wondering lately if like, our classic themes, our most favorite, our most loved classic themes do need a little bit of help moving into a Block theme future. And I think that this will help. I think, on the one hand this will help, and on the other hand, like, what would it take for us to just say, and you’re not the theme person I know, but like, what would it take for us to just say, “These are our top five most favorite, most used, classic themes that we’ve got in WordPress. Let’s rebuild it in blocks and just ship the block version of it and help the classic themes users that love the design, love the look, love the features get introduced to this new block territory so that they can see that not only do they have the look, the feel, the features, but also the flexibility that comes with that and a little bit more feeling of safety as they wander around modifying themes.”

[00:12:18] Josepha: I have no fear of any code changes and didn’t when I started working with WordPress, as opposed to working in WordPress, but I think that that’s not the way that that works right now. Like there’s a whole lot of like, I need to get it right-ish with folks who are using our software. And so I just wonder if that will help everybody feel a little more confident in what they’re doing, knowing they’re not going to break things because we’ve built it so you can’t.

[00:12:45] Dave: It could do, it could do. And I was just thinking as you were talking, like, do we have any themes that already do that? And, of course, we do have 2021. If you can think back that far into the mists of time, we had 2021 classic, which is that it’s called 2021, but we also 2021 blocks, which is doing very much what you’ve just described.

[00:13:03] Dave: So we haven’t pursued that for the new default themes or block themes, but, you know, it might be something to look at for onboarding if there are any of classic themes from the more distant past, you know, maybe some of those could do with a block theme equivalent just to let people on board to that experience and just feel comfortable. Yeah, interesting, interesting. You should definitely talk to the theme people about that.

[00:13:23] Josepha: I’m going to. They’re going to love it. They’re going to be like, Yay! Of course! Of course! I don’t know, actually. I don’t know if anyone ever loves the things that I suggest, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not going to get suggested. I have all these ideas, and they got to come out somewhere. Okay. So do you have something that you worked on that’s not in this big list of features or that you helped people to really shepherd into the release that you think is really cool? Like, maybe it’s not going to be super visible or something, but like that you’ve personally felt was like a cool feature, excited for it to get into the release.

[00:13:53] Dave: Yeah, there are a couple of things, a couple of things at the top of mind. One of them is user-facing and one of them is more developer-facing features. So, I’ll start with the developer feature first. And this one is a change to an API. Now, that API is always a slightly intimidating word, I think, but it just means a set of tools, a standardized set of tools that developers can use to do something. And in this case, it’s the allowed blocks API.

[00:14:20] Josepha: Sounds so fun.

[00:14:21] Dave: Yeah, I know it’s riveting, isn’t it? But trust me, it does come with some benefits. So the Navigation block is a good example. It’s a block that acts as a container and it’s got child blocks. Okay. But you can only insert certain blocks. You can insert links, you can insert social icons, you can insert search. But if you want to insert, I don’t know, an Icon block, for example. You can’t do that, but you can with WordPress 6.5 because of the change to the allow box API. And what it allows you to do is say, “I want to additionally allow the following blocks to be inserted as well.”

So as a developer, you can hook into this filter and change those blocks. Now, okay, so far, so good. “What’s the big deal?” you might say, well, it’s open the door, is open the door to some very, very interesting explorations. Some of which I’ve no doubt that you and your listeners would have already encountered. And one is by a colleague of mine called Nick Diego. And I think it’s on the WordPress Developer blog right now. I think he’s done a fantastic inspiration into mega menus in the navigation block. I’m someone who’s worked on the Navigation block extensively in the past, and I’m very aware of how much users want mega menus to be a part of the Navigation block.

[00:15:30] Dave: I was never convinced it was going to be something we were going to do in core, because it requires so many different things. But Nick has actually managed with this allow blocks API and some other tweaks as well to build a mega menu as a plugin for WordPress using the standard Navigation block.

And I think that’s just one example of the utility of this API. But for example, I mentioned that you could add icons to your Navigation block and you can’t really do that at the moment. It’s pretty powerful. It’s kind of hidden away. It’s in the release notes, but it’s not massively clear, but it does open some pretty big doors. And I think if you’re a developer or a theme author, indeed, you should you should definitely be looking into that and see what it enables for you.

[00:16:06] Josepha: Yeah, we’ll put a link to Nick’s post in the show notes, and we’ll share it around the social spaces. So like, I hear you saying it’s buried, it’s hard to see, it won’t necessarily be exciting now, but will be exciting later, but like mega menus and sliders, those are the most contested things that people want to put on sites all the time. Like from my agency days, like when I was thinking in the mindset of a strategist, a data person, that’s what I was doing. Like, I never wanted sliders. I never wanted mega menus because it just implied that we didn’t have a decision about the sites we were making, like we had not decided the primary purpose, and also it was just hard to track, but it was always literally every single time people are like well if Amazon has it why can’t we have it? You’re like, yeah, I know, but they’re Amazon. They’re not the same like mega menus sliders. I know that from a project perspective that we’re like, that should be a theme thing. That should be in theme territory. But I think it makes sense to have in core because so many people want to be able to do it.

[00:17:14] Josepha: And just because like someone like me feels like it’s not the right call for your business doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be able to make that decision for yourself, you know, I think that’s a, I think that’s a great, a great feature to call out.

[00:17:28] Dave: Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. I can look for my agency days. I can exactly imagine that sort of thing. We have a lot of people, a problem that a lot of people are facing. So it’s really important that we provide the tools to allow people to do that now. And we can always look at if it’s valid to include it in core later, then we can look at that as well.

Yeah. So that’s, that’s the first one I had. The second one is a little bit more user-facing. I would say it’s hidden away. But I’m not 100 percent sure it is. I mean, Josepha, how often do you create links when you’re working with WordPress?

[00:17:58] Josepha: Like every time that I’m in WordPress.

[00:18:00] Dave: Yeah, exactly. Same here. I do it all the time, right? And a lot of people do. And for a long while, contributors to the editor have been sort of collecting and collating the feedback that’s come in from people about their frustrations with the built in link interface in the Block Editor. So if you’re creating a hyperlink to, you know, hyperlink to another page or, you know, you’re going to link to Nick’s mega menu article, you’re going to be doing that a lot, right?

That’s something that people do when they’re creating content in WordPress. And so we worked a lot to refine that with a contributor who, who you may know, Rich Tabor. Who’s also, I think, on the release squad as well. An influencer in the WordPress space as well. He spent a lot of time looking at the UX and myself and a number of other contributors have spent a lot of time in this release refining that. And I think it’s surprisingly difficult to get right, but I think we’ve, I think we’ve made some nice improvements to that will be nice quality of life for people who, to do this sort of content creation quite a lot.

So there’s things like now when you create the link for the first time, it remains open on the initial creation of the link. So that means you can quickly then easily adjust the link. I mean, it seems obvious, doesn’t it? Yeah, but it’s not happening. It just used to just automatically close, and the people are like, “Hey, I wanted to make more adjustments. “

[00:19:08] Josepha: I wasn’t done yet.

[00:19:10] Dave: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. We’ve, we’ve streamlined the UI. We’ve removed a lot of clutter, but we’ve also added some useful tools, like ability to copy a link and remove the link directly from the control itself. And lastly along with lots of other accessibility changes in this release. We have worked a lot on refining the implementation.

So that is discoverable for, for users of assistive tech because we spent a lot of time talking to core accessibility team and other people, and they were finding it very hard to perceive that the UI was there because of the way that keyboard interactions work and you’ve got the block toolbar in the way and things like that.

We think we’ve nailed on a really good solution now that works for, not only uses assistive tech, but actually provides benefits for sighted users as well. It’s kind of difficult to talk about. I mean, I have got a video covering this on my YouTube channel, which kind of shows it in a bit more detail, but we’re happy it’s in a much better place.

[00:20:02] Dave: And yeah if people have got feedback about it, and when, when 6.5 comes out, we’re always happy to hear that. And you can go to the WordPress GitHub repository and raise an issue. And one of us will jump on it and see what we can do.

[00:20:13] Josepha: And we can include a link to that video also. So like, for folks where this sounded intriguing, but they don’t quite get the concept, like video content all day, let’s pop it into our show notes. And everybody can take a look at it there. I think that’s a great idea.

[00:20:28] Dave: Great. Yeah, I appreciate that.

[00:20:30] Josepha: So final question, maybe, maybe final question, final planned question. Is there anything from a user-facing perspective again that you feel has not really gotten the airtime that it needs so far?

[00:20:44] Dave: I think there’s a lot of technical changes that have happened in this release. So it’s easy to look at those. I mean, we’ve covered quite a lot of the key ones that will be user-facing in terms of Font Library and Revisions. We’ve got things that are going to this release that enable things a lot for people to experience in the future, I think, so underlying changes like the Interactivity API becoming public. Now that’s public, plugin developers can start to make sites much more interactive on the front of the site rather than just in the editor. So I think that once 6.5 has gone in, and people have started to explore the Interactivity API in more detail, we might see more plugins offering sort of interactivity on the fronts of their sites. An example is obviously the lightbox you’ve got with images in core, but I can; there’s way more stuff that you can do with that. So we’re going to see more of that.

[00:21:28] Dave: We’ve got Block Hooks that have landed in 6.5, and this is going to open for things like ecommerce plugins and to be able to add, you know, cart blocks or log in, log out blocks to things like navigation, for example, or you might want a ability to like all your comments, and you can do that with Block Hooks and then a plugin developer can just, you know, when the plugin is enabled, they can just make it so that those things just appear on your site, but you still got control over the design.

So there’s a lot of like hidden things I think are going to uncover new features for users over time as a result of the community getting involved and changing their plugins and themes to do these take advantage of these new tools.

[00:22:07] Josepha: Yeah, so the Interactivity API, obviously it has “API” on it. And so no one’s thinking, well, this is a user-facing thing. And while the API is not a user facing thing, like, I think that you’re right. That what it enables absolutely is going to be really useful and hopefully really engaging for like end-to-end users, like the users that are not listening to this podcast and they don’t know we exist, like they don’t know that WordPress has a community building it, they’re just like, it exists, there’s a software that came out of nowhere, like, I’m really excited to see how our developers in the community start to use that in their plugins and themes and get that out to end users. I’m really, really excited to see how creative they get with it.

Did you have a final thing?

[00:22:51] Dave: There’s a lot of design changes, I think. I mean, we can’t cover them all, obviously, in verbal form in this podcast, but some things that are just standing out to me if we look at the source of truth for, for WordPress 6.5, it is, it is big. There’s a lot in this release. But there’s some very cool things for, I don’t know, quality. I like to see them as like quality of life design design changes. Things like, if you drop an image, as a background image of a cover block, it automatically sets the overlay color for that cover block to match the most prominent color of the background image. Like things like that, they seem small, but over time, they just, you just drop that thing, and it just does it. And it’s like, this is nice. And it feels like a nice tool to use that just is intuitive. And I think there’s, we’ll see a lot of those things landing in this release that can just make the experience of working with WordPress and working in the Site Editor much, much nicer.

[00:23:41] Josepha: Yeah. I remember when I first ran into that particular thing, it was on the Showcase, our most recent redesign of it. We’re using that functionality in there before it was available in core. Obviously, I know, but it was really fascinating. I’m not great with color combinations. Like, I don’t have a sense for, like, oh, that’s the primary thing. That’s not. And so having that being done kind of automatically so that my stuff looks good anyway, despite what my color sense said to do or not. I thought it was great. Makes you look good as somebody who’s running a business. You don’t have to know how things work in order to have excellently functional, really beautiful things.

[00:24:21] Josepha: And I think that’s a great thing about all of our releases. Obviously, everything is supposed to work that way, but like this one has a lot of really cool things like that available. I think those are really the questions that I had. Is there anything you want to make sure to share before we kind of give last thoughts and head out?

[00:24:39] Dave: Yeah, I was, I was thinking a lot about, you know, the community we’ve got with WordPress, and I think that people outside of WordPress may not really understand that how amazing this community is that we’ve got here, but I wanted to say to people like don’t shy away from contributing to WordPress. I get that, you know, people like myself are fortunate enough to be sponsored to do it. But there’s always something that people can do, even if that’s just spending like 30 minutes testing a release or donating some of your time to run one of the meetings. It can really make a difference overall. Even just filing a bug report for something you see in WordPress 6.5 or testing 6.5 before it goes out, those little things do make a big difference. And if you’re not sure where to go, then we can signpost you with links, no doubt in this, in the podcast description with where where’s to go. But yeah, I just want to encourage people to get involved, basically.

[00:25:27] Josepha: Yeah. And it’s all working out in public, like we’ve got developers, designers, marketing folks, community folks like all doing this work out where everybody can see it. And so that, I know, can look really kind of overwhelming. But I want to just highlight, like, you don’t have to know everything about what’s happening in the project in order to get involved in the project. Like every small bit of contribution toward like finding a new bug or confirming that a bug happens across other devices, other setups, things like that, like those all help make things better and keep things moving as quickly as we are able to make them move. And so, yeah, I’ll second that every little thing that you think like that won’t make a difference. It does. We can’t tell that things are broken or things are working or things are in need of some care unless you highlight those for us. And this is the best way to do it is to show up and give 30 minutes to send out a group testing invite to your meetup group or whatever it is that you all have been thinking you should do, like, this is your sign. You can do it.

[00:26:34] Dave: Everyone should get involved if they can.

[00:26:37] Josepha: I agree. I agree. Dave, this has been such an excellent conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:26:42] Dave: Oh, thank you very much. It’s a pleasure.

[00:26:43] (Music interlude)

[00:26:49] Josepha: What an interesting release we’ve got coming out this week. I’m so glad you all made it this far in the pod, and now it’s time for our small list of big things.

[00:27:00] Josepha: First up, following up on the WordPress meetup reactivation project that we had in 2022, we aim to revive some meetup groups in big cities that are inactive or help the local WordPress community that are not yet part of our meetup chapter program to join our program. There is a post out on the community P2 on the community site. That is titled Asia Meetup Revival Project 2024. I’ll leave a link to that in the show notes if you want to read more about that and figure out how to get involved.

And speaking of getting involved, we have roughly a million meetings. Because it’s a new month, we’re in April now. New month, new opportunities. There are a lot of things happening in April. We will be coming out of a major release, obviously, and so there will be some minor release follow up to do. There will be a lot of discussion about what’s coming next, what’s in trunk, what’s not in trunk. But also a lot of work being done around our next big major events, our next big major training initiatives. There’s just so much happening. Spring is a time when we are looking at stuff that’s new, what we want to invest in, what we want to grow. And so if you have not attended one in a while or even at all if you’ve never attended a meeting in the community, then this is a great time to start and join your fellow community members trying to make WordPress better every day.

[00:28:23] Josepha: And then the final thing on our small list of big things is I am looking at helping to shift the focus of our WordPress marketing community. We’ve had a bit of a struggle over the years to figure out what our primary focus and our primary impact can be. So there’s a post up called ‘Making a WordPress Media Corps’. It’s gotten quite a bit of attention, and I do really think that it has a lot of potential for solving some of the issues that we have and kind of getting some quick wins into our recent history of that team so that we can move forward confidently together. So pop on over, give it a read, share your thoughts. And if you are one of these qualified media partners, also let us know.

[00:29:08] Josepha: That, my friends, is your small list of big things.

Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. And if you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser, or if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

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Say hello to WordPress 6.5 “Regina,” inspired by the dynamic versatility of renowned jazz violinist Regina Carter. An award-winning artist and storied jazz educator known for transcending genre, Regina’s technical foundations in classical music and deep understanding of jazz have earned her the reputation of boldly going beyond what’s possible with the violin.

Let the stunning twists and subtle turns of Regina’s genre-bending sound surprise you as you explore everything 6.5 offers.

This latest version of WordPress puts more power into the details. It offers new and improved ways to fine-tune and enhance your site-building experience, letting you take control in ways that make it your own. You’ll find new ways to manage your site’s typography, more comprehensive revisions available in more places, and a collection of Site Editor updates paired with impressive performance gains to help you get things done smoother and faster.

“Regina” also marks the introduction of some breakthrough developer tools that will start transforming how you use and extend blocks to craft engaging experiences. The Interactivity API opens up a world of creative front-end possibilities, while the Block Bindings API makes dynamic connections between blocks and data seamless. These, among other developer-focused improvements and updates, are ready to help you evolve how you build with WordPress.

Download WordPress 6.5 “Regina”What’s inside 6.5Add and manage fonts across your siteThe new Font Library puts you in control of an essential piece of your site’s design—typography—without coding or extra steps. Effortlessly install, remove, and activate local and Google Fonts across your site for any Block theme. The ability to include custom typography collections gives site creators and publishers more options when it comes to styling content.

Get more from your revisions—including revisions for templates and template partsWork through creative projects with a more comprehensive picture of what’s been done—and what you can fall back on. Get details like time stamps, quick summaries, and a paginated list of all revisions. View revisions from the Style Book to see how changes impact every block. Revisions are also now available for templates and template parts.

Play with enhanced background and shadow tools* Control the size, repeat, and focal point options for background images in Group blocks so you can explore subtle or splashy ways to add visual interest to layouts. * Set aspect ratios for Cover block images and easily add color overlays that automatically source color from your chosen image. * Add box shadow support to more block types and create layouts with visual depth, or throw a little personality into your design.

Discover new Data ViewsEvery piece of your site comes with a library of information and data—now, you can find what you need quickly and organize it however you like. Data views for pages, templates, patterns, and template parts let you see data in a table or grid view, with the option to toggle fields and make bulk changes.

Smoother drag-and-dropFeel the difference when you move things around, with helpful visual cues like displaced items in List View or frictionless dragging to anywhere in your workspace—from beginning to end.

Improved link controlsCreate and manage links easily with a more intuitive link-building experience, like a streamlined UI and a shortcut for copying links.

What’s fresh for developers in 6.5Bring interactions to blocks with the Interactivity APIThe Interactivity API offers developers a standardized method for building interactive front-end experiences with blocks. It simplifies the process, with fewer dependencies on external tooling, while maintaining optimal performance. Use it to create memorable user experiences, like fetching search results instantly or letting visitors interact with content in real time.

Connect blocks to custom fields or other dynamic contentLink core block attributes to custom fields and use the value of custom fields without creating custom blocks. Powered by the Block Bindings API, developers can extend this capability further to connect blocks to any dynamic content—even beyond custom fields. If there’s data stored elsewhere, easily point blocks to that new source with only a few lines of code.

Add appearance tools to Classic themesGive designers and creators using Classic themes access to an upgraded design experience. Opt in to support for spacing, border, typography, and color options, even without using theme.json. Once support is enabled, more tools will be automatically added as they become available.

Explore improvements to the plugin experienceThere’s now an easier way to manage plugin dependencies. Plugin authors can supply a new Requires Plugins header with a comma-separated list of required plugin slugs, presenting users with links to install and activate those plugins first.

From fast to faster: Performance updatesThis release includes 110+ performance updates, resulting in an impressive increase in speed and efficiency across the Post Editor and Site Editor. Loading is over two times faster than in 6.4, with input processing speed up to five times faster than the previous release.

Translated sites see up to 25% improvement in load time for this release courtesy of Performant Translations. Additional performance highlights include AVIF image support and improvements for registering block variations with callbacks.

A tradition of inclusionThis release includes more than 65 accessibility improvements across the platform, making it more accessible than ever. It contains an important fix that unblocks access to the admin submenus for screen reader users and others who navigate by keyboard. This release also adds fixes to color contrast in admin focus states, positioning of elements, and cursor focus, among many others, that help improve the WordPress experience for everyone.

Learn more about WordPress 6.5Check out the new WordPress 6.5 page to learn more about the numerous enhancements and features of this release—including short demos of some of the highlighted features.

Explore Learn WordPress for quick how-to videos, online workshops, and other free resources to level up your WordPress knowledge and skills.

Check out the WordPress 6.5 Field Guide for detailed technical information and developer notes to help you build with WordPress and get the most out of this release. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Developer Blog for developer updates, feature tutorials, and other helpful WordPress content from a developer perspective.

For more information about installation, file changes, fixes, and other updates, read the 6.5 release notes.

The 6.5 release squadEvery release has many moving parts with its own triumphs and challenges. It takes a dedicated team of enthusiastic contributors to help keep things on track and moving smoothly. 6.5 is made possible by a cross-functional group of contributors, always ready to champion ideas, remove blockers, and resolve issues.

Release Lead: Matt Mullenweg
Release Coordinators: Akshaya Rane, Héctor Prieto, Mary Baum
Core Tech Leads: David Baumwald, Pascal Birchler
Editor Tech Leads: David Smith, Riad Benguella
Core Triage Leads: Ahmed Kabir Chaion, Jb Audras, Rajin Sharwar
Editor Triage Leads: Anne McCarthy, Fabian Kägy
Design Leads: Benjamin Zekavica, Rich Tabor
Marketing and Communication Leads: Dan Soschin, Lauren Stein
Documentation Leads: Estela Rueda, Leonardus Nugraha, Steven Lin
Performance Leads: Joe McGill, Mukesh Panchal
Test Leads: Olga Gleckler, Patrick Lumumba, Vipul Ghori
Default Themes Leads: Carolina Nymark

Thank you, contributorsWordPress believes in democratizing publishing and the freedoms that come with open source. Supporting this idea is a global and diverse community of people collaborating to strengthen the software.

WordPress 6.5 reflects the countless efforts and passion of around 700 contributors in at least 57 countries. This release also welcomed over 150 first-time contributors!

Their collaboration delivered more than 2,500 enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all—a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress open source community.

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Over 70 locales have translated 90 percent or more of WordPress 6.5 into their language. Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps make WordPress available in 200 languages.

Last but not least, thanks to the volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users worldwide.

Get involved and contributeParticipation in WordPress is not limited to coding. If contributing appeals to you, learning more and getting involved is easy. Discover the teams that come together to Make WordPress, and use this interactive tool to help you decide which is right for you.

One more haiku6.5 is here!
Play, interact, build better,
Stronger and faster.

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The latest release candidate (RC4) for WordPress 6.5 is ready!

This release candidate is an addition to the existing WordPress 6.5 release cycle. It allows more time for testing to ensure every feature and improvement is in the best shape possible.

The updated target for the WordPress 6.5 release is April 2, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.5-related posts for further details. If you’re looking for more detailed technical notes on new features and improvements, the WordPress 6.5 Field Guide is for you.

What to expect in WordPress 6.5 RC4There’s been a lot of helpful feedback regarding one of this release’s highlighted features: the Font Library. This has resulted in some additional improvements needed to make sure the greatest number of sites possible can benefit from this anticipated new feature.

This release also includes sixbug fixes for the Editor and 10+ tickets for WordPress Core. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC3, you can browse the following links:

GitHub commits for 6.5
Closed Trac tickets

How to testThis version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC4 on a test server and site.

While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.5 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 6.5 RC4 in four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the RC4 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use the following WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.5-RC4 | | WordPress Playground | Use the 6.5 RC4 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. |

Here comes the haikuWith some extra time
Test, rinse, repeat, and refresh
WordPress will really shine

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin.

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The third release candidate (RC3) for WordPress 6.5 is ready!

While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.5 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 6.5 RC3 in four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the RC3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use the following WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.5-RC3 | | WordPress Playground | Use the 6.5 RC3 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. |

The current target for the WordPress 6.5 release is March 26, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.5-related posts in the coming weeks for further details.

If you’re looking for more detailed technical notes on new features and improvements, the WordPress 6.5 Field Guide is for you.

What to expect in WordPress 6.5 RC3Thanks to the many contributors testing up to this point, this release includes 10+ bug fixes for the Editor and around 15 tickets for WordPress Core. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC2, you can browse the following links:

GitHub commits for 6.5
Closed Trac tickets

How to contribute to this releaseWordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

Get involved in testingTesting for issues is critical to ensuring WordPress is performant and stable. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Search for vulnerabilitiesDuring the release candidate phase of WordPress 6.5, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Update your theme or pluginFor plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.5 beta releases. With RC3, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.5.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Release the haikuAnother RC
We are getting really close
Have you tested yet?

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin, @audrasjb.

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WordCamp Asia 2024 was a dynamic three-day celebration of collaboration, diversity, and innovation in the WordPress project. This week, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shares her insights and experiences from the event, which featured one of the largest Contributor Days in the region, a variety of speakers, engaging panel discussions, and workshops. Josepha offers her thoughts on the latest topics being discussed within the community and forming the future of WordPress.

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes WordCamp Asia 2024 + Contributor Day + WordCamp Asia Playlist * Small List of Big Things* + WordPress 6.5 is on target for release on March 26, 2024. + Get involved with WordPress events: - Find events near you on events.WordPress.org and WordCamp Central - Learn more about organizing your own local event + Proposal: Non-editable Footer for all Event Website Pages * Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org.

[00:00:29] (Intro music)

[00:00:40] Josepha: I have returned from WordCamp Asia and struggled my way through some truly aggressive jet lag, so that means it’s time for a little WordCamp wrap-up. I spoke with a couple hundred people at the event, and I came away with a few topics that seemed to be on everyone’s minds. Those topics are: making business in WordPress, the business of making WordPress, and how to communicate both sides a little better.

[00:01:04] Josepha: So first, let’s start with making business in WordPress. This comes up at every event, and that honestly just makes sense. WordPress is a tool that people use to power their businesses across our global economy, and sometimes the businesses are closely related to WordPress itself. They are creating custom themes or plugins, building WordPress powered commerce sites for clients, or offering any number of agency services. But there are also businesses that are a little less close: restaurants, museums, local governments, schools. But it was clear that they all rely on the software just as much as the other.

So, it was nice to see some sessions that focused specifically on business matters in WordPress. And I heard so many people tell me about a conversation they had had earlier in the day with someone who helped them figure out their pricing or advised them on early errors they made in their business journey and generally helped them feel a little less lost.

I always love seeing this. Hearing how people are accomplishing their goals because of connections they made at one of our events, it’s enough to keep me coming back for years.

[00:02:10] Josepha: The next thing that came up a lot was the business of making WordPress. I don’t know if that came up a lot because of the sorts of conversations that people are willing to bring to me these days or because there was overwhelming interest in knowing how we keep all these trains on their tracks. But either way, it was refreshing to be able to have so many conversations about the invisible work that goes into a project like this. There was a Contributor Day that hosted over 600 people, if I recall correctly, which makes it the largest Contributor Day in the area to date. 35 percent of those people had never attended a Contributor Day before, so there were a lot of people who were discovering the WordPress community for the first time.

And for folks who’ve been here for a long time, it’s so easy for us to forget how much there is to learn at first. Even if you happen to show up with a skill set that fits a contributor team’s needs exactly, you still have to learn where we collaborate, how distributed contribution works, and all these rules and guidelines about open source freedoms and copyleft.

[00:03:10] *Josepha*: And then also you have to come to terms with the fact that we define and design all of our spaces and programs with belonging in mind. I mean, for every one question that you get answered, there are going to be six new ones that you didn’t know you had yet. So I came away from a lot of these conversations with the reminder that it’s important in so many ways for us to talk about the work that we do, even when it’s boring, even when we think it doesn’t really matter, because a lot of people have questions about how this works, how it runs, and how they can be part of making sure that it’s around for the long-term.

And the final thing that came up all over the place last week was how to communicate these things better. It’s easy to forget that folks who listen to this podcast don’t actually make up like a hundred percent of the people using WordPress; that’s on me. So just cause I’ve said here that, you know, enterprise is our next big space for biz dev or that, our primary growth markets are APAC, or that events are our best tool for brand expression.

[00:04:08] *Josepha*: Like, just because I said it doesn’t mean that everyone heard it. And we absolutely have to get those messages to more people, more frequently, and with more certainty. You’ll hear often from WordPress pundits that rising tides lift all boats, and the bigger the pie, the more the slices. We believe fully in the spirit of coopetition here, that we are all better together.

But I can’t shake the feeling that we’re mostly just talking to ourselves about it. It’s hard to get outside our own little bubble, but I believe completely that doing so is the best thing for our project in the long term. Not only so that we can continue to grow and provide access to the opportunities we know we offer but also so that we can do more to dignify our profession.

WordPress developers are not taken seriously, and yet you all are some of the smartest and most compassionate people I’ve ever met in my career. And I’d like to see how we can fix that perception together. And so that’s it. Those are the big, big, giant, old topics that came up a lot in conversation last week.

[00:05:14] *Josepha*: Don’t forget that you can catch up on all the sessions via the live stream, or if you are feeling inspired to contribute, reach out to the community team and see what sorts of meetup events you can host.

[00:05:24] (Music interlude)

[00:05:32] *Josepha*: Which brings us now to our small list of big things. I have two big things and one slightly less big thing, but they’re all fairly big.

So, the first thing on the list is that the latest version of WordPress, WordPress 6.5, is on target for release on March 26th. That’s, I think, a couple weeks from now. So keep an eye out for that. In the event, I mean, we have auto-updates everywhere, and probably you are on a WordPress-specific host and, so you won’t necessarily need to do anything. But if you have any desire or concerns about seeing the software a little bit ahead of time, you can always go and download the beta, give it a quick test or the release candidate, give that a quick test. See if there’s anything that’s not functioning as you expected it to function, and let us know if it’s not. But yeah, there are auto-updates. You don’t have to go out and proactively do anything if you don’t want to, that’s just in case you do want to. That’s coming up March 26th.

[00:06:27] *Josepha*: The next thing is that I want to give everybody a general call-in for event contribution. So, WordPress events is where I entered the community. It is one of the most affirming and life-changing types of contribution I’ve ever done because you get to see a bunch of people succeed in their own goals because of something that you were able to tell them. It’s like teaching, but with people who elected to be there. So we have a lot of opportunities, for contribution by volunteering at events, either as volunteering at the event itself or to volunteer to organize it. We have small-scale, easy-to-do meetups, but we also have slightly larger WordCamps that can be done. If you have any hope for doing that or are just kind of interested. I’ll leave a link for you in the show notes.

[00:07:19] *Josepha*: And then the final thing on here is that we actually have a pretty substantial proposal out at the moment. It’s for non-editable footers on all event website pages. This might not sound interesting to you, but it actually is kind of interesting. So, it’s been proposed to add a non-editable footer to all of the event website pages moving forward. So that’s everything that would be displayed on a WordCamp or on any of the new formatted event sites that we have. This proposal intends to meet two goals. One, it fills any legal requirements a site or country might have about displaying the privacy policy and other items. And two, it brings visibility to the new events.WordPress.org website, where a community member can find more events in their area. The last day to respond to that proposal is March 20th, which I think is two days from now. I think it’s on Wednesday and this is airing on Monday. So, I’ll have a link to that in the show notes as well in case you have any thoughts about it.

[00:08:15] *Josepha*: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. And if you like what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you ended up with questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

[00:08:43] (Music outro)

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The second release candidate (RC2) for WordPress 6.5 is ready!

While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.5 is the best it can be.

You can test WordPress 6.5 RC2 in four ways:

| Plugin | Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). | | Direct Download | Download the RC2 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. | | Command Line | Use the following WP-CLI command:wp core update --version=6.5-RC2 | | WordPress Playground | Use the 6.5 RC2 WordPress Playground instance (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. |

The current target for the WordPress 6.5 release is March 26, 2024. That’s a mere two weeks away! Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.5-related posts in the coming weeks for further details.

What to expect in WordPress 6.5 RC2Thanks to the many contributors testing up to this point, this release includes approximately 20 bug fixes for the Editor and 30+ tickets for WordPress Core. For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC1, you can browse the following links:

GitHub commits for 6.5 since March 5
Closed Trac tickets since March 5

Update on content overrides for synced patternsAs synced patterns evolve and improve, every enhancement must continue to provide the best experience possible. With this in mind, WordPress 6.5 will not include the ability to override content in synced patterns. This allows more time for feedback and testing to ensure it can really shine. Expect this feature to debut in the next major release!

Contribute to this releaseWordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

Get involved in testingTesting for issues is critical to ensuring WordPress is performant and stable. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide for more details on getting set up.

Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

Search for vulnerabilitiesFrom now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.5 (scheduled for March 19), the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Update your theme or pluginFor plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users.

Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.5 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.5.

If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum.

Release the haikuRC2, a bridge,
From development to launch,
One more step forward.
– submitted by @huzaifaalmesbah

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin, @get_dave, and @audrasjb.

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Over 1,300 attendees gathered at the Taipei International Convention Center in Taiwan for WordCamp Asia 2024. This three-day event emerged as a vibrant celebration showcasing the collaboration, diversity, and innovation that drive the world’s most popular web platform.

The Asian WordPress flagship event started with a dedicated Contributor Day, followed by two days of engaging talks, panels, hands-on workshops, and networking. Notable guests, including WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg and Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy, joined the diverse lineup of speakers. Popular topics featured cutting-edge web technologies and trends, use cases, open source dynamics, and more. WordPress enthusiasts seized the opportunity to gain insights from international and local industry experts and to learn about the project’s future.

Converting walled gardens into community gardensOn March 8, Josepha Haden Chomphosy took the stage for an insightful journey comparing and contrasting the “walled” and “community” gardens in software ecosystems, drawing an analogy between closed and open source platforms. After exploring both concepts, she posed an important question to the audience.

What would it take for someone to move from a walled garden to a community garden?

Open source software, symbolized by community gardens, represents freedom from copyright restrictions and usage limitations. Unlike proprietary software (described as walled gardens), the core value lies in long-term empowerment, giving people control and ownership of their digital presence.

Acknowledging the longstanding values held by WordPress and its open source community for two decades, Josepha focused on the importance of caring for foundations that make us strong, managing what distracts us, and nurturing growth by embracing new opportunities. She celebrated the strengths of the WordPress community and how its shared ethos furthers a thriving ecosystem.

Quoting artist and activist Audrey Hepburn, Josepha expressed that, much like a community garden, the power of contributions—whether through time, knowledge, or product use— sustains and maintains shared spaces like WordPress.

In the Q&A portion of her presentation, Josepha addressed inquiries about community involvement and contributions. Highlighted resources included the WordPress job board for opportunities within the ecosystem and the Data Liberation project, emphasizing its role in fostering a more open web and helping the transition out of proprietary platforms.

Q&A with Matt MullenwegWordCamp Asia concluded with a live audience Q&A session featuring WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg. Attendees gained insights into the future of WordPress, including ongoing projects like Data Liberation, community inclusion initiatives, artificial intelligence (AI), and more.

The atmosphere was filled with excitement when Matt revealed that this year’s State of the Word will take place in Tokyo, Japan, on December 16, 2024.

Additional questions from this session will be addressed in an upcoming post on the Make WordPress Project blog.

Stay connectedWordPress events enable technologists, open source enthusiasts, and community members around the globe to meet, share ideas, and collaborate to drive WordPress and the open web forward.

Don’t forget to mark your calendars for WordCamp Europe (Torino, Italy), WordCamp US (Portland, Oregon, United States), and next year’s WordCamp Asia in Manila, Philippines!

Thank you to the WordCamp Asia organizers, volunteers, and sponsors who made this event possible, and to @angelasjin, @dansoschin, @eidolonnight, @bjmcsherry for collaborating on this post.

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August 2023 marked another exciting chapter in WordPress, with the Community Summit and WordCamp US bringing the community together for meaningful discussions, knowledge sharing, and learning. This month also welcomed the long-awaited WordPress 6.3 release and offered a glimpse of what’s to come. Let’s dive into it.

Meet WordPress 6.3 “Lionel”WordPress 6.3 “Lionel” was released on August 8, 2023, and named after the acclaimed vibraphonist, pianist, and jazz percussionist Lionel Hampton.

This major update makes bringing your vision to life with blocks more intuitive and efficient. Your content, templates, and patterns are now seamlessly integrated into the Site Editor, enabling you to craft every aspect of your online presence within a single location. You can sharpen your designs with new tools, enjoy fine-tuned control over navigation menus, and work faster with the Command Palette. Explore what’s new.

WordPress 6.3 features over 500 features and enhancements with a continued emphasis on performance and accessibility. This release was made possible by more than 650 contributors from 52 countries.

While the Site Editor will continue to be enhanced, this release means a significant milestone as it marks the conclusion of Gutenberg Phase 2. Take a moment to watch “Designed with WordPress”—an ode to this remarkable journey worth celebrating.

Download WordPress 6.3.1.

Roadmap to 6.4Contributors are already working on WordPress 6.4, expected to be released on November 7, 2023. This release, led by an underrepresented gender release squad, will focus on enhancing different aspects of the WordPress experience while continuing the foundational work for Gutenberg Phase 3. Users can anticipate features like font management and a new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Four.

Twenty Twenty-Four aims to be a versatile theme, featuring a range of templates and patterns specifically designed for three use cases: entrepreneurs and small businesses, photographers and artists, and writers and bloggers.

Check out the 6.4 roadmap post for a tentative preview of expected features.

New in the Gutenberg pluginTwo new versions of Gutenberg shipped in the last month:

Gutenberg 16.4 was released on August 9, 2023. It introduced a new “auto-inserting blocks” experimental feature, a progress bar component that can be used throughout the interface, and block supports for the Footnotes block.
Gutenberg 16.5shipped on August 23, 2023, and focused on enhancements to the Command Palette and enabling further customization of blocks.

Follow the “What’s new in Gutenberg” posts to stay on top of the latest enhancements.

Team updates: Next generation of WordPress events, WP Admin redesign, and more* The Community team has been busy ushering in the next generation of WordPress events. Four pilot events were successfully held in July and August, with another five planned before the end of the year. * The Admin Design Kickoff post elaborates on the concepts explored so far to revitalize the WordPress admin experience. * In response to Europe’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), leaders from Drupal, Joomla!, TYPO3, and WordPress co-authored an open letter addressing concerns about the current CRA definitions and terms and the implications for open source projects. * Check out WordPress.org/blocks—A new page that explores the power of blocks within WordPress and as a broader framework. * WordPressCS 3.0.0 is now available. This update to the WordPress Coding Standards introduces improvements in accuracy, performance, stability, and compatibility with modern PHP versions. * The first cohort of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program, which aims to help new contributors onboard to Make teams, successfully concluded last month. * WordPress Remembers went live in August to honor contributors who left a lasting impact on the project and have since passed away. * Core team members proposed to sync Gutenberg code with core earlier in the release cycle to streamline the integration of new features and reduce risks and delays in major release milestones. * Blue Note, the second block theme born from the Community Themes initiative, is live on the Theme Directory. * Every month, the Training team works to expand the Learn WordPress catalog with new courses, tutorials, online workshops, and more. See what’s new. * Openverse maintainers met in Copenhagen for an exciting exchange with Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK), Denmark’s largest art museum. Learn about their discussions and collaboration efforts to advance openly licensed works.

Keen to see new WordPress event formats happening in your local community? Get inspired by these creative concepts and share your ideas!

Feedback & testing requests* Core team members suggested updating the WordPress Field Guide by publishing it earlier in the development cycle and introducing a simplified Field Guide on the WordPress Developer Blog. Feedback is open until September 15, 2023. * Help test the new Performant Translations plugin, which aims to make localized WordPress sites faster. * A new proposal aims to refine and update WordPress’ support guidelines. You can provide your input by October 1, 2023. * Version 23.2 of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is ready for testing.

The Training team seeks feedback on the first learning pathways outlined to improve the Learn WordPress educational experience. Share your thoughts by September 15, 2023.

WordPress events updates On August 22-23, a group of WordPress contributors gathered at the Community Summit to discuss key topics concerning the project. Read the notes from each session and join the conversations at make.wordpress.org/summit. * Following the Summit, Washington, D.C. hosted WordCamp US 2023* from August 24-26. This event brought together nearly 2,000 attendees for a Contributor Day and two conference days filled with engaging sessions, conversations, and open source art. Saturday’s agenda concluded with keynotes by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy and a subsequent Q&A session. Check out the event recap for highlights. * Join #WPDiversity with a free online speaker workshop for Indian women in the WordPress Community. The event will take place on September 23-24, 2023. * The WordCamp Asia 2024 organizing team opened calls for speakers, volunteers, sponsors, and media partners. * Be sure to visit WordCamp Central to find out about upcoming WordCamps.

Join Josepha Haden Chomphosy in Episode 61 of WP Briefing as she discusses her takeaways from the Community Summit.

*Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know.*****

The following folks contributed to this Month in WordPress: @rmartinezduque, @laurlittle.

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Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she discusses the latest from the Community Summit and her takeaways from the 2023 event in Washington, D.C.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arc
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes The 2023 Community Summit in Washington, DC * WP Briefing Episode 49: Everything You Need to Know About the Community Summit! * The Next Generation of WordCamps * Idea generation: Next Gen WordCamps! * PressNomics * LoopConf * WordPress Community Summit * A small list of big things* + Call for ideas: new features for our NexGen WP events central page – Open call for ideas to find the most desirable features for a future homepage that would host a list of all NextGen WordPress events. + Introducing Twenty Twenty-Four – Announced at Contributor Day, this new theme will be part of the 6.4 release. + With the release of 6.3 behind us, we are working hard on bringing 6.4 to the community. You can get involved with the development of this important release. + A successful WCUS is behind us, and if you missed the event, we have you covered. Here is a recap of the event.

Transcript[00:00:00] Josepha: 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. Here we go.

[00:00:28] (Intro Music)

[00:00:39] Josepha: We are back and catching up from our midyear break. And in true WordPress fashion, we’re just going to start off running. The WordPress Community Summit happened a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been talking about it on this podcast for a few months now, but if you’ve missed it and you want a refresher, go ahead and give episode 49 a listen.

At the Community Summit, there were 125 people, if I remember correctly. And we covered a wide array of topics that were brought to us directly from the community itself. While the event is small, it is specifically designed for gathering and sharing information. So, I’ve got some top-level trends that I noticed that I’m going to share with you all today, as well as just like a reminder of what happens after a Community Summit.

[00:01:27] Josepha: So there are three, maybe four, big trends that I noticed. The first one that I noticed is that we have a lot of discussions right now about contributor acknowledgment. That also, for what it’s worth, came with an unresolved question around whether acknowledgment and recognition are the same. I don’t think they are the same.

But it also was part of a conversation around whether we treat those two things the same. And if they are not the same, should we treat them differently? And et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. For folks who’ve been around for a bit, you know, that we spent a lot of time working on our contributor recognition a few years back and had really made quite a bit of difference in just reported feelings about how the community felt they were being recognized for their contributions.

And so a lot of the conversations that we ended up having were around whether or not the project as a whole has changed the way that we provide that recognition or acknowledgment. Or, as an alternative, if the community that is supporting WordPress has changed how they would like to be recognized.

[00:02:32] Josepha: There were also some questions about whether or not making sure that contributors can see their impact. Like they can say, I contributed 10 hours last month, and these are the two things that I got accomplished over there, and that everyone else can see those things too. So, how we can do that more easily while also not having so many metrics and making the metrics so prevalent that we start to close out the people who are truly just doing this for fun.

Like many of the problems that we have at the Community Summit, this is a bunch of pretty much unsolved mysteries at the moment. But it did; it came up across probably five or six different sessions that I heard about, quite a few that I went to myself, and so contributor acknowledgment and recognition is on our minds again.

A second thing that I noticed across multiple sessions, and this one honestly is not a surprise at all, is that there were a lot of questions about what the next big thing is after Gutenberg. I always love when people are asking big questions about what comes next because it means that we all still believe that there will be a next.

[00:03:43] Josepha: And so I never hesitate when I hear these questions to give some ideas about what I think might be coming. But a lot of the discussions that we were having were around, we think this is coming, but now that we think this is coming, what should we do now to make sure that we are ready for it? One of the biggest assumptions that we all had is that for the CMS, for the software itself, probably our next big area after Gutenberg is going to be something about artificial intelligence.

Matt pointed out in his presentation that he has told us twice to learn something deeply. One was in 2016 when he said, learn JavaScript Deeply. And then one was in 2022 when he said to learn AI deeply. And so we all kind of are guessing that that is our future area. And so that’s an area for everyone to spend some time in. Make sure you understand it. Make sure you know it a bit.

The second thing that came up as like a future, where are we going here? It was kind of on the business-y side. It was on a lot of questions about enterprise and are we selling properly to enterprise. Can we sell, can we appeal to enterprise? Whose job is it to sell any of these things? Questions like that. So, lots of business questions again. This is not something that I have any concerns about. I’m very excited to see that people are talking about it. That’s been a topic of conversation since, I want to say, February of this year. And so it also wasn’t a surprise inclusion today. And, and I was excited to see, am excited to see what we get out of those conversations over time.

[00:05:17] Josepha: As far as like questions around what’s next for the community, I’m going to address that separately because it was a huge question for everyone. So I’m going to discuss that as soon as we get finished with this chunk about like the big thing that, that is coming after Gutenberg.

But, from an ecosystem perspective. Like a WordPress project operations perspective, this came up a couple of times. Never in as clear a word, a set of words as that, but the question about, like, what are we doing with our tools? Are we making sure that we are keeping the tools that our contributors use maintained and still in an excellent space with features that are useful and, necessary, and requested?

And so that is a big question. I do have a lot of questions about that. Also, there are so many tools that I have wanted in order to make organizing the WordPress community better and easier, but also making contributing better and easier. And hopefully, here soon, we have an opportunity to get to some of those.

[00:06:16] Josepha: So, the third big trend that I kept seeing at the Community Summit is actually about the community itself, specifically about events. So I was part of or listened to many, many, many conversations over the course of the week that were specifically focused on what we’re going to do with the future of our events. Like are meetups still sustainable? Are WordCamps still sustainable? And that’s from not only the idea of sustainability that we all tend to know from like an ecological standpoint but also, you know, checking in on the resources. So the kinds of questions that folks had were, is it time to continue having many small events, or is it time to move to a few giant events?

Should we bring back midsized, WP-adjacent events like PressNomics or LoopConf? And if we are bringing those back, do we want to have them be part of a semi-official thing along with a clearly WordPress event and like do joint sales in there? Try to figure out how to get people from one to the other, so that it’s not just WordPress people that we’re talking to, but also business people and advanced developers, things like that.

There was also a lot of discussion about whether or not we have gotten too big, should we double down on our grassroots efforts? Just go all the way back to, like, BarCamp style, WordPress in a forest kind of thing.

[00:07:46] Josepha: And yeah, and among all of these conversations, there were questions about the resources that we need. Do we have what we need now? Do we have plans for how to maintain those resources in the future? Do we have enough time? Do we have enough money? Do we have an expertise? The people? So many questions, so many questions. And on the community side of things, we also had a lot of questions that are routine in open source. Like, do we have a pipeline for future maintainers, for future team reps, for future leaders in the project? All of the questions.

So, those are the three slash four, depending on how you break it out, really big trends that I saw across the conversation at the Community Summit. And I don’t necessarily know the answers to all of these things. Like, I know what my gut tells me, I know what I believe the answer to be. From my own perspective, but as you’ve been told many times with many eyes, all bugs are shallow. And so here is what happens next with a Community Summit. So we’ve gathered all of these things together. We’ve had these conversations, and now all of the notes from every conversation that we had will be put on make.wordpress.org/summit.

[00:09:10] Josepha: There, you can do any of the following three things, but at least do one before we get any further. I think it’s important to remind everyone that no decisions were made at the Community Summit. There are a few things that will come out of the Community Summit where the answer the way forward is really obvious. And so those probably will get done quickly thereafter because it’s just an obvious thing to do. It makes sense for everyone in the project. It makes sense for everyone who’s using WordPress. Whatever reason.

So those things will probably move quickly, but mostly not even mostly there were no decisions made. And so if it looks like something is moving quickly there, it is because it makes sense after the fact. So there’s that. But the three things that you can do in order to take part in this information gathering and sharing that happened at the Community Summit.

Number one, head over to make.wordpress.org/summit and just read the notes. There are a lot of them you can pick and choose based on the teams you contribute to or the topics that are specifically interesting. Or if you have been assigned to read one of these things, obviously, go ahead and read that. But find the notes read them. Take a look at the discussion as far as you can tell it happened and get a sense for what the essential question is.

The second thing that you can do while you’re there is that you can join in that discussion right there in the comments if you would like to. You can, if you feel like your perspective is not quite accounted for in that, obviously leave some comments and let folks know. But also, if you feel like your perspective was accounted for, but there’s also a very specific question that was not necessarily answered or not even brought up, share those as well. That’s stuff that we would like to know as we are working through this.

And then the third thing that you can do is you can take those conversations, and if there’s anything that looks like it’s particularly relevant to your local WordPress community, absolutely take those there and have those conversations with them.

[00:11:23] Josepha: And once you’ve had those conversations, let us know what you thought also in those comments, or take it directly into your weekly teams’ chat, either way. We want to hear what you think about the questions that were brought because you brought them to us. And so you should have an opportunity to tell us what you think.

[00:11:39] (Music Interlude)

[00:11:48] Josepha: That brings us now to our small list of big things. My friends, there’s nothing but big things left for the rest of the year. And so here we go. Number one, uh, I mentioned it quite a bit. There’s a conversation, an ongoing conversation about the future of events for our community. Right now, there is an open call for ideas, new features for our NextGen WordPress events, especially on the page that exists on WordCamp Central.

So, we want to find the most useful and desirable features for a future homepage on central.wordcamp.org that would host a list of all of our upcoming WordPress events. And so we want your opinion there. Please let us know what would be especially useful to you as you are looking for WordPress events to attend.

The second thing is that we introduced 2024, the default theme that is coming with WordPress 6.4, was announced. We have had, I think, 32 contributors to it at the time of this recording. And yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s got a lot of different implementation options, a lot of default patterns, and curated patterns so that you can get exactly what you want out of that theme. I think it’s going to make a great default theme, a great starter theme for our final release of the year.

And then, speaking of 6.4, with the release of 6.3 behind us, we are working hard on bringing 6.4 to the community. You can get involved with the development of that. There is a core chat every Wednesday. It happens. I want to say at 21:00 UTC, but I don’t actually know off the top of my head. I just go when my calendar tells me to go, and I live in the central time zone. And so, my UTC conversion is not the best, but we will leave the actual information about that in the show notes so that you can see it. But you can also go over to make.wordpress.org, and then there’s a little card on that homepage that tells you exactly when those core meetings are, including the new contributor meeting, which happens every two weeks.

And then the fourth thing is that there is a successful WordCamp US behind us. That is our final flagship event of the year, which is always exciting. If you missed it, for one, we missed you. And for two, we have you covered. We’ve got a recap of the event. There is a link to that in the show notes as well.

[00:14:05] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

[00:14:15] (Music Outro)

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WordPress 6.3.1 is available!

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Nearly 2,000 attendees gathered for two days of keynotes, sessions, and community-building conversations at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in the largest attended WordCamp US ever. Saturday’s sessions concluded with back-to-back keynotes by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy. What’s Next for WordPress Josepha launched her keynote by celebrating […]

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Earlier this year, WordPressers around the globe united to celebrate 20 years of community and innovation. There were parties, blogs, videos, and social media posts aplenty. And, of course, the trending hashtag, “#WP20”.

Throughout April and May, community members reflected on their journeys - what brought them to WordPress and its personal meaning. The stories, tweets, and videos were inspiring, nostalgic, and even humorous at times. There was swag, and the cakes were epic.

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WordPress 6.3 "Lionel" is here! Named after Lionel Hampton, the prolific jazz musician and bandleader, this release was made possible by over 650 contributors. Download WordPress 6.3 Lionel today.

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"Our shared goal is to further bolster the security of digital products without compromising the values of freedom, democracy, and innovation." Learn more about the Cyber Resilience Act and its impact on open source.

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WordPress 6.3 Release Candidate 3 is now available for download and testing.

The WordPress 6.3 release is scheduled for August 8, 2023—just one week away. Now is your last opportunity to test it before the general release.

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People of WordPress features Ihtisham Zahoor, an administrator turned web developer from Pakistan.

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Synced patterns are replacing Reusable blocks, offering a unified creation experience for new pattern functionality coming to WordPress 6.3. Patterns, first introduced in WordPress 5.5, are a collection of blocks that make it simple to add complex layouts and designs to any WordPress site without starting from scratch. With WordPress 6.3, set to be released […]

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WordPress 6.3 RC2 is ready for download and testing. Reaching this part of the release cycle is a key milestone. While release candidates are considered ready for final release, additional testing and use by the community can only make it better.

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Watch a demonstration of some of the newest features of WordPress 6.3, recorded live on July 20, 2023.

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WordPress 6.3 RC1 is ready for download and testing. Reaching this part of the release cycle is a key milestone. While release candidates are considered ready for final release, additional testing and use by the community can only make it better.

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Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy and Core Tech Lead Mike Schroder as they discuss their favorite new features and enhancements coming in WordPress 6.3.

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The Gutenberg project has aimed to revolutionize how we manage web content as much as Johannes Gutenberg did the printed word. The project’s roadmap is comprised of four unique phases: With the upcoming release of WordPress 6.3, Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project is coming to a close; a journey worth celebrating. This video is […]

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WordPress 6.3 Beta 4 is ready for download and testing.

Testing for issues is a critical part of developing any software, and it’s a meaningful way for anyone to contribute—whether you have experience or not.

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Want to learn more about WordPress 6.3, planned for release on August 8, 2023? Join the WordPress community for a first look at 6.3 in action during a live product demonstration.

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WordPress 6.3 Beta 3 is now ready for download and testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test Beta 3 on a test server and site.

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Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy in the 59th episode of the WordPress Briefing. Today she invites guest speaker Alex Kirk to discuss Polyglots’ work to continue to help bring translation to WordPress.

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The People of WordPress goes to the US to feature Allison Dye, who uses the software in her work and disability-advocacy.

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WordPress 6.3 Beta 2 is ready for download and testing. This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test Beta 2 on a test server and site.

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Hear special guest host Chloé Bringmann and special guest Angela Jin in the WordPress Briefing as they discuss the next generation of WordCamps.

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Inspiring the global community The atmosphere was electric at WordCamp Europe (WCEU) 2023 in Athens, Greece, as WordPress celebrated its 20th anniversary and the opportunity to gather in person for inspiration and engagement. More than 2,500 individuals from 94 countries came together in person or through the live stream to participate in a remarkable three-day […]

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May has been a month of celebrating WordPress and the open source community that makes it possible. In honor of the project’s 20th anniversary, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy reflected on this journey and the opportunity to build a better future for those who come after: The more our community invests in itself and […]

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Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy in the 57th episode of the WordPress Briefing as she discusses the Contributor Mentorship Program to help increase the success of new contributors over time.

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With WordCamp Europe 2023 in June, we feature Stefano Cassone, a web designer, photographer and volunteer translator, who believes his life has been transformed through WordPress and its community.

The People of WordPress series shares inspiring stories of how people’s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global community of contributors.

Stefano with a laptop covered in WordPress event stickersStefano has always been fascinated by the internet. His initial learning in the 1990s was through joining friends at a local pub where they could explore how websites were structured and learn to use chat software.

This led to Stefano creating websites for fun in 1998, and his first paid job was for the shop where he bought comics. He turned to content management systems (CMS) to speed up the creation process for sites, but found he needed more documentation to really understand their capabilities. Then he read a magazine article about WordPress, a CMS which was being used to make incredible blog sites, and was supported by an international community and documentation. Over time, Stefano started using that documentation to work on websites in Italian.

WordPress provides a life-changing turning point Stefano describes himself as an introvert. He found that WordPress helped him to work from home, to develop his skills and the quality of what he could produce, as well as build his self-confidence.

A catalyst for the turning point in his life and career was the discovery of an area for events on the WordPress dashboard. On this page, he found a forthcoming local meetup in Rome.

In November 2017, Stefano took the step to go along to this event, led by a curiosity of what he might discover and intrigued by how a software could be supported by a vast community. The topic at the event was on WP-CLI, a command line interface for WordPress. He recalled that he felt outside his comfort zone as he did not regard himself as a developer and at that point, had only used the software for simple jobs. He wondered whether using the software as his only CMS was going to be a long term option and if these meetups were suitable for him.

At the meetup, people were talking about a forthcoming event, called WordCamp Rome. Through his research, he saw that there was a lot of enthusiasm for this event. This intrigued him and he wondered if it would show him that he could have a career using the software after all.

Unfamiliar with WordCamps, Stefano found it difficult at first to know what he could go to and how to get involved, but he persevered and attended the event.

“The WordCamp was a great discovery: talks at all levels from basic to those for developers, advanced and very advanced. I was immediately struck by the enthusiasm of the volunteers. It was an environment where I felt very comfortable, so much so, that I asked myself how I could participate in some WordCamps.”

Stefano Cassone

From this event, Stefano was encouraged by those he met to consider applying as a volunteer for a future WordCamp.

There was also much talk at the event about ‘Slack’. It was new to Stefano, but with help from those attending, he signed up for the messaging tool Slack, used by the WordPress community. He was still unsure how he could contribute, and if he would be welcome.

Joining thousands of volunteer translators of WordPressItalian General Translation Editors at WordPress Italia 2022Stefano took the plunge and was excited to find there was a team called Polyglots. In this team, people from across the world translate the WordPress software into many different languages. He started with translating a theme he was using in his work. Little by little he became more interested in plugins and attended meetings with other translators. He offered his skills to translate into Italian themes and plugins in general and as his experience grew, he took on the volunteer role of a General Translation Editor. He also took care of the translation into Italian of the WordPress Core. More recently he has joined the group of translators for the HelpHub, which is part of the WordPress documentation system.

He said: “Participating in the WordPress Slack has helped me enormously: I’ve met a lot of people who I now call friends. Moreover, by translating, I learned a lot about how themes and plugins work.

“It’s a great way to contribute to WordPress, especially for someone like me who is not a developer. Translating also allows me to fully understand how WordPress works.”

“I always say that translating themes, plugins, and the Core software is the best way to learn WordPress, better than any course or book.”

Stefano Cassone

Sharing skills to support Open Source WordPressStefano volunteering as a photographer at a WordCamp in 2019 with other contributors.Stefano’s growing commitment to the open source WordPress project was further boosted through his volunteering. He was a volunteer at WordCamp Rome 2018 and participated there in his first Contributor Day where he had the opportunity to translate the software with others.

He was also able to bring his own hobbies and skills to help the project grow and reach others. One example was his passion for photography, and he volunteered as a photographer for many other events in Italy organized by the WordPress community. He said: “This commitment to the community also allows me to have fun: being a photographer means having the opportunity to walk around the halls and capture moments of the life of a WordCamp.” The more WordCamps he attended, the more he wanted to be part of and keep contributing to the wider WordPress community.

Contribution to WordPress is inspiringStefano at the Support Table at a WordPress Contributor DayWhen Stefano was asked to become an organizer for the WordPress meetup in Rome in October 2019, he knew he wanted to be part of reaching and supporting more people in his area. He faced challenges with finding venues, but a greater issue was to come: the Covid-19 pandemic.

Spurred on by the Italian WordPress community as a whole, he was determined that the meetup was still needed. The regular event was transformed into an online meeting. He was able to gain help from people he had met as a volunteer to share their expertise with meetup attendees.

The community in Italy also worked together to put on WordCamp Italia online. It brought together the organizers of previous meetups and WordCamps, and new contributors too. Stefano volunteered in both online editions of this camp, including being part of the social and communication team. He found it to not only be a fun experience but also one that helped him grow professionally and learn from so many others.

He went onto help restart the Rome WordPress meetup in-person meetings in May 2022 and was an organizer for the third WordCamp Rome and volunteering for camps in 2023.

What will WordPress bring you?Stefano inspired by his journey at WordCamps asks what will WordPress bring you?“Persona and professional growth and friendship” are some of the things they have brought Stefano. Contributing boosted his confidence and willingness to try new opportunities in his work.

He said: “The best thing I got out of joining the WordPress community was the chance to collaborate with some people on a working basis and, I have to say, that was incredible. Being with many of them you have an incredible opportunity to grow in knowledge, you just have to be ready to learn. With WordPress you never stop learning.”

His top recommendation is: “Join your local meetup or think about organizing one, it will introduce you to an amazing world. Don’t be afraid to meet people at WordCamps and Contributor Days, because you will learn more there than in dozens of courses. Talk to people at those events and don’t worry. The WordPress community is inclusive so you’ll always feel welcome, and you will see enthusiasm like you’ve never seen at other IT events. Sign-up and get involved.”

Share the storiesHelp share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series.

ContributorsThanks to Stefano Cassone (@deadpool76) for sharing about his adventures in WordPress.

Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), the late Surendra Thakor (@sthakor) and Meher Bala (@meher) for interviews, writing the feature and collaborating on images, to Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann), Mark Smallman (@marks99), Nalini Thakor (@nalininonstopnewsuk), Mary Baum (@marybaum), and Maja Loncar (@majaloncar) for help with reviews.

The People of WordPress series thanks Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support.

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

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You did it and I think congratulations are in order! You, dear WordPress enthusiast, have helped WordPress thrive for the past 20 years. It’s an incredible accomplishment, and I couldn’t be more thankful.

Did you know: WordPress is seven years older than TikTok (2016), came four years before Tumblr (2007) and the first iPhone (2007), beat Facebook to market by about a year (2004), and is about five weeks older than Tesla (July 2003).

May 27, 2023, marks exactly 20 years since Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little forked b2/cafelog to create WordPress Version 0.70. Quite a bit has taken place in the past 20 years, and imagine how much more we can accomplish together in the next 20!

You can read about the first 20 years of WordPress in two parts:
Milestones: The Story of WordPress (2003 – 2013)
Building Blocks: The Evolution of WordPress (2013 – 2023)

Whether you celebrate at one of the 100+ meetup events, are strutting your stuff in some limited edition WP20 swag, or joining in a collective reflection on WordPress in your unique way on social media, WP20 is a celebration of you – the WordPress community.

A Common LegacyAs I scroll through the amazing photos and memories shared on social media of past WordCamps and meetups, I think about the people who got WordPress to where it is today. The thousands of contributors who patched bugs and tested new features; organized events and fostered community; or wrote documentation and translated strings — how those contributions paved the road we travel today. A road that allows more people across the globe to use WordPress and contribute to WordPress, advancing the mission of democratizing publishing and giving us a little more freedom in the world. To the giants on whose shoulders we stand, those unsung, tireless, and passionate committers working through long nights and longer weekends: all of WordPress thanks you!

The dedication to and support of open source software has and will continue to ensure that WordPress endures for another 20 years and beyond.

the freedom to build.
the freedom to change.
the freedom to share.

The more our community invests in itself and supports one another, the stronger WordPress and the open source software movement becomes. And WordPress benefits, not just the present community, but future generations of contributors, entrepreneurs, educators, and enterprises large and small alike.

A Shared FutureIf the last two decades are any indication of what lies ahead, then wow, the opportunity to innovate, lead, and sustain a versatile publishing platform will be profound!

Looking ahead at the next few years, our community will navigate Gutenberg Phases 3 and 4 together, delivering features that bring easy collaboration and multillingual support directly into the software. These next steps for WordPress will ensure our legacy of creating useful, relevant, and reliable software remains strong while keeping in mind the core elements of our mission regarding accessibility, performance, and stability.

By renewing our emphasis on the Five for the Future program, and continuing to elevate our standing, we can make WordPress the household name it deserves to be. We can be more recognizable in known growth markets such as the enterprise and education sectors, but also every community beyond the open source and developer communities. Opportunity abounds!

When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

There is no time like the present to invest in the future of WordPress. The community is the greatest asset within the WordPress ecosystem. This means every WordPress user, from casual bloggers to enterprise extenders, is invited to rediscover all that our community means and does, and how each one of us can further our positive impact.

Through all our planning, both short- and long-term, we can ensure that WordPress never loses sight of its user. Each one of us individually, and together, can do our part to make WordPress better, just as we have done each day for the past 7,305 days.

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Join guest host Rich Tabor and WordPress Playground innovator Adam Zielinski as they discuss the capabilities and promise of WP Playground in episode 56 of the WordPress Briefing. Stay tuned for your small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsHost: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Guests: Rich Tabor and Adam Zielinski
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry and Nicholas Garofalo
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes* WordPress Playground and the Playground Github repo * WordCamp Gliwice * WordCamp Europe 2023, Contributor Day, and WP Connect * #meta-playground in the Making WordPress Slack * ChatGPT * WooCommerce * CloudFest and Daniel Bachhuber * The Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship for travel to WordCamp US 2023 * Find your closest location for a WordPress 20th Anniversary celebration * Changes to the WCUS event for 2023

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

(Intro music)

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. Here we go.

(Intro continues)

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]

Today we’re gonna spend a little time talking about WP Playground. This is a project that debuted at State of the Word in December 2022, but it was demoed for me about a month prior in November.

I was, and remain, absolutely floored by the potential future applications, as well as the innovative thinking behind it. So I’ve invited a couple of excellent WordPress futurists to the show today so that we can listen in on their conversation.

Welcome guys.

[Rich Tabor 00:01:07]

Hey everyone, I’m Rich Tabor, and I’m here today with Adam Zielinski to talk about WordPress Playground. So for those of you who don’t know what WordPress Playground is, can you tell us a little bit more about it, Adam?

[Adam Zielinski 00:01:18]

Absolutely. WordPress Playground is WordPress that works in your browser like there’s no server with PHP or database like there’s just your browser and JavaScript, and you can run it in so many more places that we’ll all get to. For example, I just came back from WordCamp Gliwice, where on a Contributor Day, a couple of developers got set up with WordPress in just a couple of minutes, whereas normally, it can take hours to do that.

[Rich Tabor 00:01:44]

Yeah, that’s, that’s pretty impressive. Do you think that, particularly for WordCamps and other demo-type areas, this would be something that’s very useful? Or what do you think would be the other problems that could be solved with WordPress Playground?

[Adam Zielinski 00:01:55]

Playground solves one primary problem, and that is WordPress is pretty difficult to get started with. I’m not even talking about creating your website, but let’s say, someone told you there’s this WordPress thing that you should try. Well, you Google for it, and you find installation instructions, and there’s like three hours of work for you there.

So then maybe you’ll find a hosting company, and you have to pay some money. So with WordPress Playground, you can actually try it for free because there’s no cost to run it. It just runs on your device. If you’re a developer, and you want to start learning WordPress, normally you have to go through quite an extensive setup process, and there are some tools to make it easier, but maybe there’s still friction like you have to even own a computer, like a PC device or a Mac. Playground can run on your phone, and it can power interactive tutorials that you can use and just start learning there and there with zero setup.

Like if you work on a product team and someone asks you to test a code change, with Playground you can just click a link and test it with no infrastructure behind it. And if you’re a company creating a plugin, you can just show your plugin in a live demo to people. And this isn’t something many plugins are doing because it’s quite hard to get a live demo set up.

[Rich Tabor 00:03:12]

Ah, that’s pretty impressive. So, you know, amongst like tutorials, code changes for developer environments, the mobile application running, do you think that, since there’s such a wide brevity of ideas that WordPress Playground can kind of plug into, would this be more of a developer tool?

Is that right? Or is Playground more of a like a click and play-type application that can run anywhere and demo anything?

[Adam Zielinski 00:03:36]

I’d say it’s both, but it’s more transparent for the users. So there are a whole lot of things you can do with Playground as a developer, as I just mentioned. But who are you doing these things for? Well, some of them are for the users, as in live demos, or there’s a WordCamp Europe coming, and I know some people are doing workshops there. They are going to use Playground to get everyone set up. So now that’s, well, maybe a workshop that teaches you how to build a theme, for example, right? Now you can just get started without any setup process. So there’s both, it’s very useful for development teams, and it’s very useful for them to build stuff for the final users.

[Rich Tabor 00:04:21]

That’s great. I know you, and I have probably both been in the same scenario at WordCamps when you’re trying to get dev environments set up, and it takes, you know, the better half of the workshop to get to step one. So this is really gonna be interesting to see it, especially at WordCamp Europe, and to see it getting into action.

Are you planning on going to WordCamp Europe this year?

[Adam Zielinski 00:04:39]

Absolutely, I will have a table at Contributor Day, a WordPress Playground table. So yeah, everyone’s invited to come over. I’ll show you a lot of cool stuff. And then at WP Connect on Saturday at 10:00 AM, there will be a WordPress Playground session where you’ll be able to learn more and see some cool demos.

And this will be a conversational format, so we’ll just have a nice chat.

[Rich Tabor 00:05:01]

Super cool. So how else can people find out a little bit more info about Playground and perhaps even get involved and contribute to the project?

[Adam Zielinski 00:05:08]

There’s a developer.WordPress.org/playground website. There’s a link in a show notes where you’ll be able, like this is the perfect entry point to the entire rabbit hole of WordPress Playground.

There’s a quite a few projects under the WordPress Playground umbrella, and they all live in a single GitHub repository where you can just find any issue that interests if you want to contribute and just start contributing. Also, there’s a Slack channel in WordPress org space called #meta-playground, and I highly encourage everyone interested in coming over to say hi.

And probably one of the best places to ask questions and get acquainted with the community.

[Rich Tabor 00:05:54]

Oh, that’s great; I’m very intrigued about the project overall. I think that there’s an immense amount of potential, for WordPress Playground. Just last question here, like, where do you see the future of this project going? What is the most interesting application that hasn’t been done yet, or the things that are really gonna be the next level in unlocking Playground for everyone?

[Adam Zielinski 00:06:12]

There’s quite a few. Imagine being able to go to WordPress.org and have a WordPress demo right then and there without having to download anything. Then you customize it, and you have a button to host your website anywhere or just to download it.

Imagine having a live preview for all the themes and plugins in the directory and even in WordPress core, but these are sooner than later. Maybe like, let’s talk more grandiose, shall we? So there’s this term, 1 billion new users coming online in the next, like in the nearest future, and plenty of them doesn’t even own a desktop device. Maybe they have a mobile phone, maybe they have a tablet, maybe we’re talking about a young, prospective developer somewhere. And currently, if you don’t own a desktop device, you cannot contribute to the WordPress plugin ecosystem at all.

Like, we’re seeing more and more of creating themes with no code, which is really exciting. But you cannot build the plugin, really. Well, with WordPress Playground. Suddenly you can do development on a mobile device. So development tools and code editors and just the entire suite of things we use as the developers on our desktop of devices like this may come online and be available in your browser.

And if you’re on a train and you just have a phone with you, but you still want to learn, how to build a plugin, well, you’ll be able to do that. Furthermore, there’s a lot of exciting opportunities with ChatGPT, as in, well, here’s a WordPress running entirely on your device. So maybe if that’s connected to ChatGPT, you’ll be able to say, well, I like fish, or like, I want two columns and a photo of a racing car on top of it.

And because ChatGPT can output HTML, we connect the two, and suddenly, you can build a website entirely in your browser using natural language.

[Rich Tabor 00:08:20]

Man, that’s, that’s really interesting. It really does unlock the next, potentially the next like, wave of innovation in the WordPress experience, especially removing all the complications of getting set up and actually seeing what’s there. I think that it really could, be huge for users every day.

[Adam Zielinski 00:08:38]

Oh, here’s one more. So, edge computing is big lately, and it’s going to be bigger in the future. WordPress Playground runs on this new technology called Web Assembly, and it just happened so that a bunch of edge computing providers allows you to run web assembly on their gear. So imagine having WordPress running entirely in edge infrastructure with no centralized server.

Truly decentralized WordPress. It could be big for a well cost of operating, but also for speed, but also even further down in the future. Imagine downloading the actual, you know, even WordPress around time to your device and having the entire website on your phone. So then you know, you’re on a train, you enter a tunnel, but you can still browse that WooCommerce store and add things to your cart even though there is no range at all.

[Rich Tabor 00:09:32]

Wow, that’s, that’s pretty crazy. How far out there do you think something like that is?

[Adam Zielinski 00:09:37]

It’s hard to tell. I mean, technically, it is possible. There are a lot of challenges with regard to privacy, right? And data security for the edge computing case specifically. As for the development tools, there was a Cloud Fest hackathon earlier this year where I was with Daniel Bachhuber, also from Automattic, and we led this exciting project that brought the WordPress development environment into the browser using a couple of editors that are out there, and this is too much of an MVP for actual production use yet, but we got it working, and we build an actual plugin on a phone without internet access.

[Rich Tabor 00:10:19]

Wow. And that was just a hackathon, just hacking at it to see what you can get.

[Adam Zielinski 00:10:23]

Yeah, it was two and a half days.

[Rich Tabor 00:10:25]

Oh, that’s awesome. That’s really cool, man. Well, this has been quite a pleasure. Thanks, Adam, for chatting all about WordPress Playground. Folks, just be sure to check out developer.WordPress.org/playground to explore, experiment, and play with WordPress Playground.

This has been awesome, Adam.

[Adam Zielinski 00:10:43]

Thank you so much for having me, Rich.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:45]

What a remarkable new way of working with and experiencing WordPress. I would love to be able to find ways across the project and ecosystem to help folks see what they’re getting into before they get into it, but also, who knows what the future holds for that project. Keep an eye on it.

(Musical interlude)

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11:10]

That brings us to our small list of big things happening right now in the WordPress project. The first one is that the Kim Parel Memorial Scholarship for WordCamp US 2023 is open, and applications for it are the WordPress Foundation will once again be offering that scholarship for Travel to WordCamp US.

It is for specifically for women in technology, women in the WordPress space. I’ll include a link to that in the show notes.

The second thing is WordPress’ 20th anniversary is still coming, as we heard in the last podcast.

So we have reached over 100 events that are scheduled on or around May 27th, which is WordPress’ launch date. There is still time to find your closest location and attend one of those events. And probably, there’s also time to pull together an event of your own. Head on over to wp20.WordPress.net if you would like to see events in your area.

And the third thing is WordCamp US 2023. I realize WordCamp Europe comes before that, but the programming team actually has a really interesting thing that they’re doing this year. They have some changes to the way that they are organizing the event and finding speakers for the event. But as always, they are working very hard to make sure it is an attendee-focused event.

I’m gonna include a link or two to some announcements that are really worthwhile there. Head on over to the podcast page to see those. And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks again to my guests, and I’ll see y’all in a couple of weeks.

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WordPress 6.2.2 is now available!The 6.2.2 minor release addresses 1 bug and 1 security issue. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 5.9 have also been updated.

WordPress 6.2.2 is a rapid response release to address a regression in 6.2.1 and further patch a vulnerability addressed in 6.2.1. The next major release will be version 6.3 planned for August 2023.

The update process will begin automatically if you have sites that support automatic background updates.

You can download WordPress 6.2.2 from WordPress.org or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates,” and click “Update Now.”

For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site.

Security updates included in this releaseThe security team would like to thank the following people for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities and allowing them to be fixed in this release.

Block themes parsing shortcodes in user-generated data; thanks to Liam Gladdy of WP Engine for reporting this issue.

The issue above was originally patched in the 6.2.1 release, but needed further hardening here in 6.2.2. The Core team is thankful for the community in their response to 6.2.1 and collaboration on finding the best path forward for proper resolution in 6.2.2. The folks who worked on 6.2.2 are especially appreciative for everyone’s understanding while they worked asynchronously to get this out the door as quickly as possible.

Thank you to these WordPress contributorsThis release was led by Jonathan Desrosiers.

WordPress 6.2.2 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver security fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Aaron Jorbin, Alex Concha, Anthony Burchell, Chloé Bringmann, chriscct7, Daniel Richards, David Baumwald, Ehtisham S., Greg Ziółkowski, Héctor Prieto, Isabel Brison, Jb Audras, Jeffrey Paul, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Josepha, Marius L. J., Matias Ventura, Mike Schroder, Peter Wilson, Riad Benguella, Robert Anderson, Ryan McCue, Samuel Wood (Otto), Scott Reilly, and Timothy Jacobs

How to contributeTo get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core and #6-3-release-leads channels. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook.

Thanks to @cbringmann, @davidbaumwald, @chanthaboune, @jeffpaul for proofreading.

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WordPress 6.2.1 is now available!This minor release features 20 bug fixes in Core and 10 bug fixes for the block editor. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the Release Candidate announcement.

This release also features several security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 4.1 have also been updated.

WordPress 6.2.1 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.3 planned for August 2023.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically.

You can download WordPress 6.2.1 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”.

For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site.

Security updates included in this releaseThe security team would like to thank the following people for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities, and allowing them to be fixed in this release.

Block themes parsing shortcodes in user generated data; thanks to Liam Gladdy of WP Engine for reporting this issue
A CSRF issue updating attachment thumbnails; reported by John Blackbourn of the WordPress security team
A flaw allowing XSS via open embed auto discovery; reported independently by Jakub Żoczek of Securitum and during a third party security audit
Bypassing of KSES sanitization in block attributes for low privileged users; discovered during a third party security audit.
A path traversal issue via translation files; reported independently by Ramuel Gall & Matt Rusnak at Wordfence, and during a third party security audit.

Thank you to these WordPress contributorsThis release was led by Jb Audras, George Mamadashvili, Sergey Biryukov and Peter Wilson.

WordPress 6.2.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance and security fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

Adam Silverstein, Aki Hamano, amin, Andrew Ozz, Andrew Serong, André, Ari Stathopoulos, Birgit Pauli-Haack, Chirag Rathod, Colin Stewart, Daniel Richards, David Baumwald, David Biňovec, Dennis Snell, devshagor, Dhrumil Kumbhani, Dominik Schilling, Ella, George Mamadashvili, Isabel Brison, Jb Audras, Joe Dolson, Joen A., John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, JuanMa Garrido, Juliette Reinders Folmer, Kai Hao, Kailey (trepmal), Marc, Marine EVAIN, Matt Wiebe, Mukesh Panchal, nendeb, Nick Diego, nickpap, Nik Tsekouras, Pavan Patil, Peter Wilson, pouicpouic, Riad Benguella, Ryan Welcher, Scott Reilly, Sergey Biryukov, Stephen Bernhardt, tmatsuur, TobiasBg, Tonya Mork, Ugyen Dorji, Weston Ruter, and zieladam.

Thanks to @sergeybiryukov for proofreading.

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Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy in the 55th episode of the WordPress Briefing as she looks back at the 20 years of WordPress and how the open source community made WordPress what it is today.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsEditor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes* The benefits of prioritizing and measuring performance in WordPress 6.2 * WordPress 6.3 Planning Proposal & Call for Volunteers * Preparing for the Next Women & Nonbinary Release Squad * WordCamp Europe: + Call for volunteers + Table Leads Needed for WCEU 2023 Contributor Day * Defining the Polyglots contributor ladder

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]

In case you hadn’t heard yet. WordPress is celebrating its 20th anniversary on May 27th.

There are a lot of celebrations and parties happening all across the world, hopefully with cake, because we all know that a party without cake is just a meeting and no one wants a year-long meeting about how old you are.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:59]

But if you’ve not yet joined the celebrations, there’s still time to share your favorite WordPress merch, your favorite WordCamp memory, host a whole dang party if you want to, or share a video to post on wp20.wordpress.net. I’ve got links to everything you need in the show notes. So if you haven’t done it yet, you can do that while you listen to today’s episode.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:14]

I’ve got links to everything you need in the show notes. So if you haven’t done it yet, you can do that while you listen to today’s episode.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:22]

Today, WordPress is the leading CMS in the market. And according to W3Tech’s it powers 43% of the web. And that’s like 35% of the top 10,000 sites that are built using this software. And sometimes, that’s as a website, sometimes as a framework, but always as a way for people and businesses to find a space on the web to call their own.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:45]

In 2021. The first-ever study on the WordPress ecosystem gave us an idea of just how large our ecosystem is. We already kind of had a sense that millions of people make a living through WordPress because we know that we are supporting small business owners and freelancers all the way out to agencies and content creators.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:06]

But according to that study, WordPress at the time was powering 82 million websites and enabled an estimated economy of $597 billion. The success of an economy like this and various other alternative economies hinges on the success of invisible open source software that powers the web, just like WordPress, that has a tonne of growth and a lot of wins since that first Cafe Log fork way back in 2003.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:37]

And WordPress could just say pencils down, everybody. Good job, team, and just kind of watch what comes next. But I’ve never met a word processor, emboldened as we are by our belief in open source freedoms, who stepped away from a challenge worth facing the recognition that everyone should have those freedoms whether they know they exist or not. Because I know that no one cares as much about open source freedoms as open source maintainers. But the recognition that everyone has the right to them anyway is built into the foundations of what WordPress is and who WordPress is.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:13]

There are big plans for WordPress future, many of which are grounded in the promise of a new block editor within WordPress that aims to lower the barriers to entry for people at any point in their learning curve. So let’s take a look at what this means for WordPress, the software, and follow up about what it means for the WordPress community.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:31]

Firstly, the software right at the end of 2018, the Gutenberg editor was merged into WordPress Core. And it’s subverted the way that people had always managed their content. It brought with it this new concept of site building that focused on blocks as the primary mode of creation. It was modular and required very little code knowledge.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:53]

Arguably also very little skill with design. Although if you’ve ever seen me tried to design something with blocks, you will know it takes some skill. But still, the ultimate goal was to make those fundamental user interactions of managing the block and apply them in any place you could manage your site using WordPress.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:53]

And if you think about the possibility to create media-rich content without having to work with shortcode, without having to know HTML workarounds, it opens the opportunity for many of us in the WordPress community to own our digital presence. In case it wasn’t already clear, this, my friends, is an audacious project, and it’s even more so if you remember that we have this existing and massive ecosystem that is enabled and empowered by our software.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:42]

And as we look forward to the third phase of the Gutenberg Project, collaborative editing inside a WordPress installation will soon be a reality, which if you are like me and you never work on a website alone, you’re probably just dying to have. I say all this not to toot the horn have WordPress or belabor our success but rather to emphasize the importance of what I’m going to say next, which is how this CMS got to where it is, namely through the work of the community.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:12]

WordPress has survived, and I would dare to say thrived through decades of constant economic, cultural, and technological shifts. And I believe that the thing that keeps us innovating fast enough to stay relevant but slow enough to be ethical, is how the community actively engages with the open source project.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:32]

We know that our strength is directly tied to the resilience of our contributors. And we know that the software we ship is shaped by the people who are willing to tell us what they love, what they hate, and what they hope to see. When the WordPress project started, we mainly had code contributions as a way to give back, but over time, the project has grown to include contributions to learning, community building, and translations, among other things, but all of that exists alongside the CMS-focused contributions.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:03]

Because WordPress as an organization understands that it is an integral part of an ecosystem of 1000s of global companies and millions of individual people who are building careers, starting businesses, learning new skills, and becoming part of something meaningful. I know that I talk just all the time about the greatness of WordPress as a software and community, which makes sense.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:29]

I really do love the work I do with you all. But I am equally in awe of this open-hearted journey of disruption that WordPress represents as an open source project. WordPress and its community is part of a long line of disruptors; blogs made publishing available to everyone, which maybe doesn’t sound like a big deal right now because you’ve been around blogging forever.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:51]

You’ve been able to just put your thoughts on the internet with almost no effort for as long as you have known the internet existed, but WordPress, at the time, was and honestly remains the low code open source CMS of choice. It has been for years. And so, let me backtrack you through the 10,000-foot milestones of our journey here.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:14]

Gutenberg has been around since 2013. It’s 10 years. I know, don’t get scared, we’re celebrating 20 years. So it’s been around for half of our time as a concept. Open source as a concept was formalized in the 1980s. Though it definitely has been around longer than that as a concept and a way of working.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:34]

And this low-code, no-code movement that we hear about from time to time that has been around since the 1970s, and just because we first became aware of it in the 1970s doesn’t mean that that’s when it actually first was discussed or thought about or used. Which means that you are in this moment, decades deep into projects that changed our entire understanding of the web.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:59]

So grab a slice of cake, and raise a glass to 20 great years of WordPress, and I am going to raise a glass to 20 more years of continuing our journey together.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:17]

Which brings us effervescently to the small list of big things. Yeah, I said effervescently.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:24]

So there are a lot of things happening in the WordPress project over the next couple of weeks. There is a lot of testing going on. There are a lot of releases that are getting underway. There are events and things. So here’s my rundown of stuff you should take a look at.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:38]

So firstly, there is a post out about performance improvements from 6.2. That is just inviting an open discussion so that we can get more of those improvements in better shape to get into the 6.3 release. And speaking of the 6.3 release that is coming, just last week, we announced the release squad that we have.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:58]

It is an extra heavy release squad because we also are working toward the 6.4 release just at the same time. So there’s the folks who are running the 6.3 release, and they have committed to working openly and in public channels as much as possible so that the 6.4 folks have a chance to really take a look at what goes into a release, the questions that we ask, the philosophies we believe in, and then that 6.4 release oil pick up probably, my guess is August-ish, mid-August or so.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:32]

That 6.4 release is specifically going to be made up entirely of diverse genders. People that we historically see are underrepresented in technology, but as always, we accept contributions from everyone for all releases.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:48]

The third thing is that we have WordCamp Europe coming up, that is June 8 and 10th. So a little bit past the two-week mark.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:54]

However, there is a final call for volunteers for anyone who wants to be able to help at the event. I personally have always enjoyed doing that kind of volunteer work. It helps you get to know your community even a bit better. And I don’t know; I’m just kind of an extroverted people person. So, of course, I always want to volunteer, but that call is still open. And they’re in the last phases of that.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:17]

There is also a team or two that needs some help with getting leads for the contributor day that happens leading up to WordCamp. Europe, I know that the testing team needs a lead for the table, and so if you enjoy the process of triaging or testing or helping people get their environment set up, that is a great opportunity.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:37]

And the final thing on my small, my big small list of big things is that we have a kind of a review of the currently defined contributor ladder for the Polyglots team. There are a number of posts over the years where we talk about the ways that people move through being a contributor.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:57]

One of the things that we know about almost all contributor ladders is that there’s no time requirement between the steps, but in general, it functions like a ladder. So you do have to have, like, rung one. And then, rung two, if you try to skip from rung one to rung three, you will have a lot of difficulty.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11:17]

Not impossible, but it’s harder than going 1, 2, 3 In the normal sequential order. And so that’s a whole discussion that’s happening over there. There’s a link to all of these things in the show notes.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11:28]

And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

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Each year, members of the WordPress community (users, site builders, extenders, and contributors) provide valuable feedback through an annual survey. For 2022, the survey received a comprehensive update, the first in six years. The total number of questions was reduced to 29 from nearly 100, socio-economic questions were mostly removed, and the Likert scale was introduced. These updates were intended to increase the completion rate of the survey, enable a more efficient and structured analysis of these data, and position the survey to best gauge the topics that matter most to the WordPress community.

My goal is that the input received via the survey helps inform initiatives and focus areas for WordPress in the near term, along with other signals, such as conversations in the community, the Making WordPress blogs, and events. Such data play a key role in shaping the direction and strategy of the project and measuring progress in focus areas.

2022 HighlightsThe 2022 edition of the survey experienced a 26% increase in completion rate, however, submissions decreased by 56% to roughly 3400, including about 800 contributors. For the 2023 survey, promotion will be increased, hopefully counteracting the declining submissions.

Here are some key takeaways:

The survey shows an increased usage of blocks and the new site editor (versus the classic editor), which shouldn’t come as a surprise since the default theme is now a block theme.
22% of respondents have only used WordPress for a year or less. Those responding to the survey are also getting a bit older, with fewer responses from those under 40 than in prior years.
1 in 5 respondents learned about WordPress from a coworker, and about the same percentage from using a search engine.
In 2022, WordPressers continued to learn about WordPress (68%), taught others about WP (48%), and built sites for others (55%).
WordPressers choose the CMS platform because it’s open source (62%), flexible (47%), low risk (45%), cost-effective (45%), and has a positive reputation (41%).
57% of survey participants obtained news and training directly from WordPress.org. While that is the primary source, other sites remain very important: search engines (46%), YouTube (40%), other WordPress communities (35%), and social media (30%)
The overwhelming majority of respondents don’t regularly use other CMS platforms, and 21% of respondents use none of the top 20 WordPress plugins.
Respondents continue to state that “WordPress is as good as or better than other CMS platforms,” with 68% agreeing. Elements that respondents feel are the best aspects of WordPress include “ease of use,” “flexibility,” and/or “plugin options,” all about 30% each. When asked about the most frustrating elements of WordPress, 1 in 5 said, “nothing,” while approximately 30% referenced difficulties with site editing / Gutenberg.
The overall contributor experience remains positive and something I continue to care about deeply. 64% shared they had a positive experience, and 24% viewed their experience as “neutral.” Contributors also feel welcome at the same percentages (64% agree and 24% are neutral).

What’s Planned for 2023In the next iteration of the survey, the plan is to improve the language options for completing the survey and continue investing in refining the questions and how they are asked. It is important to be mindful that completing a survey takes time, so we want to make sure community members are being asked questions that help WordPress the most.

The tentative plan is to launch the 2023 edition in August. This will set up an opportunity for the 2023 results and, most importantly, your input to inform planning for 2024’s key initiatives and focus areas. The community’s feedback is vitally important to the success and direction of the project. Moving the survey to earlier in the year can positively affect planning and dialogue.

View the 2022 Slide Deck

Big thank you to @dansoschin for the analysis and editorial support. Thanks also to @angelasjin, and @cbringmann for their reviews and final edits.

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With preparations for the next major releases already underway, the community is gearing up to celebrate WordPress’ 20th anniversary, which is just around the corner. This month has also seen some major highlights, such as WordPress 6.2’s performance wins and the launch of WP Translation Playground. Read on to find out what’s new.

Forthcoming WordPress releasesFollowing the successful release of WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy,” which has garnered over 31 million downloads (and counting), contributors across all teams are already planning future major releases, including versions 6.3 and 6.4.

While WordPress 6.3 will focus on refinements to the site editing experience, 6.4 will reprise the underrepresented gender release initiative introduced in WordPress 5.6 “Simone.” If you’re interested in contributing, now is the perfect time to get involved.

Check out the WordPress 6.3 proposed schedule and call for volunteers.

WP20 is just around the cornerMark your calendars for May 27 and join the community for a day filled with exciting parties and activities!

With a refreshed look, the WP20 website offers a list of events to join, swag to show your WordPress pride, and downloadable “selfie props” to add fun to your celebrations.

Cake decorated with WordPress anniversary-themed motifs shared at a recent meetup in Japan.The Marketing Team has also launched #WP20 From Blogs to Blocks, a community-focused initiative that encourages you to take a small daily WordPress-focused action for 20 days leading up to the anniversary date.

On the other hand, details are being finalized for the 20th anniversary commemorative book, Building Blocks: The Evolution of WordPress 2013-2023. This volume will span the history and most meaningful moments of the last decade of WordPress.

What’s your favorite WordPress swag? Do you have a special memory from a WordCamp or meetup? Share them with the community and join the #WP20 fun on social media.

WordPress 6.2 performanceWordPress 6.2 reiterates the platform’s commitment to optimizing website performance with significant improvements. Load times are 14 to 18% faster for block themes and 2 to 5% for classic themes. Server-side performance is also seeing a big boost, with an increase of 17 to 23% for block themes and 3 to 5% for classic themes.

Learn more about the performance wins in 6.2, including a retrospective from the Performance Core Team on the efforts that made it happen.

New in the Gutenberg pluginTwo new versions of the Gutenberg plugin have shipped in the last month:

Gutenberg 15.5shipped on April 5, 2023, with many user-facing features to improve the creation experience. Enhancements include caption style customization, theme-defined template patterns when adding a new template, and experimental support for grid layouts in the Group block.
Gutenberg 15.6 is available for download as of April 19, 2023. This version introduces an experimental Details block to expand and toggle the visibility of hidden content, and more presets for core block spacing and border controls, among other highlights.

Follow the “What’s new in Gutenberg” posts to stay on top of the latest enhancements.

Team updates: WP Translation Playground, WordPress.org redesign next steps, and more * The Polyglots Team launched WP Translation Playground, an innovative tool that combines Local GlotPress with WordPress Playground to translate plugins and themes in context—without having to set up anything. * Wondering what’s next in the WordPress.org redesign project? Learn about the latest updates and how to get involved. * This Community Team post discusses ways to make WordCamp Contributor Days more effective. * Explore what’s new on Learn WordPress in April 2023, including the latest content on the platform and the projects the Training Team has been working on. * WordPress Playground was used in a hackathon to prototype different ways to build plugins with minimal setup, right in the browser. See it in action in these tech demos. * Members of the Marketing Team suggested improvements to submission guidelines to revitalize the WordPress.org Showcase. * Most of the work to refocus the WordPress mobile app on core features is complete. Find out how to help shape its future with contributions opportunities for developers, writers, translators, and more. * Keep up with the latest enhancements and development updates you need to build on top of WordPress in last month’s edition of What’s new for developers? * The latest issue of the Meetup Organizer Newsletter shares tips and inspiring ideas to help you plan successful community events. * Find out how WordPress and its global community of contributors positively impacted Monika Rao’s web career in April’s edition of People of WordPress.

Join Josepha Haden Chomphosy in Episode 54 of WP Briefing as she explores the concept of the four freedoms of open source and their likeness to today’s Bill of Rights for the open web.

Feedback & testing requests* The latest Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach Program testing opportunity invites feedback on the features included in WordPress 6.2 and those remaining in Gutenberg Phase 2. Share your thoughts by May 8, 2023. * This update on the WP Feature Notifications project explains the progress towards a modern WordPress user notification system and how you can get involved. * Help test the latest version of the Preferred Languages feature plugin. * Version 22.2 of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is ready for testing.

This discussion post welcomes ideas and questions about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be integrated into the WordPress experience.

WordPress events updates* WordCamp Europe 2023 is fast approaching! The organizing team introduced the first confirmed speakers. * WordCamp US 2023 announced updates on the programming for the upcoming event, for which tickets are now on sale. Organizers are also calling for sponsors. * The 2023 Community Summit will provide a valuable opportunity for in-person discussions across contributor teams. Submit your topics if you haven’t yet. * Don’t miss these upcoming WordCamps: + WordCamp Barcelona, Spain on May 5-6, 2023 + WordCamp Buffalo, NY, USA on May 6, 2023 + WordCamp Gliwice, Poland on May 12-14, 2023 + WordCamp Sylhet, Bangladesh on May 19-20, 2023 + WordCamp Lisboa, Portugal on May 19-20, 2023 + WordCamp Apatin, Serbia on May 27-28, 2023

Join #WPDiversity with a free online workshop on Organizing Diverse & Inclusive WordPress Events APAC on May 13, 2023.

*Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know.*****

The following folks contributed to this Month in WordPress: @sereedmedia, @ninianepress, @rmartinezduque.

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This month we feature Monika Rao, a Product and Quality Assurance Manager from India. She finds contributing to the WordPress project a way to deepen her technical skills and further her web career.

The People of WordPress series shares inspiring stories of how people’s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global community of contributors.

Monika was born in Udaipur, in the state of Rajasthan, India. At that time, she recalls, there was some resistance to girls’ education in certain subjects. Thanks to her parents’ support and encouragement, she graduated in Computer Science Engineering. Following graduation, she went on to work for an international firm. However, she felt she wanted to work in her home area and so returned to work for a firm based in Udaipur itself.

Monika started her career journey with WordPress in 2015, and was fascinated as she learnt more of the technology. A few years later, she moved into a role as a WordPress Quality Analyst, enabling her to dive further into the software.

“From that moment, I decided to make it an integral part of my ever-learning professional career,” she said.

The more Monika researched WordPress, the more she found it was not just a tool to simplify website building but also a platform where you could “meet new people, share your thoughts, learn from them and improve yourself through the process.”

When she first started working with WordPress, she found she had many questions, ranging from what are themes and plugins to what is a WordCamp. As her knowledge grew, she knew one day she wanted to be able to contribute to both the code and the community supporting it.

Becoming part of WordPressMonika started contributing to WordPress in 2015 with Theme Review. In this area, she was able to work alongside WordPress code experts and, at the same time, learn the concepts of theme development. She saw this as a great opportunity to learn and improve her development skills.

She was also very interested in testing from the beginning, so she started contributing to Core. Her first contribution was to the WordPress 4.7 release in 2016. She remembers the day she first saw her name in the WordPress contributor list. This encouraged her to make more contributions including to core and the community team, and each time she felt more like part of the community.

Thus inspired, Monika delved into making the software more easily available in her native Hindi language through joining other contributors to the Polyglots team. She went on to become a General Translation Editor for the Hindi language, and has continued to contribute in this area.

Monika and other panelists at WordCamp Udaipur 2017As she became involved with the WordPress community, she looked for ways of sharing it with others in her home city. In 2017 she was part of the organizing team for WordCamp Udaipur 2017 and there shared her contributing journey with others. This was her first WordCamp, and she describes the experience as ‘superb’. It enabled her to connect to both those new to WordPress and those already working with it.

“It was a great moment for me speaking in front of hundreds of people and everyone cherished my journey. It inspired me to continue my contribution to other teams too.”

Monika Rao

She went on to be an organizer for WordCamp Udaipur 2018 and WordCamp India 2021. She also contributes to the Meta and Theme review teams.

Contributing to WordPress software releases2019 was a big year for Monika. She got married and joined a new firm where she could work more on WordPress, learning about marketing and design.

In November 2019, the WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden put out a call for an all-women and non-binary release squad. Monika said: “I’ve always felt that not enough women take part in WordPress, so I decided to jump in.” She took on the role of Test Lead.

“It was a wonderful journey— worth every second and this was a proud moment for me when I saw my name on the WordPress Noteworthy list. You feel proud when you see your small contributions in use by 40 per cent of the web.”

Monika Rao

Monika was part of the notable contributors for the WordPress 5.6 releaseAs a Test Lead, her priority was ensuring the release would be stable and, more importantly, ready for production sites. To effectively manage all the testing, test scrubs were run weekly, highlighting the key testing areas to help get the entire team involved. The scrubs also played an important role in picking up tickets needing immediate resolution.

Monika also continued her role in the WordPress 5.7 release, and focused more on the core software. She believes being part of the Core and Test teams is a good way to watch and learn, as well as take part in the different elements that make up a release.

“Skills you have will eventually fade away unless you work on them and sharpen them. So don’t underestimate the value of any skill. It will eventually help you somehow in your career.”

Monika Rao

She added: “I owe my skills and knowledge to WordPress and its lovely community. The best part about this platform is that it is free and provides ample opportunities to improve your skills and build a career. The wider WordPress community is highly supportive, and it provides numerous additional resources, such as online forums, tutorials, and meetups, to help people learn and grow. With the help of WordPress, anyone can learn how to create websites, develop plugins, and contribute to the community.”

This route for learning has helped Monika in choosing the direction of her career and in keeping her skills up-to-date. In October 2021, she joined a company specializing in producing WordPress plugins and services for online businesses.

Everyone can contribute to WordPressMonika pictured during her travelsMonika is determined more people, especially other women, have opportunities to contribute to open source in general.

“Many people are using WordPress, but they don’t all know about contribution. Therefore, my future goal is to help people, especially women, contribute more to WordPress.”

Monika Rao

“When I first started contributing to WordPress, I thought that being from a testing background, I may not be able to contribute much. However, I soon realized that there are various different areas where I could easily contribute and develop my skills,” said Monika.

“So, I would encourage anyone who is interested in contributing to WordPress to find their own area of interest, regardless of their background, be it marketing, content writing, designing, or any other field. The WordPress community welcomes contributions from people of all backgrounds and skill-sets. So, don’t hesitate to dive in and contribute in a way that suits your interests and skills.”

Share the storiesHelp share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series.

ContributorsThanks to Monika Rao (@monikarao) for sharing her adventures in open source.

Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) and the late Surendra Thakor (@sthakor) for interviews and writing this feature, and to Meher Bala (@meher), Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann), Mary Baum (@marybaum) for work on photographs and review.

The People of WordPress series thanks Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support.

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Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy in the 54th episode of the WordPress Briefing as she explores the concept of the four freedoms of open source and likens it to today’s Bill of Rights for the open web.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsEditor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Chloé Bringmann
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes* Episode 2: WordPress is Free(dom) * OpenAI ChatGPT and Github Copilot * WordPress 6.3 Planning Proposal & Call for Volunteers * Preparing for the Next Underrepresented Gender-Led Release – WordPress 6.4 * WP20 — Celebrating 20 years of WordPress

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

Hello, everyone! And welcome to the WordPress Briefing: the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress opensource 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. Here we go!

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40] Start of Show

Just over 50 episodes ago, I shared some basic thoughts about the four freedoms of open source. I also talked through the most quoted phrase in open source “free as in free speech, not free as in beer.” And honestly, what podcast about the freedoms of open source would be complete without that? If you haven’t listened to that episode, I suggest you do, but if you don’t have time, I’ll start by reminding us all of the definition of free software, which is most commonly referred to as the four freedoms of open source.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:12]

So the first thing is the freedom to run the program as you wish for any purpose. The second thing is the freedom to study how the program works and to change it so that it does your computing as you wish. As a side note, access to the source code is a precondition for this.

The third freedom is the freedom to redistribute copies so that you can help others. And the fourth freedom is the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others. By doing this, you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes, and of course, also access to the source code is a precondition for this.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:47]

The TLDR version of these freedoms is, essentially, that users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software. Now, normally when I speak about the freedoms of open source, I’m talking about it either from a practical or a philosophical standpoint, but I also spend a lot of time thinking about it from a leadership and organizational perspective.

Every once in a while, you might hear me talk about the effects of “open source at scale,” or you might hear Matt say that the four freedoms are essentially the “Bill of Rghts for the open web.” I almost never really dig into either of those topics because it’s just really complicated. But for starters, anytime you talk about what someone is entitled to or deserves or expects, there is a feeling of political bias.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:40]

And while I personally believe that creating software is inherently political or, at a minimum, concerned with the needs of people, that’s not what convinces anyone to participate in open source, and it’s certainly not what convinces people to use WordPress. But here’s the thing, as a leader in a widely used, free, and open source software project, as a leader in WordPress, I also know that every new user to our platform or any other open source platform represents a little more freedom in the world.

A little more access to tools and jobs that weren’t available before. A slightly more open door to networks that undergird the success of entrepreneurs across the globe and a little more equity to the world of democratizing publishing.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:28]

When I look at the four freedoms of open source, this Bill of Rights for the Web, I see not only the freedoms that we should have but also the things that we should have freedom from.

We should have the freedom to know how our tools work, the freedom to know what information they need from us, and also the freedom to have some way to make that software work specifically for us because that’s why we have software because we have humans that need it. But we should also have freedom from having to hide our hacky enhancements or freedom from fear of losing our earned audience, or even the fear of losing access to copious amounts of content that we have created ourselves over the years.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:13]

And honestly, the things that we should be free from just include a lot of fear of loss. Loss of opportunity or relevance or livelihood. And I feel like for our project, and maybe for open source as a whole, we’re encountering a lot of that right now, whether we are aware of it or not. We’re seeing advancements like GPT3 or ChatGPT if that sounds more familiar and co-pilot.

And while it’s not quite in the same vein, also things like Gutenberg. Advancements that are coming to technology around us, technology we’re familiar with. And it’s hard to see what’s in them sometimes. It’s hard to see what drives them. It’s hard to know how we can make them work for us. So I have to remind us all, as citizens of an open source community, that what protects us from those things we should be free from is directly connected to how active we are in the things we are free to.

We hear that in a slightly more routine way from folks around open source communities. Basically, the whole concept of open source software is being built by the folks who show up. You can’t influence the future of anything if you’re not showing up in the spaces where the influence happens.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:35]

So be an active participant in these new technologies. Learn how GPT works and how it could work for you, even if it’s just writing better prompts. Learn how Gutenberg can support your needs, not subvert your needs, even if it’s just learning how to arrange a series of blocks into a pattern or patterns into a page.

But as with all fast-moving technological advances, I encourage you to leap in feet first, not head first. Get in up to your neck in the “why”s and “how”s of that new technology you’ve been worrying about. Be the first to become best at this arcane new thing because that’s why we open source at all so that you have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve your software.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:33] Small List of Big Things

That brings me now to my small list of big things. It’s a very small list, but it is very big, as always. The first thing is that we are gearing up for the remaining major releases of the year, WP 6.3 and 6.4 in an atypical moment for our project. You can volunteer for both simultaneously if you want, and hopefully, you do want.

Second thing is that there are many ways to celebrate WordPress’s 20th anniversary on May 27th. But one of the things you can do right now is record a short video or sound clip about a great memory or experience you have had in this community or just generally because of WordPress. Those will be featured on the WP 20 website, and maybe even a lucky few will make it into the second volume of the WordPress history book.

And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

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Named after the multi-instrumentalist Eric Allan Dolphy Jr., WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy”‘s high notes are riffed on by WordPress’s Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, in this 53rd episode of the WordPress Briefing.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsEditor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Chloé Bringmann
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes* WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy” * Introducing the WordPress Developer Blog * WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program * Call for Volunteers: Contributor Working Group * Why Jazz * Make Slack channels #kidscamp and #sustainability

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[00:00:28]

The latest version of WordPress has shipped. WordPress 6.2, which was named after Eric Dolphy, was released on March 29th. And as is the way with software, there’s already a minor release underway to catch a few errant issues that folks like you have reported to us.

It’s a big release that refines a lot of our design tools, but some of the most important changes are actually to the inserter. If you haven’t had a chance to get in there and play with it yet, here are the three things that I think you should know.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:08]

First, the pattern browser. We’re all aware of the block inserter by now, and a lot of us probably use the quick options, the keyboard shortcuts, or that kind of inline inserter, that little black box that’s in the middle of your post.

If you use the main inserter, that’s a blue square in the top left of the screen. If you use that to add a block, you can still add individual blocks as usual. But there’s a new way to browse patterns, and in my opinion, it is so much better. It now brings out this drawer that has like thumbnails of patterns that will work with your theme.

And if you, like me, know what you want your site to look like, but could not in a million years figure out how to build it from scratch out of individual blocks, then this is the area for you. It was like shopping, but you don’t have to go through a checkout process at the end, and you still have what you want. It’s great.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00]

That’s also available when you’re working on templates or template parts, so you can make changes everywhere instead of going page by page. The second thing that I think you should know is about the media browser in that same area where you browse your patterns; you can also now browse for media.

It lets you look through the images you’ve already added to your site, but it also lets you search for openly licensed images from Openverse. And if you choose one of those images from Openverse, it inserts the proper attribution for you. You still have to add your own alt text, but that’s the fun part anyway, right?

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:35]

And number three, a Style Book. So this thing is available in the template editing area, specifically, as is appropriate, given what it actually does. So if you’re in the template area, toward the top right of the screen is like a half moon day mode, night mode looking icon. If you click on that, you can make changes to things inside your blocks.

But if you click on the little eyeball icon that’s just underneath it, it pulls up a style book where you can also see and edit the styles globally. If that didn’t make sense to you, don’t worry. I’ve got you. I’m about to tell you a bunch of things you can do in here. You can edit the way headings and lists and tables, quotes, and code looks all across the site. You can edit the way images, galleries, files, and videos look using custom CSS.

Yes. Also, all across the site. And you can edit buttons, separators, and individual blocks. Say it with me — all across the site. That is not a comprehensive list. There is a ton of stuff. You can see the styles that you have applied across the whole site. You can see them in context, and you can make any changes that you need globally, which means all across the site.

Yeah. Style Books. What will we think of next?

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:54]

So those are my three things I think you should know about WordPress right now. As a former WordPress builder who was never really super great with the code, this stuff makes me feel powerful. I just love these changes, and I hope you do too.

[00:04:07]

Which brings us now to our small list of big things. First, we just launched the Developer Blog. It’s over at developer.wordpress.org/news. It has a bunch of content on it that not only is geared specifically toward developers that are using WordPress but especially the folks who are extending WordPress. It gives you kind of an in-depth look at various changes and projects, and implementations and what goes into each one of them.

So it gives you a bit of like this aspirational overview of stuff that you could do with WordPress and then also gives you an inside look at how you would accomplish it yourself. It’s very cool. I like it a lot. Head on over there, but we’ll have a link to the show notes below.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00]

The second thing is that we have an MVP of our new mentorship program that is underway.

It should be debuting for essentially testing any day now, a link to the posts detailing that work, just in case you want to join that important initiative. But it is an important thing for me. I think that mentorship is a key element of many of our successful contributors’ onboarding journeys, a part of their story of coming to us.

And so, creating a mentorship program that is a bit sustainable and looks toward the health of the overall project, I think, is an excellent plan.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:38]

The third thing on our small list of big things is that Matt put out a nice little post about kind of the history of why jazz has this strong background in the WordPress project. It’s a brief read. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But suffice it to say that he’s saying that jazz has a little bit of learned processes and rules but that the primary expectation is that you’re able to make of the jazz what you want. Like you get to make your own thing out of it. You get to be extemporaneous. You get to be very measured, whatever it is, that expresses what you are trying to do and what you are trying to say with it.

That’s why he feels like jazz is such an important part of the DNA of the WordPress project. Like I said, it’s a short read. I’ll put a link to it in the show notes.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:30]

And finally, there are a few working groups that folks can contribute to right now. We don’t always have working groups. We generally just kind of do stuff inside individual teams. But right now, we’ve got like the kids camp group, the sustainability group, and of course, that mentorship working group that I mentioned earlier in our list.

So if you’re wanting a little change of pace, I’d drop by their areas in the Making WordPress Slack to see if they have anything that’s up your alley.

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March saw the arrival of the first major release of 2023, WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy.” Planning for the project’s 20th anniversary continues with new celebratory updates and commemorative swag. Read on for the latest happenings in the WordPress space.

Meet WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy”WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy” was released on March 29, 2023. Named after the acclaimed jazz multi-instrumentalist and composerEric Allan Dolphy Jr., the latest version of WordPress further enhances the site editing experience with significant updates.

Highlights include a reimagined Site Editor interface, a more intuitive way to manage menus, and a distraction-free writing mode. A new Block Inserter design adds integration with Openverse, allowing you to easily browse and insert free, openly-licensed images and audio files into your content.

Whether you’re a content creator, designer, or developer, WordPress 6.2 has something for you. Check out the full announcement post for an overview of what’s new and the Field Guide for detailed developer notes.

WordPress 6.2 is one of the last major releases planned for Phase 2 of the project’s development roadmap and was made possible thanks to more than 600 contributors.

Download WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy.”

WP20 swag is hereShow your WordPress excitement with limited edition 20th anniversary merchandise—now available at the official WordPress Mercantile store. If you prefer to create your own swag, you can use these WP20 downloadable assets.

The 20th anniversary website lists celebrations as organizers announce and schedule them. Check back regularly to see if there’s an event in your area to join or help organize one to celebrate this milestone with your local community.

Enter the Wapuu Coloring Giveaway by April 17, 2023, for a chance to win some commemorative WP20 swag!

New in the Gutenberg pluginTwo new versions of the Gutenberg plugin have shipped in the last month:

Gutenberg 15.3was released on March 13, 2023. This version polishes the Site Editor experience, includes a new “Time to Read” block for displaying estimated read time to posts, and enhances the Duotone design tool.
Gutenberg 15.4 is available for download as of March 22, 2023, and focuses primarily on bug fixes and testing improvements. Other additions include color and layout support for the Cover block, improved descriptions to help you understand the purpose of each template in the Site Editor, and the ability to turn paragraph blocks into columns.

Follow the “What’s new in Gutenberg” posts to stay on top of the latest enhancements.

Team updates: Phase 3 planning, WordPress Developer Blog launch, and more Gutenberg Lead Architect Matías Ventura outlined the focus areas for Phase 3 of the WordPress development roadmap, known as Collaboration or Collaborative Editing*. * Last month, the WordPress Developer Blog officially launched (removing the “beta” label). Subscribe to keep up with the latest features, tutorials, and learning resources in the WordPress development space. * The Documentation Team seeks volunteers to help with WordPress 6.2 end user documentation. * Are you looking to broaden your knowledge and improve your WordPress skills? See what’s new on Learn WordPress in March 2023, including the latest course on Converting a Shortcode to a Block. * A new Community Themes initiative aims to bring together a group of contributors to collaborate and build block themes. * The Training Team is looking for assistance in creating content to complete this WordPress Development syllabus. * The newly formed Contributor Working Group hosted an inaugural chat to kick off work on the WordPress Mentorship Program. * The Polyglots Team is testing AI systems to help with translation work. * The WordPress.org redesign project has a new dedicated Making WordPress Slack channel to coordinate work: #website-redesign. * The March 2023 editions of the Polyglots monthly newsletter and the Meetup Organizer newsletter are available for reading. * The Mobile Team announced a new support forum for the WordPress mobile app.

Tune in to Episode 52 of WP Briefing to learn more about the visioning behind Phase 3, Collaboration.

Feedback & testing requests* A new Full Site Editing (FSE) Program exploration looks into the Site Editor as a design tool in light of the recent WordPress 6.2 release. Participants are asked to create a block theme without coding using the current editor tools. Share your experience by April 26, 2023. * A group of Core contributors is working on a new Interactivity API proposal to provide a better developer experience for building interactive blocks. * Version 22.0 of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is ready for testing.

Members of the Core Team are looking for user experience (UX) feedback on the Plugin Dependencies feature plugin.

WordPress events updates* WordCamp Asia 2024 is calling for organizers. Apply by April 15, 2023. * Registration for the WordCamp Europe 2023 Contributor Day is now open. * Want to create diverse and inclusive WordPress events? Mark your calendars for the upcoming #WPDiversity workshops. * Four WordCamps are taking place this month: + WordCamp Torino, Italy, on April 14-15, 2023 + Wordcamp Vienna, Austria, on April 15-16, 2023 + WordCamp Paris, France, on April 21, 2023 + WordCamp Sofia, Bulgaria, on April 22-23, 2023

Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she discusses the benefits of routine and what role it plays in the WordPress project.

*Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know.*****

The following folks contributed to this Month in WordPress: @bsanevans, @cbringmann, @eidolonnight, @rmartinezduque, @sereedmedia.

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Say hello to WordPress 6.2 “Dolphy,” named for the woodwind jazz wiz, the multi-instrumentalist—Eric Allan Dolphy Jr. Dolphy is acclaimed for having brought the bass clarinet to prominence in the jazz scene, creating a place for the flute and extending the lexicon of the alto saxophone. In a career that spanned continents, his artistry was at the forefront of pushing improvisational boundaries, ensemble work, and partnerships with well-respected artists like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane.

This latest version of WordPress reimagines your site editing experience, introduces more ways to style your site, and offers a new distraction-free way to write. Discover improvements that give you more control and freedom to express your creative vision. There’s something for everyone, whether you’re a content creator, developer, site builder, or designer. Let the music of Eric Dolphy delight you as you take in all that 6.2 has to offer.

Download WordPress 6.2 todayWordPress 6.2 is the first major release of 2023, covering over 900 enhancements and fixes. It’s also a transition point in the WordPress project’s development roadmap, shifting focus from customization to early exploration of workflows and collaboration.

What’s insideMeet the reimagined Site EditorReady for you to dive in and explore: 6.2 is your invitation to discover what the next generation of WordPress—and block themes—can do.

Now out of beta, the Site Editor has an updated interface, giving you a new way to interact with your entire site. Explore full previews of your templates and template parts, then jump in and get to editing your site from wherever you choose.

Manage menus in more ways with the Navigation blockAdd, remove, and reorder menu items faster—with a new sidebar experience that makes editing your site’s navigation easier.

Discover a smoother experience for the Block InserterA refreshed design gives you easier access to the content you need. Use the Media tab to quickly drag and drop content from your existing Media Library. Find patterns faster with a split view that lets you navigate categories and see previews all at once.

Find the controls you want when you need themYour block settings sidebar is better organized with tabs for Settings and Styles. So the tools you need are easy to identify and access.

Build faster with headers and footers for block themesDiscover a new collection of header and footer patterns. Use them with any block theme as a quick, high-quality starting point for your site’s templates.

Explore Openverse media right from the EditorOpenverse’s library catalogs over 700 million+ free, openly licensed stock images and audio—and now it’s directly integrated into the WordPress experience through the Inserter.

Focus on writing with Distraction Free modeFor those times you want to be alone with your ideas. You can now hide all your panels and controls, leaving you free to bring your content to life.

Meet the new Style BookGet a complete overview of how every block in your site’s library looks. All in one place, all at a glance, directly in the Site Editor.

Copy and paste stylesPerfect the design on one type of block, then copy and paste those styles to other blocks to get just the look you want.

Custom CSSPower up your site any way you wish with design tools and custom CSS for another level of control over your site’s look and feel for maximum creativity and artistry in your designs.

Other highlights in 6.2 Sticky positioning: Choose to keep top-level group blocks fixed to the top of a page as visitors scroll. * Importing widgets: Options to import your favorite widgets from Classic themes to Block themes. * Local fonts in themes*: Default WordPress themes offer better privacy with Google Fonts now included.

Learn more about WordPress 6.2Explore Learn WordPress for quick how-to videos, courses, and other resources for the latest features in WordPress. Or join a free live interactive online workshop.

Check out the WordPress 6.2 Field Guide for detailed developer notes to help you build with WordPress and get the most out of the latest release. Read the 6.2 release notes for additional technical details about this release, including installation information, updates, fixes, file changes, and more.

The 6.2 release squad6.2 is made possible by the many folks who have enthusiastically helped keep the release on track and moving forward:

Release Lead: Matt Mullenweg
Release Coordinators: Francesca Marano, Héctor Prieto
Core Tech Co-Leads: Tonya Mork, Jb Audras
Editor Tech Co-Leads: George Mamadashvili, Nik Tsekouras
Core Triage Co-Leads: Colin Stewart, Mukesh Panchal
Editor Triage Co-Leads: Anne McCarthy, Nick Diego
Design Lead: Rich Tabor
Documentation Co-Leads: Birgit Pauli-Haack, Femy Praseet, Milana Cap, Abha Thakor
Marketing & Communications Co-Leads: Jonathan Pantani, Lauren Stein, Mary Baum
Test Co-Leads: Robin, Adel Tahri
Performance Lead: Felix Arntz

Thank you, contributorsWordPress 6.2 couldn’t be here without the countless effort and passion of more than 600 contributors in at least 50 countries. A special thank you to the 178 new contributors who joined a release for the first time. Their collaboration helped deliver hundreds of enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all—a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.

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By release day, 70 locales had translated 90 percent or more of WordPress 6.2 in their language. Community translators are hard at work ensuring more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps to make WordPress 6.2 available in 200 languages.

A release haiku for 6.2 Six point two, so new
Shiny and ready for you
Congrats on hard work!

* Portrait of Eric Allen Dolphy Jr. discovered via Openverse. Colorization by D. Pountain; Original by F. Wolff.
“eric dolphy” by dick_pountain is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

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On Episode fifty-two of the WordPress Briefing podcast, join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy and special guest Héctor Prieto as they discuss phase three and why it’s more than just collaborative editing!

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsEditor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

Show Notes* Write as Blocks in an Encrypted Collaborative Environment by Riad Benguella * Riad Benguella’s collaborative editing GitHub repository * Riad Benguella’s WordPress.org Profile * Block Collab: New package, a framework for collaborative editing GitHub PR * Phase 3: Collaboration * Matías Ventura Quick Search GH Issue * Matías Ventura WordPress.org Profile * WordPress 6.2 Release Day Process * Introducing the WordPress Developer Blog * WordCamp Europe Contributor Day Registration * WP20 Wapuu Coloring Giveaway

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

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. Here we go.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]

I have with me today Hécto Prieto. You all may know him from the WordPress Slack. He recently was, I believe, a release coordinator, maybe for the last release. Was that for 6.1?

[Héctor Prieto 00:00:51]

Yes. It was for 6.1 and also 6.0, in fact.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:54]

All right. Well, welcome to the WordPress Briefing today. How are you doing?

[Héctor Prieto 00:00:59]

Well, I’m excited to be here. I’m a longtime listener of the podcast since the first episode. So I’m super excited to be here with you today.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:06]

Yes. Longtime listener. First-time caller. All right, well, we’re gonna have a topic that just dumps you right in the soup, as they say in the United States. So we are actually here to talk about phase three of Gutenberg. It’s been a long time coming, and there are a lot of questions that folks have about what’s going into it and what’s not going into it.

And as someone who works really closely with our Gutenberg technical architect, Matías Ventura, I figured you would be exactly the right person to come and talk about your favorite things. From your perspective, what is going to be the biggest enhancement that we start to approach in phase three?

Like which thing, which API is gonna take the most work, do you think?

[Héctor Prieto 00:01:53]

Well, the most work, that’s a very hard question to answer because we are still we are going to start an exploration phase to determine how far we want to go with each of these APIs. So, in general, all these APIs and these products are standalone projects. And some of them are shorter, and some of them are longer.

I would say, in general, the real-time collaboration sounds the most technically challenging because of what it represents and all the changes needed to how we interact with WordPress from async to sync, basically. That would be the hardest part. I think there are also already a few prototypes working, but we need to see how that scales, for example.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:32]

Yeah. So speaking of a few prototypes, I know that there are two or three different prototypes specifically for collaborative editing, but do we have people or groups, working groups in the community that have built any other prototypes? Or is it just kind of first passes at collaborative editing that we’ve seen?

[Héctor Prieto 00:02:52]

Well, apart from Riad Benguella’s exploration, there’s a public repository with that exploration, there are a few plugins trying the same, trying real-time collaboration.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:03]

Yeah, I can think of co-blocks and as blocks, and then I feel like there was a third one.

[Héctor Prieto 00:03:09]

Yeah.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:09]

We’ll find the links to all these

[Héctor Prieto 00:03:12]

Yeah. Let’s add them to the show notes.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:14]

Excellent. So that’s going to be the biggest one. Is there, of the list of APIs, and this is based on the post that Matías sent out last week. If you all haven’t seen that, we’ll put that in the show notes as well. But from the APIs that Matías sort of helped us to identify last week, is there any one that you are particularly excited about for fixing things in WordPress or just generally like an interesting topic of development for you?

[Héctor Prieto 00:03:42]

Well, I would say all of them and how they all play together. But, if I need to pick one of them…

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:48]

Everything’s the best!

[Héctor Prieto 00:03:50]

I’ll cheat anyway, and I will going to pick two out of them because they solve issues at different levels. I’m very excited about visual revisions. I think it helps a lot of users, and it affects even non-technical users.

So it’s one of the projects that lower how hard or complex WordPress can be to use sometimes. It’s going to be a huge improvement. It’s going to, I mean, bringing blocks to the revision system. I mean, it’s just a dream come true for me. I’m also going to highlight the search everywhere or quick search feature Matías already opened an issue in the GitHub repository right now.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:28]

Mm-hmm.

[Héctor Prieto 00:04:28]

So the idea for this product is to have a power user shortcut that opens searching, an Alfred-like or Spotlight-like interface for those familiar with MacOS operating systems.

When you can type anything, any place you want to go, or you want to search for any specific text in a document. And it’s supposed to be your power user command tool. So that you can do most things there.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:53]

Oh, and I mean not only power user command tool, but also there are some applications there for folks who have mobility issues, people who are using primarily keyboard as opposed to keyboard and mouse, all that kind of stuff, right?

[Héctor Prieto 00:05:07]

Exactly. And just thinking long term with the rise of AI, it could be possible even to add some natural language processing to this interface so that users could just write in, in plain text, in natural language, what they want to do, and WordPress would provide the action for them.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:23]

Very nice. My two favorites, since you gave two favorites and I can’t just give one at that point, my two favorite projects, which are also probably really, really hard projects, are those explorations around fixing notifications. That is a really big project. And one that I think that, in general, the WordPress project is going to be really excited to have some input on.

And so that’s one that I really will have an eye on. And the other one that I’m going to definitely have my eye on is the media gallery redesign. I realize that this shows, between you and I, that shows our two specific focuses. Because, of course, you work directly with guiding all of our developers. And I am very much like our user advocate. And WordPress “everyman.”

I don’t know if that’s a term that makes sense outside the US. But I do a lot of advocacy for folks who are using WordPress from the user side as opposed to from the developer side because, of course, we have a lot of excellent developers. So y’all don’t need my help with your advocacy.

But yeah, that really shows that you and I have different focuses, which I think is good too.

[Héctor Prieto 00:06:32]

Yes. Also, it’s worth noting that at the end of the day, any improvement we make for developers is so that developers can build better things for users. So, at the end of the day, everything is in the best interest of the users.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:45]

That’s right. That’s definitely a good point. Yeah. So, a final question about this particular thing because we’re trying to keep it a little brief and also because we’ll have a few other podcasts that are specifically about phase three as our explorations get going. Final question here: If you felt like there was one API or one project in particular that could benefit from a lot of community involvement which would you guess that was?

[Héctor Prieto 00:07:20]

I don’t think I can single out any of them. I think getting user feedback is going to be a vital part of this phase, as always. So I would encourage our listeners to just participate in discussions and provide feedback as we start releasing the first prototypes in the Gutenberg plugin. I don’t think I can pick one of them for you, completely honest.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:43]

Yeah. My guess for that is going to be the rework of the dashboard, the admin, WP admin. I think that a lot of people are gonna have a lot to say about what they use it for, what they would like to be able to use it for, how to make it look more modern, how to make it feel more modern. I think that that probably is going to benefit from a lot of early testing and possibly some specific user testing around the concepts of design in there.

And so that’s one that that I think probably is going to take a lot of feedback from the community. And community, in this case, I think, is not only our developers and designers and copy folks who are working to build the CMS, but probably also all of our folks who are extending WordPress, everybody who is working in agencies, things like that.

[Héctor Prieto 00:08:35]

Hmm, well, if I need to pick one, I would say the publishing flows could use also lots of feedback and testing because we are going to implement editorial requirements and customized user flows. And, of course, there are many, many different workflows out there that we might not be able to think of ourselves.

So just imagine the sheer amount of different use cases. There’s going to be, or there currently is with customizations of third-party plugins. So, yeah. I would like to listen to how people would like the publishing flows to be. What are the specific use cases?

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:09]

So really, just everything, we need a lot of user feedback on everything.

[Héctor Prieto 00:09:13]

Yes. That’s the summary.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:15]

I don’t think that’s a bad summary. I know that we talk a bit about how WordPress is made better by the activity of our co-creators, the people who are using the software and testing the software, and telling us how it could be better. Those are the groups of people that make sure that we are the best version or headed in the best direction on any of our things with the software.

And so I guess it’s probably not super unusual for everyone to hear like we need your feedback on everything because that’s probably what we do half the time.

[Héctor Prieto 00:09:44]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:47]

So the publishing workflows, that reminds me that there has been a little bit of a conversation lately around the naming of this phase, basically.

And I know that the phases don’t necessarily need names. Like that’s why they’re numbered, and that’s a great idea. Like numbers are wonderful ways to reference things, but it also is just easier to reference it in kind of general conversation.

So the first phase was easier editing, and it really focused on the editing experience itself. The second one was customization, and now the third phase has been called collaboration for quite a bit of time.

But as we got closer and closer to this phase and we had more and more conversations that were coming out of phases one and two, it became really clear that really what we’re looking at here is more around workflows. And I love that that is an option for how to refer to this. Probably that’s how I will refer to it for most of the time that I talk about it as we are looking at phase three.

Because I remember that when we were first building the prototypes of Gutenberg, one of the big flags that I had was that breaking changes are not just about what we can see or any sort of visual regressions or what causes the white screen of death. Also, some of the things that are breaking changes should be considered in those workflows when we change where things are or how you accomplish a task.

And our users weren’t ready for it. That is something that is breaking for them, right?

[Héctor Prieto 00:11:25]

Yes. As you mentioned, this phase was referenced as collaboration, real-time collaboration, for a long time, but if we think of how this collaboration looks, it’s much more than just editing at the same time. A very big part of collaboration is also asynchronous collaboration by adding in-line comments and improving these notifications when you have a comment in your draft. I think the power of this phase is how everything comes together. These individual pieces come together.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 0:11:51]

Yes, and I don’t know where that first flag that sparked the discussion around, like, okay, but collaborative editing is not quite big enough and also means a bunch of different things for a bunch of different people. It depends on the size of your organization or the type of content you’re writing.

Like, I don’t know where that conversation started. My guess is, you know, some WordCamp somewhere, and an attendee was like, did you, did anybody ever think about these problems? And then they kind of worked their way around the Make Core site or otherwise made their way around to Matias’s ears.

But yeah, I think that was a really smart choice. And you’re exactly right, collaborative editing; that can refer to the synchronous kind or the asynchronous kind, and both of those types of collaboration are equally valuable and probably equally used.

[Héctor Prieto 00:12:40]

Yes. And one important point to note here is that this editorial flows, and this collaboration is crucial to implement multilingualism going into phase four. We need to think that as soon as we have posts and pages in different languages, there are going to be requirements in terms of how to translate these pieces of content.

So this will need collaboration, all forms of collaboration.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:13:02]

Yeah, absolutely. This maybe was before your time with the project, but I was team multilingual-first for a long time. Or at least thinking that we could do the multilingual part of this work alongside the collaborative editing part of the work. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand what we think is going in phase three versus what probably we need to be able to do as far as having native multilingual support in the project.

And I have softened my very hard position on that. You know, we’re big fans of strong positions loosely held, strong opinions loosely held. And this was one of those moments where I had that really strong opinion that we could just do them concurrently. We can do them at the same time.

And I think it was a conversation that you and I were having when you were pointing out the complexities of translating WordPress at all, let alone being able to translate all your content as well. And it makes a lot of sense, and you’re right. I think that there are a lot of interactions, a lot of workflows that we’re gonna have to kind of refresh or redesign or rebuild before it really makes sense for us to help make that a nice streamlined option for multilingual offerings.

[Héctor Prieto 00:14:17]

Yes, absolutely. As a Spanish-speaking person, I’m super excited about having multilingual in Core, but I also understand that we need some tooling ready before implementing multilingual in Core.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:14:29]

There are no, there really are no easy problems left in WordPress, right? Like, we all agree on this now?

[Héctor Prieto 00:14:36]

That’s correct. And we’re creating something incrementally. If we look at the phases, they are ordered sequentially. But that doesn’t mean that when we start phase three, we are, finishing phase two completely in the same way. We have not finished phase one.

That will be like saying, when is WordPress finished, when is the development finished? So it’s an incremental project, and it’s always going to be to need refining. So it’s of course, multilingual needs to come after collaboration because we need those tools.

But that doesn’t mean we need to finish the collaboration phase or have it very advanced phase three before we can start phase four. That will be determined in the next month as we start explorations.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:15:17]

So if you all, which I know you are, are interested in better workflows, more streamlined ways of working inside WordPress, and or interested in how we are gonna get multilingual settled in the future, this is a great time to get involved in this project and in the community. Like I said, we’ve got that post up that Matías shipped last week, which, again, if you have not read it, go read it because it’s got excellent, excellent information in there for you.

Héctor, before we head out, is there anything that you wanna make sure that you let the listeners know, either about phase three or just about WordPress in general?

[Héctor Prieto 00:15:57]

Well, tomorrow is WordPress 6.2 release day. So happy 6.2, everybody!

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:16:04]

Happy 6.2. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which means today is the dry run; probably in three hours, we’re doing the dry run.

[Héctor Prieto 00:16:14]

Depends on when we’re listening to this, but yes.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:16:18]

Oh, that’s a good point. Right? Not everybody listens to this the second it becomes available. Time zones. That’s right. Oh, man. Look at us being a global project and just pretending like everybody listens to this particular thing the moment that it’s available.

I apologize to everybody who’s listening to it after the release or in the middle of the release party or whatever you’re doing. Regardless, tomorrow, if you’re listening to it today, is the WordPress 6.2 release, and it’s gonna be great.

Well, Héctor, thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed having you on, and thanks for letting me interview you.

[Héctor Prieto 00:16:59]

Thank you for having me. It was my pleasure to be here.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:17:10]

So that brings us now to our small list of big things, and as is frequently the case, it’s actually kind of a big list of big things. So we’re gonna hop right in here. As Héctor and I mentioned in the episode, the release WordPress 6.2 is coming out tomorrow, depending on when you’re listening to this. If you listen to it on the 27th, it comes out on the 28th of March.

If you have a chance to drop by the release party. I would encourage you to; they’re pretty interesting just to get an idea of everything that it takes to build WordPress. It is, of course, the last few hours before a release, and so you don’t get a full scope.

But it’s always nice to see the way that everybody in the community works together, especially there in that last moment when we’re trying to package something and test it in a bunch of environments all across the world.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:18:00]

I love attending those. And so I encourage it. The next episode of the WordPress Briefing is going to have the release rundown.

I’ll go through the key features and highlights that finally made it into 6.2. The reason we don’t do those beforehand is just in case we have to remove anything at the last minute from a release. It doesn’t happen too often, but it does happen sometimes. And so, next episode of WP Briefing, that’s what we’ll be talking about.

The next thing on my list is a new developer blog. So there is a brand new developer blog. It was launched last Wednesday. It’s a great resource for WordPress developers to stay up to date and hear the latest in the WordPress development world. And also, we had been hearing some feedback from our developers in recent years that if you are like exploring how to extend WordPress, if you’re in that group of extenders, people who are building themes or building plugins, you’ve kind of feel like you’ve lost a place where you can have those exploratory conversations.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:19:00]

This is gonna be one of those places. We’ll put a link in the show notes. So far, the content that’s planned, I think, is really interesting.

Next thing on our small list, big list, of big things is WordCamp Europe’s Contributor Day.

So registration for Contributor Day is now open, and it does require a separate registration than regular attendance at WordCamp Europe. So if you are registered for WordCamp Europe, you already have your ticket for that, but you are not registered for Contributor Day, click the link in the show notes and come on down to spend a little time giving back to the WordPress Project.

And the last thing on our list today is that we have a WP20 Wapuu coloring giveaway. So put on your little party hats, and grab your crayons. The 20th anniversary Wapuu coloring giveaway is here. There is an opportunity to color in your own community-driven Wapuu and tweet it to us using #WapuuWP20 for your chance to win a sweet haul of WP20 swag items.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:20:00]

You can check out the full rules at the link in our show notes.

And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

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With much activity happening in the WordPress development space every day, keeping up-to-date with the latest updates can be challenging. The new WordPress Developer Blog is a developer-focused resource to help you stay on top of the latest software features, tutorials, and learning materials relevant to the open source project.

This blog is the culmination of a community effort that began last year. Formed by experienced WordPress community members and developers, the editorial group has since worked on a wide range of content already available—from theme and block development tutorials to tips and tricks for leveraging WordPress in the site editing era.

A new home for developersAs a complementary resource to the WordPress documentation, the Developer Blog aims to provide a shared space to stay informed of development-related updates, keep up with ongoing discussions and ideas, and explore cutting-edge use cases.

In other words, consider it as a central hub for developers and extenders of different backgrounds and skill levels to learn with quality content from reliable sources, share knowledge, and drive WordPress development forward.

True to the open source way, the blog will likely evolve. As its editors and readers learn and create more content, it will adapt in response to the needs of community members like you.

Everyone is welcome to chime in on-topic discussions, share ideas or contribute. Learn more about how to get involved.

What about the content?Content on the WordPress Developer Blog covers many topics, including tutorials on theme development, plugins, and block development. You can also expect posts on WordPress APIs, best practices for working with WordPress, updates on upcoming releases, and learning resources for beginners and seasoned developers.

These articles offer a good hint at what’s already in store for you:

Demystifying home and posts templates in WordPress theme development
Creating themes from a pattern-first mindset
Static vs. dynamic blocks: What’s the difference?
Creating custom block styles in WordPress themes
What’s new for developers? (March 2023)

Sounds interesting? Subscribe to the Developer Blog to keep up with the latest content in the WordPress development space.

Props for content and peer review @chanthaboune @rmartinezduque @mburridge @marybaum @bph @greenshady @webcommsat.

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It’s the final countdown: the third (and last) scheduled release candidate (RC3) for WordPress 6.2 is ready!

The WordPress 6.2 release is scheduled for March 28, 2023—just one week away! Now is your last opportunity to test it before the general release.

Just tuning in now? Catch up on the featured highlights, and dig into more 6.2 details in the WordPress 6.2 RC1 release announcement.

Thanks to all the Beta and RC testers who have assisted in this release. Since RC2 was released on March 14, there have been about 21 issues resolved in Trac and GitHub.

Your feedback and help in filing bug reports keep the WordPress experience stable, smooth, and delightful. It’s critical work and a great way to contribute to the project.

How to install RC3 for testingThis version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC3 on a test server and site.

You can test WordPress 6.2 RC3 in three ways:

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

Option 2: Direct download the RC3 version (zip).

Option 3: Use the following WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=6.2-RC3

A shout out to plugin and theme developersYour products are the reason WordPress does so many things for more people across the world. As you test your latest versions against RC3, make sure you update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.2. If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the support forums.

Check out the WordPress 6.2 Field Guide for more details about the major changes in this release.

Help translate WordPressDo you speak a language other than English? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.

Keep WordPress bug-free—help with testingWithout your testing support, hitting important product milestones would be a much bigger challenge. It’s also a meaningful way to contribute to the project. If you’re new to testing, or it’s been a while, this detailed guide can help you get started.

If you think you have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Release the haikuWow, we’re oh so close
Test, test. Get it out the door.
Please no RC 4.

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @laurlittle @marybaum @audrasjb @cbringmann @webcommsat

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Here it is: the second release candidate (RC2) for WordPress 6.2 is ready!

WordPress 6.2 is scheduled for release on March 28, 2023—which is only two weeks away. Now is your perfect opportunity if you haven’t tried it out yet. Your feedback and help filing bug reports are what keep the WordPress experience stable, smooth, and delightful. It’s important work and a great way to contribute to the project.

Thanks to everyone who tested the Beta and RC releases so far. Since RC1 was released on March 9, there have been about 36 issues resolved in Trac and GitHub.

Catch up on the featured highlights, and dig into more 6.2 details, in the WordPress 6.2 RC1 release announcement.

How to install RC2 for testingThis version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC2 on a test server and site.

You can test WordPress 6.2 RC2 in three ways:

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

Option 2: Direct download the RC2 version (zip).

Option 3: Use the following WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=6.2-RC2

A shoutout to plugin and theme developersYour products are the reason WordPress does so many more things for more people across the world. As you test your latest versions against RC2, make sure you update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.2. If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the support forums.

Check out the WordPress 6.2 Field Guide for more details about the major changes in this release.

Help translate WordPressDo you speak a language other than English? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages.

Join the bug hunt—test, test, testWithout your testing support, hitting important product milestones would be a much bigger challenge. It’s also a meaningful way to contribute to the project. If you’re new to testing, or it’s been a while, this detailed guide can help you get started.

Release the haikuListen, we are close
One step to final RC
Breathe, and keep going

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @laurlittle @marybaum @audrasjb @cbringmann

Haiku by @sereedmedia

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On Episode fifty-one of the WordPress Briefing podcast, join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she makes a case for why routine is a good thing– in life and in the WordPress project.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsEditor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes* Beta 5, Additional Beta Released * WordPress 6.2, Release Candidate 1 * Join WordPress 20th Anniversary Celebrations * Organizing Diverse and Inclusive WordPress Events * Events News Widget Modification Proposal

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:29]

All right, my WordPress wonders; it’s time to join me for one of my gentle rants on basic leadership principles. Today we’re talking about the importance of routine and predictability in everyday life. But don’t worry, I’m gonna tie it all together with WordPress, too. So by now you’re probably aware that I don’t really consider myself one of those “born leaders.”

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00]

Over the years, I’ve put a lot of effort into researching characteristics of good leaders and general leadership methods overall. But one of the things I encountered early on in my leadership learning journey was the concept of routine.

As with most leadership practices I hold, routine has more than one purpose. From a very pragmatic standpoint, routines provide predictability and the more predictable something is, the lower the cognitive load becomes, which in turn lets you use your thinking power for something better. For instance, if you know that in every check-in with your team lead, she’s gonna ask you what you were proud to have shipped last week, what you want to ship next week, and what things stand in the way of your plans, then you know that that is what you have to prepare for.

The knowledge work, the thinking part. The thinking part stops being, what is my team lead going to ask me and starts being what is the problem that she can help me solve?

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00]

But from a more human standpoint, that kind of predictability helps us to understand when something that happened is out of the ordinary. Whether it’s a notification of a comment left on your blog or syntactical highlighting that lets you know that you’ve written something that’s out of voice or against grammar standards, it just lets you know that something is unusual there and deserves your attention.

Now for me, this has a lot of applications across the WordPress project. There are the obvious things like the cadence of our major release cycles or our notification system, which honestly could use a bit of TLC, a little bit of elbow grease.

But there are also less obvious things that this idea still applies to simply because of the way our brains work, the information architecture on our sites, for instance. It should make sense visually and semantically because that makes it easy for us to skim and predict where the highest value content is for us. Or the user interface across the back end of our software.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:00]

Having familiar tasks or actions across any type of content or area of content makes it easier for a site maintainer to flow from one area of a site to the next, fixing things as they find them without necessarily having to stop and put down their hammer and pick up a screwdriver or whatever metaphor works for you. Or if you’re doing more nuanced work, like put down your timpani mallets and pick up your xylophone mallets.

So, yeah, consistency. Consistency is the topic of today’s gentle rant. I get really worked up about it because I feel like consistency ends up being this euphemism for being boring. But I honestly believe that it’s the consistency and the dependability that make it clear what is supposed to be exciting, the things that are different enough that they merit our attention.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:38]

Which, fortunately, now brings us to our small list of big things. It’s actually a pretty big list today and also a bunch of pretty big things. So first thing to know, there was an additional beta added to this release cycle.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00]

It was beta five; it came out last week, I think. There was a bit of a regression that we worked our way through. And so RC1, release candidate one, is going to be postponed a little bit because of that. But don’t wait until RC to start testing, obviously RC is tomorrow, so that means you get to test, like, today!

The second thing on our small list of big things is that we have the WordPress 20th anniversary coming up. That’s May 27th. And you can join in the celebrations. So at WordPress’s 10th anniversary and 15th anniversary, we had like a big, ongoing global set of parties, like Meetup events got together and made cakes, or did a concert, or did a hackathon for various reasons.

Like they all got together on May 27th or thereabouts and did some really fun, like celebration of how far WordPress has gotten them and how far they hope to be able to go with WordPress.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00]

So if you are from the before times WordCamp kind of organizing timeframe, you know that we always consider WordCamps to be like an annual celebration of the excellence of your community and how much you all come together and how different you are as part of this overall big WordPress-y thingy.

All right. Third item that we have is that, I know that I mentioned this in the last WP Briefing as well, but we have another session of the diverse and inclusive WordPress events coming up that’s happening on March 16th. So coming up really fast, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well.

And the final thing, I don’t remember what list number we’re at, but the final thing is that there is a proposal out there right now to modify the events and news widget that we use inside the WordPress dashboard. If you’re not familiar with it, it is a place where all of the local-to-you Meetup events get listed.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00]

It’s where all of the news items from various WordPress media outlets get published. We just have a link to it there. And so, we would like to make some changes to that so that we’re able to include not only specific location types of events but also events that are location agnostic because they’re online but might have a specific, identifying niche that you particularly find interesting.

So it might be for Spanish speakers or for women in particular, or whatever it might be. There’s a proposal out for that. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well.

And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

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WordPress 6.2’s first release candidate (RC1) is here and ready for testing.

Reaching this part of the release cycle is a key milestone. While we consider release candidates ready for final release, additional testing and use by the community can only make it better.

The official release of 6.2 is just three short weeks away on March 28. In open source, we say with many eyes, all bugs are shallow, so we ask everyone across the WordPress ecosystem—theme and plugin developers, educators, agencies, and creators—to jump in and help test.

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test RC1 on a test server and site.

You can test WordPress 6.2 RC1 in three ways:

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

Option 2: Direct download the RC1 version (zip).

Option 3: Use the following WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=6.2-RC1 First-time tester? Here’s a guide to getting started.

What’s in WordPress 6.2 RC1This release includes over 900 enhancements and fixes and is the first major release of 2023.

Gutenberg commits on GitHub
Core Trac Tickets

WordPress 6.2 comes packed with enhancements to make everything you do smoother, faster and a little more inspired:

A refreshed Site Editor for easier template browsing
A new sidebar experience in the Navigation block for simpler menu management
Reorganized block settings with separate tabs for Settings and Styles
New inserter design that lets you add Media—including Openverse and its more than 600-million-item catalog, plus your entire Media Library—and better categories
More header and footer patterns for block themes
A new Style Book that shows your entire site’s look and feel all in one place
New controls to let you copy and paste block styles for faster, simpler design across your whole site
Custom CSS you can add for those finishing touches, per block and globally
Sticky positioning to keep important blocks fixed when scrolling
Distraction Free mode for moments you want to focus on writing
New options that let you import certain widgets from classic to block themes
The removal of the Site Editor’s beta label—welcome to the next generation of WordPress

Want to see some of these featured highlights in action? Check out the WordPress 6.2 Demo recorded March 2, 2023.

Do you crave a deep dive into tech specs? These recent posts cover a few of the latest technical updates. This is not an exhaustive list, but it should get you started:

Patterns API expanded to include template_types property
Introduction of Block Inspector Tabs
Shadows in Global Styles
Introducing the HTML API
Miscellaneous Editor Changes
Custom CSS for global styles and per block
Google Fonts are included locally in bundled themes
Editor Components updates in WordPress 6.2
Enhanced accessibility
And much, much more

These are also compiled into a comprehensive WordPress 6.2 Field Guide.

Let’s go on a bug hunt!Without your testing support, hitting important product milestones would be a much bigger challenge. It’s also a meaningful way to contribute to the project. If it’s your first time, or it’s been a while, this detailed guide is a great resource to lean on.

From a global perspective, every time you test a pre-release version, you help secure the future of WordPress. How? By helping the community prove the software is stable, easy to use, and as bug-free as possible.

Want to know more about testing releases in general? You can follow along with the testing initiatives that happen in Make Core. You can also join the #core-test channel on the Making WordPress Slack workspace.

Interested in the details on the latest Gutenberg features? Find out what’s been included since WordPress 6.1 (the last major release of WordPress). You will find more details in these What’s new in Gutenberg posts for 15.1, 15.0, 14.9, 14.8, 14.7, 14.6, 14.5, 14.4, 14.3, and 14.2.

A special thanks to WordPress plugin and theme developersDo you build plugins and themes? Your products play a special role in helping WordPress do more things for more people across the world. In turn, more people in the WordPress Community mean a bigger, more robust open web.

Chances are, you have already been testing your latest versions against the WordPress 6.2 betas. With RC1, you will want to finalize your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.2.

If you find compatibility problems, please post detailed information to the support forums.

Help translate WordPressDo you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Português? Русский? 日本? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. This release also marks the hard string freeze point of the 6.2 release cycle.

Hungry for even more?Want to know more about what went into the making of WordPress 6.2? Please check out the 6.2 release cycle, the Make WordPress Core blog, or search for all things 6.2 related.

Another haiku for 6.2—it’s tradition! Beta has left us The code sings such happy songs Six point two RC Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @laurlittle@cbringmann, @audrasjb, @jpantani. Haiku by @nomad-skateboarding-dev.

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On March 2, release squad members Anne McCarthy and Rich Tabor presented a live product demo of all the delights coming in WordPress 6.2, set to release on March 28, 2023.

A first-of-its-kind event in the world of WordPress releases, the showcase was moderated by fellow community member Nathan Wrigley and joined by nearly 90 participants.

During the demo, Anne and Rich highlighted some of the new features and enhancements that will continue to revolutionize the way you interact with WordPress. They gave a quick tour of the Site Editor’s refreshed interface, which lets you browse and preview templates before editing. They also covered all the new and highly anticipated ways to manage styles, as well as improvements to the Navigation block, new collections of header and footer patterns, the new distraction-free mode for focusing on writing, and plenty more.

It was a jam-packed hour that sparked plenty of excitement—and a lively question and answer session that wrapped up the event on a high note. Any questions the presenters couldn’t get to will be collected and answered in a follow-up post on Make.Wordpress.org/Core and subsequently linked to this post.

Watch the recording of the live demo in case you missed it, or want to relive the moment (and the funky fresh demo site designed by Rich). You can find a full transcript of the live demo below.

Referenced Resources* Live demo announcement * 6.2 release roadmap * Wrapping Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project * 6.2 release enters Beta 1 * Beta 4 and the latest call for testing * Fixed/sticky positioning GitHub issue * Learn WordPress * FSE theme developers on Twitch: daisyonwp and ryanwelchercodes * Intrinsic design, theming, and rethinking how to design with WordPress * Anne McCarthy on GitHub * Learn WP workshop: How to create a website on mobile

Props to @cbringmann and @laurlittle for co-authoring and editing this post, @evarlese, @courtneypk, and @mysweetcate for captioning, and @robinwpdeveloper for uploading the recording files to wordpress.tv.

Transcript **Nathan Wrigley** 0:22 How are we doing? Should we go for it?**Anne McCarthy** 0:24 I think we can start.**Nathan Wrigley** 0:26Why not? The recording has started. So let's get, let's get cracking.Hello, welcome everybody to the WP 6.2 Live Demo outline. I'm Nathan Wrigley. I do a few things around the WordPress community, mainly to do with video and podcasting and things like that. But it's not about me.Today, we've got two fabulous guests. We've got Anne McCarthy and Rich Tabor, and they're going to do a full on Product Demo. It's a little bit unlike things that you may have seen, because in the more recent past, lots of new features have been added. And so Rich, and Anne are going to spend the time on the screen in a moment, and they're going to show you all of the bits and pieces that you may find dropping into a WordPress install near you. Let's hope. There's been a lot that's been happening, so there really will be probably 20 or 30 minutes of live demos, so look forward to that. I've got to get them to introduce themselves in a couple of moments.Just before that, though, a little bit of housekeeping. This is going to be recorded, so if you have to drop out halfway through and go elsewhere, completely fine. It's going to be posted at the Make/Core website, but it will also come fully complete with a transcript as well. So, if that's something that you're looking for, that will all be there. Also to say that if you want to post any questions, we'd love that. In fact, there's a whole portion at the end when Rich and Anne have finished speaking, where we're going to field questions toward them. Now there's really two places to do that. If you're live with us on Zoom, then if you hit the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen and post your questions in there, I guess specifity... specific... Whatever that word is, be specific. Help us out. Tell us exactly what you want to know and we'll get the questions to them. The other way to do that is to go into Slack. And there is a channel in there, #walkthrough. And if you want to post any questions in there as well, that would be great. So yeah, just to recap, Q&A button if you're in Zoom, and use the Slack #walkthrough channel, if you are in the Making WordPress Slack. Okay, right. I think we'll take you guys one at a time if that's alright. First off a little bit of an introduction from both of you. Let's begin with with Anne McCarthy, shall we? Hello, Anne!**Anne McCarthy** 2:42Hello, hello. It's so good to be back on literally any sort of live stream with you.I appreciate that you're a part of this**Nathan Wrigley** 2:48Yeah, that's really nice.**Anne McCarthy** 2:49Well, I'm Anne McCarthy. I'm a product wrangler at Automattic. I live in Seattle. I also run the FSE Outreach Program, which is basically dedicated to testing all the latest and greatest of WordPress, which is part of why I'm so excited to be part of this demo, is because so much neat stuff has come through this that I've had the privilege of going through a little bit early on with the ever growing calls for testing. So that's a little bit about me, I'll pop it over to Rich.**Nathan Wrigley** 3:17Yeah. So Rich, if you want to take the baton there.**Rich Tabor** 3:21Yeah. Hey, everyone. I'm Rich Tabor. I'm a product manager at Automattic. And I work on WordPress and Gutenberg, in particular. From a little bit south of Atlanta, Georgia, in the US, and been building and tinkering with WordPress for I think, close to 11 years now. So it's, it's been a good run, and I'm super stoked about where things are heading.**Nathan Wrigley** 3:43Yeah, and things definitely have been moving in a very much a forward direction, WordPress, 6.1. And WordPress 6.2. There's so much clear blue sky between the two of them. I think probably the best thing at this point is if we can have it, I don't know what whose screen is coming on. I think it might be Rich's, or maybe it's Anne's, I don't know.**Rich Tabor** 4:00Yeah.**Nathan Wrigley** 4:01If we can get that screen shared, then I will slide my way out of this call and say, Rich and Anne, it's... it's over to you. I'll be back soon as you're finished for any Q&As.**Anne McCarthy** 4:14Awesome. Thank you.**Rich Tabor** 4:17Alright, everybody can see my screen right now?**Anne McCarthy** 4:19 Yes. Rich did an excellent job designing this. I do want to call this out that I love, absolutely love this.**Rich Tabor** 4:26Thanks, Anne. Yeah, this is actually running Twenty Twenty-Three. So it's kind of showcasing some of the things you can do just with the core theme. And some of the design tooling that we are, that has been built into 6.2. So this view here is the site editor. So I'm going to orient you here. There's one big change here in particular, I want to call out visually, is this idea of the frame here on the right, and this will pull up the local template. So I'm looking at my homepage of the site right now. If I navigate into other templates, I can pull those up here on the right as well. And then you can also navigate template parts. So this part's not very new to 6.2. But the idea of zooming in on different template parts and templates and having them appear here in the frame is. And that's important because of this concept of browse mode. And this is where you could dive into an actual page from the site editor. So here, I just pulled up the about page of the site, and I can click into it and actually start making changes. Now, the changes here within the post content block are going to be relative to this about page. But I can also modify the template which then changes the about, or changes the page on any instance of this particular template. So it's a new concept and how we can browse the site. But it's a very powerful, and really the first iteration of that way of managing a site.**Anne McCarthy** 5:50And also lightly introduced content editing in the site editor, as you mentioned. So it's a kind of a neat merging of the two worlds, which I know folks have long been wanting to see that unified. And same with the frame, it kind of adds a nice layer where instead of just being dropped in, like before, you kind of are given a more zoomed out view, which I think helps address a lot of the feedback that we saw around the orientation when you're entering the site editor.**Rich Tabor** 6:12 Yeah, exactly. And really, if we think a little bit further out than 6.2, this could also house setting to use. So we do have, you know, one view here that that is relative to 6.1, where you can see all of your different templates. But imagine if we had any other different types of settings and controls and different pages loaded within here, doesn't have to be just the front end templates and renders of your site.Alright, so we're gonna dive into this here. So you can go into it just by clicking on the frame. I'll do that one more time just to show, you just click on it. And now you entered right into it. You can edit it right off, so we can make changes, just as if we zoomed into it in the other way in 6.1. And then we have a bunch of styling tools that have been added to 6.2, so I want to kind of hone in on these. Like, this panel itself is not new. We have style variations, you can zoom in here, we've got this new zoomed out view, where you can apply different ones at a time. And then we also have this icon here, which triggers the style book. Now the style book is a very interesting tool here that really lets you customize the theme's style guide, essentially. So I can go through each of these tabs, which are relative to the block categories, and see all of the blocks loaded on this particular site. So right here, I've got like Button blocks and Columns block and whatnot. So if I click on one of these, it'll pull up the Style panel of that particular block. And then when I make changes over here, these are applied globally throughout my entire site. So if I want to change the way this button looks, let's say we do some smaller tags, maybe we'll add a little bit of letter spacing, and maybe make it capitalized. See, it's getting applied everywhere that the button is used. Also do some changes here to padding, perhaps. We'll do something custom here. I think that looks nice. And now...**Anne McCarthy** 8:13Real quick while you're doing this, I wanted to note that like this is something that folks have really struggled with previously with the site editor, where if you're editing a block that isn't in the template already, you're not able to see this. So as Rich is showing, you can actually look at any block that's being used in your theme and see how the change that you're making in styles will impact that. Where before, if the block wasn't present in that template that you were editing, it was hard to know exactly what was happening. And so now you have both the style book and this inline preview that you see in the Style section to rely upon, which is pretty neat.**Rich Tabor** 8:43Yeah, exactly. And really, you could theoretically go in and design your entire theme with the style book. Now, I know there's some advantage to design in context of pages and whatnot. And I'll go into that in a bit. But the idea is that you really can quickly browse through all of the different blocks and tighten up what you want to within these controls. And it's not limited to the standard variation as well. There's also these style variations of each block that you can now manipulate as well. So we're gonna go in, say, we'll change the radius of this one. So we want it to be sharp like our other button. But we have these new controls. Like, this is a shadow control we've added in 6.2, where you can apply, say, like this shadow here might be nice. This one here, and so some fallback shadows, within core that a theme can provide as well, its own values. But this now will apply for every single variation of the outline on my site here.**Anne McCarthy** 9:39 And you'll notice that it's not in the style book right now. And that's just part of the future feature development is showing the variations of blocks as well.**Rich Tabor** 9:47Exactly, yes, I would imagine that this would this would show up the variations of the button block, yeah. Which is a nice way to really customize these, like it used to be only CSS would be used to manipulate these variations here. And now it kind of abstracts that away and you can do it within the editing experience. That's really nice. It really is. There's also this idea of block CSS, so you can add custom CSS that is scoped to a particular block. So if I add CSS here, it'll be applied for the button block wherever it's used. Now, I wouldn't recommend using additional CSS in most cases. I would, I would suggest using all the different controls that we've built, that are built into 6.2. But the idea of using CSS to add a little pizzazz to this particular button block is fine. But just with that caveat that you wouldn't want to use it exclusively. Like I wouldn't apply a background color via CSS, I would rather use the background elements color here. There's also additional CSS, which emulates what was previously in the customizer. So we do have site wide CSS that can be applied within the site editor and also on the front end of your site. Again, I wouldn't emphasize using this exclusively, as there are a lot of new design tools that I would explore first, from the top level styles here where you can apply colors to the background, text and buttons. But if there was anything extra you wanted to add, you could do so within the stylesheet here.**Anne McCarthy** 11:21And I'll note we'd love to hear feedback if there are certain things that you're repeatedly adding custom CSS for. So either commenting on a currently open issue, or if you don't find one, opening an issue would be super helpful, because it's neat to see what folks are using for CSS so we can fill those gaps.**Rich Tabor** 11:36Yeah, exactly. So that's the global Style panel here. But there are some quite a few other improvements along with styling. So the first is the idea of pushing styles globally. So if I'm in here, and I'm designing, let's say I want to add a radius, I want to do some different typography as to appearance like this, like bold, italic look. And then we'll also...**Anne McCarthy** 12:07That's cool.**Rich Tabor** 12:07Thanks. Also, let me make the letter spacing, maybe we'll make it a little bit bigger, actually, and then, I think that'll work. Do these changes here and see I've just styled this one particular block this button up here. And this button down here is still using the global styles that we designed earlier. But now I can go through my settings panel here and hit Apply globally. And I'm going to here so we can see that happen. The styles are now pushed globally to all the other blocks. So this is really helpful for when you're designing in flow. And you don't necessarily want to abstract out into the style book and you want to push your changes that you just did here, because you like the way the button looks and want those applied everywhere, all at once. I think this is really powerful way to to quickly design within the editor. Another tool that is quite useful, I'm going to take this heading here and manipulate this. It's the idea of copying and pasting styling. So we're going to use that same bold italic look, maybe we'll make that a little smaller, we can even manipulate this size to be a little bigger. Now we go here to copy styles. And then I can come all the way down here to this other heading that's very similar, and paste it in. And there we have that style applied just to these two headers. And you would do this when you don't necessarily want every single heading to have this effect. But perhaps there are like elements on this page that you want to push those changes to, specifically. So copying and pasting allows you to be very granular, whereas applying styling globally, lets you be more of a holistic design experience for pushing styles. Another neat...**Anne McCarthy** 13:57 Oh, real quick, I just wanted to know like I think one of the things that's interesting is, as we've added more design options to blocks like this is part of the experience of scaling things and making it easier to use. So when we think about like intuitive and delightful. Some of these tools coming into 6.2 really take you know, the tons of design tools that we've added over the last couple releases and makes it easy so you can actually tweak things and then reuse. So I think that's one of the things I want to call out is it's kind of this crescendo. Where now the tools that are coming to 6.2 to really ease the experience and allow you to do a lot of neat stuff where rather than having to re-tweak everything through every single heading block. A lot of stuff is used. So...**Rich Tabor** 14:34Yeah, exactly. WordPress is moving towards a design tool and less of like, what you see is what you can only have. It's more of an expression of creativity and it really does open up the doors for for designing beautiful pages on the web. I think it's really powerful.Another cool bit that we've added is the idea of sticky positioning. So headers would be nice sometimes if they stick to the top, so for top level group blocks, this is a group block here, there's this new position attribute where you can assign it to sticky. And as you can see, right in the editor, it's already showing me that this is sticky on the front end. And also here as well. It's only available for top level blocks for now, there's still some some odd stuff to figure out on how we communicate when something is not going to stick due to the the parent height of the elements around it. But for top level, it's still fine. So we have it here. But there are some iterations that are already happening for the next release that will kind of bring this into more, bring some more capabilities to this particular feature.**Anne McCarthy** 15:44 Yeah, and I'm very excited because one of the things I wanted to briefly call out was the how the header, the template part has that purple. So another neat thing coming to this release, that was a big part of feedback for the outreach program was having to look parts and reusable blocks having a different coloring, because there are different kinds of blocks are synced across the site, when you make little changes and impacts everything everywhere. So that's another neat thing that's coming with this release, is that you can kind of see those a bit differently in the List view as well as when you're in the editor. I see Nathan has his hand raised. Is that intentional? Oh, it's removed. Okay.**Nathan Wrigley** 16:23 It was not intentional. That's my mistake. I'm sorry.**Rich Tabor** 16:28 Yeah, it helps you see quickly too like, what is the template part, particularly for headers and footers, it makes it easier to browse quickly.So speaking of template parts, and patterns in particular, so headers and footers, are new patterns added within WordPress 6.2. And now that they're loaded, actually from the pattern directory, which is kind of neat. And I'm going to show you how to replace a footer with one of those other patterns. So if you have your footer template parts selected, you can go to replace footer. Now this flow is not new to 6.2, but it's going to call out these other improvements. And then you just click one there, and you have it loaded here, that's the site logo that I'm using up here as well. And you can modify this text without having to do any any funky PHP filters or moving actual templates. And if you want to change it again, you go back to replace say, let's pick this other one, let's try this one. It's kind of nice. And there's this focus view, or you can zoom in to just the footer itself. You can even check the responsiveness of it and see how it, how it reacts on mobile, and make any of your changes here and have those persist over to the actual template whenever you close it out. It's a nice way to really kind of clean up the editing experience. So you're not seeing this entire group of groups and instead kind of focusing on what you're actually wanting to complete. You can do the same for the header as well.**Anne McCarthy** 18:01Yeah, and as Rich mentioned, there are some new patterns that are being bundled from the directory, which I think are really extensive. Regardless of what theme you're using, there's going to be some pattern for group patterns that help democratize design where you can use them in anything.**Rich Tabor** 18:15Yes, that's right. All right. So navigation. Navigation has gone under a... quite a bit of work in the last a couple of months. And really, this is all about trying to make it easier to manage your site's navigation and also add pages and links and then even styling. So there's this new dedicated list view for the navigation block. So it's essentially emulating a little bit of what's available over here except for you had to kind of get down to it. Now it brings it top of mine and the surface area here. You can drag them around, move them up and down, even add submenu links and remove them as well. And then you can style it like normal. And now apply different styles via the styles tab to the block itself, or even individual page links and whatnot, you can dive into them and manage them all from here, instead of having to only manage them from up here. This really kind of abstracts the complexity from from this particular canvas interface into a more familiar interface here on the sidebar. It's really a great effort. And it's it's taken some time to refine but it's getting there and it's feels a lot nicer.**Anne McCarthy** 19:30 Yeah, there's been a lot of good feedback about this as well just because it kind of is meant to marry the classic experience with bringing blocks into it. So it is in addition to being edit, editing on canvas, so if you really want to continue to edit as a block you still, you can continue to do that. But it does add a nice interface and the block settings where you're able to do it. And I'll briefly call out here the split settings, which we'll probably talk about later. But you'll see here for more complex blocks, there's some nice split settings making it a little bit easier, more intuitive to go through.**Rich Tabor** 20:02Yeah, that's right. And if you take a look at navigation here, this is very similar to this component added here. And, and that's, that's purposeful, we want it to look and feel familiar. Either way you're managing navigation. So you can also add some menu items here, remove them and drag them around and reset them here, as well as browse into the individual pages. So that's what I have for the site editor portion of the demo. And did you have anything else you wanted to add to this, Anne?**Anne McCarthy** 20:37Oh, could you resize the Browse mode for me? I just love the resizing. I think it's kind of cool. This is just like a fun, you know, thing to call out. But maybe you won't noticem but you can resize it. So as you're quickly going through your site, if you want to see how it looks in different ways, you can also do that. So that's the final thing I'll shout out.**Rich Tabor** 20:56Yeah. So then, yeah, exactly. It's... there's a lot of fine, fine touches like that. Well, we can't obviously can't call them all out today. But it is really getting tightened up overall as an admin experience for the site.**Anne McCarthy** 21:12It's such a great foundation in the future, for sure.**Rich Tabor** 21:15Exactly, exactly. Alright, so if we press this back button here, it goes right back to the dashboard, I'm gonna go and leave...**Anne McCarthy** 21:25That back button was a big piece of feedback people had they would get into the site or not know how to get back out. So I appreciate you calling that out.**Rich Tabor** 21:32Yeah, exactly. It's been through a number of iterations. And I think we've settled on something that feels feels nice; it does feel nice.**Anne McCarthy** 21:41I agree.**Rich Tabor** 21:43So...**Anne McCarthy** 21:44Ah yes, the removal of the beta label.**Rich Tabor** 21:46You want to talk to this, Anne?**Anne McCarthy** 21:48Yeah, I would love to jump in on this actually. So you'll notice that the beta label is removed for this release. And part of why we wanted to show it now is to see how all the features, how the experience has changed, how much more you can do. And all of that has led to the removal of the beta label. And that doesn't mean that feature development is done that it's like, you know, gonna stay this way forever, it just means it's in a place where we invite you all to try to the site editor, it is out of beta. And a lot of development work has gone into testing this. So we've had almost, I think, 20 calls for testing with the outreach program. It's been through multiple major WordPress release cycles, there is still more work to be done. But I'm very excited to see the beta label removed, I think the features that are coming to 6.2. And the foundation that is set with 6.2 really marks a level of maturity. That is pretty exciting. So consider this an invitation to try out modern WordPress, and to check it out.**Rich Tabor** 22:43A hundred percent, I couldn't have said it better.Alright, so another neat part that's added recently for 6.2 is this idea of distraction free mode. So it's not turned on by default, but I have it on so we can see the results here. So you can go in and type right here. And then actually, I'm gonna throw in some Lorem here. So you can see it in action. So this feels more like a text editor and less like a Block Editor. Whenever distraction free mode is on even the the multi block selection, it feels really nice. It doesn't there's not this idea of blocks, even it's kind of abstracted from here, there's less noise, there's less distraction. And just think that the idea is that it's just you and your words, it's just writing and publishing. And if you want to publish, you can hover over here, you'll see the toolbar come down, you can hit Publish or draft. And then this is how you would turn it off and back on here. And then you still have control of all the existing tool. And it's just a much simpler, streamlined interface. And you do have access to blocks, you can still add them if you'd like to, but the idea is just being able to write without the distractions is really powerful. And a really nice publishing experience overall.**Anne McCarthy** 24:08 And this is for everyone. So this is like a lot of stuff we're coming to say it or using a block theme. This is available for anyone who's using the Block Editor. And to be honest, I use this for basically all my writing now. Especially for any post or page, I typically will go into this mode. So I'm very excited about this. And I hope folks feel the same way.**Rich Tabor** 24:28Yeah, exactly. I've been using that too for quite a bit. But the thing is, is also not only for post editing, so I have a page here that I've created. And I have distraction free mode turned on, which kind of removes all the extraneous tooling and it really lets me focus in on the actual blocks here so I can manipulate them to an extent. I can even drop in different imagery for these images here and modify the buttons and whatnot and even add more blocks but the idea is it's almost like a simplified editing experience for pages as well, not only for posts. And here, I'll come up here and turn off distraction free mode to see it all in real time.**Anne McCarthy** 25:13 And this isn't yet available for the site editor, but I have a feeling a number of folks are going to be keen to see that put in there as well.**Rich Tabor** 25:20 Exactly, yeah, I don't see why it wouldn't work in the site editor as well. I think it'd be very nice. Yeah. So we have some other improvements here that are fun. So this inserter here has gotten a couple of changes here. So blocks looks familiar, it's still the same, but patterns is where we started seeing some changes. Instead of having some featured patterns loaded in a block category selector, we've split them out individually as their categories here, you're gonna load up some of the different header patterns that are loaded in WordPress 6.2. So you can load them here and see them in this tray, and then click to add them to your site. Which is really nice, it's a nice way to kind of go through them quickly and see a bunch of different ones. We also have the media tab up here, which is new, which splits out the images from your Media Library, videos, and audio as well, including the Openverse library. So this is a catalogue of, I believe, over 600 million free, openly licensed stock imagery. And you could search from right here in the inserter. So let's type in birds. And click on one, and it will add an image block with the image already added to it, we have got the caption down here. If you don't want the caption, you just turn it off right here, this little control that was added. And now you can manipulate it right off. So let's say this, drop it into here. Maybe we'll make these about the same size and move it over to something interesting.**Anne McCarthy** 26:53And I'll note that there was a GDPR concern around the images being properly uploaded rather than hotlinked. And I wanted to just note that that's been addressed. So the images are uploaded to your Media Library. That's why. So in case anyone has that question. Sorry, continue.**Rich Tabor** 27:08Yeah, no, that's a good point. It's very important. A key benefit to have this flow here is that instead of instead of having to add an image block, and then open your Media Library, and then pick an image, and then you have it here, it's really this one flow of searching visually, and searching here, as well. And then having it added as an image block already. So it kind of skipping all the extra steps that you always have to do anyhow, it's really nice. And we have a couple of interface changes. So there's the settings icon up here that used to be a cog, and now it represents the sidebar itself. So when you open it, the sidebar is triggered, if that's closed. And that's changed for a couple of reasons. But one of the bigger reasons is, as I mentioned earlier, this idea of split tabs, so we have the cog for settings. And that's when a block has additional settings that are not per the norm of the styles that are available within WordPress, then you'll have a new settings tab pulled out here. And that's to keep the density nice whenever you're editing and it feels good instead of having everything kind of in your face all at once. Now for other blocks, like the paragraph block, there's not additional settings, so automatically not included. The tabs up top and just be everything top level. But when a third party plugin adds like a different settings panel, or even if you extend one of these core blocks that does not have one, and a detects one should be auto added as well. So it's kind of just like a nice, fluid way to continue improving the experience of editing within WordPress.**Anne McCarthy** 28:49Yeah, so plugin authors can also kind of make sure where they want settings and styles to show that it shows up correctly. And there's a dev note about that as well.**Rich Tabor** 28:58Yes, that's right, you can you can decide as when you're extending or adding your own inspector controls. That's what these are called here, whether or not they're included within styles or settings as well. Yeah.Then another smaller change that's kind of nice is this idea of pulling the outline from its own toolbar item up here into the list view. It's because they're very relative, you know, a list of all the blocks on your page, also an outline of what's going on. So they're combined now into this one view. We also have time to read word count and character count here, which is nice. And then this is a little guide here that just helps you understand the structure of the importance of the structure of the document and making sure that it is properly structured. All right, was there anything else that we wanted to add you think, Anne?**Anne McCarthy** 29:51I'll add one last call out just because I'm trying to think about like little dev tidbits if you want to disable it prefers there is a way to disable Openverse as well I know that's always a concern. We add something it's like, okay, how do we get rid of because I don't want a client getting into it, there is a way to disable that is documented as well. The other thing is the pattern. So there's new categories, the patterns. And so query is now posts, a couple of things were merged, there's no call to action. And there's also some lovely, which I'm gonna brag on Rich, again, some new text based, query patterns. We have a lot of visual patterns for the query loop, and now there's wonderful, more text focused ones, which I think is really exciting. And just another great way where patterns have evolved and patterns is obviously a huge part of the future building with WordPress. So I'm very excited about those and keen to see just more variation with query loop, I think it's really powerful block to make easier to use. So I'm excited to see it. Otherwise, I think that's, I think that covers a lot of what we were trying to go through.**Rich Tabor** 30:57Yeah, and there's certainly more. There's a lot of interesting, minute details that are, you know, quality of life improvements around editing and designing. And we can't cover them all today. But it's just, there's a lot of exploratory ideas and cool, interesting pieces that have been the result of lots of feedback and lots of testing, like I mentioned earlier. And, you know, it's really a testament to open source and contributing and really working together as a team to make this thing we call WordPress ours and making it a brilliant publishing experience. So just thank you to everyone who's put in time ideas, effort, code, design, marketing, copy, all of that, and more to making this what it is. It wouldn't be possible without you.**Anne McCarthy** 31:46Totally agree. And thank you, Rich, for doing such an excellent job building this site and demoing all this.**Nathan Wrigley** 31:51 Yeah, indeed. Thank you, Rich. Thank you, Anne. Just to let you know that, in theory, there's possibly up to about 25 minutes left. If anybody wishes to pose a question, we're going to do our best to get the answer directly from Rich and Anne. Whether that means putting the screen back on, I don't really know. But we've got a few that have come in. The place to put those, it would appear that some people have figured out how to do that in Zoom. But if you go to the walkthrough channel, in the making WordPress Slack, you can post some questions in there and all things being equal, we'll get them raised as quickly as we can. So we've got a few. In all honesty, because they've been copied and pasted from various different places, I can't necessarily say who the name of the person is that sent them. But first question I've got over here for either of you. It says when you save globally, under the Advanced tab, does this change the stylesheet? Interesting.**Rich Tabor** 32:54 So this will change the attributes of the blocks. So if I throw in that example, there, I pushed the attributes of that one block globally. So they're applied to every block. So it does affect some styles, but not writing any style sheet or writing to the core style sheets.**Nathan Wrigley** 33:11Can I ask the question? It's not something that's been submitted by anybody else, but it just occurred to me that as you were clicking the global button, I just wondered if there was a "get out" from there. In other words, if you inadvertently click the global button, is there an undo option in there? In other words, can you back away from all of the buttons suddenly changing or all of the H1s? **Anne McCarthy** 33:32 You do have to hit save after. You can't just hit Apply globally. You have to hit save, and that's where the multi-entity saving pops up. The multi-entity saving is kind of strange in that it's not good at discarding changes. So you basically would just have to like leave. Like it would be like, Whoops, I hit that. You probably also have to hit the undo. Like there's - those are the two kind of options. So, yeah.**Rich Tabor** 33:54 Yeah. The undo is like a global thing. It works there as well. Yes.**Anne McCarthy** 33:58 And there's a reason that feature is hidden, like under Advanced and collapsed. That's not necessarily for everyone. But for folks who do like to tinker, it is available.**Rich Tabor** 34:08 Right. And it's also only available in the site editor as well. So it's the more the global view of editing your site is where you can access that. **Nathan Wrigley** 34:17 Perfect.Okay, so I have a question from Zoom. Is copying and pasting styles as demonstrated just for core blocks? They go on to say more, which I'll read out. Some blocks collect, some block collections have their own C&P, and I'm curious what might carry over, if anything? And then there's a follow up. Also, if CSS classes are assigned to a block, will applying global styles to a block be to all of the same block, i.e. H2? Or, hopefully, will a custom class allow for a more granular global CSS? There's a lot in that question, but if we start with the: is copying and pasting styles demonstrated just for core blocks?**Rich Tabor** 34:56 So it works for blocks that have leveraged the block support system within core. So if you have opted your block into using background color, and text color, link color, any of the layout settings, anything that was in the styles tab, then all of those would get pushed to or get copied or pasted or even pushed to the global application of styles as well. Now, if there's, if a block has done its own sort of background color attributes, I don't know that those would persist as well. But if you use what's available in core, it's really one or two lines of JSON will get you the background color support that you need. **Nathan Wrigley** 35:35Anything to add to that, Anne?**Anne McCarthy** 35:37 No, just another reason to rely on what core is building. So it's a another great example of how these features will work together and how adoption helps whenever these new things come out.**Nathan Wrigley** 35:49 Okay, so we'll go on to the next question then. So this is from Zoom, and apologies, I don't know your name. Can we have this as a feature request? Can we have sticky sidebar block for some groups next release, please? **Anne McCarthy** 36:05 Probably would do a separate block, I'm guessing. Yeah, do you have anything to add to that?**Rich Tabor** 36:11Yeah, I would say we wouldn't need a sticky sidebar block. Right now that group lock in top level-only does support position sticky. And the only reason it was turned off like we did have it on for one of the Gutenberg releases for everything - for every group block - but it was turned off just because there was too much confusion around if you had a sticky element that wasn't didn't have enough space to stick for and enough height to stick. So it wouldn't actually be sticking. You wouldn't see a result of you applying a sticky position to it. So I think we can figure that out with some some UX to really clean that experience up so that you do expect and understand what's going on. When you apply that to a block. That's not the root level of the document. So it'll be there. It just takes a little bit more iteration.**Nathan Wrigley** 37:00Okay, another question. This time from Slack. When there are changes made in the site editor, are the templates still marked with the blue dots to indicate that the changes are in the database?**Rich Tabor** 37:14Yes, from that Manage Templates view that I shared in the canvas, it will show up just like it did previously, when there are changes to one of the templates provided by the theme.**Anne McCarthy** 37:25You can revert the changes, as well, as you're used to doing.**Nathan Wrigley** 37:30Okay, thank you. Anne's shared a link related to the question that we just posted. I don't know how Zoom works well enough to whether or not we can share the screen. **Anne McCarthy** 37:40I can briefly share my screen. **Nathan Wrigley** 37:42Yeah, that'd be great. Show us the GitHub.**Anne McCarthy** 37:43Let me try that. I just wanted to mention this in case people want to follow along in the follow up tasks related to this. I love to look at links. I'm a nerd like that. So in case anyone else is, this is a lot of the follow up tasks and a great issue to chime in on or just follow if you're interested in this because there are some improvements to be made. But this is a neat report for now. So it's - oh, I just copied and pasted. So it's issue number 47043 in the GitHub repo.**Nathan Wrigley** 38:11So 47043 related to the question that we just had. Okay, so another one from Zoom. This is Robin, who asked the question, can you show? It's just moved on my screen. There we go. Can you show us how to trigger the focus mode to view, say, for example, the footer on its own? So I guess we're back on the screen again.**Rich Tabor** 38:34Sure. Everyone can see? Yep. So when you have a template part selected, you just hit the Edit button here and then it's focused into that as well. And then you have, again, the responsive controls here. All the existing controls, it's just localized to this template part.**Nathan Wrigley** 38:54Hopefully that answers your question. Thank you, Robin. Just for anybody who's kind of lurking who has a question but hasn't yet posted it, please do. What are the chances that you're going to get Rich and Anne on the on the phone in the next few weeks? Pretty minimal, I'd say, so make use of them while they're here. Ellen has done just that. She's in Slack. Ellen says, is there a plan to allow no title templates in the block editor as they are still included even in header and footer-only templates?**Rich Tabor** 39:28No title templates. Like templates without a title? I'm not quite.**Anne McCarthy** 39:35You can just remove that block. **Rich Tabor** 39:36Yeah, you can you can remove the post title block from a template. I'm not quite sure if that's if that's what the question is asking.**Nathan Wrigley** 39:46Ellen, if you're still in Slack and watching this, if you heard Rich and Anne queerying that, then if you can give some more clarity, we'll endeavor to get that answered.**Anne McCarthy** 39:57Knowing Ellen she knows exactly how to remove things. So I'm like, I'm curious. I'm definitely - we're misinterpreting something because she's very - Not showing the title in the editor...?**Nathan Wrigley** 40:07Yeah. Not showing the title in the editor. She says she's here. **Anne McCarthy** 40:12 I'm like, "Say more." **Nathan Wrigley** 40:14 Yeah. Give us more. Give us more Ellen, and we'll get right back to you.**Anne McCarthy** 40:17Let's follow back up on that, because Ellen always has some good questions and good feedback.**Nathan Wrigley** 40:21All right. We'll do just that. Again, another question from Zoom. This is posed by some anonymous person. Will the list views icon get the same treatment as settings?**Rich Tabor** 40:33I don't think it's in the plans. I don't think there are plans to change that. But list view icon, it's always the list view. So when you toggle it on and off, it's relative to what it is. Whereas on the other side, the settings can be block settings, page settings, template settings. Global styles is in that same area. So it's a little bit more context for the list view to stay a list view item.**Anne McCarthy** 40:58And I know that the question came up because the settings icon looks like there's that sidebar. And so there are who people have been asking like, will the same thing happened over here? Just for context. That was part of a discussion in a different GitHub issue.**Nathan Wrigley** 41:12Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate very much those people who are posing questions. That's really great. Again, just to prod you once more, feel free to add your own questions in no matter how big or small they are. We're here to help. So now we have a question on Zoom from Abdullah. And he coincides beautifully with a question I've written down. Any good resources to learn FSE theme-based development? Can either of you point to a particularly good resource that you know of?**Anne McCarthy** 41:41Yeah, Learn WordPress. There's tons of stuff on Learn WordPress that I would recommend. I also, Daisy Olson, who's Developer Relations at Automattic, has a Twitch stream going and some YouTube videos around block theme development. But I would recommend going to Learn WordPress. There's also some contributor-led initiatives. Carolina, who's one of the theme folks has, I think, it's fullsiteediting.com. And that was kind of like the original, go-to resource. And she's done an incredible job working on that and keeping it up to date. So yeah, there's tons of tons of resources. I will spare you from from sharing more, I don't know, Rich, you have more hands-on experience there. What's the most helpful for you?**Rich Tabor** 42:22Yeah, there's some really great tutorials and guides on Learn that are relatively new, that are really helpful. And I see that the team there has been really cranking it out on the last year or two, like really putting a lot of effort into this. So I would, I would start there.**Nathan Wrigley** 42:38So if you're not familiar with that, I guess it would be apropos to say go to your browser of choice and type in learn.wordpress.org and go and explore. Basically, there's a ton of materials that are getting updated on what feels like a daily basis at the moment. So, once more, learn.wordpress.org. Go and check that out. But also, Anne in the chat that we've got going on here has linked to Daisy Olsen's Twitch channel, which - I'm just going to read it out but hopefully I'll make it into the transcript. twitch.tv/DaisyonWP. And it's all one word. D-A-I-S-Y-O-N-W-P. Daisy on WP. So there's two great places to go. But the learn.wordpress.org is perfect.**Anne McCarthy** 43:24 I have to add one more thing, which is if you're not fully ready for block themes, one of the big things that I feel like needs to be emphasized more is you can gradually adopt. So all these features are being done. But maybe you want to only give access to a client to edit the header. You can do that. Maybe you want to leverage theme.json in your classic theme, you can do that. If you want to expose the template editor.But use the rest of your themes across them, you can do that. So I want to also encourage folks to look into resources around gradual adoption, because it makes sense that this stuff isn't - From day one, there has been a focus on that. Adopt what you what you want, when you want and it's going to make sense to different people at different times. Matías once said that to me, and I think it rings really true. And so now that we're at this level of maturity, I think we're looking again and revisiting again, like okay, what can I use? What do I want to use? I think it's really important to mention. So if you're not ready to go all in, I encourage you not to just wipe it all away, but to think about how you can gradually adopt and also what would help you gradually adopt. So there is actually a label on GitHub started a couple months ago around - It's called blocks adoption. So if there's something that you see that you're trying to adopt the site editor, and it's preventing you from doing so, like we want to know about that. And you're welcome - I'm going to just put this out here - @annezazu is my GitHub username, feel free to just like @ annezazu, ". This is blocking me from using the site editor." We want to know these things. Open issues. Please share, because that is also part of the phase of this work is making sure people can adopt as they can and that the tools are robust. There's a ton of resources as well. There's a page in the Theme Handbook around gradually adopting to block themes. So I just wanted to call that out.**Nathan Wrigley** 45:06 And just one more time, what was that? Give us, the give us the username.**Anne McCarthy** 45:11A-N-N-E-Z-A-Z-U. So like Zazu from The Lion King. It's an inside joke from middle school.**Nathan Wrigley** 45:19Okay, possibly the shortest question. This is from Sandy, I should say, Can Lotties be added to 6.2?**Rich Tabor** 45:28I would say that I did a quick search a few minutes ago and there are various blocks built by the community, which do allow you to add or embed LottieFiles to your site. I haven't tested any myself but feel free to dig into those. And if they're open source, they can contribute ideas or feedback on on those GitHub repos.**Nathan Wrigley** 45:49Thank you very much. And Eagle has posted a question. When there are changes made in the site editor, are the templates still marked up - Did we have that one? We have, right? We've done that. **Anne McCarthy** 46:01We answered that one. Yeah.**Nathan Wrigley** 46:02I think we did. Okay, moving on directly then to Ian, what is - oh! Okay, what is the philosophy for mobile in the editor? Are there any plans to have a mobile view?**Anne McCarthy** 46:16That's part of the dragging and resizing. And there's a lot of work being done around intrinsic design. And you can see on the developer.wordpress.org? What is the blog? I think it's /news. Do you hear audio?**Nathan Wrigley** 46:35I hear only your audio. I don't hear anything I don't wish.**Anne McCarthy** 46:36Okay, sorry. Something just started playing in the background out of nowhere and that just scared me. It's like all of a sudden, I was like, woah! Where was I?**Nathan Wrigley** 46:50So we were talking about mobile views?**Anne McCarthy** 46:53Yes, intrinsic design. There is a developer blog that if you're not following that, you definitely should, that addresses this around, basically showing that the mobile view points have exploded over time. It's now really not sustainable to try and have CSS and all this sort of stuff, mobile queries allowing for each view. So instead, how can we think about intrinsic design? And so that's like the best answer I can give. And for now, there is this nice resizing that you can do to kind of see how things scale. 6.1 introduced fluid typography, which was really exciting and part of this larger, intrinsic design set up. And I think we'll expect to see more of that over time. Sorry, for the brief mental break.**Nathan Wrigley** 47:36Just a quick reminder, we probably got 5, 6, 7 minutes or something like that before we start to wrap things up. So if you've got any questions, please, please do post them in here. We have one from Paul who asks, is there any more work planned for pattern management in the future? And then WP Engine has released a plugin allowing easier management of patterns recently, I believe that was yesterday, it would be good to know if we should wait for core or assume that nothing else is coming soon.**Rich Tabor** 48:07Yeah, I would say that pattern management is an important part of this new WordPress experience and having a way to create and manage local patterns, but also maybe push them to the pattern directory. And then on top of that, having a functionality built in where - it's kind of like a component based system where you have patterns where the design is the same across patterns, but content can change. All of that kind of falls into the same category of work. And that is something I believe WordPress will eventually do as well.**Nathan Wrigley** 48:41Okay, we've got no more questions on the screen. So I'm going to ask a question, if that's all right. You were demonstrating the distraction-free mode there where you could move things up, move things down, and resize pictures and images and so on. I was just wondering what the constraints on that are. So in the case of images, I could see that you could resize things. And with the text, I could see that you could, you know, highlight things and start typing wherever you wish. But I just wondered how the decisions had been made to set those parameters and those only. So yeah, around that, what's available in distraction-free mode? What limitations are there?**Rich Tabor** 49:17I would say, generally, it's what's available is what happens when you click on a block. The tooling is there available on the canvas before so resizing was available on the image but not the toolbar. So the resizing is still available when you're in distraction-free, but maybe not adding the caption piece or you know, those other toolings. It's almost like the content locking or content only locking API. It's very similar to that in a sense, but a little bit more tightened up. Where just text and dropping in images - you can't necessarily open the Media Library from there unless you dive out of it. But you can drop another image onto that existing image to replace it. Some things like that.**Nathan Wrigley** 49:59It looks like a really excellent interface for people who just, well, want to concentrate on their writing. It sounds like Anne's all in on it.**Anne McCarthy** 50:05I use it every single day. It's amazing.**Nathan Wrigley** 50:09 It almost felt like a Google doc minus all the bits and pieces at the top. Yeah, really, really nice. Okay, so we have some more questions. Weston is asking, what about optimizing the experience of editing using a mobile device on the web? So I guess that's a little bit maybe the question that we had earlier. How can... we how can we do things on a actual mobile device? **Anne McCarthy** 50:30That's a great question. There are mobile apps. So there is the mobile team and using the mobile apps. I personally don't use mobile apps and sometimes will edit things from Safari on my iPhone SE 2.I actually was talking to someone - their username is Nomad Skateboarding. And from what I understand, he only builds client sites from his phone. And so one of the things I said to him, I was like, "Give us your feedback. That's really cool. It's really unique. That's fantastic. Like, what pain points you're running into, what can we improve?" Because there is obviously like, we are in a mobile first world. My phone is sitting right next to me. I would love to hear particular pain points folks have when trying to edit in that way. You can obviously use the apps. There are some quirks with the site editor, and that I know is partially being looked into and resolved. But yeah, I think there are probably - what we're building now should always translate back and there are teams trying to sync back and forth. And there was a recent post from the mobile team talking about what's the future of mobile editing. And so I would recommend - it's somewhere on Make/Core. I recommend digging that up and getting involved and honestly sharing your feedback. Because I don't think that is an experience that we talked about enough personally.It's a great question. **Nathan Wrigley** 51:40Rich, anything or should we move on?**Rich Tabor** 51:42 I think that was great.**Nathan Wrigley** 51:44 Okay, perfect. Um, um, um. Okay, we have an anonymous question. It says as page speed is a big challenge, how are we optimizing the blocks for better LCP score?**Anne McCarthy** 52:00 There are, some interesting - sorry, Rich, I don't know if you wanted to jump in. I was going to start link dropping. **Rich Tabor** 52:05 Yeah, you go ahead. Yeah. **Anne McCarthy** 52:07 Yeah, there's some interesting work from André. Part of it involves actually adding tracking and making sure there's really good front end metrics. So there's kind of a twofer going on. In one fell swoop, we're focusing on better tracking and improving the tracking that we have for performance, particularly the front end. And then at the same time, also work is being done to optimize like style sheets. There's been some really neat stuff in previous releases that I bet I can pull up if you'll give me one moment.**Nathan Wrigley** 52:36Yeah, whilst you try to find that, Anne, I think it's probably important to say that, if there are any questions which you wish to have answered which don't somehow get answered in the next few moments, then there will be posts created around this piece. So anything that goes missing, any question that is unanswered, there will be endeavours to get them answered. Right? Okay, show us what you got, Anne.**Anne McCarthy** 53:00 Yeah. So this was a post I did for 5.9, in conjunction with a whole ton of folks who contributed and actually did this work, I just was kind of gathering it up. But you'll see sections here around block style sheets and CSS loading. And honestly, a lot of the work with the styles engine, which is part of the global styles project, can help give a lot of opportunity to actually improve this, I recommend checking out this post to see some of what's already been done. And then in the future, one of the discussions that we had recently with some folks across the community from Google, from Automattic, 10up, all over the place, including our lovely performance lead, Felix. We talked about some of this stuff and about how to talk about particularly themes and also just blocks in general. And thinking about some performance improvements and developer education and automated testing and all sorts of stuff. So I won't go too far into this. But I think a lot of work can be done. And some of it is being done around measuring more front end metrics and very recently, LCP was added and started to be tracked here, which I think is pretty exciting. **Nathan Wrigley** 54:05 I think following the performance team and Felix Arntz, in particular, would possibly get you quite a long way towards your answers there. Okay, a couple more. Firstly, there's a few people helping out in the Slack channel. So, appreciate that. We've got Matías answering questions, and so on. So that's really amazing. Thank you. Another anonymous question, any plans to support CSS Grid?**Rich Tabor** 54:33 I think it's something worth exploring. Probably not the major priority coming up. But definitely some interesting aspects that we've seen other... other building applications do that we can learn from for sure.**Nathan Wrigley** 54:47 Okay, we're very short on time now. I think we've got to round it off at the top of the hour. So we've got about four minutes left. I've got to wrap it up a little bit. So try to get these last two done if we can. This is from Mary. What are the typography options as of 6.2? we have Google fonts and self-hosted. Any plans for solutions like Adobe Type and Monotype?**Anne McCarthy** 55:11 There's a Fonts API that got booted from 6.2 and is hopefully planned for 6.3. So I would just follow that effort. So right now, 6.2 is not introducing anything new or different there. Things are as they were. There's a private API that folks can can use with anything JSON. That's as concise as I can be.**Nathan Wrigley** 55:31No, that's perfect. I think we're three minutes to go. That's probably the best time to wrap up the Q&A. Apologies if you had a question and it didn't get answered. As I said, there will be a whole load of things created off the back of this. We will make sure that there's a transcript available and - just read something in the comment. Hopefully, any questions that have been asked but unanswered will be answered approaching that. Just very, very quickly, I have to say thank you to Anne and Rich in particular, for taking the time out of their busy schedules and demoing what 6.2 can do. It really looks like a transformational release. But also, thanks to Chloé and Jonathan and Lauren and Mary who are on the call, but, you know, you haven't necessarily seen them right now. So, appreciate them. That's really great. Following up off this, I've got three points to mention. Following the 6.2 release on Make/Core for development updates and calls, there's going to be a post. It's make.wordpress.org/core/6-2. Also, if you've been keeping a close eye on the Beta releases - I say beta, I know it's hysterical. The beta releases, we've got version beta four has just been released. And anybody who wants to test that out would be most welcome. The URL for that is far too long for me to say out loud, but you can Google it, I'm sure, and find out how to test for that. And also, if you are keen to follow WordPress, it's all over the social networks. And you can follow - basically, if you try to just follow @WordPress, then you'll get somewhere. So for example, on Twitter, it's WordPress - @WordPress. On LinkedIn, it's /company/WordPress. Instagram is @WordPress. And guess what? On Facebook, it's - what do you think it would be? It's @WordPress. So it's available all over there. And I think that's it. I think that's everything that we've got to say. We're about one minute away from closing. So particular thanks to Rich and Anne, but thanks to everybody in the background making all of this happen. Thanks for showing up. If people don't show up, the work never gets done and the project never moves forward. So fully appreciate anybody who's given up their time to ask questions today and watch this presentation.**Anne McCarthy** 57:51 And thank you, Nathan. I want to call you out as being an excellent moderator and creating a safe space for us.**Nathan Wrigley** 57:57 Very, very welcome. I enjoyed doing it. I would gladly do it again. All right. I don't know how to end this call. So I'm just gonna wave. Bye, everyone.

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February has been an exciting month for the WordPress community, with the celebration of the first-ever WordCamp Asia bringing friends and contributors back together in person. But that’s not all; read on for the latest project updates.

Get ready for WordPress 6.2WordPress 6.2 Beta 4 arrived earlier this week and is ready for download and testing. Work continues on track, with the first release candidate (RC1) due next week and the target for the final release on March 28, 2023—less than four weeks away!

WordPress 6.2 is one of the last major releases planned for Phase 2 of Gutenberg, taking the Site Editor out of beta with a more polished user experience and refreshed interface.

On March 2, members of the release squad hosted the 6.2 live product demo. The recording and transcript will be available soon. In the meantime, these resources will give you a taste of what’s to come:

Roadmap to 6.2
Phase 2, Finale
WordPress 6.2 Accessibility Improvements

Help test WordPress 6.2. Your feedback is key to ensuring everything in this release is the best it can be.

Join WordPress 20th anniversary celebrationsWordPress is turning 20, and the community is getting ready to celebrate!

As part of the festivities, the project has released a 20th anniversary Wapuu, a set of commemorative logos, and a special playlist with 46 tracks from the jazz artists selected to represent WordPress releases. Official WP20 swag will also be available soon.

In addition, the Museum of Block Art (MOBA) is calling all artists to submit block art themed on “20 years of WordPress.”

Find out how to organize and participate in the WP20 celebrations.

What’s new in GutenbergTwo new versions of Gutenberg have shipped in the last month:

Gutenberg 15.1 was released on February 8, 2023, with access to the Openverse library of openly-licensed media from the Editor. Other highlights include the ability to add custom CSS on a per-block basis and support for shadow presets in Global Styles. This is the last version of Gutenberg that will be included in WordPress 6.2.
Gutenberg 15.2is available for download as of February 22, 2023. Besides continued accessibility improvements, this release adds support for revisions when editing templates and template parts, and refines the navigation experience in the Site Editor.

Follow the “What’s new in Gutenberg” posts to stay on top of the latest enhancements.

Team updates: Global community sponsors for 2023, contributor mentorship program, and more* The Community Team announced the global sponsors that will support the WordPress community programs in 2023. * A few months ago, Meetup.com removed an accessibility overlay in response to some concerns from the WordPress community. A recent update reports that the company has conducted an assessment and plans to address the issues identified. * The Training Team launched a new onboarding program for contributors. In addition, they worked on numerous lesson plans, online workshops, and tutorials last month. Check out what’s new on Learn WordPress. * The Documentation Team shared future plans for HelpHub. * Openverse moved to a standalone domain, openverse.org, with improvements to the site’s homepage, header, and footer. * The Plugin Review Team posted a notice to inform about the latest Twitter API changes and the types of plugins that might be affected. * The February edition of the Polyglots monthly newsletter highlights some recent enhancements to GlotPress’ functionality and the translate.wordpress.org platform. * The latest Meetup Organizer newsletter shares tips on how to help your meetup group stay connected and engaged between events. * Check out What’s new for developers? (February 2023), the first edition of a new monthly series with features and resources developers should know about. * The latest edition of People of WordPress features Hauwa Abashiya.

Following discussions on improving the contributor journey, a new WordPress contributor mentorship program has been proposed to roll out this year.

Feedback & testing requests* A new proposal from the Community Team seeks to modify the Events and News dashboard widget to show topic-based meetups worldwide. * Members of the Core Team suggested some updates to the WordPress release cycle. * Version 21.8 of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is available for testing.

Redesign work is well underway on the WordPress Theme Directory. Contributors can follow along on the GitHub repository.

WordPress events updates* Bangkok, Thailand, hosted a successful inaugural WordCamp Asia on February 17-19. The event welcomed 1,299 attendees, and more than 600 participants joined the Contributor Day. At the event’s closure, organizers announced that WordCamp Asia 2024 will take place in Taipei, Taiwan! * The application to attend the 2023 Community Summit is now open to WordPress contributors. Learn more about the ins and outs of this working event in Episode 49 of WP Briefing. * WordCamp Europe 2023 is looking for media partners and supporters. * Want to create diverse and inclusive WordPress events? Don’t miss this free #WPDiversity workshop happening March 16, 2023. * Many WordCamps are coming up in the next weeks: + WordCamp Entebbe, Uganda, on March 10-11, 2023 + WordCamp Torrelodones, Madrid, Spain, on March 11-12, 2023 + WordCamp Phoenix, Arizona, USA, on March 24-25, 2023 + WordCamp Kerala, India, on March 25, 2023 + WordCamp Bogotá, Colombia, on March 31-April 1, 2023 (Online) + WordCamp Switzerland on April 1, 2023

Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she explores three interesting trends from WordCamp Asia.

*Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know.*****

The following folks contributed to this Month in WordPress: @ninianepress, @jpantani, @rmartinezduque.

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Join WordPress enthusiasts from across the globe on May 27, 2023, as they come together to celebrate its 20th anniversary!

Regardless of how you use WordPress or where you call home, you are invited to celebrate this great milestone. Plan a larger party that includes your entire meetup, spend the day coworking with a group of friends, or hang out virtually online.

Whatever your style, celebrate in your time zone, your way. WordPress has some resources to help you party.

The Meetup Organizer handbook has a section dedicated to helping you plan your meetup’s anniversary celebration. You’ll find email and Meetup.com templates that make sending your announcements and creating your events simple, as well as tips for planning a fun, safe, and inclusive event, in-person or online.

The 20th anniversary website will list events as they are announced and scheduled by organizers, so check back regularly to see if there’s one in your area you’d like to join or help organize.

Meetup organizers, once your meetup’s WP20 Celebration is scheduled, email support@wordpress.org using the subject WP20 Celebration and include a link to your meetup event. Events will be reviewed to ensure they have all the necessary details before inclusion on wp20.wordpress.net.

And don’t forget the new swag!

Starting in April, meetup organizers can order complimentary kits of official anniversary swag, including limited-edition stickers, buttons, and pencils that can be shipped to your meetup at no cost to you. Additional items, such as pennants, shirts, hoodies, keychains, and more, are also available for purchase at the official WordPress store while supplies last, beginning in early March.

So, whether you’re sporting new anniversary swag or your old favorites from your closet, join WordPress enthusiasts on Saturday, May 27, for a globe-spanning WordPress celebration. Use hashtag #WP20 to share your passion for WordPress.

Don’t have an active meetup in your area? It’s not too late to start one.

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This month we feature Hauwa Abashiya, a project manager in Nigeria and the UK, whose passion for community support led her to an adventure in open source.

The People of WordPress series features inspiring stories of how people’s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global community of contributors.

As we travel through life, sometimes we are drawn to a particular cause, one to which we can get behind and join in. This cause, in whatever field it may be, can help lift us beyond our everyday lives and can help us take stock. This is the journey that depicts Hauwa’s finding a global sense of place and providing a way to re-look at her life and plans.

That change agent was discovering and becoming part of open source through WordPress.

Learning development and WordPressIn 2017, Hauwa was working full time as an experienced and successful project manager, but was becoming increasingly aware that she did not feel the same excitement for projects as she once had. She was starting to feel bored. “I knew I still loved working with and in project management, but I needed to do something different.” she said.

Hauwa enrolled in a web development course and studied HTML, CSS and some JavaScript. One of the course options was WordPress, which she elected to take. It was then that a course tutor encouraged her to attend a WordCamp, an event focused on the open source software and its global community.

She felt that she needed to have a basic knowledge of the software before she arrived at the event, so started to learn WordPress. The first WordCamp she attended was in the seaside town of Brighton on the south coast of England. There she met people who would be friends and mentors for years to come.

“I was inspired by meeting people in the WordPress community.”

Hauwa Abashiya

She said: “I was inspired by meeting people in the WordPress community. My life and my wish to support communities have been shaped for the better by some of the people I met, and I continue to be grateful for knowing them.”

Global WordPress community: from Germany to NigeriaAfter discovering a WordPress community in the UK, Hauwa wanted to see first hand just what a global connection it had. She had heard that WordCamp Europe was a flagship event and brought thousands from across the world together. She wanted to be part of this, and its organization appealed to her project management training. She applied to be a volunteer at the three day conference, which in 2019 was held in Berlin, Germany. At this event, Hauwa discovered both a global movement and an active local WordPress community in her home country of Nigeria. She was able to connect with all the different parts of this vast community from wherever she was working through an instant messaging tool.

Inspired by people she met who were using WordPress to help improve people’s lives in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, Hauwa started to delve further into how this open source software and its global community could provide opportunities and improve understanding across cultures and continents.

Rosalind and Hauwa at an event in Nigeria.Hauwa’s father, Dr Audu Kwasau Abashiya and her mother Rosalind Zulai Abashiya, were both well known for their philanthropy, especially in giving practical support to people in Kaduna, in the north of Nigeria and Abuja in the center of the country. Hauwa explained: “My mum comes from a family who give and share their skills to give practical help. From friends I had got to know in WordPress, I saw that there were parts of the community that had this same ethos. This could be something I could be part of, and also take back to Nigeria in the future.”

Her parents had established a charitable foundation focused on helping widows, orphans and children get access to education skills, from finance to music. It connects those who need help and those who can give support.

Hauwa said: “Teaching practical skills people which can be used to raise an income or be re-shared with family and others in the local area is so important. Projects like this can help grow a community and keep it strong. Skills such as sewing and cookery are not just skills to put clothing and food on the table, but also are about gaining independence and pride. They are examples of how micro-economies can grow and inspire others to have dreams that they can see becoming real. I had seen through my work and studies that technology used with care and an understanding of different needs can make a difference in local communities too. Projects like WordPress can be part of this empowerment through localized translations and software which can give a way to share ideas.”

With her project management and IT background, Hauwa is getting more involved with how IT skills can be used for not just instilling a sense of community belonging, but also the practical longer term input into the local infrastructure and introduction of fast changing technology.

She said: “I would love to see some of the people who have been helped by the foundation my parents started be able to share their ideas and their achievements to encourage others. One of the routes could be through open source software that is free to access and can work on mobile phones.

“As a previous volunteer team rep in the WordPress Training Team, I saw first-hand just how important it is that a non-technical end user can use software to share their ideas without having to become a developer. We can all help give people a voice, and if we are working in technology, we have a role to play in creating and pushing for genuine access of tools.”

“If we are working in technology, we have a role to play in creating access to tools.”

Hauwa Abashiya

On Hauwa’s future wish list is to help African countries access software and technology in their local languages. She said: “This is part of identity, and respecting and valuing different cultures, and not expecting everything to be translated from the English as it is read. It makes it possible for older people to use the software or the content published.”

Hauwa learned Hausa (a language spoken across several African countries) and English at the same time at home in Nigeria. She had a multi-location education, like her parents, studying and going on to work in different countries. At 16, she first studied computer science on what she describes as a ‘whim,’ not knowing it would be a significant part of her working life in the future.

She intended to go to university to study finance and sociology. When she went to say goodbye to her computer studies class, the teacher asked what she was going to study. On hearing it was finance and sociology, the teacher said: “You don’t want to be doing that, you want to be doing something in computing.” This conversation proved to be a turning point for Hauwa. She went on to study Computing and Information Systems and Object Oriented Information Systems for her Master’s degree in the UK.

During her second year of university, she also worked with data entry and related areas as she was determined to learn as much as she could about the moving parts of a project. After she completed her master’s, she chose jobs that enabled her to work on systems, out of hours support, project management, supply chain, and procurement. She is an advocate for learning as many aspects of your subject as you can to give you as many tools to really understand what both clients need and how to help them reach workable and timely solutions. These skills proved to be transferable in later years to give her time to support WordCamps, meetups, and the Training Team. She said: “Contributors to open source come from so many different professional and cultural backgrounds. Contributing is a great way to share your skills and keep them fresh and open to new learning opportunities.”

Hauwa fascination for project management and learning continued, and she gained qualifications in the field, including Prince 2 and PMP. She continues her commitment to ongoing learning in her work today with Agile and other methodologies and draws parallels with this and her interest in community learning.

Hauwa welcomes attendees at WordCamp London in 2019Committed to supporting her local community in the UK too, Hauwa joined the London WordPress Meetup and in 2019 became an organizer for WordCamp London where she was able to use some of her project management expertise. During these events, she had many conversations to encourage others to develop their IT skills and share her own experiences.

This interest in driving up the skills levels of others naturally led her to become further involved in the Contributor Teams. Inspired to share her skills by another contributor to the project, she joined the Training Team at a WordCamp Contributor Day. In this team, Hauwa found in it a group collaborating on easier online ways for people to keep up with the software, its features, and how they could grow the community in their own local area. At the heart of this, Hauwa felt accessibility should be key, and she gave time to better understand documentation. She felt this was essential to give people genuine access and identify where more work was needed. Her belief in this grew when she joined the accessibility team for release 5.6, and she continued to contribute to the team in the area of documentation and training.

Hauwa devoted many hours to supporting the Training Team for a number of years as part of her conviction that the right resources can really help communities globally use open source software. She also stressed the importance of materials being user-friendly and easy to translate as WordPress has such a large international usage.

Volunteering in open source can re-energize you Through the combination of volunteering efforts in UK and Nigeria, and supporting contributors globally, Hauwa began to re-find her love for helping people with their planning and to achieve their goals. She was able to share her 15 years of project management experience in her volunteering role and encouraged others to consider it as a career.

She said: “Through volunteering you work alongside people. Project management is about people. It is about helping people achieve. This can be the same through volunteering, and you can learn much through meeting people from different places.

“One of my drivers is using technology to solve problems. As a project manager, it is a privilege to help guide people and organizations to identify and reach goals. It is helping them gain that value. This is one of the reasons I was drawn to finding out tech communities and contributing to them. If this is something that drives people reading about my experience, there are vast opportunities to to share your skills. Find something that fits you for where you are now.”

Hauwa encourages anyone working in technology to further their understanding of managing projects and working with different teams. “Project management skills are so important in whatever kind of project you are in. With long working hours over many years, I felt I had lost the connection with the people element. I was stuck in what seemed to be a repeat cycle. With the people I met in the WordPress community and my professional skills being used, I was reminded of my own values and how as a project manager I can support help others reach new heights or make something of value and quality that others can benefit from and use.”

In 2022, Hauwa returned to working full time for both national and international, medium and large scale projects. Though her volunteering time to global community building initiatives has reduced accordingly, she focuses on encouraging skills learning and on the community cultural side.

“I will keep my interest in how open source like WordPress, working alongside other solutions, can help not-for-profit ground level and community building. For me, if there are technology-based solutions out there, we can all play some part in helping them grow and making a difference,” she said.

“How we give to wider communities does not have to be the same throughout time. It is important to keep relooking at what is needed and the difference it can make.”

She added: “Find your central wish for the communities you are connected with, and there may be technologies that can support them. I am glad I started my journey.”

Share the storiesHelp share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series.

ContributorsThanks to Hauwa Abashiya (@azhiyadev) for sharing her adventures in open source.

Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) for interviews and writing the feature, and to Meher Bala (@meher), Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann), Mary Baum (@marybaum), Nalini Thakor (@nalininonstopnewsuk) and Maja Loncar (@mloncar) for work on photographs and review.

The People of WordPress series thanks Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support.

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On Episode fifty of the WordPress Briefing podcast, join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she explores the three big trends from the inaugural WordCamp Asia.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsEditor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show NotesCreate Block Theme Plugin
WordPressing Your Way to Digital Literacy
PostStatus Networking Opportunities
WordPress 6.2 Live Demo will be held 2 March, 2023 at 17:00h UTC
Future Plans for the HelpHub
How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events WP Diversity Training 1 March 2023

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

Here we go.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]

The inaugural WordCamp Asia happened a couple of weeks ago in Bangkok. There were almost 1300 people in attendance, and I was lucky to be able to talk with a lot of them about their thoughts around the WordPress project and community. So today, let’s talk about three of the most interesting trends that I heard from people: the future of themes, the future of work, and the future of contributions.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00]

So first up, the future of themes. This one was not a surprise to me. Not only has it been on my mind lately, but every WordCamp I’ve ever attended in Asia or Australia has had themes as a central element. There are a lot of theme creators making a living in WordPress in this part of the world. So it’s natural that they want to know what to prepare for.

Now, it’s hard to predict the future, but there are a couple of things you can do to kind of get a leg up on it. Firstly, the theme review team, if you know how to make block themes but are still struggling to understand what might make them high value to your users, donating a little bit of time to review them can help.

While I was at the contributor day, the team rep who happened to also be there to represent the table told me that reviewing block themes is way faster than reviewing classic themes. So if it’s been a bit since you stopped by, I would encourage you to give it a shot. It’s a lot easier than it used to be for a lot of reasons, and they can always use a little bit of help.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00]

The second thing is this plugin called the Create Block Theme plugin. If you don’t know how to make block themes, you know how to make classic themes. You don’t know how to make block themes. This is a wordpress.org maintained plugin that will make theme creation simpler. It’s a relatively new plugin, though, so if you’re the type of contributor who likes to create good tools for good people, you can also feel free to grab a ticket or two from their repo and help get that moving.

The second thing that came up was the future of work. This was also not a surprise to me. There have been a lot of reports of layoffs in the tech industry and worries about the possibility of a recession.

Since WordPress is not only a tool that folks use in their jobs but also a tool that empowers people to create jobs for themselves, it’s entirely expected for questions about career prospects to come up during a WordCamp. Here are a couple of thoughts on that. So I mentioned this briefly during the Q&A session on that Sunday, but I’m gonna repeat it here because I believe it with every fiber of my being.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:06]

You can learn every 21st century skill that you need while contributing to an open source project.

I talked about it in episode 17 of this podcast. I’ve talked about it at WordCamps and major event series outside of WordPress for years. Like I really, really believe this, and it’s not just like a WordPress only thing. Although obviously, that is my primary perspective, that’s true for contributing to almost any open source project.

On top of that, if you are contributing to WordPress and you’re doing that in the way that we encourage folks to do, you’ve got public examples of proactive, asynchronous collaboration across cultures and time zones. And I don’t know about y’all, but sometimes it’s hard to explain what my job is. And so having examples of how the whatever it is that you were doing, however, you were collaborating or contributing or working on a project together, having concrete examples to be able to share with someone can never hurt.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:04]

I’m gonna give us a necessary side note here. I know that volunteering time is a privilege, and if you find yourself between jobs, the last thing you want to do is give up any more of your time for no money.

But if you have contributed to any team in the past, that benefit still exists for you. Your contributions are not taken away just because you’re no longer with your employer.

The second thought on that is actually one that Matt mentioned during the Q&A on Sunday. He said in his experience that open source shines in recessionary times.

I’ll have to take his word for that one since I discovered WordPress in 2009 or so and so after the last recession that I would have experienced in the US. However, I have heard from a lot of people in the WordPress ecosystem and in tech in general who have shared their stories from the last time that we all experienced a recession.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00]

And certainly, when they suddenly found that they did not have a company to call the place that they were working, a company that they were working for, they were able to, at the very least, freelance until they found the next thing.

I know that that’s cold comfort if you’re in the middle of things right now, but it certainly is something that people always have looked back to as like one of those turning points for them in the 2007-2008 era here in the US.

Now I know that is sometimes not what anybody wants to hear. And also like, who am I to be speaking about observed experiences from other people? I did want to let you know that the folks over at PostStatus have opened up some networking opportunities for anyone that’s been caught up in the current downsizing around the ecosystem.

I’ll link to that in the show notes here on wordpress.org/news, but also, if you’re a part of the PostStatus network, they’ve got it posted over there on their sites and things as well. So easy to find and definitely worthwhile if that’s a situation that you find yourself in right now.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:02]

And the third thing that I heard from a lot of folks about is the future of contributions. So 635 people attended the contributor day that happened ahead of WordCamp Asia, And at WordCamp Europe in Porto last June, it was 800 people or something, which was the biggest one on record. And so this is really close to that.

There’s a lot of people. And a lot of them were attending for the first time. Over the course of the day, I checked in with quite a few of the table leads and heard some pretty consistent feedback, both about what we’re doing to help onboard contributors now but also about how we can help to onboard contributors in the future.

Firstly, we all generally agree that documentation, which is our current problem to solve toward easier contributor onboarding, we all generally agree that that’s going pretty well. We now have a ton of our preferences and processes documented in various team handbooks, but with a ton of documentation comes the potential for overwhelm.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:00]

So across the board table leads shared the need for sort of a quick start guide for each of their teams. Secondly, we also generally seem to agree that mentorship plays a big role in the success of many long-term contributors. I’ve talked about it before. I had some mentors as I was getting started, and I would never have made it past organizing meetup events if it hadn’t been for their help.

And so a bonus item I heard about is actually Meetup events. Meetup groups are one of our most resilient ways to contribute to WordPress, and they also happen to be one of the hardest working. If you’ve never been to one of these events, you may not know that you can learn a skill that’s new to you or teach a skill that you’ve had for a long time.

You can also network to find the jobs that you want or network to hire the people you need. It’s where people learn how to use the CMS or learn how to become an entrepreneur.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:00]

But it’s also where they discover our community and eventually learn why we think that open source is an idea that will change our generation.

So if you took nothing else away from this, I guess the takeaway is that you too can organize a Meetup event that will strengthen your local community and the world!

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:27]

Which brings us now to our small list of big things. So first up, we have a live product demo for WordPress 6.2 on March 2nd, that’s going to be at 17:00 UTC.

There is a post that has gone up about it, which I’ll include in the show notes. This is an opportunity for folks to watch a live walkthrough of the current release with a collection of people from the release squad as well as avid contributors and testers. It’ll give you an idea of upcoming changes, but also we’ll probably expose a bug or two along the way.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:00]

Come with your questions, and we will see you there.

Item number two is documentation. So apparently, that’s just half of what I wanna talk about today. Documentation, so wordpress.org, has docs that are specifically written for users and pulls in not only the documentation that we have but also information from the codex, the documentation space of yesteryear.

There’s a bit more to do here, and I realize this project has been going on since 2015. It’s because there’s a lot of stuff we have to do. There’s a lot of documentation, and we have to kind of get it in order. But that is the area that we’re in now. We have launched the new documentation page, the new look and feel is out there.

And so the next question is making sure that we have it organized in a way that’s easy to find and easy to learn from as you go. There is a whole working group that meets about it, and I will share a link to that in case you find that to be of interest to you as well.

And last but not least, there is another speaker workshop coming up on March 1st.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:00]

If you have not heard of these yet, it’s a workshop that helps speakers learn the process of presentation brainstorming and creation. It is a great workshop. It was created over the course of many years within the WordPress project by Jill Binder and crew. It is a wonderful opportunity.

It’s not a WordPress link that we’re on, but there is an event link that I will make sure that we all have access to here, in case that is something that you have always wanted to try, learning how to speak at WordPress events.

View Details

Episode forty-nine of the WordPress Briefing explores the What, Why, and Who behind the upcoming Community Summit in National Harbor, DC, USA, August 22-23, 2023. Join Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy to learn the importance of the gathering to the WordPress project.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsEditor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show NotesObservations on WordPress Contributor Team Structure

Apply to attend the 2023 Community Summit

Topic Submissions for the 2023 Community Summit

Tuckman’s Theory: Stages of Group Development

Chatham House Rules

Proposal for a project-wide mentorship program

Openverse.org

6.2 Beta 1 is open for testing

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]

A couple of episodes ago, I mentioned the Community Summit in the small list of big things. That’s coming up on August 22nd and 23rd, right before WordCamp US. And for some of you, that made complete sense, and the only thought in your mind was, wow, our last one was in 2017, how could so many years have passed since then? And since so many years have passed, today we’re gonna talk a bit about the Community Summit, what it is, where it came from, and why it’s so important for the WordPress project.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:09]

First things first, let’s talk about what exactly the Community Summit is. The Community Summit is a small event where folks from around the WordPress project and community come together to work through some of the most difficult topics the project currently faces, many of which are easier or at least less fraught when we can be face-to-face.

The Community Summit is usually done in an “unconference” style, and when we were smaller, we left topic gathering and voting to the day of. That’s evolved a bit as our group of fearless contributors has grown over the years, and this year, we have been asking for topics ahead of time so that we can make sure we have the right folks in the room and are making the best use of everyone’s limited time.

It’s easy to take a look at this event and think it’s like some fun exclusive thing with a who’s who of WordPress.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00]

But I assure you it’s a working event. Decisions are not finalized during the event, but since we try very hard to account for many, many viewpoints, it ends up being two days of hard discussions, contentious viewpoints, and problem definition at a level of complexity you don’t really see every day.

Hearing how hard this event is, you may be wondering why we put in that effort. There are a lot of reasons, but there are three that come to my mind immediately. So for starters, working across cultures is hard. Apart from the cultural differences, we tend to be aware of things like where we’re located or our lived experiences, things like that– working remotely or distributedly is a whole different set of skills than working in person. This helps remind everyone that we’re humans, that there are humans behind those comments and behind those messages in Slack. The second thing is that I’m a big supporter of Tuckman’s theory of group development.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:00]

If you don’t know what that is, you can look for it, we’ll put a link in the show notes, but it’s that forming, storming, norming, performing kind of concept of how groups come together. Because there are so many of us and our community has such a large footprint, there are little storms a-brewin all the time.

Some get really big, some stay small. But at some point, most of them have to be addressed. And this is a space that is specifically designed to help us do that. Which brings us to the third reason that we do it. This event uses something called the Chatham House Rule, which creates a kind of temporal psychological safety.

Right. Psychological safety, if you’re a leader, you know that that’s something that is built over time and requires a lot of trust and a lot of conversations with people that you’re working with, and we can’t quite do that.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00]

And so Chatham House Rule builds an environment that helps create that suddenly in the moment and requires, you know, some, some faith in one another.

But basically, no one can be quoted about what they said in those conversations. No one’s examples can be attributed to them. But the conversations can be summarized and published, which we do on the Community Summit website. And then, we publish those for our collective knowledge over time. This lets folks who are attending advocate for themselves and others fully without worrying over whether they’re gonna be taken out of context later.

And finally, one of the biggest questions we get ahead of any Community Summit is why it is by invitation only. The most commonly cited reasons for keeping this small and invite only have everything to do with logistics and leadership. You want it to be large enough to have good representation but small enough to have high-quality interactions. It’s just a really narrow Goldilocks moment, if you will.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00]

But that reason doesn’t necessarily address the need for invitations rather than letting it be first come, first served. The reason for that is more of a philosophical one and requires you to go on a mini historical journey with me.

This also has changed a bit over the years. The first ever Community Summit, way back in 2012, was before my time, but if I recall my history correctly, it was truly by invitation only. The summit after that included a closed nomination process. The next included a team nomination process, and then the last two, 2017 and 2023, have included open nominations.

Now, even in the nomination era of Community Summit organizing, there is still a selection process. The organizers review the list of suggested attendees and check for the same types of things we expect major WordCamp organizers to look for in their speaker selection.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00]

Things like which teams they contribute to, what communities they advocate for, and how long they’ve been a member of the community.

And then they adjust for balance. In addition to those things, there are also four types of voices that we always want represented at our Community Summit. So first is leading voices, people who are already in the community and kind of are helping us to make decisions. I am considered one of those leading voices; I have put in my application to be included in the Community Summit. Really hope we select me.

The second one is future leading voices. Specifically, those are people who are active in the community already and are showing a lot of promise, either because they really understand the values that the WordPress open source project is putting forward or understand the basic processes of communicating and guiding people in such a complex ecosystem as the WordPress project represents. Or because they have said quite plainly they are interested in helping us to make sure that the WordPress project is able to move and continue to create and continue to support democratizing publishing.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:00]

So it’s a little bit potentially folks who are self-selecting for that. People who already are showing that they are doing that either in WordPress or in their local communities. That’s one of the types of voices we want to include. A third one that we want to include all the time is voices we need, so voices that we need to hear. People that specifically we are building WordPress for, people that have indicated to us that the CMS is not necessarily perfect for some of the use cases that they run into regularly.

So the people and users and community organizers that can and are able to advocate for the types of user interactions, the types of community interactions that we absolutely want to be able to see.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:00]

And so that’s a third group of voices that we want to make sure we have represented.

And then the fourth and final group that we always want to have represented is a group that I call voices we miss. And so those are the people that we want to be able to hear more from in our project that we don’t necessarily either have a good group of representative voices for, so it’s hard to hear them, or that we know are probably users of the CMS or they are attending events, they are somehow involved in the WordPress project.

But we don’t necessarily have any way to have accounted for them while we were building solutions way back in 2012 or 2006 when things were being built for us. And so those are the four groups of people, the four types of voices that I absolutely want to have represented at our Community Summit.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:00]

And I ask organizers to go through this incredibly complicated selection process because we want not simply a microcosm of the WordPress community as we see it today and hope to see it in the future but also an equitably voiced forum during that critical problem definition phase.

So TLDL. For, listen?! T L D Real Listen. Although if you didn’t make it through that, you definitely are not getting to this point. So a TLDR for folks who skimmed the transcript and got here, I guess we keep this invitation structure because we want to account for voices we don’t hear every day in the WordPress project. Not because we don’t value them but because we already hear them.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:44]

And now that brings us to our small list of big things. This week it’s actually kind of a big list of big things, but you know, there it is.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:00]

First things first. The applications for the Community Summit are now open. Those are the applications to attend. It’s pretty short. I filled mine out this morning and it’s three questions about who you are and your username on wordpress.org, and then three questions about the topics you are most interested in and the experience that you have in those conversations so far.

Yeah. It took me, like, I think, 90 seconds. Like, a full minute and a half. So head on over there. We have a link in the show notes, but also, you’ll be able to find it in newsletters across the entire WordPress media ecosystem. I am pretty sure about that.

The second thing is that there is a proposal out for a project-wide mentorship program.

This is a huge potential win for us. It is aiming to fix some of our broken ladders. If you’re not familiar with my Broken Ladder Theory of the WordPress project, I’ll try to remember to find a link to that post and put that in the show notes.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11:00]

Number three is that Openverse moved. I shared this last week that happened last week. They didn’t move very far, though. They have a new URL, you can find them at openverse.org. It’s the same team. It’s the same product. It’s the same group of excellent openly-licensed images and media that you have come to expect. It just has its own standalone URL now. Huge kudos to the contributors who got that done.

Another thing that happened last week is that WordPress 6.2 has moved into its beta phase, and so now is the time to get out there and test.

There also was an excellent, excellent write-up about how to test any given release. And I think it also includes how to file a good bug. And so we’ll send all of those things into the show notes. They’ll be easy to find. Get out there and do your testing.

And number five, longest, small list of big things in recent history.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:12:00]

I got some interest on [a] women, and non-binary led release for 2023, and so since there was some interest shown for that, it is hereby verbally confirmed. Keep an eye out on make.wordpress.org for more information about what that process is gonna look like and how to volunteer your time for that if that is something that calls to you.

Woo. And that, my friends, is your small list of big things, your big list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

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WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 is ready for download and testing!

You can test WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 in three ways:

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

Option 2: Direct download the Beta 1 version (zip).

Option 3: Use the following WP-CLI command:

wp core update --version=6.2-beta1

The current target for the final release is March 28, 2023, which is seven weeks away. Your help testing this version is vital to ensuring everything in this release is the best it can be.

Get an overview of the 6.2 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.2-related posts in the coming weeks for further details.

How you can help: testing!Testing for issues is a critical part of developing any software, and it’s a meaningful way for anyone to contribute—whether you have experience or not. This detailed guide is a great place to start if you’ve never tested a beta release.

If you build products for WordPress, you probably realize that the sooner you can test this release with your themes, plugins, and patterns, the easier it will be for you to offer a seamless experience to your users.

If you think you may have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Interested in Gutenberg features? Find out what’s been included since WordPress 6.1 (the last major release of WordPress). You will find more details in the currently available What’s new in Gutenberg posts for 15.0, 14.9, 14.8, 14.7, 14.6, 14.5, 14.4, 14.3, and 14.2.

This release contains more than 292 enhancements and 354 bug fixes for the editor, including more than 195 tickets for the WordPress 6.2 core.

A major release for a major project milestoneWordPress 6.2 is one of the last planned major releases of Phase 2 on the Gutenberg project’s roadmap. The platform has come a long way in the past few years. The 6.2 release both celebrates that progress and looks toward a future of publishing that puts ever more powerful tools in your hands.

Next stop: collaboration tools and more, in Phase 3!

Notable highlightsWant to know what’s new in WordPress version 6.2? Read on for a taste of what’s coming.

Beta label is gone—signaling that the Site Editor is stable and ready for anyone to explore, create, and experiment!
Distraction-free mode for a clear, focused writing experience.
A new Site Editor interface shows you previews of your templates and Template Parts first, so you can choose exactly where you want to start editing.
Scaled block settings with split controls organize your Styles and Settings options to easily find what you need—and clearly see everything a block can do.
Color-coded labels help you find your Template Parts and Reusable Blocks fast, everywhere you look: in the List View, the Block toolbar, even on the Canvas.
An improved Navigation experience makes menus simple to create and manage—right from the block settings sidebar.
Patterns are easier to find and insert—with even more categories to choose from like headers and footers!
A new Style Book offers one place to see all your Styles across every block, for a complete overview of your site’s design details.
Custom CSS support for specific blocks, or your whole site, for another level of control over how you want things to look.
Openverse integration lets you pull free, openly-licensed media directly into your content as you work—along with a quicker way to insert media from your existing library.
Widgets become Template Parts when you switch from a Classic to a Block Theme—making the transition that much smoother.

Please note that the features in this list may change before the final release.

A haiku for 6.2Last of Phase 2 now
Let’s get the party started
WordPress turns 20

Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @marybaum@laurlittle@cbringmann, @webcommsat, @audrasjb, @annezazu, @bhp

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Welcome to the first 2023 edition of The Month in WordPress! January kicked off with an overview of WordPress’ big goals for 2023 and new projects beginning to take shape. Moreover, work on the next major release, WordPress 6.2, continues with Beta 1 scheduled for next week. Read on for the latest news.

WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 is on its wayThe first beta release of WordPress 6.2 is scheduled for next Tuesday, February 7, 2023.

As you may have heard, this version will wrap up work on Gutenberg Phase 2 (Customization), but what does this mean in the larger context of the WordPress project?

Tune in to Episode 48 of WP Briefing to hear Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy discuss what it means to conclude a Gutenberg phase.

What’s new in GutenbergGutenberg 15.0 was released on January 18, 2023. Some highlights include a new “paste styles” feature to easily create multiple blocks with identical styling, and a “sticky” option to keep a block at the top of the page while the rest of the content scrolls.

In addition, block settings have been split into two tabs in the sidebar: Styles and Settings. This makes blocks with more controls, such as the Group block, easier to customize, and allows the interface to scale with the growing number of design tools.

The latest “Core Editor Improvement” post highlights the newest style features enhancements. Learn how they can help give your site a unique and cohesive look and feel.

Team updates: Matrix exploration, WordPress.org redesign news, and more* WordPress and Matrix contributors published a proposal to explore the open source chat system Matrix as a possible replacement for the WordPress community’s Slack. * Several sections of WordPress.org have been redesigned lately, including Documentation (HelpHub), Enterprise, and Mercantile (the official WordPress swag store). Learn more about the latest redesign updates. * The implementation of the block editor in the WordPress.org forums is progressing well and the feedback so far has been very positive. * This comprehensive post clarifies how WordPress Community Support (also known as WordCamp Central) and WordPress Foundation entities are set up and addresses some misconceptions about them. * The bug scrub schedule for WordPress 6.2 is now published. The goal of bug scrubs is to ensure tickets move towards a resolution—anyone can join these sessions to learn, help, or even lead one. * Openverse will be moving from wordpress.org/openverse to openverse.org next week. Along with this move, new improvements are coming to the site’s homepage, header, and footer. * The Plugin Review Team is looking for your (intentionally) wrong plugins. * The latest edition of People of WordPress features Daniel Kossmann, a software engineer from South America.

As part of the discussion on improving the contributor journey, Josepha wrote some thoughts on the Eternal September phenomenon in open source and invites you to share yours.

Feedback & testing requests* The Community Team is gathering feedback on a proposed move to GitHub for standardizing the project’s management tools. * To mark WordPress’ 20th anniversary milestone, Core Team contributors are organizing several bug scrub sessions to tackle long-standing Trac tickets. * Version 21.6 of the WordPress mobile app for iOS is available for testing.

The Training Team calls all WordPress users to complete this short Individual Learner Survey by February 15, 2023. Your feedback will help identify the most high-impact resources for Learn WordPress.

WordPress events updates* Would you like to be a speaker at WordCamp Europe 2023? Submit your application by February 5, 2023. The organizing team released the first batch of tickets and is also calling for volunteers and photographers. * The first WordCamp to be held in Africa in 2023, WordCamp Entebbe, is well underway and set to take place on March 10-11. * Don’t miss these other upcoming WordCamps: + WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama, USA on February 4-5, 2023 + WordCamp Cebu, Philippines on February 11, 2023 + WordCamp Chiclana, Spain, on March 3-4, 2023

WordCamp Asia 2023 in Bangkok, Thailand, is only two weeks away! Check out the livestream schedule if you are attending virtually.

*Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know.*****

The following folks contributed to this edition of The Month in WordPress: @webcommsat, @rmartinezduque**.

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This month we feature Daniel Kossmann, a software engineer from South America who shares his enthusiasm for WordPress at every opportunity.

The People of WordPress series features inspiring stories of how people’s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global community of contributors.

Daniel’s adventure into WordPress began in 2009 when he needed a way to publish and share articles on films. From that small spark, he now enjoys an interesting and varied career in Brazil and beyond, and an ever-expanding community network.

Following WordPress and its new features fascinates Daniel and he is always looking for ways to share what it has to offer with others. His initial focus on WordPress for content publishing soon became a wider appreciation of the platform’s capacity for building communities and careers.

Daniel has served as a community organizer for seven years in Curitiba, Brazil and co-organized four annual WordPress Translation Day events in the city. Community building initiatives, like these, bring in new volunteers and help spur on local user groups.

Now working as a software engineer manager, Daniel maintains his interest in supporting the WordPress community through a newsletter in Brazilian Portuguese.

Finding WordPress to publish content can be life-changingDaniel’s web development skills were initially self-taught, and built on his interest in technology and from his earlier interest in video games. He developed systems in ASP and PHP, and created online resources to teach others how to create websites.

When the time came to choose his academic path, he had no doubt that it would be something related to computers and picked Computer Science at the Federal University of Paraná.

“In order to focus more on content rather than coding, I ended up getting to know WordPress. It was love at first sight!”

In 2009, he launched a public blog about films that became a hub for cultural content related to cinema, literature, and comics. The blog had collaborators from several cities in the country. He found WordPress an easy tool for publishing articles. It allowed him to spend more time on writing content rather than having to use his software engineering skills to write code.

However, once he discovered the range and versatility of the software, he wanted to build themes and features to customize websites.

As he searched for learning materials, he came across a WordPress event happening in his own city. This event, WordCamp Curitiba 2010, had a deep impact on Daniel.

“Other tech events I attended charged more than double this WordCamp, but hadn’t offered half of the things it did.”

Daniel was inspired not only by the talks but also the kindness shown by others at the event. His inherent shyness meant he had to step out of his comfort zone to socialize. However, the friendliness of attendees and the welcome he received made this less foreboding. He was hooked by the community he met, and he pledged to volunteer at the next WordCamp and even apply as a speaker.

Daniel giving a talk at WordCamp São Paulo 2018 about GutenbergLess than two years later, Daniel helped to organize WordCamp in Curitiba 2012, and this was where he gave his first public talk. It was an important moment in his journey. He is determined to keep improving his public speaking skills each time he presents, and help others to do so too.

From WordPress user to entrepreneurDaniel had dreamed of starting his own company since childhood. Following his university graduation in 2011, he decided to fulfil that dream. He started a web development company, envisioning it as a creative project lab.

Initially, he worked with a variety of systems and programming languages. Soon, he realized that maintaining multiple solutions took considerable time and effort. So he opted to use a single platform, WordPress. It offered ease of use for his clients and the possibility of offering 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,” said Daniel.

As the company grew, he expanded the services it offered to include support, maintenance, courses, consulting, and optimized hosting for WordPress. This gave Daniel access to a wider range of clients and greater specialization in the WordPress platform.

Even as a small company, Daniel wanted to give back to the WordPress community. Through using this open source software, the business had not faced the costs of using commercial platforms. He felt he should invest back into the software and its community it as much as he could, from sponsorship of events to collaborating in the Contributor Teams.

His community contributions include speaking at meetups and WordCamps to share what what he has learned in his day-to-day work. “It was always and still is a big pleasure to be able to make these contributions,” he affirmed.

In 2019, he decided to close his company after eight years and start a new chapter in Development Coordination. His focus continues to be on WordPress, both professionally and in the community.

Supporting local: re-energising the Curitiba’s WordPress communityDaniel speaking at a meetup in Curitiba in 2016After WordCamp in Curitiba in 2012, the community there took a break from organizing events. Three years later, Daniel was eager to help restart meetups in Curitiba. He connected with others in the Brazilian community to find a way forward to support both end users of WordPress and firms using the platform. Through instant messaging tool Slack, a rebooted meetup was organized in August 2015. All the planning was done virtually and they only met for the first time in person on the day of the event.

Although they did not have much initial experience in event planning, the meetup organizers were determined attendees should have fun and enjoy a relaxed atmosphere. They wanted people to feel comfortable socializing and to chat before and after the talks. The tips that attendees shared at every meeting were one of the most successful elements of these user-focused meetups.

For Daniel, getting up in front of people to introduce the meetup was still not easy. However, he knew continuing to practice and improve his self-confidence was the only way to overcome his shyness. This determination and sense of achievement inspires him to encourage others to present talks and share the tips he uses when presenting.

The Curitiba meetup continues to flourish. Though Daniel has moved to supporting the community in new ways, he has a lasting fondness for it. It has made him an advocate for local groups at the heart of the WordPress community. He believes the shared interest and enthusiasm for learning at meetups helps to increase attendees’ interest in both the software and its community, and their willingness to participate .

Sharing the benefit of WordPress across BrazilDaniel presenting at a Curitiba meetup in 2019In June 2019, Daniel created a newsletter to spread content about WordPress in Brazilian Portuguese and inspire others to create content in the language. Translating, Daniel believes is a powerful way to make WordPress more accessible to people who do not speak English, which is the case for a lot of people in Brazil. In 2021, Daniel started writing regularly about WordPress on his blog too. He continues to publish weekly news, tutorials, tips, and share events.

Advice to future WordPress contributorsDaniel believes that the WordPress community is a key strength of the platform. It attracts people with a range of technical skills and backgrounds, and strives to have a diverse and open space for exchange.

There are so many ways to contribute to WordPress without working with the code. He said: “I’m a big evangelizer of learning in public. A great way to collaborate is to create your blog in WordPress itself and share your journey of using it, and to write about tips and useful resources. This will eventually lead you to the official WordPress documentation and, the more you use it, the more opportunities for improvements you will see. Then you can start contributing to improving it. Besides this, you can pick a plugin or theme that you use and help with its translation.”

He added: “My biggest advice for those who are starting to contribute to WordPress is to start with a small step, maybe solving an easy bug or fixing a typo, and create a routine to consistently work on it, like an hour every weekend.”

Daniel has made several lasting friendships, received professional referrals through his participation in community events, and enjoys a career that continues to have variety and new things to learn.

His final message is to join WordPress meetups locally or online in other cities, and be inspired like he has been for 14 years and still counting.

Share the storiesHelp share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series.

ContributorsThank you to @kossmann for sharing his adventures in WordPress.

Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), Larissa Murillo (@lmurillom), Meher Bala (@meher), Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann) for research, interviews, and writing this feature article.

The People of WordPress series thanks Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support.

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On episode forty-eight of the WordPress Briefing podcast, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy reflects on the closing of Gutenberg phase two, and what that means in the larger context of the project.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsEditor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show NotesRemoving Block Editor Beta Label GitHub Issue
Reporting Bugs
make.wordpress.org/design
Contribution Conversations: Improving the Contributor Journey
Contribution Conversations: Ending the Eternal September
Contribution Conversations: WordCamp Mentorship
WordCamp Asia Livestream Info

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

I’m your host, Jospeha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]

We’ve barely gotten moving here in 2023, but even so, WordPress is already working toward its next major release– coming to us at the end of March. You’ve probably heard by now that with this release comes the “end of Phase 2.” But for a lot of folks, that’s raising some questions about what to expect.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00]

So I’m gonna spend a little time today sharing what I currently know. Let’s start with what that phrase does mean. Firstly, all of the projects, with the exception of two, I believe, in the Phase 2 scoping ticket, will be shipped in the Gutenberg plugin before WordPress 6.2 release comes out. Barring any major breaking issues, those will then land in that major release in WordPress 6.2.

So, like, 99% of the features we considered in scope for Phase 2 will be in core by April. It also means the block editor may finally shed its beta label. We’ve been discussing that possibility with the input of the community over the course of the last few major releases, and we’ll do the same as we get ready for the 6.2 release as well. That discussion is tracked over in GitHub, and I can share a link to that in the show notes. For anyone who is a little super nerd, like me, the ticket number is 39293.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00]

So not only if you’re going to memorize it and be one of those cool WordPressers who can call tickets to mind based on the numbers. This is a good one because not only is it an important topic, to be able to recall, but also it’s a palindrome, so you get to be fancy and know that forever.

But anyway, I’ll put a link to it in the show notes for all the rest of us. Fingers crossed that we get to remove that label this time around, but also, the acceptance criteria on it are pretty clear. So it’s really a matter of yes or no on all of the columns all the way down.

So what does that phase not mean? Firstly, it does not mean that we will stop accepting user feedback or bug reports on any features up to this point. It is always encouraged to file a ticket on track or GitHub detailing any bugs that you’ve encountered. If you’ve never reported a bug before, don’t worry. We have all been there. I’ll gather a link or two with some information for first-timers.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:00]

If you ever run into me at a WordCamp, feel free to ask me about my first bug-reporting experience. And after you’ve heard that, you will immediately go and file that bug that has been sitting screenshotted on your desk for six months because it honestly cannot get any worse than my first one.

Secondly, it definitely does not mean that we will stop shipping refinements to the user experience. As much as I’d like to say this isn’t true, I think all open source contributors know that no matter how much you test a solution, you can’t actually account for all possible use cases when you work on a project this size.

So as we find things that we didn’t realize were a little rough to use, we will, of course, make the effort to smooth those workflows as quickly as possible. So that’s my little reassuring tl;dr for what that phrase means. If you are listening to this and haven’t spent much time in the block editor as it exists today, I encourage you to do so.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00]

It has really changed substantially since it was first merged in 2018, and it represents thousands of hours of research and problem-solving and creation, and outreach. If you know someone who has contributed to the project or whose content helped you make sense of some inscrutable part of it, also maybe, drop them a line and let them know you appreciate their hard work.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:26]

That brings us now to our small list of big things. Firstly, we are thinking a lot right now about the paths to contribution. Both at the start of your contribution journey and as you grow into a long-term, seasoned contributor. There are a couple of different discussions related to that right now. So there are actually two project-wide discussions that are on make.wordpress.org/project.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00]

And then there’s one that is specific to WordCamp membership, and that is on make.wordpress.org/community. You can head over to any of those and share your experiences, thoughts, and any wild ideas that you have.

The second thing on my small list is that there are a lot of pages across wordpress.org that are getting shiny new designs.

If you want to get involved in those discussions, or you just wanna catch early previews of what’s coming to the site, you can hop over to make.wordpress.org/design or join the design team meetings in Slack.

And the last thing is that WordCamp Asia is coming quickly, my friends. This event is near and dear to my heart. I hope to see a lot of you in person, but if you won’t be able to make it in person, we still have you covered. There will be a live stream, and the schedule for that is already on the site. It shows the times for each session in your local time zone so you can easily decide which presentations you absolutely must see right in the moment.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00]

And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

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Last month at State of the Word, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shared some opening thoughts on “Why WordPress” and the Four Freedoms of open source. In this recent letter, she expands on her vision for the WordPress open source project as it prepares for the third phase of Gutenberg:

“We are now, as we ever were, securing the opportunity for those who come after us, because of the opportunity secured by those who came before us.”

Josepha Haden Chomphosy

December brought with it a time for reflection—a time to look back, celebrate, and start planning new projects. Read on to find out what 2023 holds for WordPress so far.

WordPress is turning 20!2023 marks the 20th anniversary of WordPress’ launch. The project has come a long way since the first release as it continues to advance its mission to democratize publishing. From its beginnings as a blogging platform to a world-leading open source CMS powering over 40% of websites.

Join the WordPress community in celebrating this important milestone. As the anniversary date approaches, there will be events, commemorative swag, and more.

Stay tuned for updates.

WordPress 6.2 is scheduled for March 28, 2023Work on WordPress 6.2, the first major release of 2023, is already underway. It is expected to launch on March 28, 2023, and will include up to Gutenberg 15.1 for a total of 10 Gutenberg releases.

The proposed schedule includes four Beta releases to accommodate the first WordCamp Asia and avoid having major release milestones very close to this event.

Read more about the 6.2 schedule and release team.

What’s new in GutenbergTwo new versions of Gutenberg have shipped in the last month:

Gutenberg 14.8 was released on December 21, 2022. This version features a reorganized Site Editor interface with a Browse Mode that facilitates navigation through templates and template parts. In addition, it includes the ability to add custom CSS via the Style panel and a Style Book that provides an overview of all block styles in a centralized location.
Gutenberg 14.9 became available for download on January 4, 2023. It introduces a new “Push changes to Global Styles” button in the Site Editor, which allows users to apply individual block style changes to all blocks of that type across their site. Other features include typography support for the Page List block, and the ability to import sidebar widgets into a template part when transitioning from a classic theme.

Learn how Gutenberg’s latest releases are advancing the Site Editor experience to be more intuitive and scalable.

Team updates: WordPress big picture goals, new Incident Response Team, and more* Josepha shared WordPress’ big picture goals for 2023, which support the vision set out in State of the Word 2022 and her recent letter to WordPress. * Let’s welcome the newly formed WordPress Incident Response Team (IRT)—a group of contributors who will help as a community resource when behavior or actions do not align with the code of conduct. * A number of Make teams have announced their team representatives for 2023, including Community, Core, Marketing, Polyglots, Themes, and Training. * As part of the WordPress.org redesign project, the Theme Directory will soon get a refreshed look and feel. * The return of in-person events and the Meetup Reactivation project are some of the highlights that marked a challenging but successful year for the Community Team. Learn more about what they achieved in 2022. * #WPDiversity also celebrated its accomplishments in this report. Last year, the training group held 15 events attended by more than 200 participants. * A Year in Core – 2022 provides a data overview of contributions made to the WordPress core codebase in the past year. * Are you into WordPress development? Don’t miss this post on 2022’s most notable milestones and learning resources for block developers. * The January 2023 editions of the Polyglots monthly newsletter and the Meetup Organizer newsletter are now available for reading.

Check out the 2022 State of the Word Q&A post, which answers submitted questions that Matt could not address at the live event.

Feedback & testing requests* Join the latest FSE Program testing call to help strengthen the upcoming WordPress site editing experience. Leave your feedback by February 1, 2023. * The WordPress Developer Blog is gathering ideas for content topics. * Version 21.4 of the WordPress mobile app for Android and iOS is available for testing.

Have thoughts for improving the Five for the Future contributor experience? This post calls for ideas on how this initiative can better support the project and the people behind it.

WordPress events updates* Get ready for WordCamp Asia 2023! The first flagship WordCamp in Asia is happening on February 17-19, 2023, in Bangkok, Thailand. Check out the schedule to learn more about the sessions and speakers. * The WordPress Community Summit and WordCamp US 2023 will take place in Maryland, USA, in August 2023. You can now apply to join the organizing team and help bring the next WCUS to life. * Join #WPDiversity with a free online workshop on How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events APAC. The event will take place on January 28, 2023. * Don’t miss these other upcoming WordCamps: + WordCamp Zaragoza, Spain on January 20-21, 2023 + WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama, USA on February 4-5, 2023 + WordCamp Cebu, Philippines on February 11, 2023

Would you like to be a speaker at WordCamp Europe 2023? Submit your application by the first week of February.

*Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know.*****

The following folks contributed to this edition of The Month in WordPress: @cbringmann, @laurlittle, @rmartinezduque.

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Last month at State of the Word, I shared some opening thoughts about “Why WordPress.” For me, this is an easy question, and the hardest part is knowing which lens to answer through. The reasons that a solopreneur will choose WordPress are different than the reasons a corporation would. And while artists and activists may have a similar vision for the world, their motivations change their reasons, too. That’s why I always focus on the philosophical parts of the answer because I know that I am speaking as an advocate for many types of WordPressers. I have a few other reasons, too, which you may not be aware of as you use our software every day.

Why WordPress?Most importantly, the Four Freedoms of Open Source. If you have already listened to State of the Word, you have heard my thoughts on the philosophical side of open source and the freedoms it provides. If you didn’t, then the tl;dr on that is that open source provides protections and freedoms to creators on the web that should be a given. There’s an extent to which the idea of owning your content and data online is a radical idea. So radical, even, that it is hard for folks to grasp what we mean when we say “free as in speech, not free as in beer.” Securing an open web for the future is, I believe, a net win for the world especially when contrasted to the walled gardens and proprietary systems that pit us all against one another with the purpose of gaining more data to sell.

A second reason is that WordPress entrepreneurs (those providing services, designing sites, and building applications) have proven that open source offers an ethical framework for conducting business. No one ever said that you cannot build a business using free and open source software. And I am regularly heartened by the way successful companies and freelancers make an effort to pay forward what they can. Not always for the sole benefit of WordPress, but often for the general benefit of folks learning how to be an entrepreneur in our ecosystem. Because despite our competitive streaks, at the end of the day, we know that ultimately we are the temporary caretakers of an ecosystem that has unlocked wealth and opportunity for people we may never meet but whose lives are made infinitely better because of us.

And the final reason is that leaders in the WordPress community (team reps, component maintainers, and community builders) have shown that open source ideals can be applied to how we work with one another. As a community, we tend to approach solution gathering as an “us vs. the problem” exercise, which not only makes our solutions better and our community stronger. And our leaders—working as they are in a cross-cultural, globally-distributed project that guides or supports tens of thousands of people a year—have unparalleled generosity of spirit. Whether they are welcoming newcomers or putting out calls for last-minute volunteers, seeing the way that they collaborate every day gives me hope for our future.

As I have witnessed these three things work together over the years, one thing is clear to me: not only is open source an idea that can change our generation by being an antidote to proprietary systems and the data economy, open source methodologies represent a process that can change the way we approach our work and our businesses.

WordPress in 2023As we prepare for the third phase of the Gutenberg project, we are putting on our backend developer hats and working on the APIs that power our workflows. Releases during Phase 3 will focus on the main elements of collaborative user workflows. If that doesn’t make sense, think of built-in real-time collaboration, commenting options in drafts, easier browsing of post revisions, and programmatic editorial and pre-launch checklists.

If Phases 1 and 2 had a “blocks everywhere” vision, think of Phase 3 with more of a “works with the way you work” vision.

In addition to this halfway milestone of starting work on Phase 3, WordPress also hits the milestone of turning 20 years old. I keep thinking back to various milestones we’ve had (which you can read about in the second version of the Milestones book) and realized that almost my entire experience of full-time contributions to WordPress has been in the Gutenberg era.

I hear some of you already thinking incredulous thoughts so, come with me briefly.

There are a couple of different moments that folks point to as the beginning of the Gutenberg project. Some say it was at State of the Word 2013 when Matt dreamed of “a true WYSIWYG” editor for WordPress. Some say it was at State of the Word 2016 where we were encouraged to “learn Javascript deeply.” For many of us, it was at WordCamp Europe in 2017 when the Gutenberg demo first made its way on stage.

No matter when you first became aware of Gutenberg, I can confirm that it feels like a long time because it has been a long time. I can also confirm that it takes many pushes to knock over a refrigerator. For early adopters (both to the creation of Gutenberg and its use), hyper-focus on daily tasks makes it hard to get a concept of scale.

So I encourage you this year to look out toward the horizon and up toward our guiding stars. We are now, as we ever were, securing the opportunity for those who come after us, because of the opportunity secured by those who came before us.

Rather listen? The abbreviated spoken letter is also available.

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On episode forty-seven of the WordPress Briefing podcast, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shares her vision and current thinking for the WordPress open source project in 2023. Rather read it? The full letter is also available.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsEditor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notesmake.WordPress.org/core
Join the 6.2 Release!
Submit Topics for the Community Summit!

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40]

Last month at State of the Word, I shared some opening thoughts about why WordPress. For me, this is an easy question, and the hardest part is always knowing which lens to answer through. Though I always focus on the philosophical parts of the answer, I know that I often speak as an advocate for many types of WordPressers.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00]

So as we prepare ourselves for the start of a new year, I have a few additional thoughts that I’d like to share with you, my WordPress community, to take into the year with you.

Firstly, the Four Freedoms. If you have already listened to State of the Word, you have heard my take on the philosophical side of open source and the freedoms it provides.

But if you didn’t, then the TL;DR on that is that open source provides protections and freedoms to creators on the web that I really think should just be a given. But there are a couple of other things about the Four Freedoms, and especially the way that WordPress does this kind of open source-y thing that I think are worth noting as well.

One of those things is that WordPress entrepreneurs, those who are providing services or designing sites, building applications, they have proven that open source provides an ethical framework for conducting business. No one ever said that you aren’t allowed to build a business using free and open source software, and I am regularly heartened by the way that successful companies and freelancers make the effort to pay forward what they can.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:02]

Not always for the sole benefit of WordPress, of course, but often for the general benefit of folks who are also learning how to be entrepreneurs or how to kind of navigate our ecosystem. And the other thing that I love about the Four Freedoms and the way that WordPress does it is that leaders in the WordPress community, no matter where they are leading from, have shown that open source ideals can be applied to the way we work with one another and show up for one another.

As a community, we tend to approach solution gathering as an us-versus-the-problem exercise, which not only makes our solutions better, it also makes our community stronger.

As I have witnessed all of these things work together over the years, one thing that is clear to me is this: not only is open source an idea that can change our generation by being an antidote to proprietary systems and the data economy, but open source methodologies represent a process that can change the way we approach our work and our businesses.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:01]

The second big thing that I want to make sure you all take into the year with you is that we are preparing for the third phase of the Gutenberg project. We are putting our backend developer hats on and working on the APIs that power our workflows. That workflows phase will be complex. A little bit because APIs are dark magic that binds us together, but also because we’re going to get deep into the core of WordPress with that phase.

If you want to have impactful work for future users of WordPress, though, this is the phase to get invested in. This phase will focus on the main elements of collaborative user workflows. If that doesn’t really make sense to you, I totally get it. Think of it this way, this phase will work on built-in real-time collaboration, commenting options in drafts, easier browsing of post revisions, and things like programmable editorial, pre-launch checklists.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00]

So phases one and two of the Gutenberg project had a very ‘blocks everywhere’ sort of vision. And phase three and, arguably, phase four will have more of a ‘works with the way you work’ vision.

And my final thought for you all as we head into the year is this, there are a couple of different moments that folks point to as the beginning of the Gutenberg project. Some say it was State of the Word 2013, where Matt dreamed on stage of a true WYSIWYG editor for WordPress. Some say it was State of the Word 2016, where we were all encouraged to learn JavaScript deeply. For a lot of us though, it was at WordCamp Europe in 2018 when the Gutenberg feature plugin first made its way to the repo.

No matter when you first became aware of Gutenberg, I can confirm that it feels like it’s been a long time because it has been a long time. But I can also confirm that it takes many pushes to knock over a refrigerator.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00]

For early adopters, both to the creation of Gutenberg as well as its use, hyperfocus on daily tasks makes it really hard to get a concept of scale.

And so I encourage everyone this year to look out toward the horizon a bit more and up toward our guiding stars a bit more as well. Because we are now, as we ever were, securing opportunity for those who come after us because of the opportunity that was secured for us by those who came before us.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:33]

That brings us now to our small list of big things. It’s a very small list, but two pretty big things. The first thing on the list is that the WordPress 6.2 release is on its way. If you would like to get started contributing there, you can wander over to make.WordPress.org/core. You can volunteer to be part of the release squad. You can volunteer your time just as a regular contributor, someone who can test things — any of that.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00]

We’ll put a link in the show notes. And the second thing that I wanted to remind you of is that today is the deadline to submit topics for the Community Summit that’s coming up in August. That comes up in the middle of August, like the 22nd and 23rd or something like that.

We’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. If you already have chatted with a team rep about some things that you really want to make sure get discussed at the community summit, I think that we can all assume that your team rep has put that in. But if not, it never hurts to give it a second vote by putting a new submission into the form.

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2023 marks the 20th year of WordPress. Where would we all be without WordPress? Just think of that! While many technologies, software stacks, and fashion trends have come and gone throughout the past two decades, WordPress has thrived. This is due to the fantastic work and contributions of the WordPress community, comprised of thousands of contributors; and millions of users who have embraced the four freedoms of WordPress and the mission to democratize publishing.

Let’s celebrate!

Throughout the beginning of 2023, leading up to the official anniversary date of WordPress’s launch (May 27, 2003), a number of different events will celebrate this important milestone, reflect on the journey, and look toward the future.

Please join in!

Over the next few months, be sure to check WordPress’s official social media accounts along with the official anniversary website for updates on how you can be involved in this exciting celebration by contributing content, collecting cool anniversary swag, and much more.

Use the hashtag #WP20 on social media so the community can follow along.

If you have something planned to celebrate that you would like to be considered for inclusion on the official website, please use this form to share the details.

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This episode of the WP Briefing features all the Josepha bloopers our little elves have stored away over the year.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsEditor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can normally catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project with the hope that deeper understanding creates deeper appreciation.

But on today’s bonus episode, instead of catching quick explanations, you’ll catch some quick bloopers.

The end of the year is a time when many people and many cultures gather together, and whether you observe traditions of light or faith, compassion, or celebration from everyone here at the WordPress Briefing Podcast, we’re wishing you a happy, festive season and a very happy New Year.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy some of the laughs and outtakes from recording the WP Briefing over the year.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00]

Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress. This is the thing I’ve done 25 times, and I know how to do it for reals.

Welcome to WordPress Briefing, episode 20. Oh no, 7? 27? 26? Episode 27. I know how many things I’ve done.

Ooh, neat. This is Josepha recording episode 46 of the WP Bonus Briefings. Not because we’ve had 46 bonus Briefings, but because this is the 46th one and it is a bonus, it will also have a fancy name. But right now, I’m just calling it the bonus. It’s gonna be quick. Here I go.

Group them into two big buckets, themes, uh, themes and tools. Mmm, I’m gonna have to redo the whole thing! No! I thought I could save it, and I didn’t save it. I had a typo in my script, and then I messed it up. I, it said into you big buckets instead of into two big buckets.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00]

I’m gonna start over from the target release date because I kind of smeared it all together, um, despite what I intended to do.

And gives everyone, no. What is this ringing of phones? Oh, I was doing so well. Where was I? Let’s see if I can just pick it up.

All righty, live from my closet. It’s episode 20, the WordPress Briefing, WP Briefing. So I have a title for this, and when I started writing it, I really had every intention of writing it to the title. And then what I wrote doesn’t fit the title at all, but does really hang together well. And so we’re gonna have to come up with a new title, but at the moment, it’s called So Many Ways to WordPress.

Here in a minute, you will see why it doesn’t fit. Also, at the end, I feel like I get very, like, angry nerd leader.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:00]

And so I may, I may at the end, give that a second go and see if there’s a way that I can soften it a little bit, but, I, I don’t know that I can soften it. I feel very strongly about it. So, maybe I am just an angry nerd leader.

Oh, okay. I’ll get us started now that I apparently have filled the room with apologies, not the room, the closet.

We’ll figure out something very catchy as a title or as an alternative. Very descriptive, and people will click on it because they must know, but we’ll figure out the title later.

@wordpress.org. However, I don’t know why I decided to do an invitation to email me in the middle of that. I’m gonna start from the top of that paragraph. I just got too excited by the opportunity to get mail.

I gotta slow it down. I’m like the fastest talker, had too much coffee. Okay, slowing it down now.

Huh? What am I saying? No, no, that’s what I’m saying. It’s fine. I, I can do this.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00]

Hold on. Oww. Sorry. I was adjusting my microphone, and then it fell down. I happened to be holding it at the time, so it didn’t, like, slam down, I think, and hurt your ears and so I apologize. Good thing I stopped so it didn’t just, like, slam down in the middle of a recording.

That’s all right. I’m gonna give myself that win, even though it’s a hollow one. All right. Trying again. Starting right there, at now since.

This year, it starts on October 18th, 2001. That’s the year? No, 2021. That’s the year. Oh man. I’m doing such a great job of this.

Um, I’m recording this slightly before, um, you’re hearing it? What, how am I gonna start this? Hold on. I don’t know how to start this. All right. I’m, I can do it.

Oh, I’m so glad I remembered. We had guests that could have been so embarrassing.

Now for me, the trade-offs work well. How many times can I say now?

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00]

Do I just start every sentence with now now? Is this just how I do things? Uh, now, now, now, now. I’m gonna start all over again because I’m in my head about the words in my mouth now. So.

In some near timeframe, some near timeframe. This is not a thing that people say, Dustin, I’m sorry. That’s not a thing people say. I’m just gonna retry that one sentence to sound like I speak with other human beings sometimes.

Today is the start of… I can do these things.

This was a terrible ending. I need to just finish that last part. I’m gonna redo the part where I started with my name and not the name of the podcast. Um, and we’ll do that.

And if you’re supporting or building anything to hand off to clients, you know that timely, easy to ship changes on a site are considered a vital part of any overarching brand and marketing strategy. Wow. It’s like, I don’t know what words are right there.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00]

I tripped over my own tongue a lot. I’m gonna sit, I’m gonna do that paragraph again because I didn’t do a very good job of it.

I’ll do a better job.

I literally digress, and now I don’t know. I am in my thing. What was I saying? Oh, there we go.

Topher DeRosia, who founded Word not WordPress. Holy moly. That was a, I knew I was gonna say that, and I was like, don’t say that when you actually get around to saying this, but here I am, and I did it. Even though I knew I was gonna do it and I told myself not to. Doing it again. Right from there.

Not which audiench segment. Oh man. Audiench is not a word, folks. I was on a roll. I’m gonna start right from the primary thing.

I don’t even remember how I started this podcast. What is the last thing I said? I said, here we go. All right.

Kind of covered some interesting ground, and so, oh no, this is not where I’m gonna start it. I know exactly where I’m gonna start it. Okay. I’m really ready now. Here we go.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:00]

I suddenly, I’m gonna pause right here because I suddenly got really worried that I didn’t actually hit record. Oh my gosh. I did. Woo. I’m all over the place. Okay. We’ll now continue. Wait, did I? Oh my goodness. I did, super sorry.

Of the WordPress Briefing. I’m gonna do some singing in the middle of some talking, but I keep trying to talk myself out of the singing, so I’m gonna go ahead and do the singing, and then I’ll do the talking before I talk myself out of the singing. Here I go, probably.

I added a word. That was so good. I’m gonna start again. I’m gonna get some water, and then I’m gonna start again. Not again. Again. Just from the ‘and finally.’

I don’t know how I finish my show. Y’all, I do this literally every week. I never know how to finish my show. Here we go.

I don’t know why I shouted at you from the other side of the tiny closet. I apologize. I’m gonna start again from ‘and finally.’

Tada we did it.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:00]

Ha. I hate it. I hate the whole podcast. It’s gonna be fine.

Done. Nailed it.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

With that, I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Merry Christmas from me. Happy holidays to you, and we’ll see you again in the new year.

Done.

View Details

In the forty-fifth episode of the WordPress Briefing, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses highlights from this year’s State of the Word address.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

CreditsEditor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Santana Inniss
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

ReferencesLearnWP
WordPress Playground
ICYMI: State of the Word Recap
Take the 2020 WordPress Survey!
Exploring WordPress Certifications
Community Summit WordCamp Site
Submit Topics for the 2023 Community Summit
20th Anniversary– Stay Tuned for Updates
Check Out Style Variations and the 2023 Theme

Transcript[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00]

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. Here we go.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:39]

Last week, WordPress hosted its annual State of the Word. As usual, this was delivered by our project co-founder Matt Mullenweg and represented a year-long labor of love from the WordPress community as a whole. There are many things I love about State of the Word, but consistently the thing I love the most is being able to shine spotlights on the great work of our global network of contributors.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:02]

Since that presentation goes by at the speed of light, I wanted to highlight a few things as well. First things first, I wanted to highlight that we had nearly 1,400 contributors, and by nearly, I mean just one too few. We had 1,399 contributors. So that is a big deal in general, but it’s an especially big deal to me because that’s before we start looking at any contributions that aren’t specifically tied to a release.

You may be wondering what those non-release contributions are. An incomplete list of those contributions would include organizing WordPress events, training others how to use WordPress, the myriad podcasts, articles, and newsletters that make up the WordPress media community, and any participant in a call for testing. Not to mention the unglamorous ways to contribute, like reviewing themes or reviewing plugins.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:58]

Things like patching security vulnerabilities and the bazillion things that Meta does to make sure that our community has all the tools that it needs to function. So I want to echo, once again, the huge, huge thanks that Matt already shared in State of the Word, and thank all of you for showing up for our project and for each other this way.

The next thing I wanted to be sure to highlight was LearnWP. It was briefly noted that 12,000 learners had found their way to courses on learn.wordpress.org, and then during the Q&A, there was a related question about certifications in WordPress.

The need for certifications has been a regular topic in our project, and I mentioned that there are two different ongoing discussions at the moment. One of those discussions is happening directly on the make.wordpress.org/training site, so I’ll share a link in the show notes for that.

But I’ve also been personally chatting on and off with Training team reps and other members of the community about what makes that so hard. In case you have not heard my whole spiel about what makes it difficult, it’s the logistics and our speed of iteration, and public perception.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:05]

So not exactly a small set of hurdles. I’ll be doing a more complete post on this in the New Year so that we can get some solid documentation of the state of things and not let it be lost forever in this podcast. But I do know that it is something that we are very interested in as a community and something that, historically, I have really been resistant to.

Not because I think it’s a bad idea, but because as someone who’s looking out for our operations side of things and our logistics side of things, it is not clear how we’re gonna get that done. Like I said, in the New Year, keep an eye out for a big, big post that takes a look at the benefits versus the costs and everything that we can do to help make those match each other a bit better.

And then the last thing I wanted to highlight was the WordPress Playground. Okay, so this was the last thing that Matt mentioned, and I want to be sure that it’s clear what’s going on with this project because when I first heard about it, I very nearly lept from my chair!

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:03]

It was such a remarkably big deal. Okay, so the WordPress Playground uses technological magic called ‘web assembly.’ I don’t know what it is, but it’s magic. And when I say magic, I mean that this tool makes it possible to run WordPress, an instance of WordPress, including a theme and a handful of plug-ins entirely inside your browser as a logged-in admin.

You don’t need a server. You don’t need to select a host. You don’t need to download anything at all. You don’t need to know what your domain’s going to be. You simply select the theme you want to test. Add some dummy content and see how all of the posts and pages function as though we’re a real live WordPress site running on your favorite top-tier host.

Then when you close the tab, it’s gone forever. Poof. Just like that. Now, this is a brand new project. It’s brand new to us and has a long way to go. So if working on that sounds cool, stop by the Meta Playground channel in the Making WordPress Slack.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:09]

But this, in my mind, changes the way that we stage sites.

It could change the way we determine whether a theme or plugin is right for us. And arguably, it can become a stress-free way to introduce new or undecided users to WordPress’s admin area so that they can tell what they’re getting into. So when I say that this is a mind-blowing thing, and when I say that it is powered by magic, like it is astounding, it is astounding.

And the applications for our users as a whole, I think, are untapped yet, and potentially even the applications for our learners and future learners of WordPress– equally untapped. I’m very excited to see what we can do with this project in the future. So stop by the Meta channel. Stop by Meta Playground.

See what’s going on over there. We would love to have you.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00]

So those are my highlights of the day for State of the Word. Like I said, there are a few things I want to do more of a deep dive on in the text, so keep an eye out on make.wordpress.org/projects for most of those. But right now, let’s make some time for the small list of big things.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:17]

Today I actually have kind of like a big list of big things. But I pretended it was small, so you didn’t turn off the podcast. So the first thing that I have is that in case you missed State of the Word, if you didn’t have a Watch Party to go to, or you didn’t know it was happening and so you didn’t really tune in at the time, I’m going to drop in a link of the recording.

It’s gonna probably start right when everything gets going. And so you shouldn’t have to scrub through anything. If you end up on one of the recordings that includes like the whole live stream, there is jazz for the first 30 minutes, and just, you know, skip through that.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:00]

The second thing on my big list of big things is our annual community survey. So Matt mentioned this in State of the Word, and he pointed out that one of the things that makes WordPress and open source in general so effective is that we have a way to communicate with people who are using our software and we make every effort to be responsive to it.

So the annual survey that we send out, it used to be quite big, and we’ve cut it down to 20 questions. If you want, you can think of it as like a census, so have your type of work and how long you’ve been working in WordPress, and what you wish to do with WordPress– have all those things be counted so we have a good idea of the type of person who’s currently using WordPress, and we can account for your needs and wants.

But also, if you want to think of it more as an opportunity to share the things that were especially useful for you in the project this year or especially valuable for you as a contributor, this is also an excellent place to do that.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:01]

There’s a QR code running around on the internet somewhere, but I’ll also put a link in the show notes. If you do not know where the show notes are, by the way, they are at wordpress.org/news/podcast, and you’ll be able to get to the survey.

The third thing on my big list of big things is that next year we’re hosting a community summit. So if you’ve never been to a community summit, Matt mentioned that it is an opportunity for the best and most prolific contributors that we have to show up and discuss the things that are the biggest problems for the WordPress project right now.

But we also want to make sure that we are making space for the voices that we know that we are missing from the community as well as contributors who look like they are probably excellent future stewards of this open source project that we are taking care of together. And so there is a whole website for that.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:55]

I believe it’s communitysummit.wordcamp.org. Right now, there is a form up asking for topics that you want to be able to discuss while we are there, but it’s taking place, if I recall correctly, on August 22nd and 23rd of 2023.

Number four on my big list of big things is that next year is WordPress’s 20th anniversary. So on May 27th of next year, WordPress will officially be 20 years old. So on our 10th birthday, anniversary rather, and our 15th anniversary, we pulled together some parties all across the world.

We had some images, some logos, and things that were specific to the celebration that we printed into stickers and that folks put on, like, mugs and backpacks and cakes and stuff. So if you want to learn more about that, keep an eye out in the community channel in making WordPress Slack. They will keep you posted on how to one, find any of those logos and designs so that your local community can join in the celebrations.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:03]

But they will also help you learn how to have any sort of WordPress celebration party that we’re doing there in May of 2023.

And then the final thing on my big list of big things, it was mentioned that on the 2023 theme that was shipped with a bunch of style variations and there was this really, I think, excellent illustrative video that Rich Tabor put together for us that shows that you can switch through style variations on a single theme and have a site that looks totally different.

Now, that feels like that’s just a thing that should always have been in WordPress, but it is new this year. And so, if you have not yet had a chance to look at the 2023 theme, it is the default theme that shipped with 6.1. And so, if you have it on your website and just haven’t had a look at it yet, I encourage you to do that.

[Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11:00]

It’s a really interesting implementation that makes a single theme potentially look like an infinite number of other themes, and those style variations can be specific to the theme or can just kind of be around and about in the patterns that are also available in Core.

Give that a look. I think it’s super worthwhile.

And that, my friends, is your big list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in the New Year.

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WordPress enthusiasts tuned in last week for the State of the Word address to celebrate the project’s yearly accomplishments and explore what 2023 holds. But that’s not the only exciting update from the past month. New proposals and ideas are already emerging with an eye on the year ahead—let’s dive into them!

Highlights from State of the Word 2022WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg delivered the annual State of the Word address on December 15, 2022, before a live audience in New York City. Most attendees joined the event via livestream or one of the 33 watch parties held across 11 countries.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of WordPress, kicked off this year’s event with an introduction to the Four Freedoms of open source and the importance of WordPress in ensuring “a free, open and interconnected web for the future.”

Similar to past State of the Word events, Matt reflected on the project’s achievements over the past year, including Gutenberg’s adoption beyond WordPress, the steady progress in advancing the site editing experience, and the return to in-person events.In addition, he took the opportunity to remind everyone of the 2023 Community Summit and the 20th anniversary of WordPress coming up next year.

Ahead of 2023, Matt announced new taxonomies in the WordPress.org theme and plugin directories to help users identify the extensions that best fit their needs and plans for Phase 3 of Gutenberg—Collaboration—among other notable updates.

People who watched the State of the Word enjoyed a demo of WordPress Playground, an experimental project to explore, experiment, and build apps with a WordPress instance that runs entirely in the browser.

Missed the event? Read the recap or watch the State of the Word recording and Q&A session on WordPress.tv.

The 2022 WordPress Survey is openThe annual WordPress survey helps project leadership and those who build WordPress understand more about the contributor experience, how the software is used, and by whom.

This year’s survey will remain open through the end of 2022 and is available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.

Take the 2022 WordPress Survey to help make an impact on the project.

What’s new in GutenbergTwo new versions of Gutenberg have shipped in the last month:

Gutenberg 14.6, released on November 23, 2022, came with many refinements to core blocks. Notable highlights include a variation picker that allows users to choose a desired layout when a Group block is inserted on a page, a new list view for editing the Navigation block, and a keyboard shortcut to transform paragraph blocks into headings.
Gutenberg 14.7, released on December 7, 2022, introduced an experimental tabbed sidebar, colors to help identify some block types in list view, and improvements to the Page List block to make it easier to manage page links in the content.

Follow the “What’s new in Gutenberg” posts to stay on top of the latest enhancements.

Team updates: Introducing the block editor in the support forums, a revamped Showcase page, and more* The Support and Meta Teams are bringing the block editor experience into the WordPress.org support forums. * WordPress.org’s redesign continues with a refreshed Showcase page. * A proposal for the 2023 Global Community Sponsorship Program has been published. * WordPress is accessible to more people thanks to 19,357 contributors who translated more than eight million strings this year. Learn more about the Polyglots Team’s achievements in 2022. * Speaking of accomplishments, supporters of the Global Meetup Reactivation project helped reactivated 126 meetup groups in 2022! There are also some discussions on how these efforts can support the Polyglots Outreach Effort project, and vice versa. * The Community Team met with members of the Meetup.com team to help report some feedback and issues with an accessibility overlay that they ultimately agreed to remove. * The Training Team highlighted the latest updates that have been made to Learn WordPress. In addition, part 1 and part 2 of the Developers Guide to Block Themes are now available on the platform. * The Themes and Polyglots Teams announced their team representatives for 2023. * The final releases for WordPress 3.7-4.0 were made available on November 30, 2022, with a notice that they are no longer receiving security updates. WordPress 4.1 and later will continue to receive such updates. * Fresh off the press, the December 2022 edition of the Polyglots monthly newsletter is available for reading. * The latest edition of People of WordPress features Huanyi Chuang, a front end developer from Taiwan.

Curious about why WordPress has so many releases? Tune in to Episode 44 of WP Briefing to learn about the role of major and minor releases in the project.

Feedback & testing requests* Help efforts to wrap up Gutenberg Phase 2 by testing the Site Editor’s latest updates. Leave your feedback by January 6, 2023. * The Performance Team shared a new proposal for enhancing the Scripts API with a loading strategy. * The Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach Program is looking for volunteers to use Replay.io for capturing bugs. Express your interest by December 28, 2022. * Version 21.4 of the WordPress mobile app for Android and iOS is available for testing.

The Community Team is calling on WordPress contributor teams to suggest topics for the 2023 Community Summit by January 16, 2023.

WordPress events updates* The #WPDiversity working group organized several workshops during the past few months. Among other highlights, attendees of the Speaker Workshop for Women Voices in Latin America reported a 52% increase in self-confidence to speak in public. Stay tuned for the next events. * The WordCamp Europe 2023 organizing team shared their content vision for next year’s flagship event in Athens, Greece. * WordCamp Asia 2023 is just a few months away, scheduled for February 17-19, 2023, in Bangkok, Thailand. Organizers have announced the first recipient of the WordCamp Asia Diversity Scholarship, Awais Arfan. * Three more WordCamps are happening in the next few months: + WordCamp Zaragoza, Spain on January 20-21, 2023 + WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama, USA on February 4-5, 2023 + WordCamp Cebu, Philippines on February 11, 2023

WordCamp Europe 2023 is calling for sponsors and speakers.

*Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know.*****

The following folks contributed to this edition of The Month in WordPress: @cbringmann, @webcommsat, @sereedmedia, and @rmartinezduque.

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WordPress belongs to all of us, but really we’re taking care of it for the next generation.”

Matt Mullenweg

A small audience of WordPress contributors, developers, and extenders gathered on December 15 for the annual State of the Word keynote from WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. Those who could not join in person joined via livestream or one of 33 watch parties held across 11 countries, with more than 500 RSVPs.

Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, introduced the event with a reminder of why so many of those gathered choose WordPress—the Four Freedoms of open source. As Haden Chomphosy noted, open source is an idea that can change our generation, and WordPress is one of the most consistent and impactful stewards of those freedoms.

As with past State of the Word events, Matt reflected on the year’s accomplishments, learnings, and aspirations as the project moves into 2023. From Gutenberg concluding its second phase of site editing in preparation for phase three—Collaborative Workflows, to the reactivation of meetups and global WordCamps, to the introduction of a new theme and plugin taxonomy, to musings on the potential of machine learning, WordPress enters its 20th year continuing to define bleeding edge technology in thanks to the ecosystem’s vibrant community.

The one-hour multimedia presentation was followed by an interactive question and answer session where Matt fielded questions from the livestream and studio audience. All questions will be responded to in a follow-up post on Make.WordPress.org/project.

Discover everything that was covered by watching the official event recording and join the ongoing #StateOfTheWord conversation on Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. For another way to get involved, consider sharing your experience with WordPress in the 2022 WordPress Community Survey.

Referenced Resources * WordPress on Tumblr * Engineawesome.com using Gutenberg * WordPress Community Summit 2023 * WP20.wordpress.net * learn.WordPress.org * Openverse * Create Block Theme plugin * Make.WordPress.org * WordPress Playground * Matt on Tumblr * Distributed.blog

Special thanks to @laurlittle and @eidolonnight for review and collaboration.

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The 2022 WordPress survey is open for your input and available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.

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The latest People of WordPress story features Huanyi Chuang, from #Taiwan, on his journey to become a digital marketer and front end developer.

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Hear Josepha Haden Chomphosy highlight the role of manor and minor releases in the WordPress open source project in this episode.

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With the end of the year fast approaching, the WordPress project has not slowed down. Read on to learn more about the latest major release, WordPress 6.1, and the State of the Word 2022 live event, among other exciting news.

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Join the WordPress project leaders for State of the Word 2022 in New York City on December 15, 2022. Also live-streamed on social media, you will hear about the WordPress project, open source, and more in this annual event.

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WordPress 6.1.1 is now available for download. This maintenance release features several updates since the release of WordPress 6.1 on 01 November 2022. You can review a summary of the key changes in this release by visiting WordPress.org/news.

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Join Josepha as she explores the differences between Openverse & Photo Directory, two resources for openly licensed media in the WordPress project.

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This post was written in collaboration with Lauren Stein (@laurlittle) and Anne McCarthy @annezazu). Twenty Twenty-Three is here, alongside WordPress 6.1! The new default theme offers a clean, blank canvas bundled with a collection of style variations. Style variations are predefined design options that give you the opportunity to alter the appearance of your site […]

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Say hello to “Misha,” the WordPress 6.1 release, inspired by Mikhail “Misha” Alperin acclaimed jazz ensemblist and composer. At least 800 contributors made this release possible. Download 6.1 today.

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The latest People of WordPress story features Raghavendra Satish Peri, a digital entrepreneur in web accessibility and digital marketing.

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Tis the season for spooky fun. Hear Josepha Haden Chomphosy read a Halloween-themed WordPress Mad Lib on the episode of the WP Briefing.

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WordPress 6.1 Release Candidate 3 is now available for testing! You can download and help test RC3 in three ways. 6.1 is planned for general release on November 01, 2022.

This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended that you test Release Candidate 3 on a test server and site.

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WordPress 6.1 Release Candidate 2 is now available for download and testing.

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WordPress 6.0.3 is now available! This release features several security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 3.7 have also been updated. WordPress 6.0.3 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.1 planned for November 1, 2022. If […]

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Tune into episode 41 of the WordPress Briefing Podcast for a sneak peek into the upcoming WordPress 6.1 release.

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September was an exciting month with the return of many in-person WordCamps, WordPress Translation Day, and preparations for WordPress 6.1. Let's catch up on all things WordPress.

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The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.1 is now available! This is an important milestone in the 6.1 release cycle. “Release Candidate” means that this version of WordPress is ready for release! Before the official release date, time is set aside for the community to perform final reviews and help test.

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WordPress 6.1 Beta 3 is now available for download and testing.

Learn how you can help test WordPress!

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On this week's episode of the WP Briefing, Josepha is joined by special guests Anne McCarthy and Brian Alexander to discuss all thing testing within the WordPress project!

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WordPress 6.1 Beta 2 is now available for download and testing.

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WordPress 6.1 Beta 1 is now available for download and testing.

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Live from WordCamp US 2022, listen to contributor stories about why they WordPress.

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As of December 1, 2022 the WordPress Security Team will no longer provide security updates for WordPress versions 3.7 through 4.0. These versions of WordPress were first released eight or more years ago so the vast majority of WordPress installations run a more recent version of WordPress. The chances this will affect your site, or […]

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August has been a busy month, with the redesign of WordPress.org, new localized content on Learn WordPress, and the WordPress 6.0.2 security and maintenance release. But that’s not all! Read on to catch up on the latest WordPress news. WordPress 6.1 walk-through scheduled for September 13, 2022 Save the date! A live interactive walk-through of […]

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Enter the educational world of the WordPress Training team and its Learn initiative during this week's episode of the podcast.

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The latest People of WordPress story features trainer Bud Kraus, from the United States, talking about the software and how he uses it.

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WordPress 6.0.2 is now available for download. This security and maintenance release features several updates since WordPress 6.0.1 in July 2022. You can review a summary of the key changes in this release by visiting https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/08/23/wordpress-6-0-2-rc1-is-now-available/.

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The WordPress experience has significantly evolved in the past few years. In order to highlight the power of WordPress on WordPress.org, the last few weeks have seen a homepage and download page redesign kickoff and shared mockups. Today, these new designs are going live! Like the News pages before them, these refreshed pages are inspired […]

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July 2022 brought a lot of exciting announcements and proposals for the WordPress project, from an updated timeline for the WordPress 6.1 release, to design updates on WordPress.org. Read on to learn more about the latest news from the community. WordPress 6.1 development cycle is now published Mark your calendars! The WordPress 6.1 development cycle […]

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Celebrating WWW Day, Josepha invites contributors from around the globe to share stories of how WordPress impacts their worlds.

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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 Carla Doria, a customer support specialist from South America on how WordPress opened up a new world for her, and gave her the ability to […]

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Thinking of contributing to WordPress? Josepha Haden Chomphosy guides you through the five stages of contribution on the latest episode of the WP Briefing podcast!

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WordPress 6.0.1 is now available for download. This maintenance release features several updates since the release of WordPress 6.0 in May 2022. You can review a summary of the key changes in this release by visiting WordPress.org/news.

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On this week's episode of the WordPress Briefing, Josepha answers questions about the intentions behind the Five for the Future initiative.

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With WordPress 6.1 already in the works, a lot of updates happened during June. Here’s a summary to catch up on the ones you may have missed. WordPress 6.1 is Slated for Release on October 25, 2022 Planning for WordPress 6.1 kicked off a few weeks ago with a proposed schedule and a call for […]

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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 Leo Gopal, from South Africa, a back-end Developer and Customer Support agent on the encouragement and learning support the WordPress community can give. Writing as […]

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Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she covers planning for major releases and how you can get involved in the 6.1 release cycle!

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WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy covers some important questions from WordCamp Europe on this special episode of the WordPress Briefing podcast.

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WordPress has a lot to celebrate this month. The newest release “Arturo” is here. WordPress turned 19 years old last week. And WordCamp Europe, the first in-person flagship WordCamp in two years, is starting today in Porto, Portugal. Read on to learn more about these and other exciting news around WordPress! Say hello to WordPress […]

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This month's People of WordPress feature shares the story of Dee Teal, based in Australia.

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In the thirty-second episode of the WordPress Briefing, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shares her open source reading list for that post-WordCamp Europe downtime. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Beatriz Fialho Production: Santana Inniss and Chloé Bringmann Song: […]

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Say hello to “Arturo” and WordPress 6.0, inspired by Grammy-winning jazz musician, Arturo O’Farrill. With nearly 1,000 enhancements and bug fixes, the second major release of 2022 is here. Download it now! As of today, WordPress powers more than 42% of websites worldwide.

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WordPress 6.0 Release Candidate 3 is now available for testing! You can download and help test RC3 in three ways. 6.0 is planned for general release on May 24, 2022.

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In the thirty-first episode of the WordPress Briefing, GAAD Co-Founder Joe Devon joins WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy to discuss Global Accessibility Awareness Day and the role of open source in accessibility. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Guest: Joe […]

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WordPress 6.0 Release Candidate 2 is now available for testing! You can download and help test RC2 in three ways. You can also help translate WordPress to 100+ languages.

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This past month saw a lot of preparation work for WordPress 6.0, due to release on 24 May 2022. This major release brings exciting improvements – read on to find out more about the latest happenings in the WordPress project. WordPress 6.0 Release Candidate 1 The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.0 is now […]

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WordPress 6.0 Release Candidate 1 is now available for testing! You can download and help test RC1 in three ways. You can also help translate WordPress to 100+ languages.

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WordPress 6.0 Beta 4 is now available for testing! You can download and help test Beta 4 in three ways.

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Get a behind the scenes sneak peek at the WordPress 6.0 release on this episode of the WordPress Briefing featuring a special guest!

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This month's People of WordPress feature shares the story of developer and e-commerce builder Meher Bala.

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WordPress 6.0 Beta 3 is now available for testing! You can download and help test Beta 3 in three ways.

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WordPress 6.0 Beta 2 is now available for testing! This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, and test this version of WordPress on a production or mission-critical website. Instead, it is recommended that you test Beta 2 on a test server and site. You can test the WordPress […]

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Join our host Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she takes us back to WordPress basics. Learn everything you need to know about how to make a WordPress blog!

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WordPress 6.0 Beta 1 is now available for download and testing.

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WordPress 5.9.3 is now available! This maintenance release features 9 bug fixes in Core and 9 bug fixes in the block editor.

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We hope that you and your beloved ones are staying safe during these difficult times. If you’re looking for a way to support the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, you can refer to this episode of WP Briefing. There you will find a list of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that can help. In parallel to the work […]

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Curious about returning to WordPress events safely? Tune in as WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses guidelines for returning to in-person events.

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The People of WordPress feature this month shares the story of web and plugin developer Juanfra Aldasoro from Argentina.

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It’s been less than a year since the WordPress Pattern Directory was launched, and we already have more exciting news to share. The Pattern Creator is live! You can now build, edit, and submit your best block patterns to the Pattern Directory—submissions are open to all with a WordPress.org user account! The WordPress Pattern Directory […]

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Who is WordPress actually made for? Join our host, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy, as she explores this controversial question and three things that can help find the answer. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Hosts: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Editor: Dustin HartzlerLogo: Beatriz […]

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WordPress 5.9.2 is now available! This security and maintenance release features 1 bug fix in addition to 3 security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 3.7 have also been updated. WordPress 5.9.2 is a security and maintenance release. The next major release […]

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Matt Mullenweg speaks to WordPress contributors worldwide on this special edition of the WP Briefing podcast with Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Join us to hear Matt’s thoughts on Ukraine. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Hosts: Josepha Haden Chomphosy and Matt Mullenweg […]

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There’s a lot going on in the world right now, and safety is top of mind for everyone in the WordPress community. If you don’t know where to begin, or how to support your peers, Executive Director Josepha Chomphosy’s advice to the global community is to start small. Overall, February has been a busy month […]

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The People of WordPress feature this month shares the story of engineer and developer Tonya Mork.

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WordPress 5.9.1 is now available!

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In this twenty-fifth episode of the WordPress Briefing, Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses future-proofing the WordPress project with the Five for the Future pledge. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Beatriz Fialho Production: Chloé Bringmann & Santana Inniss Song: […]

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In June 2021, @beafialho in collaboration with @pablohoney floated the idea of giving WordPress News a new look. Today, those ideas become a reality—we’re excited to share that redesign of WordPress News is live! The new design leans on the aesthetics of jazz, intrinsically connected to WordPress and which ultimately translates its uniqueness, historic significance […]

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In episode 24 of the WordPress Briefing, the Project’s Executive Director reviews three big-picture goals for the year: Increased Gutenberg adoption, support of all open source alternatives, and stewarding the open source ethos. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler […]

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There are a few significant moments in the history of the WordPress project. January 2022 is one of them, with the release of WordPress 5.9! But that’s not all. Read on to learn more about the latest updates and achievements from the community. WordPress 5.9 Joséphine is here Meet WordPress 5.9 Joséphine. Named in honor […]

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WordPress 5.9 is available thanks to more than 600 contributors who helped make it happen.

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Download to test the third Release Candidate (RC3) for WordPress 5.9.

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As we greet a new year, WordPress’ Executive Director writes a letter to the project and community that speaks to the hopes of the year ahead. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Beatriz Fialho Production: Chloé Bringmann Song: Fearless First […]

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The second Release Candidate (RC2) for WordPress 5.9 is available! The final release is slated for January 25, 2022.

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This security release features four security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 3.7 have also been updated. WordPress 5.8.3 is a short-cycle security release. The next major release will be version 5.9, which is already in the Release Candidate stage. You […]

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December was a busy month for the WordPress community. In the latest episode of the WP Briefing podcast, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shares a carol of thanks and shows her gratitude to all the people who make the WordPress project a success.

(…) I know that we have gotten so much done together in the last few years. And I am equally sure that we’re going to get so much done in the years to come. And so thank you all so much for your continued work with WordPress and the way that you just bring your best at all times.

Josepha Haden, Executive Director of the WordPress project

We said goodbye to 2021 with the annual State of the Word, along with the release of WordPress 5.9 Beta 4, among many other exciting updates. Read on to learn more about the latest community achievements.

WordPress 5.9: The first release candidate just landed * Following the Beta 3 and Beta 4 releases in December, the first release candidate for WordPress 5.9 is now out and available for testing. * With less than three weeks to go until the final release, this version continues the work from last year and marks the hard string freeze point of the 5.9 release schedule. * Follow the 5.9 developer notes to learn more about the changes and updates coming with this release.

Are you interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC.

Gutenberg releases: Versions 12.1 and 12.2 are here The Core Team launched two new versions of Gutenberg last month. Both come with new features, code quality improvements, and bug fixes.

Gutenberg 12.1 marks the return of the template List View and includes several Navigation block enhancements, new global styles features, an improved developer experience for block themes, and more.
The Gutenberg 12.2 release focuses on user experience improvements and brings the block styles preview to the Widgets Editor, among other new features.

Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. Follow the #gutenberg-new tag for details on the latest updates.

Highlights from State of the Word 2021 * State of the Word 2021, the annual keynote address delivered by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, was livestreamed from New York City on December 14, 2021. The event gathered WordPress enthusiasts at 29 watch parties around the world. * Matt shared his thoughts on the progress of the WordPress project and made announcements regarding its future in 2022. The presentation was followed by a Question and Answer session.

If you missed the event’s livestream, you could watch the State of the Word recording and the Q&A session on WordPress.tv.

Team updates: 2022 major release timings, new team rep announcements, and more * The Core Team opened a discussion on the release dates for 2022 and the possibility of having four major WordPress releases this year. * The following teams announced their team representatives for 2022: Themes, Support, Polyglots, and Community. * In 2021, 2572 people contributed to WordPress source code using Trac, including 305 first-timers. Check out A Year in Core – 2021 for more interesting stats on WordPress Core contributions. * The Diverse Speaker Training Group (#WPDiversity) shared its accomplishments from last year in this 2021 year-end report. * The Training Team planned a sprint to audit and revisit the Learn WordPress content for the WordPress 5.9 release. * The Design Team summarized some of the key changes behind the Openverse redesign. * The December 2021 editions of the Polyglots Monthly Newsletter and the Meetup Organizer Newsletter are out. * The latest edition ofPeople of WordPress features Collins Agbonghama from Nigeria. * The Core Team announced a proposal to change the JavaScript coding standards for complete Prettier compatibility.

Are you looking for some 5.9 resources to share with your local community? Check out the WordPress 5.9 Talking Points for Meetup Organizers post.

Feedback/Testing requests: Contribute by testing or translating WordPress 5.9 * Your feedback on WordPress 5.9 release candidates is still needed and appreciated! If you haven’t tried this version yet, you can find instructions on testing 5.9 features in this post. * Do you speak a language other than English? The Polyglots Team announced that WordPress 5.9 is also ready to be translated. * Version 18.9 of WordPress for Android is available for testing.

Share your feedback on WordPress 5.9.

Apply to speak or host a workshop at WordCamp Europe 2022 * WordCamp US 2022 is currently looking for organizers. * The WordPress community celebrated its first in-person WordCamp after 21 months in Sevilla (Spain) on December 11-12, 2021. WordCamp Taiwan was held online the same weekend. * The Test Team organized the Hallway Hangout titled Let’s talk about WordPress 6.0 on December 21, 2021. The team also shared a wrap-up of the Site Editing Safari as part of the FSE Outreach Program. * The Training Team hosted several WordPress Social Learning Meetups last month, and there will be many more in January 2022. * Last year the WordPress Foundation made significant progress in its mission to educate the public about open source software. Learn more about it in this 2021 recap.

Don’t miss the following upcoming WordCamps: WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama 2022,WordCamp Genève 2022, WordCamp Vienna 2022, and WordCamp Europe 2022.

The Call For Sponsors and Call For Speakers for WordCamp Europe 2022 are open! Read this post to learn more about the Organizing Team’s plans for the first in-person WordCamp Europe in three years.

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

The following folks contributed to December 2021’s Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan, @harishanker @lmurillom @meher @nalininonstopnewsuk @webcommsat

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The first Release Candidate (RC1) for WordPress 5.9 is now available!

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to reach this important milestone in the community’s progress towards a WordPress 5.9 release.

“Release Candidate” means the new version of the software is ready for release. It helps the community check that nothing is missed, given the thousands of plugins and themes and differences in how millions of people use the software.

WordPress 5.9 is slated for release on January 25, 2022. This is just three weeks to go – and there’s still time to help!

Testing the release You can test the WordPress 5.9 release candidate in three ways:

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

Option 2: Direct download the beta version here (zip).

Option 3: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1, 2, 3 or 4 on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:

Command One:

wp core update --version=5.9-RC1

Command Two:

wp core update --version=5.9-RC1 --force

Your help to test the RC1 is vital: the more testing that happens, the more stable the release, and the better the experience for users and developers—and the entire WordPress community.

Thank you to all of the contributors who tested the Beta releases and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is not just a critical part of polishing every release; it is also a great way to contribute to WordPress.

Help test WordPress 5.9 features – a guide to how you can take part.

What is in WordPress 5.9 release candidate? This will be the first release of 2022 and continues the work towards 5.9 from last year. It features the latest advances of the block editor and is the first version of full site editing in Core.

WordPress 5.9 also brings more refinements to the developer experience. To keep up with the latest updates and discover more about how the community works to continually improve the software, please subscribe to the Make WordPress Core blog. In particular, the developer notes tag will keep you up to date on changes that might affect your products or how you use the software.

Plugin and Theme Developers Please test your plugins and themes against WordPress 5.9 and update the Tested up to version to 5.9 in your readme file. If you find compatibility problems, please post to the support forums, so volunteers and developers can help you figure them out before the final release.

The WordPress 5.9 Field Guide will be out very shortly. It will give you a deeper dive into the major changes.

How to Help Do you speak a language that is not English? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! Release Candidate 1 marks the hard string freeze point of the 5.9 release schedule. Thanks to every locale that is already involved with translations.

If you think you have found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also check the issue against a list of known bugs.

Props to @webcommsat for the post and to @marybaum @hellofromtonya @audrasjb @davidbaumwald @estelaris @cbringmann for final review.

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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 website builder from Nigeria, who uses the open source WordPress platform to support his family and to share learning with others in his home country and beyond.

Creating a life in the WordPress Ecosystem Collins Agbonghama started his journey to becoming a web developer by reading the football news headlines on a friend’s mobile phone. His fascination with development and learning continued to grow, and he now makes a living using WordPress and the web.

Read on to discover his story, which shows with creativity and determination you can create products and make a living using WordPress.

Starting web building on a phone

Collins began his exploration of the internet while attending Secondary School in Nigeria, or High School as it is known in some other countries.

A friend at the school had a simple mobile phone which could browse the internet. Collins had his first introduction to the World Wide Web through access to this device. He became hooked by reading headlines on a sports site about a famous English Premier League Football Club, Chelsea, a soccer team which he has long supported.

“Being a very inquisitive person, I wanted to learn how the web works as well as have my own website. I was able to buy a classic mobile phone through the menial jobs I did after school,” he said.

His first website was a wapsite or Wireless Application Protocol site optimized for mobile devices.

He took to Google to learn how to actually build a site. He discovered he needed something called an ‘email address’ to sign-up for site builders. Google Search came to the rescue again, and he created the first email account for his first website.

A desire for a website was the catalyst for further learning, starting with HTML and CSS from an online provider. His interest in building sites with more advanced tools grew, and then he came across WordPress.

Using his savings, he bought the cheapest hosting plan from a local Nigerian web host. He installed WordPress and started writing tutorials for a mobile device platform. He built the site, created the lessons, and started his entry into WordPress all on a mobile phone.

This led to him having the confidence to start building sites for others, and he was able to earn a small income from that.

Collins said: “I couldn’t go to the university because of my precarious financial situation. I continued to do menial jobs during the day and started learning PHP in the evenings and at night using my mobile phone via online learning platforms.”

He was later able to get an old laptop, which helped him access ebooks to learn more and practice his coding.

Keen to share this learning, he started blogging about what he was learning on his website.

Collins said: “I later took up a job teaching children at a school primarily because I got tired of the menial jobs and wanted to earn enough to take care of my internet data plan. After a while, I became fairly proficient in PHP and even took up a job to build a school management system.”

Using WordPress to make a living Collins’ blog wasn’t making money through advertisements, but he discovered opportunities to write tutorials for other platforms.

“I started writing PHP and WordPress development tutorials and got paid a few hundred dollars per article. In Nigeria, that’s quite a lot of money. I was able to improve the life and wellbeing of my family and myself,” he said.

After getting into a higher education program to study computer science, his life dramatically changed. He decided to stop writing and began to focus on building and selling WordPress plugins. His first one was a user and profile plugin for WordPress sites.

“Thankfully, after a year, it started making enough revenue for me to live pretty comfortably here in Nigeria because the cost of living here is relatively low,” he said

Today, Collins has several plugins which have given him a sustainable source of income. He’s also a Core and Translation volunteer contributor to the WordPress.org Open Source project.

I am thankful for WordPress because without it, I’m really not sure I would have been able to live a decent quality life.
Who knows what would have become of me?

Collins Agbonghama

“I am also thankful for the community. I have made lots of friends that have been very supportive and helpful in my journey.”

He added: “I tell people, life won’t give you what you want. You demand from life what you want. You make these demands by being determined and never giving up on your dreams and aspirations.

“If you are poor, perhaps because you came from a humble and poor background, it is not your fault. You can’t go back in time to change things. I implore you to be strong, determined, and work hard.”

Meet more WordPress community members in our People of WordPress series.

Contributors Thanks to Michael Geheren (@geheren), Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), for writing this feature, to @MeherBala (@meher) for follow-ups and photo-editing, and to Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann) and Nalini Thakor (@nalininonstopnewsuk) for the final proofing. Thank you to Collins Agbonghama (@collizo4sky) for sharing his Contributor Story.

Thanks to Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune), Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) and others for their support of this initiative.

The People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia, which highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers.

HeroPress #ContributorStory

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WordPress 5.9 Beta 4 is now available for testing!

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

You can test the WordPress 5.9 Beta 4 in three ways:

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

Option 2: Direct download the beta version here (zip).

Option 3: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1, 2, or 3 to Beta 4 on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence:

Command One:

wp core update --version=5.9-beta4

Command Two:

wp core update --version=5.9-beta4 --force

The current target for the final release of 5.9 is January 25, 2022, which is only five weeks away. Your help testing this beta is vital: the more testing that happens, the more stable the release, and the better the experience for users and developers—and the entire WordPress community.

Some Highlights Since Beta 3, 20 bugs have been fixed. Here are a few of the changes you will find in Beta 4:

Bundled Theme: Fixed duplicate CSS rules in Twenty Twenty-One theme (#53605).
Customizer: It’s possible to switch to a block theme from within Customizer (#54549).
Themes: Provide guidance to users seeking to preview block themes on WordPress versions below 5.9 (#54575).
REST API: The get_theme_item method should respect fields param (#54595).
Editor: Block Patterns: “Featured” category & patterns missing from inserter (#54623).
Login and registration: Add a filter to allow to disable the Login screen language dropdown – (#54675).

How You Can Help Do some testing!

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

Please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums if you find a bug. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.

Got questions? Here are some answers In the coming weeks, follow the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.9-related developer notes that will cover these items in detail.

So far, contributors have fixed 326 tickets and 108 new features and enhancements in WordPress 5.9. More bug fixes are on the way with your help through testing.

Props to @cbringmann, @psykro, @hellofromtonya, @marybaum, @webcommsat, @audrasjb, @costdev and @meher for contributions to this post.

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In this last episode of 2021, Josepha Haden Chomphosy takes the time to appreciate those who make the WordPress project a success and offers a carol of thanks.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

Credits * Editor: Dustin Hartzler * Logo: Beatriz Fialho * Production: Chloé Bringmann * Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

References Have yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Transcript Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10

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. Here we go!

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:39

So, ages and ages ago, when I first started this podcast, someone basically requested that Matt and I do a duet for the last podcast of the year. A Christmas carol duet; him on the saxophone and me on voice. I obviously did not get that coordinated I don’t even know why I said obviously. I’ll tell you right now I did not get that coordinated. I was a very busy lady this year. So I don’t have a Matt on saxophone. Still, I did think that maybe it might be nice just for me to sing a teensy little Christmas carol for you all just because it seems especially poignant the words this year, especially after the 2020, 2021 COVID, all the things and trying to get back in person. So I’m going to sing you all one little verse from Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:35 Singing

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Let your heart be light

From now on our troubles

Will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

Make the Yuletide gay

From now on our troubles

Will be miles away

Here we are as in olden days

Happy golden days of yore

Faithful friends who are dear to us

Gather near to us, once more

Through the years we all will be together

If the fates allow

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough

And have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Here we are as in olden days

Happy golden days of yore

Faithful friends who are dear to us

Gather near to us, once more

Through the years we all will be together

If the fates allow

Hang a shining star upon the highest bough

And have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 03:34

Alright, my friends, that was from my heart to yours if you happened to listen. If you skipped a few seconds to get through it, which I would totally understand, that is also fine. But I did want to just kind of wrap up the year to let you all know that I am so incredibly grateful for all of the people who show up for the WordPress project to make it a success. I have made so many friends and wonderful acquaintances throughout my time here with the WordPress project. And especially in my three years as the project’s Executive Director. You all have put a lot of trust in me and a lot of faith. And I know that we have gotten so much done together in the last few years. And I am equally sure that we’re going to get so much done in the years to come. And so thank you all so much for your continued work with WordPress and the way that you just bring your best at all times.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 04:32

One other little thanks I want to give. Over the course of this year, I’ve had an excellent team that works with me on this podcast. I have editing and design folks and people who’ve joined me here and there, folks who helped me with my production. So big thank you to Dustin, Bea, I realize your name is Beatriz in the actual credits, but I call you Bea, and so thank you. Also, a huge thank you to Chloé, who does all of our production and wrangling every couple of weeks. A big round of applause and kudos to that tiny but tough team that helps me get this all done.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:10

That’s to go on top of the general thanks to the WordPress project. And if you all are celebrators, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season. If you are not celebrators, I hope that you have a wonderful end to your year and that everything you wanted to get done, you did get done, and that you can start 2022 with a fresh slate. Again, this is the WP Briefing. Thank you so much for listening. I’m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in 2022.

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State of the Word 2021, the annual keynote from WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, happened on December 14. The hybrid event took place in New York City with a small audience (proof of vaccination required). As Matt said, “we had people join by plane, train, and automobile.” Those who didn’t make the trek to the live event watched the livestream from wherever they call home, all around the world.

It was an exciting moment for the WordPress community which also celebrated its first in-person WordCamp in Sevilla, Spain, after a lengthy hiatus for in-person events.

You can view the full recording, complete with captions and transcripts on WordPress.tv.

It was thrilling to see so many meetup organizers host watch parties worldwide. Twenty-eight watch parties were held across eleven countries, with more than 300 RSVPs.

Similar to past State of the Word events, Matt covered a broad range of topics. This year was no different. WordPress’ past, present, and future were in the spotlight, with highlights on the growth of the contributors, language translations, recent release milestones, and educational initiatives, to name a few.

Audience members and livestreamers alike viewed product demos showcasing upcoming features that will be the hallmark of WordPress 5.9, such as full site editing, block patterns, global styling options, and enhanced image controls.

Matt took the opportunity to remind everyone of the WordPress roadmap which includes native multi-lingual support and real-time collaborative site editing. He also pointed out that anyone can contribute to WordPress’ progress through a number of different initiatives ranging from creating new features and testing to helping spread the word and educate others.

Matt emphasized the way that open source software gets better by reminding everyone that “The more people that use a program like WordPress, the better it gets.”

Broader topics covering the tech landscape including web3, merger and acquisition activity, as well as the growth and support of open source software, rounded out the energetic presentation.

The one-hour multimedia presentation was followed by an interactive question and answer session where Matt fielded questions that were submitted ahead of the event, as well as questions from the livestream and studio audience.

Discover everything that was covered by watching the official event recording and join the ongoing #ILoveWP conversation on Twitter!

Special thanks to @dansoschin for review and edits!

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WordPress 5.9 Beta 3 is now available for testing!

You can test the WordPress 5.9 Beta 3 in three ways:

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

Option 2: Direct download the beta version.

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

Command One:

wp core update --version=5.9-beta2

Command Two:

wp core update --version=5.9-beta3 --force

The current target for the final release of 5.9 is January 25, 2022, which gets closer every minute. Your help testing this beta is vital: the more testing that happens, the more stable the release, and the better the experience for users and developers—and the entire WordPress community.

Some Highlights Since Beta 2,14 bugs have been fixed. Here are a few of the changes you will find in Beta 3:

Editor: Add FSE infrastructure from Gutenberg plugin into Core (#54335).
Formatting: Allow PDFs to embedded as objects (#54261)
Language switcher on the login screen (#43700)
REST API: Add navigation areas REST API endpoint from Gutenberg plugin (#54393)
Themes: Live Preview button bug (#54578)

How You Can Help Do some testing!

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.

For even more ways to test, you can also refer to this official Full Site Editing post from @annezazu.

Got questions? Here are some answers In the coming weeks, follow the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.9-related developer notes that cover these items in detail. So far, contributors have fixed 316 tickets in WordPress 5.9, including 100 new features and enhancements. More bug fixes are on the way with your help through testing.

Props to@psykro, @estelaris, @hellofromtonya, @marybaum, @webcommsat, @cbringmann, @costdev, and @audrasjb for contributions to this post.

Filed under #release, #5.9, #beta

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WordPress 5.9 Beta 2 is now available for testing!

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.

You can test the WordPress 5.9 Beta 2 in three ways:

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

Option 2: Direct download the beta version here (zip).

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

Command One:

wp core update --version=5.9-beta1

Command Two:

wp core update --version=5.9-beta2 --force

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

Block Editor: Remove navigation areas (#54506)
Block Editor: Navigation block view JavaScript error (#54456)
Block Editor: Block template theme error related to child themes (#54515)
General: Fixing existing links to Customizer when the Site Editor is enabled (#54460)
Media: Media library showing only the selected image (#53765)
Media: Fatal error uploading media on PHP8 (#54385)
REST API: Add Global Styles REST API endpoints from Gutenberg into Core (#54336)

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 Do some testing!

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

Where can I get more information? In the coming weeks, follow the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.9-related developer notes that cover these items in detail.

So far, contributors have fixed 305 tickets in WordPress 5.9, including 110 new features and enhancements. More bug fixes are on the way with your help through testing.

Props to@psykro, @estelaris, @hellofromtonya, @marybaum, @webcommsat, @cbringmann, @davidb, @audrasjb, and @pbiron for contributions to this post.

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Despite the holiday season being around the corner, the WordPress project didn’t slow down. In a recent episode of WP Briefing, Executive Director Josepha Haden shares the first thing she wants people to notice about WordPress, which is also the heart of this open source project:

Now, the first thing I want people to see on that site is that WordPress has not only 18 years of learned knowledge that every single new user benefits from, but that it also has thousands of really smart people making sure it works and gets better every day.

Josepha Haden, Executive Director of the WordPress 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

The Core Team announced the WordPress 5.9 Revised Release Schedule, and the release is now planned for January 25, 2022.
WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 was recently released and is available for testing. This version of the WordPress software is under development. Check out the release post to learn more about what’s new in version 5.9 and how you can help testing.
Check out “A Look at WordPress 5.9” for a first peek into the exciting features included in this major release.
WordPress 5.8.2, a security and maintenance release, was out on November 10, 2021. This release includes two bug fixes and one security fix.

*Are you interested in contributing to WordPress core?* Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC.

Gutenberg releases: 11.9 and 12.0 are out Two new Gutenberg versions have been released!

Version 11.9.0 brings new Gutenberg blocks for working with post comments, a fullscreen pattern explorer modal, further iterations on the Navigation block, and many other improvements.
Gutenberg 12.0.0, released on November 24, improves the Block Styles preview and includes featured image block visual enhancements, a site Editor welcome guide, official JSON schema updates, and much more.

Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. Follow #gutenberg-new for details on the latest updates.

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

State of the Word 2021, the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, will be held on December 14, 2021 between 5 and 7 pm ET/10 pm – 12 am (December 15) UTC. The event will be livestreamed from New York City, and include a Question and Answer session.
Host or join a State of the Word watch party to enjoy the event with your WordPress friends. Check Meetup to see if a watch party is scheduled to be held in your local community!

Add the event to your calendar so you don’t miss State of the Word 2021! Want to ask Matt a question during State of the Word? Please send your questions ahead of time to ask-matt@wordcamp.org or ask them live during the event via YouTube chat.

Team updates: Nominations for some team representatives are still underway * Requests 2.0.0 has been released. This release is fully compatible with PHP 8.0 and 8.1, indicating that a legacy codebase can be modernized, made more stable and secure without breaking backward-compatibility. The Requests project is a dependency of WordPress core, which was adopted into the WordPress organization earlier this year. * The 2020 WordPress Annual Survey results are available to be viewed. * The Core Team added six new committers. * Last month, the Marketing Team opened its call for team representatives, joining Core, Themes, Accessibility, Support, and Hosting from October 2021. * The Core Team announced its new Team Rep for 2022 (and beyond). * The Design Team and the Accessibility Team’s meetings will be held bi-weekly moving forward. * The Marketing Team published the latest edition of People of WordPress, featuring Devin Maeztri from Indonesia. * There’s an open call for suggestions for Global Community Team, Training Team, and Polyglots goals for 2022. Please drop your ideas by December 6, 2021. * The Accessibility Team has opened 1-2 volunteer positions for the #diverse-speaker-support channel. * The November 2021 edition of the Polyglots monthly newsletter is out. * The Marketing Team welcomes any help to promote WordPress Meetups on a weekly basis and thus keep the community connected.

We want to hear from you! Suggest your 2022 goals for the Global Community Team by December 6, 2021.

Feedback/Testing requests: Test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1; Take the 2021 Annual WordPress Survey to share your experience * WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 is now available for testing and we’d like to hear from you! Testing is vital to ensure the release is as good as it can be—it’s also a great way to contribute. Read the comprehensive guide, “Help test WordPress 5.9 Features,” to learn how to test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 and report any bugs. * There’s an open call for testing for WordPress iOS 18.7 and Android 18.7.

The 2021 WordPress Annual Survey is out! Please respond to the survey, so your WordPress experience is reflected in the results.

Keep an eye out for WordCamp Taiwan and Sevilla, along with several WordPress workshops in December 2021 * Several WordPress Social Learning Meetups were held in November by the Training Team, and there will be more in December 2021. * Tuesday Training sessions are paused until 2022. * WordCamp São Paulo was held online on November 27, 2021. * Get excited for WordCamp Sevilla 2021, coming up on December 11-12! Sevilla is the first in-person WordCamp happening in over 18 months, since WordCamps moved online in March 2020 due to COVID-19. * Don’t miss the following upcoming WordCamps: WordCamp Taiwan 2021, WordCamp Birmingham 2022, and WordCamp Europe 2022! * Check out the latest episodes of WordPress Briefing with Josepha Haden on + “All Things Block Themes!” + “WordPress=Blogging+” + “The People of WordPress”

Give back to open source. Please donate to the WordPress Foundation’s mission this holiday season.

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

The following folks contributed to November 2021’s Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan, @harishanker, @rmartinezduque, @callye, @jrf, @webcommsat, and @nalininonstopnewsuk

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WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 is now available for testing!

This version of the WordPress software is under development. You don’t want to run this version on a production site. Instead, it is recommended that you run this on a test site. This will allow you to test out the new version.

You can test the WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 in three ways:

Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
Option 2: Direct download the beta version here (zip).
Option 3: Use WP-CLI to test: wp core update --version=5.9-beta1. Do not use this option if your filesystem is case-insensitive.

The current target for the final release is January 25, 2022, which is just eight weeks away. Your help testing this version is vital to make sure the release is as good as it can be.

Check the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.9-related developer notes in the coming weeks which will break down all upcoming changes in greater detail.

How You Can Help – Testing! Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing the release in the beta stage. It is also a great way to contribute. If you’ve never tested a beta release before, this detailed guide will help walk you through what and how to test.

If you think you’ve found a bug, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs.

To see every feature in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 5.8, check out the What’s New In Gutenberg posts for 10.8, 10.9, 11.0, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, 11.5, 11.6, 11.7, 11.8, and 11.9.

Beyond the noted changes, which include 580 enhancements and nearly 450 bug fixes, contributors have fixed 297 tickets for WordPress 5.9, including 110 new features and enhancements. More fixes are on the way.

Happy testing!

Want to know what’s new in version 5.9? Read on for some highlights.

*Full Site Editing The Styles Interface Combine all the features that went live in 5.8 with those making their entrance in 5.9, and you get Full Site Editing.*

Formerly known as Global Styles, the Styles Interface lets you interact directly with your blocks and elements right in the WordPress Admin. From typography to color palettes, this cohesive design interface means a design change—even a dramatic one—can happen without a theme switch. No code needed.

Theme.json Introduced in WordPress 5.8, theme.json has been improved to enable features and default styles for your site and its blocks. With 5.9, theme.json can support child themes and the duotone treatment. Coordinate layers of style with theme.json, taking the weight off of your theme’s required CSS.

Other features supported by theme.json include:

Border: color, style, and width augment the border-radius property that landed in 5.8.
Flex layouts: Block Gap support, courtesy of spacing.blockGap.
Typography: font families, font style, font weight, text decoration, and text transform.
Images: Duotones.

A New Navigation Block Welcome to the most intuitive way to build navigation: the Navigation Block.

Here are the features that need testing the most:

Responsive menu options you can turn off, have always on, or opt to use only for small screens.
Built-in keyboard accessibility. For accessibility, for speed, or both.
Add extra blocks like Search and Site Icon blocks (and customize them to your liking).
Submenu items with styling options.
Horizontal or vertical alignment.
Reusable navigation? Even across themes? Yes. Because the Navigation Block you build gets saved as a custom post type.

A Better Gallery Block What if you could treat single images in your Gallery Block the same way you treat the Image Block? Now you can.

Make every image in your gallery different from the next, with inline cropping or a duotone and change layouts with the ease of drag and drop. With the improved gallery block, every image is its own Image block.

One thing to note: Have you built a plugin or theme on the Gallery Block functionality? Be sure to review this Dev Note, which details what you need to do for compatibility.

Focused Template Part Mode Building template parts can take a level of focus all its own because you’re making decisions for the entire site. So WordPress 5.9 adds a focus mode that shows you only the part you’re working on right now (and you can get back to the regular view with a keystroke).

Block Pattern Directory The Pattern Directory offers a range of prebuilt block patterns, from a couple of blocks that show an image and text, to an entire page layout with columns and sections. Since the 5.8 release, the directory has become a hub for exploratory UI and patterns, taking submissions and offering them to the community. So now, your creation can help other people build out their perfect site.

Twenty Twenty-Two Default Theme A whole new way of building WordPress themes.

WordPress 5.9 introduces features that make Full Site Editing possible, including the first default block theme.

Using minimal CSS, theme styles reside in theme.json so that you can configure them in the Styles interface of the WordPress Admin. Make this theme take on its own personality site-wide, with a wide array of color schemes, type combinations, page templates, premade components (forms), and image treatments to choose from.

More Improvements and Updates * Do you love to blog? New tweaks to the publishing flow let you add new posts just seconds after hitting Publish on your latest post. * List View lets you drag and drop content as easily as you could always cruise through it – and collapse entire sections – so you can concentrate on a task or get the bigger picture. * The Buttons and Social icons blocks now absorb and display their parent block’s toolbar controls. * Choose your language on the login screen. * More performance improvements (i.e., speed).

Props to @chanthaboune, @priethor, @psykro, @annezazu, @webcommsat, @marybaum, @hellofromtonya, @davidbaumwald, and @rmartinezduque for their research and copy.

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In this series, we share some of the inspiring stories of how WordPress and its global network of contributors can change people’s lives for the better. This month we feature a translator and campaigner who uses WordPress to highlight good causes and helps people in her area benefit from the open source platform.

Going to a WordCamp can be a life-changing experience, as Devin Maeztri discovered. Every event she attends is a further step on a journey of discovering the WordPress community and its many opportunities.

“It is not that hard to fall for WordPress if you have a chance to experience WordPress. For me, it took a WordCamp.”

Devin Maeztri

Devin’s first experience with camps came when she volunteered impromptu at an Indonesian event, WordCamp Denpasar, Bali in 2016.

Here, she made a profound discovery: “WordCamps can bring people who will give back to the community, even if they don’t get anything from WordPress directly.”

With every WordCamp after that first experience, she became more interested in WordPress and the community.

Over time, Devin found she wanted to be part of WordPress events more often. She became a regular at Meetups in Ubud and Jakarta, joining as a co-organizer at WordCamp Jakarta in 2017 and 2019. Later, she took on the role of co-organizer for Meetups in Jakarta and Ubud.

Smitten by what WordCamps can offer and how they can bring people together across national borders, she joined the organizing team for WordCamp Asia 2020. Sadly, this event was to become the first major WordPress event to be cancelled in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Naturally, Devin hopes WordCamp Asia will happen someday very soon. Beyond the expected WordPress learning and sharing that event will promote, she believes its very scale will showcase how WordCamps add international tourism and cultural understanding everywhere they take place.

WordCamp Asia 2020 Organizers at WordCamp Europe 2019. Devin is pictured in the front row, second from left. Photo Credit: Abha Thakor Showing how WordPress can be used locally After experiencing several events, Devin had questions: “At WordCamps and Meetups, you hear stories about how WordPress powers the web. How it changes the lives of so many people, how it helps dreams come true. It made me think, considering WordPress is that powerful, why are there not even more people in Indonesia using websites, and more using WordPress? Why aren’t more talented Indonesian WordPress users, developers, designers, and business owners taking part in WordPress.org projects? Language, for me, was the main answer.”

The solution Devin felt was to make WordPress available in the main local language. She said: “I believe, the more content translated into Indonesian, the more Indonesian WordPress users see WordPress as more than just a blogging platform or a content management system. They will realize it’s a huge open source community that works together to make the web a better place. The more plugins and themes translated, the easier the work of the developer and designer will be. The more people see how WordPress can enhance their life, the better the ecosystem for business owners becomes.”

Encouraging others to translate WordPress After talking with others about how WordPress could be even more useful in Indonesia, Devin felt she had to make a personal commitment to reviving the polyglot project in Indonesia. With another volunteer contributor and through promotion, the local polyglot team got bigger and the interest in translation grew. She also took on the responsibility of a General Translation Editor for the language.

Through the efforts of Devin and the other translation editors, Indonesia took part in WordPress Translation Day in 2020, and in 2021 held sprints and learning sessions spanning the whole 30 days of the event.

Her enthusiasm and dedication to helping others translate WordPress locally and promoting the global community were recognized in the Polyglot Appreciation Nominations for 2021.

Helping to give access to more diverse audiences Through her involvement in translation, Devin noticed there were not many women involved in the WordPress community in Indonesia. Often, she found herself the only woman at an event.

So, along with a couple of community members, she started Perempuan WordPress, a local initiative. This group is open for everyone to join, but prioritizes women as event speakers.

Devin has gone on to support the work of the Diversity Speaker Training group in the Community Team, translating materials and promoting initiatives in Indonesia. She is keen to encourage others to get involved with this initiative which helps increase the diversity of presenters at Meetups and WordCamps.

Organizing at WordCamp Jakarta 2019 In her professional roles, Devin is an advocate for WordPress as a tool for people with a wide variety of skill sets. She does not code, but uses the platform extensively for her projects. In 2014, she signed up for a free account on WordPress.com to keep and share notes about what she saw or was thinking about as she commuted on public transport to work. This site did not turn into a blog, but instead introduced her to other opportunities and the vast capabilities of the platform.

WordPress can support your skills and passions With a background in environmental activism, Devin has worked for international development organizations on everything from policymaking to campaigning.

Behind the desk, she worked with policymakers and organized conferences and meetings. That meant doing a lot of writing and translating and working with people on the ground who were impacted by the policies. “My work on the ground usually involved researching, movement building and community empowerment,” she noted.

Her work with events inspired Devin to get involved in WordCamps and Meetups and share her energy for making things happen. As in her professional work, she felt WordPress was an opportunity to work and share with people about something that can make a positive impact on someone else’s life.

“For me, everything comes from the heart. I do things that I feel so strongly about. Things that call me, and things that I am good at but still giving me room to learn and become better at. WordPress can be the perfect place for this.”

While she was between jobs, Devin was encouraged to volunteer at WordCamp Denpasar 2016. With some help, she created an online CV. She also learned to manage a WordPress site, navigate the wp-admin, and make the content appeal to potential employers.

She eventually got a job as a campaigner to build a movement online and offline. The brainchild of many university friends in America, who used digital campaigns to go global, the campaign used WordPress.

Devin worked alongside a digital campaigner and helped shape the content, the call to action, and the user experience. She also had to use the wp-admin to make some amendments. As a global movement, it developed its resources in English, so she also reviewed the work of the translators she worked with.

Devin’s cat became a regular on social media posts about #WPTranslationDay 2021 She left her job as a campaigner at the end of 2018 to concentrate on freelancing – and to spend more of her free time contributing to the WordPress community. She also took up the initiative to help street cats in Jakarta.

Devin said: “So, I am busy helping these cats but also learning how to fundraise using a website. I’m learning to use online forms, set up a payment service provider, work on SEO, and do other new things I need to learn to grow my initiative. I do have the privilege to learn directly from a personal guru. The same person who convinced me to volunteer at WordCamp Denpasar, and who I married in 2018.”

WordPress gives everyone a chance to learn Devin was so enthused by being a contributor for WordPress, she took part in the video shorts following the Translation Day events.

Devin talks about translating in this short video (opens in a new tab on YouTube) She is also active in other Contributor Teams and decided to become a Community Team Deputy to support meetups in new cities across Indonesia and perhaps future WordCamps.

She said: “One of the things that I like about WordPress is that it is very welcoming and open to people like me, who don’t code at all. At the same time, it shows me a different way of looking at the world.”

Devin believes in the power of WordPress to give ‘everyone a chance to learn new things’ and allows her to contribute and share her knowledge and experience. “By contributing, I hope to make a difference in someone’s life. I hope they feel the benefit of using WordPress and want to give back to create a healthier WordPress community.”

Contributors Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) and Mary Baum (@marybaum) for the interviews and writing this feature, and to Devin Maeztri (@devinmaeztri) for sharing her story. Thanks to Meher Bala (@meher) for work on the images, and to Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann) and Collieth Clarke (@callye) for proofing.

Thanks to Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support for the series.

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In episode 21 of the WordPress Briefing, Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, talks all things block themes with developers and theme specialists Maggie Cabrera and Jeff Ong.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

Credits * Editor: Dustin Hartzler * Logo: Beatriz Fialho * Production: Chloé Bringmann * Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

References * 5.9 Beta 1 Delay Announcement * 5.9 Revised Release Schedule * WordCamp Sevilla 2021 * Charitable Giving: + WordPress Foundation + Big Orange Heart + HeroPress (Update: This organization is not a non-profit.)

Transcript Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:40

Well, today, folks, in our podcast, I am joined by a couple of special guests. I know it’s been a bit since I’ve had a guest, so I’m very excited to introduce you to who I have with me today. Today, I have Maggie Cabrera and Jeff Ong. They both are working on themes, and especially the future of themes as we move into this low code, no code block based experience of editing things in WordPress. And there have been so many questions lately about what does the landscape of being a theme developer turns into once we move fully into this excellent promise of user empowerment for Gutenberg? I figured who best to come and talk to us about that than these two. So welcome, Maggie. Welcome, Jeff. I’m really excited to have this conversation with you today.

Jeff Ong 01:39

Thank you for having us. Excited to be here.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:45

I’m just gonna hop right in, and we will see what happens. The first thing that I want to chat about, I hear so many questions and so much discussion about patterns in a lot of different places. Like obviously, the work that I helped to steward the most is around like the Block Pattern directory and various other user-facing tools. And so I have never really been able to give a really solid answer about like patterns and how they work inside themes. And so I wondered if you all had anything that you could offer to our listeners to help clarify what is the power of patterns inside themes in the future? Implementation of themes?

Jeff Ong 02:34

I can try to start unless, Maggie? Okay. Well, if you take a look at what I’ve been doing for the last couple of months working on Twenty Twenty-Two. And if you look at that theme, it’s mostly just the collection of patterns. Patterns. As you know, if you read the description, the theme, it’s designed to be the most flexible and kind of like flexible theme ever, dare I say ever created.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 03:04

I think you can dare to say it.

Jeff Ong 03:03

And, you know, I think a huge part of that is because of the Full Site Editing being launched, introduced in 5.9. And also that theme itself ships with all of these patterns in it that work with the overall design, but really can be configured to your own kind of unique liking and kind of taste and ultimately, what you want to accomplish, whether that’s I want to make a portfolio, I want to make, you know, a single-page website promoting like my podcast, or there are patterns for that kind of shipping with the theme. And they’ve all been kind of designed and tailored to work with the typography choices at a baseline level with the color choices at a baseline level, but can very easily be tweaked. And you can kind of rely on them to work with the editor. And I guess, kind of zooming out for a little bit, not just about Twenty-Twenty Two.

Jeff Ong 04:04

But like patterns as this idea that a theme, hopefully, what it is, it’s a collection of different design options or layout options that are ultimately presented as patterns to the user, the patterns are just a really easy way to basically say “I want you this layout, like two columns of text or with like some images here.” Basically, a theme becomes a way of packaging the patterns together in a way that feels like a coherent piece of a coherent website. And I think that’s a pretty powerful idea. I know that the patterns directory is also opening up making those patterns pretty widely available. But I think a theme you could think of as like a curation of those patterns in a way that makes sense. And I think Twenty-Twenty Two is a really good example. I mean, I’m biased.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:03

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

Maggie Cabrera 05:08

Yeah, What I really like about patterns is how it empowers the user, even if they don’t really have like a deep knowledge of code, or they’re not used to the more complex blocks. When the theme developer gives you this pattern about using the query block, for example, it lays out your posts in a very compelling manner. And you can edit it if you want it or just use it out of the box. And you have this dynamic blog that it’s, like, such a big important part of your website. Like if you want to have a page where you have, you have maybe a podcast website, and you want to showcase your podcasts differently than your regular blog posts. So you can use a different gray pattern for that. And it’s like, really, really easy to use, even if you’re not familiar with it.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:07

One of the things that I have found compelling about this new version of themes and kind of the way that themes are planning to look in the future; it’s going to be like a super throwback, so everyone get ready for me to sound old, my guests and my listeners alike. It reminds me of my original days of blogging on the web. I was not a developer and even though I had this really short stint of working with JavaScript in my career, at some point. Like no one actually would ever look to me and be like, that one is excellent at design and fixing everything with code, like I was just killer at searching for the right pieces of code, right.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:57

And so I remember sitting there on Zynga, which is, of course, now powered by WordPress, I absolutely just went out and found bundles of code that are now what we would consider themes and modified the small pieces that I needed to change in order to like really suit what I wanted to have happen on the site at the time. And they’re like, I knew I could break it all. Really easily. But also, it was, it was not scary to think about breaking it. Like it was clear how I could fix it if I really broke it. The content, like what I had written, was separate from everything to do with the way that it was looking. And so like, I wouldn’t destroy all of my work, just because I didn’t put a semicolon in the right place, or whatever it was in that moment. And so like, this future of themes really reminds me of this a lot where someone has curated how it can look how it should look. And you can just like add in modular pieces that will augment what was already intended, but still kind of work. And if it’s not gonna work, it’s kind of easy to fix too. So like, I’m excited. That was a really exciting time in my learning of the web and certainly was formative in my career, as we all now see. And so yeah, I think that’s really exciting.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 08:20

I did have actually another question that this conversation has kind of brought up for me. I have, obviously just use the term modular, which no one has ever used in the context of themes for WordPress. And I know that there is a lot there are a lot of terms kind of wandering around about themes right now. And especially as we’re moving into what themes can look like in the future. There was block based theme as a term for a while. And now it’s block themes. There was like this floating around the term, universal themes. And now we’re looking at just like block themes forever. And so I wondered if y’all could give us a just like a clear understanding of these terms that had been being used and maybe are going out of fashion? Like, are they important for us to keep knowing?

Jeff Ong 09:11

So yes, the history of terms around themes. And obviously, even my knowledge only goes back so far. But it was around when we started doing the block based themes meeting. And trying to I think that’s where that term kind of came from is like, oh, let’s, let’s start talking about this idea that themes can be completely made up out of blocks. And what does that mean?

Jeff Ong 09:33

I think over time, it wasn’t just block themes, because, you know, previously, there were themes and even default themes that used and took into account the fact that blocks existed. So there was some confusion there. Enough time has gone on where we focus on this idea that themes whose templates are ultimately made out of blocks are block themes. And to me, it’s kind of as simple as that. Its themes that supply a set of templates that previously in the past were a collection of PHP and various template tags and whatnot is all transitioned to themes made up including other blocks, as well as themes that supply styles through theme.json configuration instead of supplying it in raw CSS. To me this idea is really crystallizing around like this is a block theme, one that is really, at its core, supplying a set of templates, and styles through a language that WordPress understands natively, and can allow it to be configured and customized in a really powerful way. And then maybe someday in the future, they’ll just be called themes again. If we do a good enough they will just be called themes.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 10:57

I’m gonna, I’m gonna take us into a philosophical area now that you’ve just put us in there. You said, someday they’ll be called Themes. Again, I’ve talked about this on this podcast a few times. And for anyone who’s worked with me for any length of time, like you all probably heard this from me as well. But like, adjectives are so frequently the realm of things that are not what you expect, right? Because like you have coffee, and then decaf coffee, no one’s like caffeinated coffee, because that’s what you expect out of it. And so when you’re like themes, and block themes, it makes it look like block themes are secondary, which at the moment, they are, ish. But in the future, I think you’re probably right, there will be a time when the modifier isn’t necessary anymore because it will be hopefully a much better way for people to kind of change the way that their themes work and make it more usable for users and people who are, you know, having to manage their own site without necessarily wanting to or being able to, like, have a Maggie in the room to fix everything that they break.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 12:08

Maggie is nowhere near me. And so she’s never been in the room when I’ve broken anything. But I believe that Maggie on one occasion, at least, has come in and helped me fix something that I definitely broke. I’m an excellent breaker of WordPress things. Maggie, did you have anything you wanted to add to that question?

12:29

Yeah, I guess, maybe clarify a bit, what universal themes are because, yeah, maybe some people have heard about the term but they don’t really know what they are. And maybe just clarify that. The term was born when developing block themes wasn’t something that you could actually do for production websites like you could build them to test some experiments, but they weren’t really ready for users to use. So universal themes want to grasp the power of love themes while still being ready for users. So the way they do it is they are block based, like we used to call them in the sense that the templates are made of blocks. But they are also able to be customized using the customizer, which is the old way of customizing themes, instead of using the site editor. So they can have a balance between two worlds between the worlds of classic themes and block themes. But they are, at heart, a temporary concept. They are bound to be blocked themes in the future, but with maybe a foot in the past, where they can actually serve users who are not ready for full-on site editor. But they are bound to be full block themes in the future.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 14:00

There’s a really interesting concept in there. So universal themes, it sounds like are basically kind of like an on-ramp for people who are not really ready to fully commit to this for any number of reasons. Like we never want to say that we know the reason that people would be a little bit shy to get started with this. But like it’s kind of like an on-ramp, it’s a safe way to get back to something that they do know, in the event that what they don’t know, really hinders their progress makes it hard for them to get the work done.

Maggie Cabrera 14:31

I think I wouldn’t say that they are for people shyer to get into new stuff rather than developers who want to embrace the new stuff before it’s even really ready. They really want to embrace the power of the blocks instead of doing things the old way. But even if it’s not fully ready.

Jeff Ong 14:54

They still need to support the old way of doing things.

Maggie Cabrera 14:58

Like being backward compatible and being ready for any kind of user.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 15:05

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

Maggie Cabrera 15:12

It’s also good for users; If they feel secure in using the customizer.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 15:20

Well, I think that there’s something important here that we certainly learned with the adoption of Gutenberg in 5.0. Right, which is that there is certainly one method of helping people to adopt things, which is to go like the art of war style, and kind of smash their rice pots and burn all their boats, like, that’s one way. Which works for a lot of companies in the world, I’m sure. But WordPress has always had kind of a commitment, not even kind of, has always had a commitment to backward compatibility. And like, we know that a lot of the work on Gutenberg is going to represent some breaking changes around the around workflows and around the user experience the interface, especially like, we know that. But the opportunity to like have a thing that gives you an early taste of what’s coming but also the ability to keep kind of working in your old space where you need to, I think it’s an excellent way to bring people forward into the future of things, I have never been a fan of the just like cut off all avenues and hope that they stay with your method because of course, like you can’t cut off all the methods. You can’t cut off all the ways people can get away from you. And even if we could, it wouldn’t be in line with how WordPress hopes to kind of help people through some tough stuff like making your first website is hard. If you are doing it as part of, an overall campaign that’s supposed to bring in leads for you or generate revenue like you don’t want to necessarily play with that in a way that could break things and be risky for you in the long term. So I think all the tools that we offer to help people kind of move forward with the technology move forward with the CMS as it’s moving forward, I think it’s really smart. And so universal themes are one of those things, but also not around to stay. As we move into non modified themes, just the word themes that happen to be based in blocks. If I’ve confused anyone, please email me at wpbriefing@wordpress.org. And tell me how I confused you. And I will do a follow-up to unconfuse everyone.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 17:40

So speaking of the way that we help people kind of move forward with WordPress and with the technology. So much has been done in the CMS in the past 12 months in the past 18 months to be able to move themes into this same future as the rest of the editor. Right. So like, for folks who have not been listening to me for the last five years, you may not know this. So I’m going to tell everybody now, like one of the pain points that Gutenberg overall is solving is the fact that you for a long time had to learn five different editing interfaces to get one thing done in WordPress, right. And so like the advent of blocks and moving it into more and more spaces in the CMS is intended to really flatten the editing experience by making the type of user interaction the type of workflow really similar across all of the editing interfaces in the CMS. And so themes are a natural extension of that, where we can take similar user patterns and workflows, and work them out into themes. So over the last 12 months or so probably a little bit more, there’s been a lot of work on the CMS to move us forward in that that is now enabling the work that we want to be able to do to move things forward ahead. And so, I mean, this is probably our last question. Is there anything that you all want to offer to people who maybe saw themes early on or saw Gutenberg early on and felt like this is just not for me, in that in that context of like, how far it’s moved ahead in the past 12 months or so.

Jeff Ong 19:23

So you’re asking like, what in the last 12 months has maybe like really surprised me or like sticks out to me as something that like, Wow, look how far we’ve come?

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 19:36

Yeah, yeah. So like, if you’re looking at what is the one thing that you saw in the last 12 months, that changed in the CMS that really enabled something wonderful for themes or from the other side of it. Like if someone had looked at themes or WordPress 18 months ago, and now they’re looking at it and seeing this new and different way to do things with the look and feel of their site, like what is one thing that they should be aware of? On either side of that question,

Maggie Cabrera 20:05

I think there’s more than one thing that has really evolved through this last year, year and a half. Like the maturity of some of the blocks is astounding now, like navigation blog, for example, was really bare-bones at the start and now it’s full potential, and it’s really looking really great. I would say the same thing about those days or the features on fire, like how basic it was at the start, was full potential. But now it’s really, really mature in terms of how much you can do with it. Like, I think the example, the perfect example of that is the work that Kjell [Reigstad] has done on Twenty-Twenty Two with the alternative theme.json files, where just changing that file basically feels like a new theme, with just the configuration and the styles. And without writing any CSS without changing any templates. It’s really, really amazing how that can turn into a reality. And it’s so easy for users to tinker with that if they want to. And it’s much easier than having to delve deep into CSS and changing everything in like 2000 lines of code.

Jeff Ong 21:23

Yeah, I probably would echo most of that. What the thing that astounds me is global styles and how the UI can be shipping a theme or default theme with basically like, 20 lines of CSS, and have it be one of them. A beautiful, beautiful, like crisp and sharp, like, experience. It’s super fast. And it’s like, what this is a theme, you know, I thought a theme was supposed to supply all the styles like no, like, it’s just yeah. And workers do for you. Exactly. And like that. That’s pretty amazing to think in the last 12 months, we can go from, you know, shipping 1000s of lines of CSS to you none, it’s like, Wow, pretty cool.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 22:10

Well, my friends, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a really interesting conversation. I hope that all y’all out listening. Also find it interesting. As I mentioned, if you have any follow-up questions, absolutely. Send them to me via email. And I collect all of my questions that I get through the year for answering at the end of the year, mostly because I don’t get lots of questions that people want to be answered on this. Everyone just asked me their questions on Twitter and in Slack, which is fine as well.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 22:41

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

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 22:56

That brings us now to our small list of big things. In the last episode, I got all excited about being in the beta phase. But today, I’m rolling that back a little bit. As part of our usual open source processes, a group of contributors did a deep dive review on the WordPress 5.9 release and found a workflow that needed some refinement. So we are delaying the beta.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 23:19

Since we are in the midst of a major commerce slash/sales season, and of course, a lengthy holiday season, that delay also means that it makes sense to delay WordPress 5.9 final release a little as well. And so we are delaying that all the way into 2022 to January 25. For me, the trade-off works really well there. Every decision that we make in open source, of course, has some balance to it. It’s great for these aspects, it is less great for these aspects over here. But for myself, the opportunity to make sure that we have a really excellent experience for our users and also an opportunity to kind of avoid all of the chaos and hustle and bustle of the end of the year. Really, it seemed like a no-brainer for me. So in case you want to learn a little bit more about why we made the decision and get some insight into the actual milestones and where they have moved now, I’ll include some posts in the show notes below in case you want to read more and of course, if you have any additional questions you can always ask.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 24:33

The second small list of big things is that the first back to people WordCamp. I don’t think that’s what we’re calling it. Our first back to people WordCamp is happening in a couple of weeks actually. WordCamp Sevilla is happening in person on December 11. And I’m so excited I wish I were local, but I’m not so if you are local stop by their website and pick up your ticket.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 24:55

And the third thing on our smallest a big things is that it is, of course, charitable giving season. I don’t know if you do your charitable giving at the end of the year or if that’s even part of your general ways of giving back. But I can think of two or three charitable organizations inside the WordPress ecosystem. There’s of course the WordPress Foundation, but also Big Orange Heart and HeroPress. If there are others out there, I certainly do want to know about them. WordPress Foundation also does additional giving on behalf of just like the open web and open source as a whole. So if you’re the sort of person who does their charitable giving at the end of the year, just a reminder that you have some options inside the WordPress ecosystem if you were trying to figure out some new places to donate to in 2021.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 25:42

And that is your small list of big things. Thank you so much for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. Thank you again to our special guests, Maggie and Jeff. I’m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

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State of the Word 2021 is just around the corner!

Although attending State of the Word in person would be ideal, not all WordPress community members get to enjoy the experience of attending the speech live with friends.

This year, as State of the Word is streamed live for the second time, we want to restore that in person camaraderie through State of the Word watch parties for WordPress Community members around the world.

We encourage WordPress meetup organizers and community members worldwide to (safely) host State of the Word 2021 watch parties —read this handbook to learn more.

Why organize a watch party? * If you are a WordPress meetup organizer, many folks in your meetup may be unaware of the State of the Word, and a watch party could be a great opportunity to introduce or remind them. * As meetup organizers slowly bid goodbye to a tough year, the watch party could be an excellent opportunity to revitalize your group, especially if you haven’t had many events this year. * Along with your Meetup group members, you get a platform to ask questions directly to Matt Mullenweg. * And last but not least, even if you are not a Meetup Organizer, a watch party can be the perfect opportunity to reconnect and have a blast with your WordPress friends!

How do I organize a State of the Word watch party? You can choose to host a watch party online or in person. Check out our handbook for detailed instructions on how to schedule an event (including event templates).

Online The simplest way to organize an online watch party is to schedule an online event for your WordPress group and add the State of the Word YouTube streaming link directly on Meetup.com. Alternatively, you can schedule an online meeting using tools like Zoom and broadcast the live stream over there by screen sharing––thereby facilitating better engagement.

Organize an Online Watch Party

In Person If your region meets the guidelines for in person events (if vaccines and testing are freely available), you can organize an in person watch party event (for fully vaccinated OR recently tested OR recently recovered folks) for your WordPress Meetup! Group members can hang out together (following local safety guidelines of course) and watch State of the Word live.

Plan an In person Watch Party

NOTE: If State of the Word is happening at an odd hour in your timezone, you can still organize a watch party by organizing a replay of live stream, at a date/time that is convenient for your group.

If your Local WordPress Meetup is organizing an in person watch party, fill out this form so that we can ship some swag for your group to celebrate!
Deadline: November 30, 2021

What else do I need to know about organizing a State of the Word watch party? Excited? To help you get started, we’ve put together a few resources:

Check out this handbook for detailed instructions on how to organize a watch party, be it online or in person.
Looking for a Zoom Pro account to host your online watch party? Request a community zoom pro account for your event right away!
We have prepared some email templates that Meetup Organizers can use to spread the word in their Meetup groups.
Don’t forget to share on social media about your watch party events using the hashtag #StateOfTheWord so we can join in on the fun!

NOTE: The guidelines in this post are primarily aimed at WordPress Meetup organizers. However, you do not need to be a Meetup organizer to schedule a watch party! You can simply hang out together with your friends online or in person (while following local safety guidelines) and catch the event live!

Join a State of the Word Watch Party near you! We have compiled a list of State of the Word Watch Parties around the world. If you don’t see a watch party in your region listed here, check this page on Meetup.com to see if your local WordPress group is organizing one. If not, why don’t you consider organizing a watch party on your own?

[WordPress NYC Meetup] An In Person MeetUp: The State of the Word 2021 is in Manhattan.
[South Jersey WordPress Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party
[Morris County NJ WordPress Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party
[WordPress Montclair Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party
[WordPress Santa Clarita Valley] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party
[The Houston WordPress Meetup Group] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[North East Ohio WordPress Meetup] State of Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Birmingham WordPress Meetup] State of the Word Watch Party
[Lehigh Valley WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Greater Milwaukee Area WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[The East Bay WordPress Meetup Group] State of the Word 2021 (Online)
[Sacramento WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[WordPress Louisville] State of the Word Watch Party and Discussion (WP Louisville, KY)
[WordPress Medellín] State of the Word 2021: Discurso de Matt & Fiesta de Comunidad (Online)
[Port-au-Prince WordPress Meetup Group] Rejoignez-nous le 14 décembre pour regarder State of the Word 2021 (online)
[WordPress Coventry Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[WordPress Exeter] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[WordPress Meetup Torino] State of the Word 2021 Video Party (Online)
[Kigali WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Lagos WordPress Community] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Ijebu WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Jinja WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party – WordPress Community Uganda (Online)
[Kampala WordPress Meetup] State of the Word Livestream
[WordPress Meetups Lahore] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (In-person)
[WordPress Bhopal] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (In-person)
[Bengaluru WordPress] WordPress Meetup – State of the word -Watch Party
[WordPress Singapore] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)

If you are planning a watch party for State of the Word, and have questions, please drop us an email to: support@wordcamp.org if you have any questions. We are happy to help you in the best way possible.

The following folks contributed to this post: @anjanavasan @eidolonnight @evarlese and @rmartinezduque

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WordPress 5.9 is expected to be a ground-breaking release. It will introduce the next generation of themes with Twenty Twenty-Two joining the fun and over 30 theme blocks to build all parts of your site. In anticipation of the January 25th release, we hope you enjoy this sneak peek of 5.9.

New design tools will allow you to create exactly what you want, from adding filters to all your images to fine-tuning the border radius on all your buttons. With WordPress 5.9 providing more design control along with streamlined access to patterns, you can easily change the entire look and feel of your site without switching themes.

No matter what you’re editing, whether it’s crafting a new post or working on a header, improvements to List View make it simple to navigate content regardless of complexity. More improvements and features for everyone are to come in this release and we can’t wait to see what you create with WordPress 5.9!

Stay Tuned Stay tuned for more updates as the date draws near. If you want to help, the best thing you can do is test everything! For all the details, check out this Make Core post.

Video props: @annezazu (also co-wrote the post) @michaelpick @matveb @beafialho @javiarce @critterverse @joen.

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As previously announced, State of the Word will be livestreamed from New York City. That means that you can join the fun either online or in person, on December 14, 2021, between 5 and 7 pm EST!

To join State of the Word 2021 online, check your Meetup chapter for a local watch party, or simply visit wordpress.org/news, where the livestream will be embedded.

If you would like to participate in person in New York City, please request a seat by filling out the registration form by Sunday, November 28. Not all requests will receive a seat due to venue capacity, but everyone who requests one will receive further notification on Tuesday, November 30.

In person attendees will be asked to show their COVID vaccination card at the venue entrance, and are expected to follow the safety measures in place. Because of these safety measures, there is a maximum of 50 attendees.

Request a seat

Whether you participate in person or online, we are so excited to see you on December 14! Don’t forget, State of the Word will be followed by a Question & Answer session. If you have a question for Matt, you can send your question ahead of time to ask-matt@wordcamp.org, or ask during the event in the YouTube chat.

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In this episode, WordPress’s Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, answers two recently asked questions. Tune in to hear what those questions were and her response, in addition to this week’s small list of big things.

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording.

Credits * Editor: Dustin Hartzler * Logo: Beatriz Fialho * Production: Chloé Bringmann * Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

References * W3Techs WordPress Usage Statistics * WordPress 5.9 Development Cycle * Call for Team Rep Nomination

Transcript Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:40

So I was in a meeting recently, which I realize isn’t saying much for me since I spend a quarter of my time in meetings. But in this particular meeting, I was asked a couple of questions that I absolutely loved. The first question was, “if there were one thing you could change in people’s minds about WordPress, what would it be?” And my answer, predictable though it may be, was that I want to change the idea that WordPress is just a blogging platform.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:06

WordPress has grown into a lot more than that. But the idea of a content management system, even now, sometimes gets a mental shorthand where content is a stand-in for the word writing or words. If you’re using WordPress today in an enterprise context, or as part of a governmental agency, or if you use it in a classroom setting, you know that your content cannot be confined that way. And if you’re supporting or building anything to hand off to clients, you know that timely, easy-to-ship changes on a site are considered a vital part of any overarching brand and marketing strategy. And when was the last time that any marketing strategy was literally only about the words?

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:51

So that was the first question. And also my first answer. There is also this kind of annual, not fear, necessarily, but this annual question that is sort of related that is raised to me and has been asked of me recently, that I’m just going to give you a small answer to. One annual worry that I get every year around November and December is, “What are we going to do about the fact that the term blog and blogging are declining in search popularity?” And I was gonna say it’s been a while since I answered that in any sort of public format. But I think maybe I’ve never answered it in a public format at all. And so I’m just going to answer it here. Because I think maybe a lot of people have that same question.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 02:36

So number one, I think that the way that people search now is different. There’s a lot more semantic cognition. This is not the way to answer this — search engines are smarter now. So like, it used to be the case with early search engines that yeah, there was a lot of just like, individual search terms that were looked for. But now, people are asking full questions; they have, essentially, an entire sentence that they are searching for. And then, search engines are able to parse that information better and get more high-quality answers and information for them. So like, that’s one thing that I’m already not worried about. If people are searching for individual words anymore, it’s so that they can get a definition of that word. So I’m not specifically worried about a decline in search volume for the word blog or blogging for that reason. But the answer to my first question, if there is probably the real reason that I’m not actually super worried about any decline in search volume for the word blog, or blogging, is that WordPress has really moved beyond that. And since we have moved beyond that, then it doesn’t necessarily make sense for WordPress as an entity for WordPress as a project to get overly hung up on the idea that the term blog has gone out of fashion.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 03:52

Okay, now that I did my first question, and the answer, and then an additional question that only ever gets asked in private and is being answered by me for the first time in public, I will tell you now, the second question that I loved, someone asking of me, and that question is this: “What is one thing you’d like people to see or experience, right when they first land on wordpress.org?” Now, I often don’t get asked questions about the wordpress.org website, like administrative tasks, things that we need to update, move around where they should go. Sure. But like, “Josepha, what’s the point and purpose of this site?” Never. I’ve never been asked that, and so I was really excited that someone asked me, and I’m going to give you a heads up. I think some of you might disagree with my answer.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 04:40

So the primary thing that I want people to see or experience when they first get to wordpress.org, the website is the depth of WordPress. Not which audience segment they should belong to or that we believe they should belong to or raw data about the CMS or even how much we care about the freedoms of open source. Now the first thing I want people to see on that site is that WordPress has not only 18 years of learned knowledge that every single new user benefits from, but that it also has 1,000s of really smart people making sure it works and gets better every day, now.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:19

WordPress is a Goliath in its field. I know that we cite this bit of context. Frequently, we say that we are 42% of the web. And that is true that is the percentage by usage. But in its field, which is websites that are using a content management system, we actually have a 65% market share. This is very easy to find. It’s on the W3Techs website: I can put a link in the show notes, but you could find it just by searching for it.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:46

So WordPress is a Goliath in its field of websites that are run using a CMS. Because we have always brought our learnings forward with us with the understanding that knowledge, when shared grows rather than diminishes. But open source, the heart of what defines this project, open source is not a Goliath; it’s barely even David somedays. Even though the web is built on scads of open source software, there’s a pervasive public perception that it is built by and for hobbyists or that it is inherently risky, and that if there were if it were worth something, then people would pay something. And I just know that if the first impression of WordPress, we’re, “we’ve got 18 years of experience and learning that brought us to today,” the rest of the sale to adopt software that protects other people’s freedoms would take care of itself. And I guess, to quote John Oliver, at this point, “And now this.”

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:59

Alright, that brings us now to our small list of big things. There are actually quite a few big things on this small list today. So number one, we have reached the beta phase for the year’s final release, which means that WordPress 5.9 beta one is happening tomorrow, Tuesday, November 16. And then seven days later, I believe on the 23rd, if I recall correctly, comes beta two.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 07:24

The second thing on my list is that team rep nominations are happening all over the project right now. I’ve got a post that I will share in the notes below that I believe all the team reps have put their team’s nomination posts on. So if you have had an interest in learning more about that and what it means to help keep teams kind of running in the WordPress project, then this is a great opportunity to check those out.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 07:49

And the third thing, this last thing actually isn’t in the next two weeks, but it is very important, nonetheless. Matt’s annual State of the Word is coming up on December 14. So basically a month from today. It’s going to join the growing list of in-person events that are on the calendar. It will be in New York City but will also be live-streamed across the world as usual. Keep an eye out for additional updates about that for anyone who, like me, really looks forward to this particular presentation from our project co-founder every year.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy 08:25

And that is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

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Howdy, World!

Mark your calendars; it’s almost time for State of the Word 2021!

State of the Word is the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg. Every year, the event allows us to reflect on the project’s progress and the future of open source. This year will include that and more.

Due to the pandemic, we moved the State of the Word online for the first time ever in 2020. This year, the event will be livestreamed from New York City. That will enable us to take as many folks as possible along for the ride!

Join Matt as he provides a retrospective of 2021, discusses the latest trends he’s seeing, celebrates the community’s amazing wins, and explores the future. Expect to hear about a range of topics, from WordPress 5.9 and Openverse to Web3 and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

What: State of the Word 2021

When: December 14, 2021, between 5 and 7 pm ET/10 – 12 am (December 15) UTC

How: If you’re watching from the comfort of your home or local watch party, the livestream will be embedded on wordpress.org/news.

Have a question for Matt?

State of the Word will be followed by a Question & Answer session. If you want to participate, you can either send your question ahead of time to ask-matt@wordcamp.org, or ask during the event in the livestream chat on YouTube.

If you’re new to State of the Word, the previous years’ recordings (below) will help you get a sense of what the event is about. Check them out:

State of the Word 2020 (online)
State of the Word 2019 – WordCamp US, St. Louis
State of the Word 2018 – WordCamp US, Nashville
All recordings

We hope to see you online on December 14th!

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.

[WordPress NYC Meetup] An In Person MeetUp: The State of the Word 2021 is in Manhattan.
[South Jersey WordPress Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party
[Morris County NJ WordPress Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party
[WordPress Montclair Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party
[WordPress Santa Clarita Valley] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party
[The Houston WordPress Meetup Group] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[North East Ohio WordPress Meetup] State of Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Birmingham WordPress Meetup] State of the Word Watch Party
[Lehigh Valley WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Greater Milwaukee Area WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[The East Bay WordPress Meetup Group] State of the Word 2021 (Online)
[Sacramento WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[WordPress Louisville] State of the Word Watch Party and Discussion (WP Louisville, KY)
[WordPress Medellín] State of the Word 2021: Discurso de Matt & Fiesta de Comunidad (Online)
[Port-au-Prince WordPress Meetup Group] Rejoignez-nous le 14 décembre pour regarder State of the Word 2021 (online)
[WordPress Coventry Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[WordPress Exeter] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[WordPress Meetup Torino] State of the Word 2021 Video Party (Online)
[Kigali WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Lagos WordPress Community] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Ijebu WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)
[Jinja WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party – WordPress Community Uganda (Online)
[Kampala WordPress Meetup] State of the Word Livestream
[WordPress Meetups Lahore] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (In-person)
[WordPress Bhopal] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (In-person)
[Bengaluru WordPress] WordPress Meetup – State of the word -Watch Party
[WordPress Singapore] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online)

Thanks to @anjanavasan @eidolonnight @rmartinezduque for their work on this post. The featured image was created by @beafialho.

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Each year, members of the WordPress community (users, site builders, extenders, and contributors) provide their valuable feedback through an annual survey. Key takeaways and trends that emerge from this survey often find their way into the annual State of the Word address, are shared in the public project blogs, and can influence the direction and strategy for the WordPress Project.

Simply put: this survey helps those who build WordPress understand more about how the software is used, and by whom. The survey also helps leaders in the WordPress open source project learn more about our contributors’ experiences.

To ensure that your WordPress experience is represented in the 2021 survey results, take the 2021 annual survey now.

Take the Annual Survey! (English)

You may also take the survey in French, German, Japanese, Russian, or Spanish. These are the top five languages (other than English) based on the number of WordPress locale downloads. For 2022, additional languages may be considered for translation.

The survey will be open through the end of 2021, and the results will be published in a future post on this blog for anyone to view. Next year, there will be a new format for this survey, including which segments and questions are included, so that your valuable time spent responding results in equally valuable information.

2020 Survey Results For the 2020 survey, more than 17,000 responses were collected, representing the highest submission volume in four years, up three times from the prior year. In the inaugural year of the survey (2015), over 50,000 responses were collected. Given the reach and adoption of WordPress, there is a significant number we have not reached. As you take the 2021 survey, consider sharing the link on social media and with other colleagues who use WordPress. Gathering feedback from more folks who benefit from WordPress will strengthen our project.

View the 2020 Survey Results (PDF)

The 2020 survey results show that the pandemic has had a major impact on how we operate as a community. With few in-person events, many community members continue to find it challenging to balance community contributions with their own personal and professional obligations.

Footnotes: Data security and privacy are paramount to the WordPress project and community. With this in mind, all data will be anonymized: no email addresses nor IP addresses will be associated with published results. To learn more about WordPress.org’s privacy practices, view the privacy policy.

Like last year, the 2021 survey will be promoted via a banner on WordPress.org, and throughout the make blogs. However, taking a moment to amplify these posts through your own social media and Slack accounts will ensure broader participation. Each of the translated surveys will be promoted through banners on their associated localized-language WordPress.org sites.

Thanks to @dansoschin for the initial draft of this post, and to @annezazu & @zackkrida for review!

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WordPress 5.8.2 is now available!

This security and maintenance release features 2 bug fixes in addition to 1 security fix. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 5.2 have also been updated.

WordPress 5.8.2 is a small focus security and maintenance release. The next major release will be version 5.9.

You can download WordPress 5.8.2 by downloading from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard → Updates and click Update Now. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.

For more information, browse the full list of changes on Trac, or check out the version 5.8.2 HelpHub documentation page.

Thanks and props! The 5.8.2 release was led by Jonathan Desrosiers and Evan Mullins.

In addition to the release squad members mentioned above, thank you to everyone who helped make WordPress 5.8.2 happen:

Ari Stathopoulos, Bradley Taylor, davidwebca, Evan Mullins, Greg Ziółkowski, Jonathan Desrosiers, Juliette Reinders Folmer, Mukesh Panchal, Sergey Biryukov, shimon246, and Yui.

Props @circlecube and @pbiron for peer review.

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October 2021 brought a lot of new things to WordPress, from release updates to new versions of Gutenberg. More notably, in the latest episode of WP Briefing, Executive Director Josepha Haden reminded us about the importance of freedom in open source platforms like WordPress.

Free speech has with it a lot of responsibility, just like being a part of a community. Governments or communities, or in our case, this software is built by the people who show up.

For WordPress, at 42% of the web, every small choice we make can cause huge changes in the way that people experience the web today and tomorrow.

Josepha Haden, Executive Director of the WordPress project

Last month was yet another chapter in this journey. So keep reading to learn what’s new.

WordPress 5.9: All proposed updates will likely be included * We announced thego/no-go for WordPress 5.9 featuresin mid-October. The release will probably include all the proposed features—though not all of them are ready yet, they should be by the proposed release date (December 14, 2021). * WordPress 5.9 will include a new default theme called Twenty Twenty-Two! The theme’s foundation will be strong, and the unpredictable yet reliable behavior of birds inspired the intentionally subtle design.

5.9 bug scrub sessions began in September and will continue each week until the release on December 14, 2021. View the full bug scrub schedule.
Many of you requested a few “must have” enhancements for the 5.9 release—follow the 5.9 Must-Haves project board to track their status.
The Test Team shared an overview of the team’s approach to testing WordPress 5.9.

Interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC.

Gutenberg releases: 11.6, 11.7, and 11.8 are here We released three new versions of the Gutenberg block editor between the end of September and October:

Version 11.6brings site logo cropping and rotation, block-level locking, improvements to Query Pagination block, support for child themes and thunks, template focus mode, and enhancements to the writing flow.
Gutenberg version 11.7includes bug fixes and polishes to the navigation block and editor, global styles and full site editing (including a handy back button that lets you quickly return to the site editor), and columns block support, among other improvements.
Finally, Gutenberg 11.8 is the second to last version to make it into the WordPress 5.9 release, and it comes with plenty of developments to the editing experience: featured Block Patterns, new animations for a few elements (like Dropzone and Insertion Point), spacing tools for heading blocks, and a lot more.

Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. For details on the latest updates, follow the “What’s next in Gutenberg” post.

WordCamp US returned virtually this year with more than 3,600 attendees WordCamp US 2021 was on October 1, and it was online for the first time. The event drew more than 3,600 attendees, 27 sponsors, and 18 remarkable speakers on topics ranging from accessibility and sustainability to e-commerce, to name a few.

Matt Mullenweg’s “State of the Word” is expected to be held as a separate event later this year, rather than being part of WordCamp US.

If you missed the live event, you can still watch the Yukon Track and the Columbia Track of WordCamp US 2021.

Team Updates: Polyglots monthly newsletter, a new Performance team, and more * The first edition of the Polyglots monthly newsletter went out on October 15, 2021. * The following teams opened up their call for team representatives last month, and more are coming soon: Core, Community, Themes, Accessibility, Support, Training, and Hosting. * A draft of the 2022 Global Community Sponsorship program proposal was released on October 8, 2021. * The October 2021 edition of People of WordPress, featuring WordPress e-commerce specialist Ronald Gijsel, went live. * Following excellent responses to the initial proposal, members of the Core Team announced the next steps in launching a performance team that aims to increase the performance (speed) of WordPress. * The Polyglots Team kicked-off bi-weekly Glotpress meetings aimed at improving the functionality of the plugin that powers translate.wordpress.org. * A sprint is planned on November 10-12 to explore a dedicated volunteer program for the Training Team, similar to the Deputy program in the Community Team. * WordPress.org profiles now display activity from the WordPress GitHub organization. * The Test Team shared results of the tenth Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach Program: Pattern Party. * Answers from the third round of questions from the FSE Outreach Program are now out! * The Docs Team is consulting with independent legal experts to explore whether there are issues with having Gutenberg (which is dual-licensed GPL + MPL) coexist with other contents in WordPress (our documentation has a CC0 license and the code is GPL). * The Themes Team shared a recap of work happening on automation and improvement processes for the WordPress Themes directory. The Team also shared a p2 post highlighting the performance impact of jQuery on WordPress themes. * The Marketing Team participated in a contributor ladder workshop to help plan their future activities. * The feature recap of the WordPress Translation Day 2021 is out from the Polyglots and Marketing teams, with the results of the Polyglots appreciation nominations 2021.

Sign up for the Polyglots monthly newsletter, if you haven’t already.

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

The Design Team is working on redesigning the wordpress.org/gutenberg landing page, and has already shared a prototype.
The team has also shared a few other concepts where they have requested feedback from contributors:
- Site Editing iA Concepts: Part1 and Part 2
- Block theme switching concepts
Version 18.5 of WordPress for iOS and Android are now available for testing!
The Accessibility Team is requesting feedback on a new Gutenberg Pull request that announces formatting changes or screen readers.

Share your feedback on the new Gutenberg landing page design in Trac or by commenting on the blog post by November 5, 2021.

Keep an eye out for WordCamp Spain, Sâo Paulo, and Taiwan 2021 We had several WordPress events in October, and several more to look forward to the rest of the year:

We’re seeking a new host city for WordCamp US 2022.
WordCamp Europe 2022 has extended its call for organizers.
WordCamp Italia 2021 was held online on October 22-23, 2021. The event had 23 speakers, 17 sponsors, and more than 1,000 registrants. Check out its YouTube channel to watch the event replay.
Another highlight of the month was WordCamp Nicaragua 2021 which was held on October 8-9, 2021.
The #WPDiversity working group of the Community Team organized an Allyship workshop for event organizers on October 28. Sign up now for the diversity events planned by the team for November!
A two-day contributor event focused on Learn WordPress, took place on October 29 and 31, 2021. There was also another contributor day on October 8, 2021, which involved working groups across the board, from accessibility to user testing.
The Test Team organized the following Hallway Hangouts this week—check out their recaps:
- Pattern Party Testing Walkthrough
- 5.9 Go/No go, Site Editor Internal Audit, and more

Don’t miss the following upcoming online WordCamps: WordCamp Spain 2021, WordCamp Sâo Paulo 2021, and WordCamp Taiwan 2021!

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

The following folks contributed to October 2021’s Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan, @harishanker, @rmartinezduque, @callye, @webcommsat, and chaion07.

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