Wordpress

WordCamp Asia 2024 is just a few days away—starting on March 7 in Taipei, Taiwan. This unique three-day summit will feature a distinguished lineup of speakers, numerous networking opportunities, and a closing Q&A experience with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The live Q&A session will be streamed for WordPress enthusiasts worldwide, beginning at 3:30 p.m. China Standard Time (7:30 a.m. UTC) on Saturday, March 9, 2024. Watch the event live stream on the WordPress YouTube channel or visit the event website for more details. What: Q&A Session with Matt Mullenweg When: March 9, 2024 at 7:30 a.m. UTC (Start of live stream) Where: Taipei International Convention Center Streaming: Watch the live stream on the WordPress YouTube channel. Have a question for Matt? If you want to participate, please submit your question via Slido from March 7 until about 10:00 a.m. UTC on Friday, March 8. Given the expected volume of submitted questions, only some will be answered live, while others will be covered in a follow-up post published after the event on make.wordpress.org/project. See you in-person and online on March 7! 谢谢! Thank you to @rmartinezduque, @eidolonnight, @cbringmann, and @bjmcsherry for reviewing this post. View the full article

Explore the impact you can make on WordPress without coding in this WordPress Briefing episode hosted by Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy. She’ll guide you through diverse non-coding contributions suitable for all skill levels, including content translation, photo submissions, event organization, and software testing. Listen and discover how you can enhance the WordPress community in ways that align with your interests and expertise. Credits Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Brett McSherry, Chloé Bringmann Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes WordCamp Asia 2024 Contributor Day WordPress Photo Directory Polyglots WordPress Support Forums Upcoming WordPress Events Make WordPress Testing Learn WordPress Small List of Big Things 2023 Annual Survey Results and Next Steps Gather Press Pilot Program Transcripts [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. [00:00:29] (Intro music) [00:00:40] Josepha: At the end of this week, WordCamp Asia is happening. It’s one of our largest events dedicated to WordPress, and it will cover a wide range of topics. From advanced concepts like running thriving businesses to more beginner things like building your first theme, there is bound to be something for you at this event. For folks who have the opportunity to attend in person, you might also be going to your first-ever Contributor Day. Now, as much as I want there to be something for everyone there, I recognize that it’s a little more frenetic than your average WordPress event. It’s not any less welcoming than the event that has like a schedule and, tracks, and rooms. [00:01:19] Josepha: But in my experience of any group of open source contributors, they get really excited when they are tackling problems together. And that’s most of what happens at a Contributor Day. It can make it a little difficult to see how you can join in. But never fear; the crew at the WordPress Briefing has you covered. We’ve got a couple of ways you can contribute immediately, no code required, and a handful of good next steps when you’re feeling comfortable and ready to level up. For total beginners, so you’ve got a WordPress site, or you know, you’re about to launch one. And you’re here to learn and meet people and hopefully find someone who answers the questions you feel too shy to mention in public. So these two ways of contribution are for you. First, you can contribute photos. WordPress has a photo directory for openly licensed photos, which are included in Openverse searches. Users can submit photographs to be used by folks all over the world. There are some basic guidelines, such as no faces or identifying characteristics. It can’t be overly edited or processed, but even photos taken on a smartphone are accepted. Because we understand that the best camera is the one you have on you. [00:02:30] Josepha: You can also contribute translations. If you speak a language other than English, you can visit translate.WordPress.org and help translate not only the WordPress software but also plugins, themes, and other parts of the WordPress project into your native language. Since more than half of all WordPress installations are in non-English languages, adding or improving translations is really impactful. We are actually at WordCamp Asia trialing a new self-serve translation day process. So that’s a great place to have a double impact. [00:03:03] Josepha: So those are your two completely code-free ways that you can contribute, completely beginner friendly ways to contribute at Contributor Day coming up later this week. And then for your next steps, so say that you’ve had your site for a while, you are an absolute expert in the admin, you’ve had to answer a few tough questions for yourself, you’ve watched a lot of tutorials, and so now you’re thinking of ways you can share that knowledge. [00:03:29] Josepha: Here are a few ways that you can exercise your new knowledge and really solidify it in your brain. Firstly, you can contribute help. Supporting other WordPress users is a great way to give back to WordPress. This can involve answering questions, providing guidance, or even providing the right resources to users. You can check out the WordPress support forums for more information, and they actually have a dedicated support team as well that works toward making sure that WordPress users have answers to the questions they are asking. You can head over to WordPress.org/support/forums and just pick an appropriate area for you, something that you are currently an expert in, and start answering questions. Start contributing. [00:04:10] Josepha: Second thing you can do is you can contribute patterns. So WordPress has a dedicated Patterns directory, which stores a list of Block patterns. So custom designs that were created using blocks in Gutenberg that then can be used across any WordPress site, anyone’s WordPress site. You can submit those patterns, any pattern that you built, to the directory, and then they can be used by people all around the world. Basically, like anything with WordPress, if you put it in there, it can be used by anyone all around the world. The third thing is that you can contribute events. This is one of my favorite ways to contribute. Organizing in person events to an extent has no code requirement to it, but also it does kind of require that you have a good understanding of your local community and have a willingness to get out there and build your network. WordPress is where it is today thanks to its excellent community and all the lovely in-person events that happen all over the world. They bring our community together, and anyone can contribute by helping to organize just a small gathering or support an in-person event. [00:05:13] Josepha: The fourth way that you can level up your contributions is to contribute by breaking things. I know that sounds weird, but testing the software to see where it breaks is actually a really valuable contribution. It’s as easy as downloading the WordPress beta tester plugin and the test reports plugin to a WordPress installation, Preferably a testing one, not one that’s currently publicly in use. But you can test out the newest version of WordPress before the release and provide useful feedback to the development team. And the fifth way that you can level up your contribution is to contribute learning. Not that you are learning as a contribution, but what one person can learn through a tutorial or documentation, another person has to learn through discussion and hands-on learning. This team, the folks over at learn.WordPress.org, they are the official team and official learning platform and resource for WordPress. They host video tutorials. Yes, but also host live online workshops, courses and even provide lesson plans on different topics related to WordPress. So if you are an educator or otherwise really like to help spread knowledge around, pass around the knowledge that has been hard-earned by you, this is an excellent opportunity. [00:06:28] Josepha: And of course, if you are brave and afraid of nothing, then you can just go to Contributor Day and move from table to table until something sounds interesting to you. You don’t have to have a plan. Your whole plan can absolutely be to wander until you are found. [00:06:45] (Music interlude) [00:06:52] Josepha: That brings us now to our small list of big things. It’s actually a very small list today. I’ve got two things on it. [00:07:00] Josepha: The first is that a couple of weeks back, we published the results from the 2023 annual survey. So, each year, we collect some high-level data about trends and themes across this vast ecosystem of users and site builders, people who extend WordPress core, and contributors who build WordPress core to help inform decision-making and provide valuable feedback on the project status. I looked at the results from our last survey. We had a bit of an increase in the respondents, not as much as we would have liked, but still a little bit greater number than we had in the past couple of years. And I have a lot of questions myself about what we are doing compared to what we are being asked to do and so go take a look at the blog post that has some highlights from it. It’s got a couple of contextual pieces of information in there as well, and come with your questions to WordCamps around the world or ask them in community meetings as you find them. [00:07:58] Josepha: And then the second thing is actually that we have kind of a pilot program going on. There’s a proposal out right now about GatherPress. It’s a group of community leaders that have built a tool, a community plugin, to help gather WordPress events a bit better and a bit more “open source-ely”. It’s open currently to anyone who is running a WordPress meetup group that is interested in learning more about how a WordPress-first and open source first community gathering tool might look. [00:08:32] Josepha: I’ll have a link to the proposal in the show notes that’ll give you more detailed information and give you an opportunity to figure out how you can join that pilot and help us figure out whether it will work or not ultimately for WordPress. 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 fellow brand new WordCamper. But 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. [00:09:13] Josepha: Thanks again for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. View the full article

WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 is here and 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 6.5 Beta 3 in four ways: PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).Direct DownloadDownload the Beta 3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.Command LineUse the following WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=6.5-beta3WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 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 6.5 is March 26, 2024. That’s only four 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 more information. Catch up on what’s new in WordPress 6.5: Read the Beta 1 announcement for details and highlights. How to test this release Your help testing the WordPress 6.5 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 6.5. 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. Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta/RC Between Beta 1, released on February 13, and the final Release Candidate (RC) 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. Beta 3 updates and highlights WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 contains more than 45 updates to the Editor since the Beta 2 release, including more than 35 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 2 using these links: GitHub commits for 6.5 since February 21 Closed Trac tickets since February 21 Double the haiku for Beta 3 Find a Beta bug, it will help the team a lot, and improve WordPress! – submitted by @lada7042 In code, dreams are bold, WordPress’s story unfolds, Beta journey’s told. – submitted by @huzaifaalmesbah Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin, @swissspidy, @adarshposimyth, @davidbaumwald View the full article

WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 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 2 on a test server and site. You can test WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 in four ways: PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).Direct DownloadDownload the Beta 2 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.Command LineUse the following WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=6.5-beta2WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 Beta 2 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 6.5 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 more information. Catch up on what’s new in WordPress 6.5: Read the Beta 1 announcement for details and highlights. How to test this release Your help testing the WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 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 6.5. 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. Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta 2 Between Beta 1, released on February 13, and the final Release Candidate (RC) 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. Beta 2 updates and highlights WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 contains more than 50 updates to the Editor since the Beta 1 release, including 40+ 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 1 using these links: GitHub commits for 6.5 since February 14 Closed Trac tickets since February 14 A Beta 2 haiku Help out with testing Contribute! Make an impact Let’s find all those bugs Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin, @huzaifaalmesbah, @rajinsharwar, @swissspidy, @courane01. View the full article

In the latest WordPress Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses the Interactivity API, a new foundational tool that helps developers create memorable interactive front-end experiences. She is joined by special guests and sponsored contributors Ryan Welcher and Mario Santos, who share more about this impactful addition to the WordPress developer experience. Credits Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Guest: Mario Santos Guest: Ryan Welcher Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Brett McSherry Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes Create block template for the Interactivity API GitHub tracking issue changes in the API Interactivity API docs Interactivity API Movies demo Interactivity API GitHub discussions Ryan Welcher Codes Small List of Big Things Online monthly Docs Team Contributor Day Share your feedback about the new WordPress Events Page! Improving block development documentation: 2023 recap and a look ahead Transcripts [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. [00:00:29] (Intro music) [00:00:40] Josepha: I have with me today a couple of guests, Ryan Welcher and Mario Santos, who have joined me to talk about the Interactivity API. This is an API that we’ve been working on for quite a while, and it’s a fascinating thing. It’s really specifically user-facing in its functionality but makes a lot of work streamlined for everyday developers, whether you are building something for yourself, for your family, or for a client. This whole project probably is gonna really speak to you. [00:01:10] Josepha: Hi, guys, and welcome to the show. First-time guests, both of you. Right? [00:01:15] Ryan: Yes. First time for me. [00:01:17] Mario: Thanks for inviting us. [00:01:18] Josepha: Yeah. Well, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, like your name, what you do with WordPress, how you contribute to the project, something like that? [00:01:27] Ryan: I can go first. My name is Ryan Welcher. I’m a developer advocate and sponsored by Automattic. Then, I contribute full-time to the WordPress project by creating documentation, doing live streams, creating videos, and just generally trying to be helpful in in the space to help engineers and extenders work with the various APIs in WordPress. [00:01:46] Josepha: I love the just generally trying to be helpful part. Mario, what about you? [00:01:52] Mario: He really is. He really does it. [00:01:54] Josepha: I know. [00:01:55] Mario: I’m Mario Santos. I’m also a sponsored contributor, and I’m more focused on the project management and developer. I consider myself a mix of both. Right now I’m working on projects that are focused on improving the developer experience especially. That can go from the Block API to the Interactivity API; that is the topic today. [00:02:16] Josepha: Very nice. Very nice. Just lots of helping that everyone’s trying to do. I think that’s a good thing. So, we’re talking about the Interactivity API today. And, Mario, I believe it was almost a year ago that you first put this proposal out into the WordPress project. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about just, like, where the idea of this came from? Like, I know it wasn’t originally called the Interactivity API, but, like, what was you said you do some a bit of product, a bit of development. Like, what was it about this idea that was so important to you? [00:02:48] Mario: Yeah. Sure. So, basically, well, the proposal came, like, one year ago, but it has been in the works, like, for many years, I would say. Just to give a bit more context, previously, before being a sponsored contributor, I was working at a startup called Frontity Framework, and we were building a React framework to enable rich user experiences on top of WordPress. [00:03:13] Mario: So basically, it was a framework for headless WordPress. And at some point, we became sponsored contributors, the idea was to bring those user experiences to those rich and cool websites that lead to WordPress. So, you don’t need an external framework to create them, and you can do that directly in WordPress. So that’s where the idea of the Interactivity API comes from. From there, we started exploring different possibilities and tailoring it more to WordPress to ensure it works with its APIs. And I think after many many months working on that, the Interactivity API is the result. [00:03:54] Josepha: I just wanted to note that you started that answer with, like, the proposal was about a year ago, but the work had been happening for a long time. I think that’s generally true, and it’s not something that we always really acknowledge. This happens with patents also. This is going to be a strange tangent, but this is how we do in in my brain. This is how my brain works. So frequently, you’ll see a brand new product, but the patent for it was, like, 30 years beforehand, like, way before you ever see anything. And I think that’s kinda how this works also with software development. Like, the idea, has been going for a long time. [00:04:27] Josepha: The problem was identified a long time ago. And by the time you see something that helps to solve the problem or bring a new set of features to you, like, you didn’t know, but it had been being worked on for, like, five years or something. And I think that’s such a fascinating thing. That’s always apparent to me, but I think it’s not really apparent for a lot of people in the, in I don’t know, who use software. I was gonna say in the space, quote, unquote, but that’s not even it. Like, it’s the people who are using software. We don’t know how long anything’s been under development. We just know that at some point, a magical thing appeared, and we get to use it. [00:05:03] Josepha: So speaking of the problems that we have identified that we’re trying to solve with this. Like, was there an inherent problem that you all were trying to solve as you were coming up with this idea around the Interactivity API itself? [00:05:16] Mario: I would say that trying to summarize it, it covers many things, but the main problem was that creating those kinds of interactions in the client was kind of difficult. You had to manage many things many tools, and each developer could come up with different solutions, and maybe they don’t combine well together. So, the idea is to provide an extended way so developers don’t have to take care of many things. They just have to take care of the interactions they wanna create. And ensuring that it works well with the WordPress way, it works well with the block system, and any block created with this Interactivity API can communicate with each other. You can combine those blocks, and you are not gonna encounter any problem. So, I would say that the main issue we were trying to solve is that there wasn’t a standard solution. There were different approaches taken by different developers, and that could create some issues. So, until now, Gutenberg has been mainly focused on the editor side and how blocks are created. And this is a first attempt to to cover the part of the front end, the interactions that users may want to create in the front end. [00:06:31] Ryan: It solves a ton of problems. But, I mean, coming from someone like, I have a fair amount of agency experience. I’ve been, you know, you’re working on large projects. And every time someone solves a problem, they solve it slightly differently. And that’s problematic because you switch teams or, you know, someone else picks up the code base, and all of a sudden, now they have to learn your custom system that’s slightly different from the one that I built last week and the one that, you know, someone else built two weeks earlier. And this takes the guesswork out. It takes the sort of the plumbing out of the equation. One of the reasons I really loves working with WordPress when I started working with WordPress was that when I was building for clients, I didn’t have to worry about building the CMS. I didn’t have to worry about building a menu system or figuring out how to handle media. [00:07:10] Ryan: I just had to do the things that that client was paying me to do. Like, I just had to make their site look the way that they wanted it to. And with the Interactivity API, I think there’s a bit of that where I don’t have to worry about figuring out how am I gonna get all these pieces to talk to each other on the front end. It’s all there. I just have to connect the dots, and it makes it very, very simple. I’m building the site right now for a workshop that I’m gonna be giving a WordCamp Asia, which is a a shameless plug. Sorry. [00:07:33] Josepha: Coming up so fast, y’all. WordCamp Asia is, like, two weeks away. [00:07:37] Ryan: I’m so excited. I have so much work to do. But I’ve built an entire voting system on a website where people can pick what we’re going to be talking about in my workshop, and I built it in the Interactivity API, and it took me, you know, probably five hours. And that’s me trying to learn some things and mess around with it. And to do that without the Interactivity API would have probably been an entire React-based, you know, completely outside of WordPress. I would have loaded one thing on the page and had it build out my whole application, and now I’m doing it with blocks and I’m doing it with a block theme. So if I wanna move those blocks around. I can move the blocks around. I can change anything that I wanna change inside of WordPress the way I would normally, and all that in interactivity just still works. And that’s It’s awesome. I just I love it. I can’t like, the Interactivity API, not my website. [00:08:26] Josepha: But also both. Like, it can be both. [00:08:28] Mario: I wanted to say that I think it’s a great point. I like to think about it like having the best of both worlds. Right now, we have modern frameworks like React, Vue that are used to create these cool websites. And I think the Interactivity API plus WordPress brings everything together. Like, you can create those cool user experiences while keeping the full power of WordPress, its management system, the Block editor, and to be honest, I don’t think there’s anything like that out there. Like having the best of both both worlds because we are still working with blocks, and that’s amazing. [00:09:04] Ryan: Given that it’s still, it’s not even been released yet. Like, it’s coming very soon. But. [00:09:08] Josepha: Yeah. This is all still in the Gutenberg plugin. So, like, if you don’t know what we’re talking about, get the Gutenberg plugin. [00:09:16] Ryan: But just how mature the API is now, considering it is still kind of not even fully released, it’s only gonna get better? I just think it’s awesome. So, kudos to Mario and your team for doing all this stuff. [00:09:28] Mario: Thank you. Kudos to everyone involved. [00:09:32] Josepha: So, I’ve a question that I think probably, Ryan, you can start with, but then also probably, Mario, you’re gonna have some opinions on also. In this conversation so far, we’ve done a lot of, like, when you want to have these interactions and also when you want to have these cool experiences. For folks who actually do not know what the Interactivity API is yet, and they don’t know what we’re talking about when we say these interactions like, what exactly are we talking about from a user perspective? Like, what types of things will users be able to see when they are experiencing the Interactivity API’s features and functionality. [00:10:07] Ryan: I think it’s a great question. From a user standpoint, it’ll just look like your regular website, I think. Depending on what you’re doing. So, like the interactions that we’re talking about is when you’re in the browser and you wanna click a button and expand something, for example, or you wanna click an image and have the lightbox pop-up, which is in core now, that’s driven by the Interactivity API, but these interactions are basically when a user wants to interact with something, what it does. That’s a really generic way of saying it. [00:10:34] Josepha: Our current favorite example and, Ryan, it sounds like you also have another example. But our current favorite example is like a movie collection site, you know? And so, like, when we’re talking about what the Interactivity API is going to power, it’s things like, when you favorite a series of movies, and then you can, and it just updates that on the fly, and you’ll be able to in essentially real-time as instant as reasonably possible based on your computer and stuff. [00:11:03] Josepha: Like, then look at your list of things that you favorited or things like that. Like, for folks who don’t understand interactive site like, all of us know that that, like, if you get on a site, you have interacted with it. But when we’re talking about Interactivity API, we’re talking about types of direct actions users can take. Right? [00:11:19] Mario: I would say yes. They are just only triggered by some actions. It could be scrolling, clicking, or, or whatever. But, it can go from a simple example like drop down or a popover to more complex things like the movies demo, where you can navigate and the page is not reloading, and that allows you to play a trailer. It starts in a pop-up, and you can keep navigating through different pages, and the trailer keeps playing without reloading. Another example could be instant search; like you start typing the search, and it directly updates the list of films, in this case, that are shown, those kinds of things that happen In the browser. [00:12:00] Josepha: And Ryan said you, you said that you, like, built a whole survey system, A whole polling system. [00:12:06] Ryan: Yeah, a voting system. So there’s a series of buttons, each one representing a certain topic, and people can vote, and it tallies the amount. So each, I’m calling them recipes, has amount of time associated with it, and then so you vote until you run out of time, at which point, like in its tracking it all, and it’s showing you how much time you voted, how much is left, and once you’ve run out of time it blurs like it disables all of the voting buttons so you can’t add more because you run out of time. [00:12:30] Ryan: So if you remove one, you can add again. It’s very, very powerful. And, like, before the Interactivity API, you would have to have, I would have built that whole thing in React, and it would have been one single application that just get loaded on a page. And I just think it’s amazing. And, like the, the ability to create what are called, like, single page applications or what have always sort of been called SPAs or single page applications where you’re not reloading the browser every single time you click on a link. You have to do some things to make that work, but that’s just available to you and in WordPress. That’s amazing. I just think that’s so neat. I mean, it’s already powering things like the Query Loop block has the ability to move pagination without reloading the page, which is, sounds like a sort of a like a okay, great, like sort of, you know, mundane thing but imagine you had two or three different query loops sitting on your homepage and you wanted to be able to paginate through each one and not refresh the page. That’s a fantastic user experience that now is just enabled and otherwise was not possible prior to the Interactivity API. [00:13:28] Josepha: I feel like the Query Loop block was, like, a three-year project four years ago. And I had forgotten about it, which is surprising because I was so concerned with it when we were working directly on it all the time. But yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly the kind of example. So we’ve talked about kind of the user thing and people who are gonna build stuff for clients. But, like, if you’re a contributor and you want to figure out more about either how to use this or how to expand on what is already there. [00:14:01] Josepha: We already talked about how it’s in the Gutenberg plugin. It’s kind of experimental over there. But, like, do you all have like, good first bugs? Things that can be worked on in there? Or is there, like, an experiment zone where people can just be like, this is what I tried with the Interactivity API until it broke? How do people work with that? [00:14:20] Mario: I would like to clarify first, it’s right now, it’s private in, it’s a private API in WordPress core in 6.4, And it’s public in Gutenberg, but it’s gonna be a public API already in WordPress 6.5. So, yes. Anyone can start testing it. The best way to get involved is first sharing what interactions you want to see. I mean, everyone has different ideas, and we will love to know the interactions that people want to create using the Interactivity API, so that would be the first step. Then, test it, create your own blocks or site, and send feedback what do you like what you don’t like. Raise issues, and for that, we are mainly using GitHub. We created a new category in GitHub in the Gutenberg plugin discussions, and we try to to keep everything there. [00:15:13] Mario: So if you have any questions any feedback, you can share it there. You can also find more discussions about the road map, the change log, many things that are going on right now. And, yeah, I would say those are the ways of getting involved, and I can also expect, maybe Ryan can tell you more here, to start working more on tutorials or videos or whatever. And for me, personally, I would love to see the community working on that as well. [00:15:43] Ryan: Yeah. I can, yeah. I think that from a contributor standpoint, especially those who are trying to get into contributing, because, I mean, it’s not not complicated. Let’s put it that way, like the Interactivity API. And that’s not meaning to be a barrier to anyone, but a great place to start is documentation. A great place to start is going through those docs and making sure they’re up to date and, you know, saying, oh, well, that’s supposed to do this, so let me go try that. And if it works, great. If it doesn’t, you know, file a bug, update the documentation, that’s a great way to get started. It’s gonna familiarize yourself with the code base and what it’s supposed to do. And then, sort of, just through osmosis, you’ll start to pick up more about it. And for anyone starting to contribute to the WordPress project in general, I would say starting with documentation or unit testing is a really, really great way to kinda, dip your toe in the water and not feel too frustrated. And tutorials and demos and show us what you’re building. We wanna see it. I mean, send it to me, and I will show everyone that I know. [00:16:40] Ryan: I mean, we wanna see what what people are building with it and because, you know, just like WordPress, I always use this example, but, like, people used to hack WordPress until we got a hook added for that particular thing that they were adding. So, if we don’t know what people are building or wanting to build with it, we can’t make those things happen. So knowing what people are building, how they’re building, and what they can’t build, what they’re running into, what issues they’re running into is the best way to contribute. So, so people smarter than me can build it for you. [00:17:08] Josepha: I love that call out, frankly. So there’s, you know, the theory of tech adoption. And for things like the Interactivity API where we’re still kind of in the early adopter phase like, Ryan, you’re an early adopter. You’re doing everything you think you want to be able to do until it breaks. And, like, I love, like, test it till it fails as a concept of how to get involved in something because, like, you’re just experimenting, and we encourage experimentation in open source and in open source software and certainly in WordPress. And so, like, it is an unusual thing to think of, like, the best way that I can give back to this project, that I can contribute to this project and make sure that it continues to succeed long term is by using it until the wheels fall off and then tell people what made the wheels fall off. Like, that is a change in thought, But you’re right. Like, it’s a very old school open source idea to just get in there and see where it breaks, and tell us. That’s it. That’s all we need. And I love it. [00:18:08] Josepha: But I just passed my 9-year anniversary being a sponsored contributor, and I was in WordPress for a little bit before it. And so, like, I’m officially the old guard of us, and so the fact that I’m, like, so excited about the fact that people are gonna come in and break Mario’s stuff. Mario, don’t be scared. It’s how it works. But also, like, I do find that very exciting. [00:18:31] Mario: I’m willing to see how people break things; that’s what we need. I totally agree with your reasoning. [00:18:38] Josepha: Exactly. So I do have kind of, just, like, a final question for y’all. If there were one thing that you wanted the people who are listening to the WordPress Briefing to know about the Interactivity API, like a hidden gem, a little secret trick. Like, what would it be? [00:18:57] Mario: For me, the most exciting part of the Interactivity API is the functionality the client-side navigation enables because there are many, many things there. And I’m sure that there are many things we haven’t thought about yet, and the community will come up with some ideas and that would be amazing. [00:19:17] Ryan: For me, the thing is, I love how integrated it is with WordPress, and I know a lot of thought has gone into that without getting too into the weeds. The reasons the decisions that were made were made was so all the hooks and filters and all that goodness that we’ve had for 20 years is still gonna work. And with the HTML API, the tag processor stuff that’s going on behind the scenes, it’s just so cool. It works so well with WordPress. It just works and that’s probably it for me. When I work with it, I’m not having to do any weird janky filtering or stuff that, like, you know, the things that I want to do are not hindered by the Interactivity API. The rather, I’m able to do more things because of it. [00:19:58] Mario: I prefer Ryan’s answer. [00:20:00] Mario: It’s something really important and it’s something we usually take for granted that it just works with WordPress APIs and the Block Editor, but if you think more about it, it’s amazing. Like, It’s what makes it really powerful, I I believe. [00:20:15] Josepha: For what it’s worth, I think that’s true for a lot of, like, the R&D type things that we’re working on in the project right now. Right? Across Our ecosystem, like WP Playground. It is mind-boggling how progressive that is as a concept, and we currently have, like, you know, 25 ideas about what we could do with it, and we’re currently working on, like, five because we’ve got two and a half developers on it or something. But, like, the expectation that it will just work is there for everybody who has, is not part of the R&D process, but for everyone else who’s, like, been watching its development over time, shocking. Shocking that it works at all. Not because it wasn’t supposed to work, but because, like, if someone had asked you five years ago if it was gonna be possible to run WordPress development environments locally and then also just export it and import it into whatever host you want. Like, without a host, without a server, we would all think that you were nuts. [00:21:22] Josepha: Amazing what’s happening there and, like, some of the things that we’re seeing, people who are, like, researching with AI in the WordPress space doing? Equally shocking. All of these things. Like, had you said anything to me about it five years ago, I’d be like, well, that is a mystery. So, every once in a while, I do have wild ideas about things that I wish we could do with our software. And so yesterday, I went and looked at a prototype for something that someone built based on a wish that I had in 2019. In 2019, I was like, you can play Skyrim on an Amazon Dot using just your voice. So like, why can’t we build a website? [00:22:01] Josepha: And then in 2021, someone prototyped that for me. It was ridiculous. It was very bad. It was hilarious. But, also, like, it took 35 minutes to create a ‘Hello world’ page, which was ridiculous. And now, like, what we’re looking at, the research that I keep seeing from that AI space is people saying, like, I’m gonna put in a plain text prompt. I need a website as a yoga instructor who also makes custom hats. Right? And then, like, poof. You have this thing that kinda looks like a website with your basic functions and features using the blocks that we have created for WordPress. Like it’s fascinating how far it’s come. And that’s in 2021. It was literally impossible the last time that I was talking about it with anyone, equally literally impossible. Everyone’s like, plain language prompts for stuff, like that is just a pipe dream. Get away from us. And now I keep seeing, like, these demos of the research, and it’s not as far away as we all thought it was. For all these things, Playground, Interactivity API, The AI research is being done. Like, we’re just a walking R&D group over here in WordPress, and I love it. It’s fascinating. We’re just making the impossible possible every day, and I think that’s really cool. [00:23:16] Ryan: So cool. [00:23:18] Josepha: Sorry. I got really sidetracked. Do y’all have anything that you wanted to be sure to share about either the Interactivity API or anything that’s coming up? Something you wanna make that our listeners know? [00:23:29] Mario: I would just like to emphasize that we love feedback. Please share your feedback. If you test it, yeah, if you think it’s bad feedback, share it with us as well. That’s especially the feedback we like. I don’t like this part. That’s great. We we want to know because the idea is that it serves all purposes for this kind of interactions. That nothing new, but I would like to emphasize that part. [00:23:56] Josepha: You know what? There’s nothing new under the sun. It’s fine. You’re good. You should always tell people what you need. [00:24:01] Ryan: If you’re interested in getting started with the Interactivity API and just don’t have any idea where to begin, there’s actually a pack there. There’s a Create Block template. So the Create Block package allows you to to quickly scaffold blocks. And there’s a template that’s part of the Gutenberg repository. It’s been published on it and NPM. And it will scaffold a very simple block out for you and it’ll give you, it’ll show you all the plumbing and how all the pieces work together. So, I think that’s a fantastic place to get started. It’s a very simple block. It just basically shows and hides a message, but it’s all done via the Interactivity API, but it’s a really, really great sort of, like, like, ‘Hello world’ style. I’m gonna shamelessly self-promote myself at WordCamp Asia. I’ll be at WordCamp Asia this year doing a workshop where I will be doing some stuff with your Interactivity API. But, if you’re there and you wanna chat more about the Interactivity API, I am all ears, and I love talking about this stuff. [00:24:51] Josepha: Cool. Ryan, Mario thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a wonderful conversation. [00:24:58] Ryan: Thank you. [00:24:58] Mario: Thank you. [00:25:01] Josepha: So I hope that you all find that whole project as fascinating as I find it. The Interactivity API is, I know, something that we’ve kind of been talking about for a while. It showed up specifically in State of the Word, and it’s hard to understand how important, how vital that work is going to be until you really get your hands on it. So I recommend you get in there. You take a look at it. I think also Ryan has a few live streams that he does, and he’s planning on a couple for the Interactivity API coming up. And so just keep an eye out for all of that as we go. [00:25:37] (Music interlude) [00:25:49] Josepha: Now that brings us to our small list of big things. Today, it’s a bunch of feedback and documentation. So, first things first. Did you know that the Documentation Team holds an online monthly Contributor Day on the fourth Tuesday of every month. It’s just an online docs day, and I love it. So, the next one that’s coming up is February 27th. We’re looking for folks to help. So show up, figure out how to get some docs done, and make the WordPress project easier to follow, one bit of documentation at a time. [00:26:16] Josepha: The next thing that I have is a request for feedback. So, we announced in December that we have a new centralized WordPress events landing page on WordPress.org, and we wanted to give more visibility to all kinds of WordPress events across the globe. But as always, we really could use your feedback about what is useful for you, what you had hoped to see, what you didn’t see. So, leave your comments with any relevant feedback about how you would improve those pages and the text on it. If you’re missing anything relevant, if there are ideas that you have for what could be there, all ideas are welcome. And then, the third thing that I have on our list today is another documentation thing. So, over the last year, a group of contributors have been working to improve the block development onboarding experience within the Block Editor handbook. That contains over 400 published pages, and the effort in 2023 to kind of overhaul that and make it easier was just the beginning. So, it’s a daunting task. It’s big. It’s complex, but improving documentation is one of the easiest ways to contribute to the WordPress project, especially If there are just quick fixes like typos or formatting. Feedback on the existing content, such as the new block tutorial, is invaluable. And so, if you have not taken a look at those yet, wander over to the show notes, click a link or two, take a look, get some feedback to us. [00:27:41] 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 like 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. [00:28:09] (Music outro) View the full article

Each year, WordPress seeks to collect high-level data about trends and themes across the vast ecosystem of users, site builders, extenders, and contributors to help inform decision-making and provide valuable feedback on the project’s status. For 2023, the survey process was updated to enhance accessibility, usability, analysis, and multilingual support. Additionally, a few questions were replaced or updated to ensure the survey captures relevant data on current and future WordPress topics. The data collected is used as one of many signals that inform the project’s road map and areas of focus, both near and long-term. Highlights from 2023 Overall, awareness and/or use of block-based features is up year over year, as well as resources such as Learn.WordPress.org. This reflects project-wide efforts to increase utilization of these respectively. However, positive sentiment about WordPress is down modestly, and more so among contributors. The analysis of the annual survey highlights certain areas that could benefit from increased attention in 2024. Here are the highlights split into three parts: logistics, general trends, and contributor sentiment. Logistics Completions were up 17% in 2023, though short of a goal to double them, despite increased promotion and partnership with some hosting partners. The Polyglots team translated the survey from English into 9 different languages, the most ever for the survey. Debuted a new platform, Alchemer, for improved accessibility, usability, data collection, administration, and analysis. The completion rate increased again from last year’s high of 63% to 79% in 2023, proving that investing some time in the new platform and clarifying wording was well worth it. General trends NPS was 30.1 overall, with contributors at 27.9 and non-contributors at 32. The NPS has trended downward since 2021, when it was 45. 60% of respondents indicate usage of Gutenberg, 8% are unsure, and 12% use something other than Gutenberg and/or the Classic Editor. This is up from 2022 (54%). 45% of respondents indicate that the WordPress Site Editor meets their site-building needs, 26% are indifferent, and 29% disagree. 61% of respondents indicate familiarity with block themes and plugins. While this question was not asked previously, in 2022, 53% said they had used blocks “In the new site editor.” Security, performance, and stability were the top three critical areas respondents considered when building their website, plugin, theme, or style variation. 63% agree that WordPress is as good or better than other CMSs, down from 68% in 2022 Respondents indicated that the best things about WordPress are that it is open source, has ample plugin options, incorporates good customization, is easy to use, and offers flexibility. This is similar to 2022. Limitless configurations, performance, scalability, accessibility, integration, hosting, and support all saw 100% or more increases compared to 2022 regarding favorite things about WordPress. Respondents cited “too many plugins,” “the site editing experience,” “security,” and “performance” as the top four worst things about WordPress. Most interestingly, though, 16% indicated that none of the 20 topics were terrible, and there was a 43% decrease in the number of people indicating that “site editing is difficult to learn.” Search engines and YouTube continue to be the two most common resources for finding information about WordPress, while those writing about WordPress, in general, saw a sharp decline year over year. Contributor sentiment 58% of self-identified contributors to WordPress said they agree with the project’s roadmap plans for “Phase 3” and “Phase 4” as a good plan to enhance the WordPress experience for developers, creators, and publishers alike. While about one-third of respondents indicated they contribute to the WordPress project, only about half knew how to get involved, knew about WordCamps and meetups, understood the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com, and knew the benefits of open source. Of 22 topics, the distribution of the top three things that WordPress needs to focus on from the perspective of contributors was broad, with only a 13.5% raw percentage point (1350 basis points) difference between performance (18.6%) in first position and collaborative editing (5.1%) in 22nd position. This shows a need for more consensus among contributors regarding where to focus resources and/or illustrates that the project has many essential elements with passionate supporters. Fewer contributors had a positive experience in 2023 (55%) versus 2022 (64%). Similarly, the feeling of being welcome in the WordPress community among contributors decreased to 57% versus 64% in 2022. Furthermore, contributors feel appropriately recognized less in 2023 (46%) than in 2022 (51%). Bringing it all together The 2023 annual WordPress survey participation and results highlight the possibility of survey burnout within the WordPress community and some declining overall satisfaction among contributors. There is an opportunity to increase awareness regarding critical initiatives such as WordCamps and other resources for WordPress users and contributors alike and to increase messaging on improvements made within the project to the CMS. What’s planned for 2024 In the next iteration of the survey, the plan is to improve the survey’s questions further to ensure they continue to provide valuable insight into the project’s trends. This means some questions will be replaced while others might be refined. Additionally, plans are being explored to distribute and promote the survey at each of the three annual flagship WordCamps (Europe, U.S., and Asia). This would be in contrast to a single yearly survey. More exploration on this topic will take place in the months to come. View the 2023 Slide Deck View a web-based version of the results. Note that this link may expire in the future. Thank you to @dansoschin for the analysis and editorial support. Thanks also to @angelasjin, @eidolonnight, and @cbringmann for their reviews and final edits. View the full article

WordPress 6.5 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, you should evaluate Beta 1 on a test server or site. Test WordPress 6.5 Beta 1 in four ways: PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).Direct DownloadDownload the Beta 1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website.Command LineUse the following WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=6.5-beta1WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 Beta 1 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 6.5 is March 26, 2024. Your help testing this version is key to ensuring everything in the release is stable. 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. How to help test this release 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 6.5 will include many new features previously only available through the Gutenberg plugin. Learn more about Gutenberg updates since WordPress 6.4 in the What’s New in Gutenberg posts for versions 16.8, 16.9, 17.0, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 17.4, 17.5, 17.6, and 17.7 (scheduled for release on February 14). WordPress 6.5 Beta 1 contains approximately 681 enhancements and 488 bug fixes for the editor, including about 229 tickets for WordPress 6.5 Core. Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta 1 The WordPress community sponsors a monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities. This reward doubles during the period between Beta 1 on February 13 and the final Release Candidate (RC) scheduled for March 19. 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. Discover what’s on the way in WordPress 6.5 This year’s first major release will add finesse and fine-tuning to how you control your site-building experience, with lots to explore specifically for developers. You’ll find more ways to manage your fonts and styles, notable upgrades to synced patterns, a collection of Site Editor and performance updates to help you get things done, and new ways to leverage design tools in Classic themes. WordPress 6.5 will include breakthrough foundational APIs that will start to transform how you use blocks to build memorable experiences. This release invites you to dig into these early-stage frameworks, discover how you’d like to see them evolve, and have an impact on their future improvements and capabilities. Excited yet? Keep reading for some highlights. Meet the Font Library Initially slated for release in WordPress 6.4, the Font Library is one of those great things worth the wait. It gives you new capabilities for efficiently managing a vital piece of your site’s design—typography—without coding or extra steps. With the Font Library, you can handle fonts across your site regardless of your active theme—much like how you manage assets in the Media Library. You can install local fonts or Google Fonts, and it’s easily extensible, with the ability to add your own custom typography collections. Synced patterns get an upgrade Synced patterns bring efficiency to the design process, letting you make global changes to particular layouts with minimal effort. However, there’s often a need to make contextual changes when it comes to content. WordPress 6.5 introduces new enhancements to synced patterns that let you override the content in each specific instance. You can choose what content can be updated within a synced pattern—while maintaining the design and layout you’ve already created. Use it for templated pieces like recipes, testimonials, or case studies that use recurring elements to frame unique content. This major release will introduce overrides for the Paragraph, Image, Heading, and Button blocks, with support for more blocks to come as work on synced patterns continues. Connecting blocks and custom fields or other dynamic content WordPress 6.5 will finally make it possible to connect core block attributes to custom fields. This capability lets you use the value of a custom field without creating custom blocks. For example, a digital publication could use custom fields with Paragraph and Image blocks. It could pull information from its individual staff writer profiles to dynamically display on its team page, like headshots and names. The Block Bindings API powers this functionality and is designed to be extensible enough for developers to connect blocks to any dynamic content—not just custom fields. If your data is stored elsewhere, you can easily point blocks to that new source with only a few lines of code. This is the first step in a larger project to simplify how custom fields and other dynamic content are managed. The Interactivity API gets baked into Core What started as just a taste in WordPress 6.4 with the lightbox feature for images is officially making its way into Core. The Interactivity API is a new framework that offers developers a standardized method to bring interactive front-end experiences, or interactions, to blocks. It aims to simplify the process, with less dependencies on external tooling, while maintaining optimal performance. Interactions create engaging user experiences, whether showing new comments or fetching search results without reloading a page, allowing visitors to interact with content in real time, or incorporating effects like countdowns and transitional animations that surprise and delight. Check out this demo site to get a taste of what this framework can do. 6.5 is just the beginning of bringing this developer experience into Core. Find out how you can follow along with the work or lend a hand and test more features. Get more from your revisions Revisions are the markers of progress. For creative projects, they’re also a welcome fallback when you’re working through a new design or concept. This release brings more detail to your style revision history in the Site Editor. Style revisions in 6.5 present a more detailed picture of your work, with design updates like time stamps, quick summaries that outline changes, and the ability to see a full list of revisions made—not just the previous 100. View revisions from the Style Book to see changes that aren’t reflected in the template you’re working on. Style revisions are also newly available for templates and template parts, giving you a broader view of your site’s changes. Expect to see more work happening to expand and improve revisions across the WordPress experience. It’s a foundational part of the collaborative editing and workflows focus of the Gutenberg project’s Phase 3. Classic themes can opt into appearance tools As the design experience in Block themes evolves and improves, many of these upgrades are also available for Classic themes. Theme authors can choose to add support for appearance tools to any Classic theme—even without the use of theme.json. Opting in gives designers and site creators using Classic themes access to a varied set of design options, from spacing and border controls to typography and color options. Switching themes can feel like a big undertaking, and for folks who aren’t ready to jump into the flexibility of Block themes, these pathways to adoption can help ease that tension. Once a Classic theme gets initial support for appearance tools, more design options will be automatically added as they become available. More design tools are on the way Each WordPress release brings more thought and attention to the way you can create with the Site Editor. The latest improvements to the design experience help bring your creative vision to life: Background images for Group blocks get size and repeat support, letting you play with subtle or splashy ways to add visual interest to your layouts. Aspect ratio support for the Cover block gives you more control over your Cover block images’ shape and size. Shadow support added to more blocks to help create layouts with visual depth or add a little personality to your design. Site Editor updates to streamline your workflow Bring ease and simplicity to your site-building process with the latest advancements to the Site Editor’s capabilities, from important interface improvements to upgraded tools. Going beyond Group blocks, you can now rename every block in the List View. You can also rename or duplicate individual patterns to help keep them organized. Other notable UI improvements add access to your block settings with a quick right-click from List View, adjust preferences with consolidated settings in the Editor preferences panel, and the ability to use the block toolbar on hover when you’re in Distraction Free mode. You’ll also notice a cleaner and more unified link-building experience that improves link controls, making it easier to create and manage links in various blocks. This release has a bounty of drag-and-drop enhancements to make your editing experience feel more intuitive. You’ll notice helpful visual adjustments, like displaced items in List View when you drag them around to reorganize. You’ll also find that you can drag and drop anywhere you’d like in the Editor, from the very beginning to the end of you workspace. New Data Views in the Site Editor Every piece of your site comes with a library of information and data. Organizing it, finding what you need, and making informed changes should be as effortless as your site editing experience. WordPress 6.5 includes data views for pages, templates, patterns, and template parts. You can view data in a table or grid view, with a new UI for toggling fields and making bulk changes. It’s a refreshing and feature-rich experience that leads the way for the upcoming Admin Redesign project on the WordPress roadmap. Plugin dependencies improve the plugin experience WordPress 6.5 improves how users manage plugins that require other plugins. Plugin authors can supply a new Requires Plugins header with a comma-separated list of required plugin slugs from the WordPress.org Plugins repository, which will present users with links to install and activate those plugins first. Required plugins must remain active and installed for as long as plugins that require them are active and installed. If any required plugins become inactive or uninstalled, the plugins that require them will be automatically deactivated. Big performance gains across the editing experience and more WordPress 6.5 contains more than 110 performance-related updates, including an impressive increase in speed and efficiency across both the Post Editor and Site Editor. Loading is over two times faster than in 6.4, with input processing speed increasing to nearly four times faster than the previous release. You’ll also find yourself navigating through the Site Editor six times faster than before. The loading time for translated sites gets a boost due to merging Performant Translations into Core. This greatly improves the load time of translated sites across the board by loading multiple locales simultaneously, making switching between them a faster and more enjoyable experience. Accessibility highlights Ensuring that WordPress remains highly accessible is crucial for its success and fulfilling the mission of democratizing publishing. With this in mind, 6.5 will ship more than 65 updates to improve accessibility throughout the platform. These updates include fixes to contrast settings, cursor focus, submenus, positioning of elements, and more. For more information on specific tickets and improvements, please visit WordPress Trac and GitHub for Gutenberg. Please note that features highlighted in this post are subject to change before the final release. Just for you: a Beta 1 haiku Freedom to publish Blocks, fonts, patterns all around Design as you wish Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin, @rajinsharwar, @webcommsat, @courane01, @hellosatya, @bph, @greenshady, @richtabor, @priethor, @annezazu, @joedolson, @santosguillamot, @cwhitmore, @costdev, @ehtis, @huzaifaalmesbah, @audrasjb, @get_dave. View the full article

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. In this edition, we feature Sunita Rai, a content marketer originally from a remote village in the hills of Nepal. Sunita’s journey to academic and professional success, with help from the WordPress community, will inspire many. A strong desire to acquire knowledge Schools first opened in Sunita’s village in the late 1970s, but most locals, including her parents, had neither the funds nor opportunities to complete their education. Over the years, they realized that an education could open doors for their children. Sunita’s parents vowed to ensure she received a full education, no matter the costs or hardships. Her father worked as a seasonal laborer in India and ensured Sunita and her siblings could go to school with the proper supplies. Her mother cared for everything at home, both the family and the farm. Money was scarce, but determination was abundant. To finish high school, Sunita moved in with her aunt in a nearby city. After graduation, she worked as a teacher. One of the biggest challenges was speaking and writing in English, a requirement for her first job teaching at a private English-language school. Her own education had used Nepali as the language of instruction. Fortunately, she enjoyed writing in English and became more fluent with practice. She discovered that she would always want a career where she could continue learning. On top of a demanding teaching schedule, Sunita continued her studies at a college affiliated with Tribhuvan University. She knew that doing both would be difficult, but she wanted to be able to support her family while pursuing ambitious life and career goals. Earning a bachelor’s degree was a hugely motivating achievement that inspired her to begin a master’s degree in sociology. Teaching for more than five years had been a full-time commitment, with hours of extra work at home. Preparing lessons, grading assignments, and handling exams made it difficult for her to find the time needed for her own studies. Sunita decided she needed more time for her coursework, so she left her teaching job and sought work that would allow her to focus on her studies while still earning money. From teaching to writing to WordPress After an extensive search, Sunita landed a content writing job at a successful WordPress development firm in Nepal. Her salary as a content writer wasn’t high, but it grew steadily over time. She would later gain some supplementary freelance work after presenting at a WordCamp. She was able to help support her family as she grew in her career, and now she could do more. I’m fortunate to have had the education that gave me the capacity to aspire, get into a WordPress job, meet people from around the world, and tell my story! Sunita Early in her career, especially in her early days with WordPress, Sunita benefited from the support of excellent mentors who played pivotal roles in her career development, nurturing her skills in content writing, SEO, and general confidence. Now, she has mentored other content writers and advocates for mentoring programs. Sunita has engaged in WordCamps, sharing her wealth of knowledge and experiences. Her first WordCamp was WordCamp Nepal 2015, a pivotal moment where she connected with WordPress enthusiasts from various Nepalese and international companies. She experienced a welcoming environment that inspired her to become involved in the WordPress community. At WordCamp Kathmandu in 2016, Sunita delivered a talk on SEO Copywriting for WordPress, marking a significant milestone in her journey. She later joined a panel discussion titled “Girls in WordPress – Story, Experience, Opportunity, and Career” at WordCamp Biratnagar 2018. Most recently, Sunita helped organize speakers at WordCamp Kathmandu 2022 and 2023, and also spoke outside her home country at WordCamp Asia 2023 and WordCamp Sylhet, Bangladesh 2023. These events and her talks, helped her grow stronger connections within the global WordPress community and encourage more women speakers. Translating WordPress and empowering others Reading and writing in your own language is powerful. For Sunita, translation is crucial in bridging gaps and granting access to those with limited platforms to express and share their passions. When she discovered that she could translate WordPress into Nepali, she joined the many other volunteers on the Polyglots team. “Translating WordPress to Nepali means empowering my people to access the freedom that WordPress provides.” Sunita Rai Sunita emphasizes that coding skills are not a prerequisite for contribution: “The potential impact you can have on the WordPress community is enormous, across areas from local meetups and WordCamps to testing and translating.” She highlights her own experience as a potential path for others. “WordPress has had a profound impact on my life… the freedom to work on my own time, to be financially independent, and to overcome my inferiority complex.” Her advice to anyone getting started with WordPress: “Get involved in the WordPress community and contribute as early as possible. By participating, you will better understand the project and its people, so you can advocate WordPress in a better way. It will offer you a sense of satisfaction or meaning as well as success in your career.” Share the stories Help share these open source contributor stories and grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series, or continue your own WordPress journey at Learn.WordPress.org Thanks to Sunita Rai for sharing about her adventures in WordPress, and to Abha Thakor, Nalini Thakor, Pooja Derashri, Meher Bala, Nicholas Garofalo, Chloe Bringmann, Maja Loncar and Mary Baum for interviews, editorial, images, and reviews. 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 View the full article

January kicked off with big plans for the WordPress project in the year ahead. Work on the WordPress 6.5 release is underway, with Beta 1 scheduled for next week and early testing opportunities. Let’s catch up on all the exciting updates from the past month. Looking at 2024 In a recent episode of WP Briefing, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses some of the big-picture goals for WordPress this year. The main highlights include Phase 3 of the WordPress roadmap, which involves collaborative editing and significant updates to writing and design workflows. Another major focus is Data Liberation, a new initiative introduced at State of the Word 2023 with the ultimate goal of creating a more open web. Learn more about Data Liberation in 2024. WordPress 6.5 is on its way Preparations for WordPress 6.5, the first major release of 2024, are in full swing. The release squad was announced last month, and the next milestone will be Beta 1, scheduled for February 13. Curious about what version 6.5 will bring? Check out this Hallway Hangout recap to learn about some upcoming features. You can also participate in this early testing opportunity to experience them first-hand and provide feedback. Until 6.5 is released, you can upgrade to WordPress 6.4.3. This version includes numerous security and maintenance updates. New in the Gutenberg plugin Three new versions of Gutenberg shipped in January: Gutenberg 17.4 featured improvements to List View and Style Revisions, more flexibility for background images in Group blocks, and significant advancements to the Data Views experience for the Templates page. Gutenberg 17.5 made good progress in combining the Post Editor and Site Editor by introducing a shared preference panel, among other highlights. Gutenberg 17.6 included the ability to extend allowed blocks within a parent block, along with several improvements to Block Hooks, the Data Views experience, and the Site and Post Editor unification. WordPress 6.5 is slated to include some impactful changes and new features to current revision functionality in the Site Editor. Read more » Team updates The second cohort of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program is open for applications. This program aims to connect experienced WordPress contributors with newcomers or those looking to enhance their skills within the community. Both mentees and mentors can apply by February 7, 2024. If you are a part of the LGBTQ+ community and participate in the Mentorship Program, you may be interested in this LGBTQ+Press Empowerment Grant. The Global Community Sponsors for 2024 have been announced. The Community team reflected on the “NextGen Events” pilot project and recommended adopting an expanded scope for WordPress events, encouraging a broad range of innovative event formats. In 2023, the WordPress Core team shipped 2211 commits, and 472 people made their first contribution to WordPress Core. Explore more stats in this report. The Performance team released a roadmap with this year’s focus areas. Are you looking to broaden your knowledge and improve your WordPress skills? Check out what’s new on Learn WordPress. Catch up on all the news in the WordPress development space with the latest edition of What’s new for developers? https://wordpress.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/ Requests for feedback and testing Community team members proposed a pilot program to test GatherPress, a community-developed plugin, as a WordPress.org event management tool. New Five for the Future program enhancements were suggested based on insights gathered during the WordPress Community Summit. You can help improve the program by sharing your feedback before February 7. A new proposal recommends the next steps for the Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach Program. Input is welcome by February 12. Members of the Community team are requesting feedback and ideas to help shape the future of the new WordPress Events page. WordPress events WordCamp Asia 2024 is just around the corner! Organizers announced a tentative schedule and a Diversity Scholarship to fund the attendance of two active project contributors to their first flagship WordCamp. Tickets for WordCamp Europe 2024 are on sale. The organizing team is looking for volunteers to help make the event in Torino, Italy, memorable. WordCamp US 2024 shared details of the event to be held September 17-20 in Portland, Oregon. This WordCamp will have a strong focus on community collaboration with two Contributor Days. Check out these other WordPress events happening soon: WordPress Photo Festival (online) on February 3-10 WordCamp Phoenix, USA, on February 9-10 WordCamp Pune, India, on February 17 WordCamp Kansai, Japan, on February 23-24 Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know. Thanks to Satyam Vishwakarma (Satya), Jenni McKinnon, and Lauren Stein for contributing to this edition of The Month in WordPress. Subscribe to WordPress News Join other subscribers and receive WordPress news directly in your inbox. Subscribe View the full article

In the latest WordPress Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy explores the reasons for choosing a website supporting your digital presence, covering topics from trust-building to professionalism to owning a unique online domain. Credits Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Brett McSherry Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes Getting Started With WordPress: Get Set Up Creating a 4-page business website Download WordPress 6.4.3 Small List of Big Things Early Opportunities to Test WordPress 6.5 Call for Mentees & Mentors: Contributor Mentorship Program Cohort #2 Data Liberation in 2024 WordCamp Asia 2024 Tickets Transcripts [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. [00:00:29] (Intro music) [00:00:39] Josepha: My friends, it is February. For many of us, that means we’ve already fallen off track on our New Year’s resolutions, but not you, intrepid WordPresser, especially you, newly found WordPresser who is still on the fence about needing a website, and I get it. It seems like a lot of work, and even if you shoot for the moon, it’s not clear which star you’ll land on. [00:01:01] Josepha: It feels easier to open a Facebook page or launch a new Instagram account, get a channel going on YouTube, but here’s a secret they won’t tell you. It’s just as much work. And even if you crack the code on today’s algorithm, you don’t own anything you build there, not the content, not the audience. So if you’re gonna make the effort to build anyway, why not build it in your space? It can be scary to take that kind of time. So, if you’re not convinced yet, let me give you a few other reasons why you should choose a website over some social media thing. I’ve got a list here, and they build on one another, really. But the first thing is a website covers the five W’s: who, what, when, where, and why. It’s basic information, I know, but it’s what people need to know when they’re looking at your product or company. The phone book, whether you had the yellow pages or the white pages, those are long gone, but that doesn’t mean that the need for that information is gone. When people are researching the right service or product to solve their problems, they’re getting online to do it. So you should be there, and your information should be easy to find. [00:02:12] Josepha: Which brings us right into item number two. When people know these things about you when, they know who you are, what you’re doing, when to get to you, where you are, why you’re doing it. Having that information increases trust and makes you look more professional, and I’ve seen that be counterintuitive for folks. I mean, it’s a digital asset, after all. But overwhelmingly, we see consumers who are well-researched by the time they get to us. They’ve looked at all of your competitors already and checked to see if you are a human, if you share some of their values, and how you manage waste or, complaints, or praise. You can never know who is looking for you. So, making it all as clear and easy to see as possible makes you more trustworthy. And the more trustworthy and professional you look, then number three, the more chances you have to bring in good leads and contacts, which can turn into sales or, at the very least, a sales opportunity. And it’s important to have good leads and contacts. Right? [00:03:17] Josepha: If you have your information out there on a website, then people can sort of prequalify themselves. If they already have a sense for whether they are a good fit for your product or service, then fingers crossed. You can spend most of your time with people who are making serious inquiries. And coming in at four, you can do this any way you want with words or art, NFTs of your latest work, or video tutorials. It lets you tell your story in ways that other mediums necessarily have to limit. And, importantly, you can still do those things elsewhere. Right? But having essentially a digital home online that is yours, keep your stuff online in a place you own and operate, then draw people to you through those other channels. Make it all work together. [00:04:07] Josepha: I have a fifth thing, mostly because I like lists of either three or five, and the list I had was four, but also because it’s true. Number five is still true. Getting domains is fun. You’ve got something to share with the world, and your domain name is title and, story, and first impression. And isn’t it great instead of having to say you can find me at LinkedIn, slash in slash, etc.? You can say something quick and memorable. Josepha.blog or whatever it is you registered. Getting domains is fun. It’s the fifth thing, and I tried to act like it was no big deal. But, also, it’s like one of the first things you have to do, and it’s kind of a big deal. You can have your own domain, and it can say a lot for you. So there you have it, some basic and not-so-basic reasons why you should have a website. If you are convinced or at least intrigued, I’ve got a few tutorials that can help you get started that I’ll link in the show notes. [00:05:03] (Music interlude) [00:05:11] Josepha: Which brings us now to our small list of big things. I have four big things for you today: four-ish. So, first things first, I have some early opportunities for y’all to test our next major release. Our next major release is WordPress 6.5. The target release date is March 26th. But coming up here on February 13th, we have Beta 1 scheduled. That’s an early opportunity for you to provide feedback. A lot of the features that we have coming in this release are big, and they’re moving quite quickly. And so, if you are already a routine WordPress user, pop on over into the core channel or onto make.WordPress.org/core and get your hands on that beta release. We could use a lot of feedback from you on that. The second thing that I have is that the second cohort of the Contributor Mentorship Program has opened up, and we’re calling for participants whether you want to be mentored or mentor somebody. We are accepting applications for both. This is a fantastic opportunity for experienced contributors to help other people learn how to do this. And also, if you are learning to contribute to open source and to WordPress for the first time, I know it can be scary. It took me many, many tries to really get started. And so this is a great opportunity for anyone who is trying to contribute in a new way, in a different way. [00:06:35] Josepha: The third thing that I have is there’s a post up about Data Liberation in 2024. This is one of our big focuses for the year. A web where being locked into a system should be a thing of the past, and migrating your site to WordPress or around the WordPress ecosystem should be doable with essentially 1-click, and, so, there’s a lot of work that we’re doing there. You can find it on WordPress.org/data-liberation. There will be a link to that in our show notes, but also, there is a lot of work that has to be done, not only to get those resources together but also some companion tools to the resources. So head on over there, take a look at what’s out there. And if you have some stuff to contribute, share that too. [00:07:21] Josepha: And my fourth thing, my final thing, is that WordCamp Asia is about a month away. So you still have time to plan your attendance. If that’s something that you want to do, head on over to asia.wordcamp.org to learn more. 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 specifically for this one; if you liked what you heard, share it with a fellow collaborator whether they know WordPress or not. But 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. [00:08:10] (Music outro) View the full article

This security and maintenance release features 5 bug fixes on Core, 16 bug fixes for the Block Editor, and 2 security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. Backports are also available for other major WordPress releases, 4.1 and later. You can download WordPress 6.4.3 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 6.4.3 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.5 planned for 26 March 2024. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the Release Candidate announcement. For further information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site. Security updates included in this release The security team would like to thank the following people for responsibly reporting vulnerabilities, and allowing them to be fixed in this release: m4tuto for finding a PHP File Upload bypass via Plugin Installer (requiring admin privileges). @_s_n_t of @pentestltd working with Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative for finding an RCE POP Chains vulnerability. Thank you to these WordPress contributors This release was led by Sarah Norris, Joe McGill, and Aaron Jorbin. WordPress 6.4.3 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. Aki Hamano, Alex Concha, Alex Lende, Alex Stine, Andrea Fercia, Andrei Draganescu, Andrew Ozz, Andrew Serong, Andy Fragen, Ari Stathopoulos, Artemio Morales, ben, bobbingwide, Carlos Bravo, Carolina Nymark, Česlav Przywara, Colin Stewart, Daniel Käfer, Daniel Richards, Dominik Schilling, Ella, Erik, George Mamadashvili, Greg Ziółkowski, Isabel Brison, Joen A., John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, joppuyo, Lax Mariappan, luisherranz, Markus, Michal Czaplinski, Mukesh Panchal, Nik Tsekouras, Niluthpal Purkayastha, Noah Allen, Pascal Birchler, Peter Wilson, ramonopoly, Riad Benguella, Sergey Biryukov, Stephen Bernhardt, Teddy Patriarca, Tonya Mork How to contribute To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core and #6-5-release-leads channels. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook. As a final reminder, The WordPress Security Team will never email you requesting that you install a plugin or theme on your site, and will never ask for an administrator username and password. Please stay vigilant against phishing attacks. Thanks to Angela Jin, Ehtisham S., Jb Audras, and Marius L. J. for proofreading. View the full article

In the latest WordPress Briefing, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy revisits our roots in blogging and breaks down the essentials of starting your first WordPress blog. Tune in to Episode 71 for practical tips and inspiration to kickstart your blogging journey. Credits Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Brett McSherry Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes WordPress 6.4.2 Download Getting Started with WordPress: Get Setup How to Make a WordPress Blog Social Learning Space Event WordPress Plugins WordPress Themes Small List of Big Things A Year in Review With Themes Team WordPress End-of-Year Celebrations! Leap into 2024 with these Site Editor Tools WordPress Developer Blog 2024 Team Reps – Watch for updates as we move into 2024. Each team in the WordPress project goes through a process to review and elect new team reps. Those elections are happening now. Big Pictures Goals 2024 Transcripts [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) [00:00:40] Josepha: Today, we’ve got a throwback episode about blogging. If you’re like me, you sometimes miss the early days of blogs, where the words were a little more pensive, and the images were a little less professional. If you’re on a slow hobby journey like so many of us are right now, give this one a listen. [00:00:58] (music interlude) [00:01:05] Josepha: You may be one of these contributors I keep mentioning. You may be an agency owner or freelancer. Maybe you’ve wondered how to make a WordPress blog for your big idea. Or maybe you’re one of the many people who use WordPress for their own project or business. Before WordPress was known as a content management system, as a way to get sites online fast, it was a blogging tool. We have long since outgrown that, but even 20 years into our journey, blogging is still a key part of what WordPress enables you to do. That’s because, even after those 20 years, the mission of WordPress is still the same, and that is to democratize publishing. To help people have a place online where they can tell their stories, or share their projects, or set up their businesses. If you’ve ever tried to set up a blog, you know that there isn’t a lot of information about what to know before you get going at all. So, I’m going to talk about that a little bit today. [00:02:06] Josepha: And just by the way, if you heard the word blog right now and thought, Oh, Jospeha, how old fashioned. I think it’s important to remember that there’s a business advantage to having well-written, relevant content on your website. And if you’re not blogging for business, because not all of us are, then the benefits are a little different but still important to my mind. Things like the cathartic benefits of journaling, a chance to build community, and the general importance of preserving wisdom for the ages. Anyway, back to the topic at hand, before we can get to any of the fancy things that WordPress can do nowadays, it’s important to know a few things as you get ready to set up your first-ever website. So let’s dive in. Here is how you need to get yourself started. First, have an idea and a plan. So, have an idea for what you’re doing, the concept of your content, who you want to reach, but also some concept of a domain name. I would encourage you to not necessarily get your heart set on a domain name at first, cause like, if you want the domain name WordPress.org, like, we own that, you can’t have that. But if you know that you want a domain like ‘WordPressbloggingforthefuture.com’ like, that one might be more available. And if you know kind of the words you want in your domain, then you can be a bit flexible about what is there. [00:03:30] Josepha: The second thing that you need to do is that if you are just getting started, ask yourself the question, what sort of host do I want? We kind of mention all along the WordPress process that, like, you need a good host, but it’s not always clear where that decision has to happen. It happens right here at the start before you even know what WordPress is most of the time. So, the earliest question that you have to answer for yourself is, what sort of host do I want? Where do I want my site to live? So ask yourself how much you want to get into the maintenance and configuration of your website and the hardware that it lives on versus creating content or keeping your shop up to date. There’s this whole spectrum of hosting options, and they range from full service, where they will keep your WordPress software up to date and provide daily backups, and have customer support if something goes really wrong. [00:04:23] Josepha: So it ranges all the way from full service like that, all the way down to essentially zero service, just kind of hands off. They give you a space to keep your WordPress software, to keep your WordPress site, but they leave everything else up to you. They leave the backups up to you; they leave updating up to you, things like that. So that’s the first thing you have to ask yourself and the first question you have to be able to answer. Most of the time, you will want to start with one of the full-service options. That way, you know that your software is set up correctly and safely from the start. And as you learn more about the software, and what you want, and what you need, and you have the ability to learn in the time that you have, the more that you can add on either services with the existing host that you chose or moving to a different host; however, that works out for you. [00:05:09] Josepha: So if that one sounds like the right option, then you choose a host, go to their site, and actually, most of them will have a way to walk you through how to set up a WordPress site inside their system. Most of the time, it’s just one click, and then they ask you some questions to get some configurations right. The other option that on the like zero, zero service side, that’s not quite fair, but you know, on the other side of that spectrum, that probably will be appealing to you if you are already familiar with code or already know how to manage a server, or you know how to work in this thing called cPanel, etc. So if you already have a lot of information on how all of that works, you can, if you want to, head over to WordPress.org/download and you can download a zip file of the WordPress software and set that up in your own environment. Okay, quick check here. If this all sounds roughly doable to you, or at least it feels like we’re in the right starting point, but you find yourself thinking, gosh, I just wish she would slow down a little, I’ve got you covered. [00:06:17] Josepha: In the show notes, you’ll find a link to one of the LearnWP courses for getting started with WordPress. There’s a section on choosing a host, as well as various other early steps of this process. If you felt like I blazed through all of that, which, honestly, I kind of did. You can work through those lessons in that course at your own pace, and it’s really a very good guide. All right. So let’s pretend we did all of that. Now you’ve got yourself a website. The thing that you will want to do next, or rather the first thing that you’ll notice once you get your site up and running, is that there’s this ‘Hello World’ post. There’s a post that already exists in there. The Hello World post is a placeholder for the common features of a blog post. [00:07:03] Josepha: There, you can find your featured image, your title, your content, and even some fake comments. You can either edit this post so that you can see how your writing will look from the start, and you can kind of compare, like, okay, the Hello World part over here on this page exists in this field over here on this page. So you can kind of see where everything works, how it all looks together. Or, if you’re more familiar with WordPress or CMSs in general, you can simply remove that and start fresh. We’ve got now a website. We know kind of how to look at our posts and create posts, where comments are, where they can be moderated, and stuff. And so, the most fun task for everyone is choosing a theme. But if it doesn’t sound like a fun task to you, I can help you kind of do some choose-your-own-adventure guiding questions here. Firstly, you can ask yourself how you want the site to look. Do you want it to mostly be a lot of photos or entirely words? Mostly animations? You can head to the theme directory and search for a theme with most of the features that you want. There’s like a filtering system where you can put in, like, you want, three columns so that you can have three columns of text if you want it to look kind of like an old school newspaper kind of layout and things like that. [00:08:24] Josepha: There’s also a way to look for themes inside your instance, your WordPress site, but like, if you haven’t set that up yet, but you do still want to see kind of what your theme options are, you can go to WordPress.org/themes and take a look at what’s out there. Just as a quick side note, if you get to that theme directory, if you get to WordPress.org/themes, and it feels overwhelming, which I can understand, I recommend starting with a theme that is designed for blogging specifically, so that you can see how things look right away. And there’s actually a theme that does come with every WordPress site, so if you’re not ready, you can skip this thing entirely. And just work with the theme that’s already there. Every WordPress instance ships with a theme, and it is fully functional when you get your site up and running, so you don’t need to choose a theme right now if you don’t feel ready. And then the other very fun thing that people do with their WordPress sites, is to add plugins to them. [00:09:20] Josepha: Plugins are these little pieces of software that you add on to the WordPress software that lets it do additional things. It adds additional functionality to it. The questions that you can ask to kind of guide yourself through what sorts of plugins you might want what sorts of functionality you might want to add to your site are a little similar to the ones that you want to ask for figuring out which themes. So, figure out if there are tasks that you need visitors to do. Do you need them to contact you? Do you want them to watch a video? Should they review and respond to questions? If you have a concept of the things that you want users to do on your website, then you can head to the plugin directory and search for a plugin with features that you need. [00:10:05] Josepha: Also, there are just endless lists of recommended plugins out there. If that is something that you find valuable as part of your research, those are also easy to find. And as a general side note here as well, there are even more plugins than there are themes. So if you have gotten to this point and feel like you don’t quite know the answers to the questions that I shared, and it’s going to be a while until you feel like you can know what those answers are. That’s totally fine. I’ll tell you this, I have never seen a site without a contact form. So feel free to begin your journey there. There are a lot of great plugins for contact forms, and it can kind of help you figure out how to work with plugins in that way. So, yeah, I made it sound like you can get a WordPress website built in like seven minutes. And on the one hand, you definitely can. And on the other hand, it’s still a little bit more complicated. So here I have a final note for everyone. You will hear around the WordPress ecosystem and, obviously, hear some things that could make you feel a little nervous about doing this for the first time. [00:11:10] Josepha: Things like the five-second installation, which WordPress has been famous for for years, but also about how easy and simple it all is. And as somebody who was once in the position of learning WordPress for the first time, like I first encountered a WordPress site in 2009, and I started learning how to use WordPress in 2010. I can say with confidence that once you learn it, it’s easy. We are the easiest of the hard options for CMSs like content management systems are just complicated. But we are the easiest one out there. And so, as you’re learning, I want to just remind you to celebrate your small wins along the way. If you feel like you’re late to this blogging game like you should have had a website for years, I mean, sure, that could be true. [00:12:01] Josepha: And yes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second best time to plant that tree is today. WordPress didn’t start out powering over 40% of the web, and your first site can’t be immediately measured in the millions of readers. So, what will your small beginning lead you to? [00:12:18] (Music interlude) [00:12:25] Josepha: And now, our small list of big things. Today we’ve got some look-back items and some look-forward items. So let’s hop right in. First thing is we have a year in review with the themes team. So much amazing work has been done by the themes team over the past year, both for reviewing themes and creating them. So I’ll leave a link to those in the show notes. We also have a post out that just has some general celebrations from teams around the community. I’ll leave a link to that. It probably has been linked in quite a few places, but you know, we don’t always embrace those moments of celebration. We don’t always embrace our wins. And so it’s always good to share those early and often. There are probably more than just those two. So if you posted one or you saw a really interesting one that you think that we should know about, don’t forget to share it. [00:13:16] Josepha: Next, we have a leap into 2024 with Site Editor tools. So, on the new Developer Blog, if you haven’t seen it yet, there is a lot of excellent content there for whether you are like an advanced developer in WordPress or you’re kind of intermediate and ready to move into your advanced developer era. The Site Editor will give you a powerful way to visually create every part of your site and tell your story. And this post will help you to kind of see how to handle everything from big style changes to simple copy updates, all in a single place. We want to make sure that you get the most out of your WordPress this year. And that post will give you a few standout tools and features that you’ll want to try. You’ll also want to keep an eye out for updates as we move into 2024 around team reps. So each team in the WordPress project goes through a process to review and elect team reps, and elections are happening now. [00:14:12] Josepha: Along with things that are happening now that you should keep an eye on, the annual goals, our big picture post has gone out as well. It went out at the end of the week last week. There’ll be a link to all of these in the show notes. And yeah, keep an eye out for, hopefully, a fantastic 2024 in WordPress. 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 have 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. [00:14:57] (Music outro) View the full article

Imagine a more open web where people can switch between any platform of their choosing. A web where being locked into a system is a thing of the past. This is the web I’ve always wanted to see. That’s why I announced a new initiative called Data Liberation for 2024. Migrating your site to WordPress, or exporting all your content from WordPress, should be possible in one click. I want WordPress’ export format to become the lingua franca of CMSes, whether coming to WordPress or moving within WordPress. I often hear about folks across the WordPress community duplicating efforts when creating scripts and workflows to move users to WordPress. Imagine if we shared those resources instead and built community-owned plugins that anyone could use! But it should be more than plugins; workflows, tutorials, and helper scripts should be shared, too. I want this resource to have space to include moving from social networks, moving from a page builder to core blocks, switching from classic to blocks, and improving WordPress current canonical plugins for importing. You can help! Of course, the heart of any open source project is the community that shows up to build it. My hope is that this marks the start of a new contribution pathway, separate from core teams, that allows folks to contribute what they’ve learned and what they’ve created to help others move to WordPress. I expect this emphasis on migration will also influence future development, both in core and with recommended community or canonical plugins. There are a few things that I think will be key to making this project a success: A dedicated landing page on WordPress.org following a WordPress.org/and/[platform-name] format. A forum used for non-review user feedback and general discussion. A dedicated Slack channel. Moderation within hours rather than days. Listed on WordPress GitHub with syncing for individual commits to SVN for history in both places. By complementing the community’s existing efforts—the Five for the Future program, the Learn WordPress initiative, a focus on internationalization, etc.—my hope is that this will help even more people see themselves in the WordPress project, providing fresh momentum for WordCamps and meetups. It’s never been more crucial to champion openness on the web. Bringing focused attention to improved portability will untether users and increase their freedom like never before. View the full article

Curious about WordPress’s big-picture items for 2024? Phase 3, Data Liberation, new meetups, and more, get the spotlight in this episode. Join Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy for all this, plus a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. Credits Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Brett McSherry Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes Real-Time Collaboration Make WordPress Core Data Liberation Make WordPress Plugins WordCamp Events Small List of Big Things Overflow Questions from State of the Word 2023 in Madrid, Spain Annual Meetup Survey – This is the final chance to share your feedback on WordPress meetups for 2024 and how we can improve the program in the future. Transcripts [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) [00:00:40] Josepha: Hello, my dears, and welcome to 2024. I hope you’ve had a lovely break. At the top of the year, I like to look around and gather the projects that the community is interested in. We can’t always commit to everything, and sometimes even the things we plan to do can’t make it across the finish line. In the next few weeks, I’ll be publishing kind of the big picture goals for the year, but I wanted to share a little bit about what I’ve collected so far. [00:01:05] Josepha: Firstly, we’ve got Phase 3. This has been called a few things over the years: collaborative editing, multiplayer, co-editing. But whatever it’s been called, the biggest changes to writing and design workflows are likely to happen in this phase. A redesigned workflow can be a bit of a shock. But fortunately, we already have a prototype out there. I’ll include a link to some resources in the show notes, or of course, you can always stop by make.WordPress.org/core for some insights. But I would encourage you to, at the very least, get your hands on that prototype to see what it looks like is coming in Phase 3 so that you can be aware and provide your feedback. The next thing on our list is Data Liberation. This is a new-to-us project that was introduced at State of the Word. Fortunately, though, it’s not a new concept overall. Data Liberation is actually one of the earliest ideas that sold me on WordPress. The idea that you could set up a site for a client, or yourself, and that hard work wasn’t lost if something went wrong, was really important to me. It’s been a long time since we put any effort into our importers and exporters, and I think this will be a good focus for the year. [00:02:14] Josepha: The next thing that I’ve picked up, kind of a list of three things, but there are three mid-sized areas that I want us to pay attention to this year: plugins, old tickets, and new meetups. Plugins, because they really have turned a corner on where they ended 2023. A lot of work has been done to make sure that they’ve streamlined some efforts, gotten some better onboarding for folks as they’re going in, and we could really use a hand to keep that momentum going. Old tickets, because it’s something that we hope for year after year when we’re talking to people about what they want in new releases. So often, part of what they say is some way to work through all of these old things that have been around forever, some with patches. And why not, after all? And then new meetups, because I really still think that meetups are the best intro to WordPress. No matter whether you’re wanting to become a developer eventually or, like, the community-building aspect is the thing that hooks you forever. Meetups are the place to encourage those and discover those. [00:03:20] Josepha: The next thing on my list is also two things. It’s two things, but kind of a guess at the moment. There are two summit items that I want us to try to consider this year. So the first one is contributor recognition. Acknowledgment and recognition, I think, are two different things, and there was an entire series of sessions at the summit where we talked about it. And so I think that it’s worth us digging in on that. The other thing from the summit that I would really like us to all kind of dig in on is accessibility, how we do it, how we confirm it, what we think we should do versus what we actually do, and see what we can move on the needle there. And the last thing is sort of a personal wish. I think it’s about time that we take a look at the way that we kind of manage ourselves as a project, the way that we do our meetings and report on our successes, things like that. And I realize that this is a big thing, and it might be a little bit scary. But, I mean, we’ve been doing this for a really long time, and it’s probably as good a time as any, frankly, to look at what we’re doing by habit or tradition and see if it still suits us. So, that’s my back of the napkin set of notes so far. Keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks for the annual Big Picture post so you can get some context, notes, and discussion opportunities. And, of course, anything that has shown up that’s a bit bigger, a bit more final will be in there as well. But first, our small list of big things. [00:04:52] (Music interlude) [00:05:00] Josepha: Firstly, State of the Word had nearly 200 questions submitted, and Matt has been answering the overflow on make.WordPress.org/project. So, I’ll include a link, but head on over there to that post if you would like to catch up on those. And then the second item, and last item, is that you’ve got a few more days left to give us feedback on WordPress meetups in 2023, and give us an idea of what we can do to improve those. I believe those close on January 14th. I really love my local meetup, and I hope that we can get some of that same sort of feeling going in all of yours, too. [00:05:33] 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 again for tuning in for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. [00:06:02] (Music outro) View the full article

As 2023 came to a close, WordPress bid farewell with the much-anticipated annual State of the Word and the 6.5 roadmap, among other exciting updates. Read on to learn more about the community’s end-of-year celebrations and catch a sneak peek of what’s in store for the year ahead. Highlights from State of the Word On December 11, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg delivered his annual State of the Word keynote in Madrid, Spain, marking the first international edition of the event. Nearly 200 WordPress enthusiasts and tech industry leaders gathered in person to hear what’s next for WordPress—with a large audience joining online or from one of the 47 watch parties held across 18 countries. The keynote highlighted last year’s milestones and showcased compelling demos, providing a glimpse into the upcoming developments for the Site Editor, Collaboration phase, and Admin redesign. Matt also introduced 2024’s focus on Data Liberation, aiming to unlock digital barriers and frictionless migrations into WordPress for a more open web. The event concluded with a Q&A session and this follow-up post. Roadmap to WordPress 6.5 WordPress 6.5 is scheduled for release on March 26, 2024. This major release is set to introduce a new Font Library for easy global font management, support for Appearance Tools in Classic Themes, Data Views for templates and patterns, and more robust revisions across the editing experience, among other highlights. 6.5 will also include new APIs like Interactivity, Custom Fields, and Block Binding that expand block capabilities and underpin features like Synced Pattern Overrides. Learn more about the features planned for WordPress 6.5 in this roadmap post. Don’t wait for the next release to optimize your creative workflows with these powerful Site Editor tools. New in the Gutenberg plugin Two new versions of Gutenberg shipped in December: Gutenberg 17.2 introduced improvements to the site editing experience, including the ability to drag and drop blocks to the top and bottom of documents and sticky table headers. The update also enhanced the Interactivity API docs and addressed numerous bug fixes. Gutenberg 17.3 featured a summary of changes in the global styles revision history, an updated preferences panel, and a new social icon for the Gravatar service, along with the ongoing development of Phase 3 features. https://wordpress.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/ Team updates Openverse introduced new features to filter sensitive content, aiming for a more accessible and safer browsing experience. This update marks the beginning of a significant initiative to enhance content safety tools. Matrix contributors announced the decision to pause the Making WordPress Slack migration to Matrix and the factors contributing to it. The redesign of the Developer Resources section went live last month. Are you searching for events in your local community? Explore the recently launched WordPress.org Events page—your new central hub for discovering upcoming events or applying to organize one. In 2023, WordPress significantly improved Core Web Vitals (CWV) across sites. The overall passing rates went up from 28.31% to 36.44% on mobile and from 32.55% to 40.80% on desktop, making both WordPress and the whole web perform better. Volunteers are needed for 2024’s WordPress major releases. If you’re interested, now’s the time to get involved! Check out all the community achievements and contributions that moved the WordPress project closer to its goals in 2023. https://wordpress.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/ Requests for feedback & testing Complete the 2023 Annual Meetup Survey before January 14, 2024, and help strengthen WordPress meetups in the future. WordPress events WordCamp Asia has opened registrations for its Contributor Day. The conference will be held in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 7-9, 2024. WordCamp Europe’s call for speakers is open until January 15, 2024. Don’t miss the chance to be part of this event by either submitting your speaking proposals or supporting it as a sponsor. Mark your calendars! WordCamp US 2024 is headed to Portland, Oregon, from September 17 to 20, as revealed during the State of the Word. Check out these WordPress events happening soon: Kolkata CareerCamp, India on January 6, 2024 WordCamp Nepal on January 12-13, 2024 WordCamp Zaragoza, Spain on January 19-20, 2024 WordPress Web Challenge, Indonesia on January 27, 2024 Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know. Thank you to Bernard Meyer, Nicholas Garofalo, and Lauren Stein for contributing to this edition of The Month in WordPress. Subscribe to WordPress News Join other subscribers and receive WordPress news directly in your inbox. Subscribe View the full article

The Site Editor gives you a powerful way to visually create every part of your site and tell your story. It lets you handle everything from big stylistic changes to simple copy updates all in a single place. To help you make the most of this new way to WordPress, here are a few standout tools and features you’ll want to try. Command Palette Think of the Command Palette as the ultimate shortcut tool, letting you do more with less clicks and without needing to remember where each option might be. It’s available across the editing experience, whether you’re switching between templates in the Site Editor or toggling open settings in the Post Editor, with specific contextual options depending on where you are. You can use the keyboard shortcut Cmd+K on Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows to activate it and get started. If you think of a command that doesn’t exist yet that would help with your workflow, open a feature request issue so we can consider adding it. Read more about everything you can do with the Command Palette, including a list of available commands. Style Book The Style Book helps you see all the blocks on your site as you style them. It’s built into the Styles section and can be toggled on/off as you’d like. This is especially useful when you’re aiming for design consistency for a client, trying to see how a change might impact a block that might not be visible, or wanting to get a different look at how a style variation will switch things up. Work is also underway for the next WordPress release to integrate the Style Book into Style revisions to allow for an at-a-glance view of changes made. Learn more about how best to use the Style Book. Styling shortcuts Sometimes you get a design just right—the color contrast, the perfect padding, the exact font size. Instead of needing to manually recreate the design or copy/paste the block to fill in with new content, you have two powerful options built into the editing experience: copy/paste styles and apply styles globally for all instances of the desired block. Copying and pasting styles is perfect for more nuanced and smaller changes, like headings on a landing page that you intentionally want to be distinct. Applying changes globally is best for blocks like buttons and for changes that are likely to work well across layouts, like setting a specific border radius and color. This helps keep the creativity flowing and makes achieving design consistency across your site much easier. Read more about the various styling options available. Distraction free mode Just like an artist might need to take a few steps back to view their in-progress artwork, sometimes we need to get a different view of our site before diving back in. Distraction free offers you that alternate perspective with a pared-down experience that lets you focus purely on creating, like: Hiding the top toolbar until one intentionally hovers over where it typically sits. Removing many of the top toolbar buttons. Automatically closing any open sidebars, like block settings and list view. Hiding the insertion point indicator, reducing visual clutter. Hiding the block toolbar for individual blocks. It’s worth noting that this mode can be used when writing posts and pages too! For an added bonus and more views of your site, you can use the preview options to see how your site might look across different devices. Learn more about making the most out of Distraction free mode. Patterns Patterns are a collection of blocks that make it simple to add complex layouts and designs to any WordPress site without starting from scratch. They save time by reducing duplication and ensuring consistency. You can create your own, use theme-provided patterns, or lean on the Pattern Directory. You can also specify whether to sync your patterns so that one change applies to all parts of your site, or to keep them unsynced so you can customize each instance. For any patterns you create, you can assign categories to make them easy to find and organize. Use the Inserter with easy filtering options to add patterns to your content, and head to the dedicated Patterns section in the Site Editor to create or edit patterns to your liking. Learn more about creating patterns. List View List View is the go-to tool for navigating between layers of your content, selecting exactly what you need, and getting a sense of how everything fits together. Similar to the Style Book and Distraction free mode, you can toggle it on/off as you’d like. It’s currently visible in the Top Toolbar and will remain open as you navigate through your site. Beyond providing a simple view of the layers of your site, there are more recent additions to List View that makes the tool even more powerful: See previews of your images for Image and Gallery blocks reflected in List View to make it easier to find what you need. The Escape key deselects blocks to make it easier to purely preview your content without any blocks selected. Lean on a keyboard shortcut for duplicating blocks quickly: CMD+Shift+D for Mac or Control + Shift + D for Windows. Drag and drop blocks at any level directly within List View. Rename Group blocks and have the custom name reflected in List View for improved organization. Here’s how a few of these improvements come together: Learn more about using List View. As you explore these tools, remember that, except for the Style Book, you can use these features when writing posts and pages too. Expect the Site Editor and other tools to evolve with each release. To get a sneak peek at what’s planned for the next major WordPress release in March, check out the roadmap and stay tuned. Subscribe to WordPress News Join other subscribers and receive WordPress news directly in your inbox. Subscribe Thank you to the contributors who collaborated on this post: Nicholas Garofalo, Lauren Stein, Joen Asmussen. View the full article

In this episode, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy reflects on the recent 2023 State of the Word, which took place in Madrid, Spain, and some of the highlights of the work across the WordPress open source project. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@WordPress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Brett McSherry Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes State of the Word Recap WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program: Pilot Program Proposal WordPress Developer Blog WordPress End of Year Celebrations! Small List of Big Things Introducing Enhanced Content Safety Features on Openverse – Introducing new features for enhanced content safety on Openverse. Alert: WordPress Security Team Impersonation Scams. Join the Plugin Review Team! – The Plugin Review Team is looking for new members; the deadline to apply is on December 31, 2023. Transcripts [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) [00:00:40] Josepha: We wrapped up State of the Word earlier this month, and while I was sitting there being the only person to clap for the love of cake, I realized just how much we have been able to accomplish this year. And on the one hand, I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, progress is radical over time yet incremental in time. But all told, 2023 has been a big year for WordPress. There’s been some radical progress in a few places. There are the things you know because you’ve heard them all year. You heard them in State of the Word. We turned 20, for instance. We shipped three on-time releases. We had three well-organized flagship events, and we prototyped essential parts of phase 3. But there’s a lot of work that happens outside of flagship events and software releases, and I’d like to highlight a few examples of operational excellence in our community and ecosystem. [00:01:31] Josepha: First highlight goes to the contributors who are building community. Going back to 2021, we’ve been working to bring people back together in person. And in that year, we had 19 events. In 2022, we had 24 events, so a modest increase of just over 30%. But then, in 2023, the WordPress community banded together on a campaign to reignite passion in our Meetup groups and encourage playfulness in our WordCamp planning. And not only did we see a 57% increase in active Meetup groups, But we also saw a 116% increase in WordCamps, 54 WordCamps in all. That’s about a third of the way to our all-time annual high of 142. And to complement these in-person opportunities, Learn also shipped 104 pieces of new content and hosted 258 online workshops because location should never be a barrier to entry for joining WordPress. [00:02:32] Josepha: Second highlight goes to the contributors who are managing our directories. We do have a lot of directories. We have Plugins, Themes, Photos, Block plugins. We got a lot. And I’m sure that everyone saw the consistent and borderline pleading calls to join the Plugin team this year. And for folks who’ve been around a bit, you probably recall a similar set of consistent and pleading calls to join the Theme team a few years back. Concurrent with the work to refill that contribution pipeline, folks over in Meta and across the project generally, were working on automating as many checks as possible, loosening guidelines where it was reasonable, and modernizing as many processes as we could. I’m happy to share that the theme wait time is at a historic low, with their longest wait sometimes just at a week. And as anxious as I am about the plugin wait times, we’re actually seeing a lot of progress there as well. As we follow a process similar to the one that we did on themes, I imagine it’s only gonna get better. So, in 2023, we’ve onboarded six new team members. And since September, the number of plugins awaiting initial review has been cut in half. And then coming up in Q1 of 2024, we’ll have a project focused entirely on automating as many checks as possible. So I still need you, but I also need you to know that your work there matters and is having an impact. [00:03:55] Josepha: The third highlight goes to the contributors who are doing outreach. This year, we launched a mentorship program with an 89% completion rate because we’ve seen time and again that our most prolific contributors had someone at the start that they felt safe asking dumb questions with. We launched and nurtured the developer blog, which was a need identified by the community because there was no place for intermediate and advanced developers to get excited about their cool explorations. And there were 53 posts there this year with thirteen thousand views, which is a 251% increase for the record, which is a ridiculous increase, but it’s a lot. Thirteen thousand views is a lot. We have focused on documentation as we suggested in Porto of 2022. And marketing, I know not always our favorite topic, but marketing, our ability to talk about ourselves to more than just ourselves, has increased dramatically this year. Not only have we started rolling out a modern design across our website, but we also are present and engaged on eight different platforms with 20-plus episodes of this very podcast and also video content that netted us seven and a half million views this year. That’s a lot of numbers, and there’s a post that goes with it. [00:05:10] Josepha: Check out the show notes. But if you’re not gonna check out the show notes because you listen to this on Pocket Casts or Google or something, go to make.WordPress.org/project, and it’ll be over there. But the point is, it’s been a banner year for the software, and I am grateful for every tester, designer, and developer that showed up for it. But I also know that what makes WordPress truly irreplaceable is our ecosystem, and it’s contributions like this and the contributors who do them that make our ecosystem vibrant and responsive and thriving on into the future. So, thank you all for the contributions you make to WordPress. Thank you for the shining example of how to do open source at scale, and thank you for another great year together. [00:06:04] Josepha: Which brings us now to our small list of big things. It is indeed a small this time. First up, I would like to introduce our enhanced content safety features on Openverse. By default, search results now exclude openly licensed media containing sensitive textual content. But this new feature adds additional filtering based on titles, tags, and descriptions of the work as well. [00:06:27] Josepha: The second thing on our small list of big things is that there is just a general alert. There’s a WordPress security team impersonation scam that’s going on out there. The team is aware of multiple ongoing phishing scams impersonating both the WordPress team and the WordPress security team in an attempt to convince administrators to install a plugin on their website which contains malware. I’ll include a link to that post just in case you have anyone that you think might need to be aware of that, but also all of our site administrators know. Like, WordPress is not gonna email you asking for passwords or anything ever. [00:07:02] Josepha: And item number three, I would like you to join the Plugin review team. I know I just said it in the body of the episode. But, the Plugin review team is looking for new members still who believe in our mission of guiding plugin authors in responsibly transforming their innovative ideas into reality and ensuring a great WordPress plugin experience for end users. There is a deadline to apply; it’s December 31st. And so you can get that done over the holidays, over a glass of eggnog if that’s how you choose to celebrate whatever it is that you do. And that’s it for 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. See you again in a couple of weeks. View the full article

On December 11, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg traveled to beautiful Madrid, Spain, to deliver his annual State of the Word keynote. It was the first time this event took place outside the United States. Against the backdrop of Palacio Neptuno—an iconic architectural gem and UNESCO World Heritage site—nearly 200 contributors, developers, extenders, and friends of the Project came together to hear from Matt, with millions more joining online. An introduction from the Executive Director Kicking off the event, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of the WordPress project, spoke about the community’s heart and spirit as what fuels hope for the future, ensuring the freedoms of the open web for all. She invited Matt on stage with a closing statement of confidence that such values and characteristics will move the Project forward into the next 20 as it has for the last 20. Looking back at 2023 Taking the stage, Matt shared his excitement about the event being the first international State of the Word. He honored the Spanish WordPress community for hosting, citing their past WordCamp accomplishments. From there, Matt jumped right into a reflection of this year’s notable moments. He recalled the project’s 20th-anniversary celebrations, how the software has evolved, and how much more the community came together this year—doubling the number of WordCamps to 70, taking place in 33 countries. We’re always aiming to learn and improve. Tell us how to make meetups better. Take the 2023 Meetup Survey Matt continued with callouts to several resources on WordPress.org: the all-new Events page, the redesigned Showcase, a new WordPress Remembers memorial, and the award-winning Openverse. He also demoed WordPress Playground, a tool allowing users to experiment with WordPress directly in their browsers, as well as the versatile Twenty Twenty-Four default theme. Collaborative editing and more Matt recapped the four phases of the Gutenberg project, noting that work has begun on Phase 3: Collaboration before passing the microphone to Matías Ventura, Lead Architect of Gutenberg. After a quick interlude in Spanish, Matías acknowledged how much progress had been made on the software this year. He spoke about the aim of the Site Editor to become both an exemplary writing environment and a superior design tool while noting improvements to the Footnotes Block and the ease of Distraction Free mode. While there was no set timeline for collaboration and workflows, Matías was excited to share a working prototype in the Editor. He showcased some of the most interesting aspects of collaborative editing, including establishing a sync engine that allows real-time edits to be visible across sessions. He invited contributors to test the prototype in the Gutenberg plugin and share their feedback in Github. From there, Matías highlighted other exciting developments, including the emphasis on Patterns and their continued evolution as a powerful tool for workflows, and the ability to connect blocks to custom fields. He was thrilled to speak about performance improvements, noting that work is in progress to make the Editor at least twice as fast. Speaking about front-end performance, he shared what’s to come with a demo of the Interactivity API, showcasing how it can make transitions, search, and other interactions instant—all with standard WordPress blocks and features. Matías concluded with a look at how the Admin redesign will take cues from the Site Editor, eventually allowing users to shape their WordPress Admin experience based on their unique needs. AI and Data Liberation Matt returned to the stage to expand on the future of WordPress, reinforcing his past advice to learn AI deeply. He expressed his excitement about what can be accomplished with the wealth of AI tools available, how contributors are already experimenting with natural language processing and WordPress Playground to create and build. Finally, Matt introduced an additional focus for the project in 2024: Data Liberation, with the goal to make importing from other platforms into WordPress as frictionless as possible. He spoke about the tendency of content management systems to keep users locked in as part of his motivation to unlock digital barriers. The Data Liberation initiative will work on one-click migration and the export format from WordPress. More than just tools, Data Liberation reflects the project’s ethos to allow seamless contributions. With that, Matt invited anyone interested to jump into the action, noting a new Data Liberation GitHub repository and forthcoming Making WordPress Slack channels as places to get started. Questions and answers Following the presentation, Matt fielded questions from the live-stream and in-person audiences during an interactive question-and-answer session hosted by Jose Ramón Padrón (Moncho). Additional questions from the live session will be answered in a follow-up post on make.WordPress.org/project. Subscribe to our blog notifications to be sure you don’t miss it. And don’t forget to mark your calendars for next year’s WordCamp Asia (Taipei, Taiwan), WordCamp Europe (Torino, Italy), and WordCamp US (Portland, Oregon, United States). Thank you to @laurlittle, @eidolonnight, @nilovelez, @fepr, @cbringmann, and the many others who made this event and post possible. View the full article

In this episode, WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy articulates the vision for a collaborative ecosystem where knowledge sharing and contributions to open source tools lead to a more interconnected and empowered web. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@WordPress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Brett McSherry Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes State of the Word 2022 PHP Foundation Josepha’s Big Picture Goals 2022 Small List of Big Things Gutenberg 17.1 has been released and is available for download! The latest release includes new enhancements, bug fixes, and continued work on Phase 3 features. Announcing the 2023 Annual Meetup Survey – The Community team proposed a survey for all meetup members and organizers. Please complete the Annual Meetup Survey by January 14, 2024– even if you haven’t participated in a meetup recently! Request for feedback: Lesson Handbook pages – As the Training team progresses towards the 2024 launch of Learning Pathways, they’re developing a set of content creation guidelines to streamline and scale the process. These guidelines will focus on efficient methods for developing, reviewing, and updating content. To gather input, a Google Doc has been created where you can share your ideas. Please provide your feedback and comments on this document by Tuesday, December 19, 2023. WordPress Playground makes WordPress instantly accessible for users, learners, extenders, and contributors. Embracing Matrix for Enhanced Communication Transcripts [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) [00:00:40] Josepha: If you’re already familiar with the WordPress project, and if you’re listening to this podcast, I feel like it’s a safe assumption that you’re probably also familiar with the fact that we are what’s considered a free and open source software project. We adhere to the four freedoms of open source. We track bugs in the open, and we believe that knowledge sharing can only improve our products. But you might not be aware of the other open source projects that are foundational to ours and otherwise are integral to our commitment to the open web. At last year’s State of the Word, Matt mentioned that one of the coolest things about being a plugin or theme author in WordPress is that you get to run your open source project on the same infrastructure that WordPress runs on. So, no matter whether you have five installs or five thousand, you’re getting the benefits of our bug trackers, messaging, and network of project sites. But beyond those, which are, of course, near and dear to us, we also support projects like PHP and its foundation. Openverse and its founding organization Creative Commons, and of course, the two that we’re hearing a lot about this year and next, Playground and Matrix. [00:01:52] Josepha: That’s a lot of projects and not even a comprehensive list. And honestly, it can seem, I don’t know, a little weird. Like, we’re a FOSS CMS, right? You probably know why we contribute back to PHP. It’s the same reason we ask people to contribute to WordPress. But why are we giving so much time to a media search engine, or a Web Assembly implementation, or even a messaging protocol? At first glance, there are, of course, a lot of quick and easy answers. For instance, like, open source is open source. Any open source contribution is going to be a good contribution. All open source in the world increases good and freedom in the world. Like, open source is open source. Makes sense, right? Another quick and easy answer is, you know, they’re part of us. And that’s true, definitely, for PHP, like, they’re part of us, and so we should be contributing back to them. Because we rely on them so much. And then a third quick and easy answer is that we, as the biggest open source CMS on the planet, basically, we can, spare a lending hand. We can offer a little bit of help to those around us. [00:03:03] Josepha: And those are all true. I don’t think that anyone would disagree with any of that. But the thing that ties it all together for me is something that’s a little harder to see. In the 2022 goals that I posted, I said that my second goal for our year was to support open source alternatives for all site-building necessities. At the time, I was primarily talking about Openverse and the directory of photos that was being created as a CC-first source. But that also applies to all of our directories. It did then, just as it does now. And Trac, and our vast network of WordPress sites. All the tools we use in order to collaborate with, and lead for, and learn from each other. I want us to be able to do everything it takes to build an online presence using open source tools and methods because WordPress is just a glorious little microcosm of the interconnected web. It reminds me of this art installation I had the privilege of experiencing. It’s called Meow Wolf. I went to the one in Denver, but there are a few different installations across the U.S. The one that I went to is this massive art installation, and it is designed to be interactive, but it wasn’t until you started sharing your experience sharing your knowledge with other people that you realized it was also collaborative, a set of buttons you pushed in one room would cause a light show in some other room. [00:04:34] Josepha: So you were enhancing the experience of strangers in some completely disconnected room to yours, and they couldn’t distinguish it from an automation or something they did, or just plain old magic. And that’s what we’re doing by supporting these other open source tools. Yes, every new open source contribution results in more freedom in the world. Yes, we owe support to the components that got us where we are today. And yes, we absolutely can and should pay it forward. But more importantly than all that, we’re creating the opportunity for new interactions, new brilliance, and new defenders of the open web every time that we work on these open source products. [00:05:20] Josepha: And it doesn’t matter if we will ever see any of those people. And it doesn’t matter if they will ever thank us. What matters is that we see that knowledge like this is worth preserving and worth sharing. Because knowledge shared, information shared is like light. The more you share it, the more there is. And I want you to be able to take that sharing and use it to light the world. I want you to be able to go out and tell people how open source has changed your life, how WordPress has opened doors for you, or how much these tools have empowered your clients. I want you to remember why you came to WordPress in the first place, and I need you to hear me when I say that I need you here in WordPress today because every little ripple of good that we create makes the world a little more good. [00:06:12] (Music interlude) [00:06:20] Josepha: (SLBT) And now, my friends, that brings us to our time for the small list of big things. I’ve got a kind of a big list because I always kind of have a big list anymore, but the first thing on my list is Gutenberg 17.1. That has been released and is available for download. It includes several new enhancements, loads of bug fixes, and continues that work on phase three features that we are starting to see come through. If you don’t have it already, go out and grab it, test it, break it, and tell us what you tested and how it broke things. [00:06:52] Josepha: The second thing on my small list of big things is that there is currently an annual meetup survey out. So, we’ve had an increase in our meetup events, and certainly an increase in the active number of meetup groups that we have, but the community team is proposing a unified survey for all meetup members and organizers, and if you haven’t participated in it yet go and fill it out. You don’t have to have actually gone to a meetup event recently in order to take it, but, you know, it might be helpful. Either way, you have until January 14, 2024, to fill that out. [00:07:30] Josepha: The third thing on my small list of big things is a request for feedback. The training team is working toward launching Learning Pathways in 2024. They’re looking to create a new set of content creation guidelines that enables the learning pathways to scale with a straightforward process for developing, reviewing, and updating that content. There’s a Google doc for you where you can contribute your ideas, and that doc will be open for feedback through this week and into next week. I believe it closes on Tuesday, the 19th of December, 2023. [00:08:04] Josepha: And then the final thing on my small list of big things is actually, it’s a dual call-in. I already said with my first one about the Gutenberg plugin: get in there and test it and break it, and then tell us how it broke and what you were doing when you were testing it and broke it. And I encourage you to do that also for Matrix and Playground. So Playground has been a really big deal all year long. It was a big deal at the end of last year. It showed up for us in November 2022 and has been really just growing in surprising ways all the way through 2023. So if you have not yet seen it, you haven’t gotten your hands on it yet, it’s a WordPress installation that is loaded entirely in the browser, totally server-free, and we’re looking at a couple of new implementations that make it easier for users who are trying to, like, kick the tires of WordPress before they decide, and developers who are wanting to test new pull requests and things like that. So keep an eye out if it sounds interesting; it is interesting. And wander over and figure out how that’s working. And the other thing in that last call for collective testing is Matrix. So Matrix is an open source federated messaging protocol, and like so many technology projects out there at the moment, we are trying to make sure that we are preparing ourselves for the future arrival of Web 3 and all of the things that are coming along with current advancements in federated everything and AI and etc., etc. And so, Matrix is an open source messaging protocol. There are a lot of different ways to get connected. I’ll share a link to one of the posts in the show notes over on WordPress.org/news. But if you’re interested in learning a bit about it and you don’t really want to like figure out what sort of client is comfortable for you to use. There’s also on-site chat implementations for, I want to say, like 10 or 12 of our largest or most regularly meeting groups that we have. You can go to parts of the website like make.WordPress.org/core/chat and check those out. If you have a WordPress.org account, then you can have access to that on-site chat, and that is it. That’s the whole low barrier to entryway of figuring that out with us. Come and break stuff with us, everyone, and tell us how to make it better. [00:10:33] 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. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. [00:11:00] (Music outro) View the full article

November is usually a busy month for the WordPress project, and this year is no different. Following the empowering release of WordPress 6.4, the energy continues to build, setting the stage for the anticipated State of the Word and upcoming projects. Read on for all the exciting updates that marked the past month. Get ready for State of the Word Mark your calendars—State of the Word 2023 is approaching fast. In this annual keynote, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg celebrates the progress of the open source project and offers a glimpse into its future. For the first time in WordPress history, the event will be held outside North America, in the vibrant city of Madrid, Spain, on December 11, 2023. If you’re unable to attend the State of the Word in person, you can watch it live on the WordPress YouTube channel or join one of the many community-led watch parties. Find one near you or organize one. Learn more about State of the Word 2023 Meet Twenty Twenty-Four Along with the release of WordPress 6.4 “Shirley,” the new default Twenty Twenty-Four theme was introduced. This theme breaks away from the tradition of previous default themes that focused on a specific topic or style. Instead, Twenty Twenty-Four was created to fit any website and explore different use cases for entrepreneurs, artists, and writers. You’ll find more than 35 beautiful patterns, including full-page patterns for templates like homepage, search, and more. Twenty Twenty-Four boasts the latest site editing capabilities and a sophisticated aesthetic inspired by contemporary design trends. Check out Twenty Twenty-Four now New in the Gutenberg plugin Gutenberg 17.0 was released on November 9, 2023. It introduced improvements to the Command Palette, an alternative implementation of the DropdownMenu component, additional visual cues for LinkControl, and various accessibility and performance iterations. Gutenberg 17.1 shipped on November 22, 2023. In addition to several accessibility and writing flow enhancements, this version brought a new block spacing control in the Quote block. https://wordpress.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/ Team updates WordPress is switching to Matrix in replacement of the Making WordPress Slack by the end of this year. The move stems from the project’s commitment to implementing a new chat system aligned with WordPress’s open source values. If you haven’t already, now is the time to explore Matrix and share your questions. With phishing scams on the rise, the WordPress Security team is actively monitoring the current threat and has posted an advisory to help you protect your site. The Plugin Review team is now reopening applications to join their team. They’re looking for three new members who can improve the state of the plugin review queue and help create a diverse and inclusive team. Over the past few months, contributors have been working on redesigning the WordPress.org Developer Resources section. This post outlines proposed dates for major WordPress releases in 2024. The Meta team shared an improved version of the plugin preview feature. This version builds on feedback and allows plugin developers to safely test the preview experience for their plugins in a WordPress Playground environment. Polyglots and Meta contributors introduced a new plugin called Tour, which enables the creation of tours to guide contributors through a Make WordPress blog. Are you looking to broaden your knowledge and improve your WordPress skills? See what’s new on Learn WordPress in November 2023. The latest edition of People of WordPress features back-end web developer Artemy Kaydash from Ukraine. https://wordpress.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/ Requests for feedback & testing The Community team announced the 2023 Annual Meetup Survey. Both event attendees and organizers are encouraged to provide feedback in this 5-minute survey to help strengthen WordPress meetups in the future. Version 23.7 of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is ready for testing. WordPress events WordCamp Asia opened the third round of ticket sales and announced that their first speaker is WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The conference will be held in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 7-9, 2024. WordCamp Europe opened its call for sponsors and speakers for their conference slated to take place in Torino, Italy, on June 13-15, 2024. Don’t miss these upcoming WordCamps: WordCamp Ahmedabad 2023, India on December 9, 2023 WordCamp Lahore 2023, Pakistan on December 9-10, 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. Thank you to Bernard Meyer for contributing to this edition of The Month in WordPress. Subscribe to WordPress News Join other subscribers and receive WordPress news directly in your inbox. Subscribe View the full article

WordPress 6.4.2 is now available! This minor release features 7 bug fixes in Core. The fixes include a bug fix for an issue causing stylesheet and theme directories to sometimes return incorrect results. This release also features one security fix. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. You can download WordPress 6.4.2 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 6.4.2 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.5 released in early 2024. For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site. Security updates included in this release The security team addressed the following vulnerability in this release. A Remote Code Execution vulnerability that is not directly exploitable in core, however the security team feels that there is a potential for high severity when combined with some plugins, especially in multisite installs. To help the security team and WordPressers around the world, you are encouraged to responsibly report vulnerabilities. This allows vulnerabilities to be fixed in future releases. Thank you to these WordPress contributors This release was led by Aaron Jorbin. WordPress 6.4.2 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, Akira Tachibana, Alex Concha, Angela Jin, Anton Vlasenko, Barry, bernhard-reiter, Caleb Burks, Corey Worrell, crstauf, Darren Ethier (nerrad), David Baumwald, Dennis Snell, Dion Hulse, Erik, Fabian Todt, Felix Arntz, Héctor Prieto, ironprogrammer, Isabel Brison, Jb Audras, Jeffrey Paul, Jessica Lyschik, Joe McGill, John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, Kharis Sulistiyono, Krupal Panchal, Kylen Downs, meta4, Mike Schroder, Mukesh Panchal, partyfrikadelle, Peter Wilson, Pieterjan Deneys, rawrly, rebasaurus, Sergey Biryukov, Tonya Mork, vortfu How to contribute To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook. As a final reminder, The WordPress Security Team will never email you requesting that you install a plugin or theme on your site, and will never ask for an administrator username and password. Please stay vigilant against phishing attacks. Thanks to @angelasjin and @desrosj for proofreading. View the full article

The WordPress Security Team is aware of multiple ongoing phishing scams impersonating both the “WordPress team” and the “WordPress Security Team“ in an attempt to convince administrators to install a plugin on their website which contains malware. The WordPress Security Team will never email you requesting that you install a plugin or theme on your site, and will never ask for an administrator username and password. If you receive an unsolicited email claiming to be from WordPress with instructions similar to those described above, please disregard the emails and indicate that the email is a scam to your email provider. These emails link to a phishing site that appears to be the WordPress plugin repository on a domain that is not owned by WordPress or an associated entity. Both Patchstack and Wordfence have written articles that go in to further detail. Official emails from the WordPress project will always: Come from a @wordpress.org or @wordpress.net domain. Should also say “Signed by: wordpress.org” in the email details section. The WordPress Security Team will only communicate with WordPress users in the following locations: the Making WordPress Secure blog at make.wordpress.org/security the main WordPress News site at wordpress.org/news The WordPress Plugin team will never communicate directly with a plugin’s users but may email plugin support staff, owners and contributors. These emails will be sent from plugins@wordpress.org and be signed as indicated above. The official WordPress plugin repository is located at wordpress.org/plugins with internationalized versions on subdomains, such as fr.wordpress.org/plugins, en-au.wordpress.org/plugins, etc. A subdomain may contain a hyphen, however a dot will always appear before wordpress.org. A WordPress site’s administrators can also access the plugin repository via the plugins menu in the WordPress dashboard. As WordPress is the most used CMS, these types of phishing scams will happen occasionally. Please be vigilant for unexpected emails asking you to install a theme, plugin or linking to a login form. The Scamwatch website has some tips for identifying emails and text messages that are likely to be scams. As always, if you believe that you have discovered a security vulnerability in WordPress, please follow the project’s Security policies by privately and responsibly disclosing the issue directly to the WordPress Security team through the project’s official HackerOne page. Thank you Aaron Jorbin, Otto, Dion Hulse, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and Jonathan Desrosiers for their collaboration on and review of this post. View the full article

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. Artemy Kaydash discovered that working with WordPress has opened possibilities greater than he imagined. For him, the “active, responsive, and enthusiastic community” makes the software fresh and alive with many ways to experiment and practice adapting it for clients’ needs. Back-end development with WordPress has proven to be a rewarding career choice for Artemy. He believes developers can inspire others to choose the same career path by sharing the opportunities and satisfaction of working with the content management system (CMS). The adventure of learning WordPress Learning new software can be daunting, but Artemy realized that learning with and from inspiring people makes a real difference: “I vividly remember my first WordPress experience. I was confused, had many questions, and was desperately trying to understand how to do the most simple things.” Working initially in a small agency in Ukraine, Artemy had basic HTML/CSS skills and had just started learning PHP development. His senior colleagues helped him take his first steps in web development and were patient with his questions. The agency director later gave him the responsibility of creating a WordPress website for a friend. He recalls being nervous, as he was not yet confident in his PHP skills. Colleagues reassured Artemy as he worked, and he went on to build a career in international web development. Like many others, Artemy found that experimenting with WordPress intrigued him, and he wanted to learn more about it. Looking back, he said: “The first theme I built was awful. It was composed of my own creative solutions and code snippets I found in searches. It had lots of bugs, but as people say, ‘the first pancake is always a bit tricky.'” Artemy is a great believer in reflective learning, going back and reviewing a piece of development. He said: “No matter how bad it was, it was my first experience, and I learned a lot about the basic concepts of WordPress. That’s why I believe that learning by doing is the best way to learn something new.” He added: “My advice to others is don’t be afraid of doing something awful when you create something for the first time. It’s okay. We’ve all been through that initial phase.” “It’s nice to have a mentor when you learn something new. Luckily, you don’t need a person sitting next to you anymore. All of us have got the best mentor possible: the Internet. If you don’t know how to do something, then search for how other people have done the same thing,” Artemy said. “No wonder some say that one of the most required skills of every developer is the willingness to learn and to know how to search for information. This is one of the reasons WordPress is one of the best options for beginners. Now there is so much more information and help available to learn, more than there was when I first began.” Artemy feels that the willingness of others to share their experience and problem-solve together is a big strength of the WordPress community and also the reason for its ongoing success: “When you stumble upon a problem, there’s a high probability that someone already asked the same question on one of the forums or websites. If you’re lucky enough, someone already wrote a post about your problem with a great explanation of how to solve it with examples and code snippets.” WordPress is for beginners and long-term careers WordPress is not a software with strict limits, and it can be adapted and used in many different ways by beginners and advanced developers. I like to learn something that excites me and makes my brain work. With WordPress, I am able to find interesting and creative solutions. There are so many new things to learn that Artemy decided to stay in web development, and he sees it as a perfect channel for his creativity and abstract thinking. It may seem very different from his initial education in literature, sociology, and philosophy. Still, he has found those studies sharpened his skills for understanding, communicating, and working with clients on creative solutions to challenges. Artemy enjoys the client side of his work and interacting with different studios and agencies. His international work allows him to use WordPress and WooCommerce in many different environments, both large and small, which keeps the software exciting. He said: “I believe if you want to learn something you have to practice using it a lot. Open source is a big advantage in this.” Artemy found that the more he experiences various sites and clients, the more flexible and helpful he can be in helping them find the right solution. Inspired to help others use WordPress A willingness to share and grow skills together is what open source environments champion. This collaborative environment inspired Artemy to focus on using WordPress professionally and to share what he learned. “There is a lot of free code and snippets available for anyone to use. I have been grateful to all of the people who have written answers on sites like Stack Overflow, written blog posts, created free plugins, and other helpful materials. It made me want to help others when I was able to.” In August 2021, Artemy began blogging about using WordPress: “I like to think that this way I am repaying my learning debt for all the content I have consumed. It makes me happy to see that people really read my posts, and it helps them solve their WordPress problems. So, today, when I face a problem and can’t find the solution, I think it might be a great idea for a new post!” He also likes to keep up with how other people use WordPress by visiting Stack Overflow, WordPress Facebook groups, and other communities where people ask questions almost daily. He helps where he can in those channels or gains inspiration for new content. He believes Learn.WordPress.org and the Developer Blog are valuable resources for beginners and more advanced developers too. As those resources grow, they will increasingly become a place where others can share their development knowledge and use cases. Every community is a two-way street Artemy encourages everyone to become a part of the WordPress community. “There are a lot of opportunities for everyone,” he said. “You can help with the translation of your favorite plugins or themes. You can create your own plugin or become a contributor to an already existing open source plugin. You can write tutorials. You can write reviews helping other people to choose the best option for them. You can help people on support forums.” Every contribution, big or small, makes WordPress better. It is a great experience to be part of it. Share the stories Help share these open source contributor stories and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series. To discover more about how to use WordPress, and start your own story, visit Learn.WordPress.org. Thanks to Artemy Kaydash for sharing about his adventures in WordPress, and to Abha Thakor, Nalini Thakor, Meher Bala, Mark Smallman, Nicholas Garofalo, Chloe Bringmann, and Mary Baum for interviews, editorial, images, and reviews. 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 View the full article

WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, returns to a recent episode of the WordPress Briefing, which discussed two resources for openly licensed media in the WordPress project– Openverse and Photo Directory– and how they differ from one another! Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@WordPress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Brett McSherry Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes Photo Directory Make Page Submit a Photo to the Photo Directory Openverse Make Page Openverse Call for Contributions: Block Editor Integration (now closed) Small List of Big Things State of the Word – The countdown is on for this year’s State of the Word! If you missed the initial announcement a few weeks ago, you’ll want to mark your calendars for December 11, 2023. State of the Word will include a Q&A session. If you want to participate, you can send your question to ask-matt@wordcamp.org or ask during the event via the Q&A app Slido. A QR code for your submission will be provided during the event live stream. WordCamp Asia has extended their call for sponsors, slated to take place in Taipei, Taiwan, March 7-9, 2024. The new deadline has been extended to November 30, 2023. The Documentation Team created a new GitHub repo for end-user documentation and its translations to all locales. More info about this can be found here. Transcripts [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) [00:00:40] Josepha: Today, we’re going to take a listen to last year’s episode about Openverse and the Photo Directory. A lot has changed in that project, well in, in both of those projects since then. For instance, the Photo Directory just passed a 10,000 photo milestone. And Openverse, in the past year, got their own URL and have been hard at work strengthening the reliability of their APIs. [00:01:03] Josepha: But for some folks, it might still be a little unclear just what the difference is between these two projects. So let’s take a listen, and don’t forget to catch the updated small list of big things at the end of the episode. [00:01:13] (Music interlude) [00:01:21] Josepha: About 18 months ago, the Openverse project became part of the WordPress open source project, and at roughly the same time, we also welcomed in the Photo Directory. Since that time, we’ve seen growth of teams supporting both of these initiatives. But if you’re not involved in the day-to-day, it can be hard to know how those two things fit together or if they fit together at all. [00:01:41] Josepha: Today, let’s take a brief tour of those two projects and why they came to be. In my timeline, work on the Photo Directory started before the work on Openverse, so that’s where we’ll start. For as long as I can remember, the WordPress community has raised the need for WordPress-first ways to have and host GPL-compatible photos for use in themes, site builds, and marketing efforts as a whole. As recently as 2016, that was still coming up as a question at various flagship events and among the career photographers that contribute their time to WordPress. [00:02:13] Josepha: So, in 2017 and 2018, as attention started to turn toward rebuilding the CMS using blocks, it dropped down the list of priority items. But it never really went away as a thing that people were hoping we could do for the project as a whole. So in 2019, it was becoming clear that having open source-first tools of all varieties for people whose businesses were built on our software would help broaden the availability of the open source freedoms we believe in. This began the work on the Photo Directory with the intention of providing a GPL-friendly, community-driven repository of images. It has since launched, and we have photos in it now. We have a whole team around it. It’s wonderful. But that is how that all kind of came to be. [00:02:58] Josepha: Openverse, on the other hand, was launched as CC Search in 2019 with the laudable mandate to increase the discoverability and accessibility of open access media. Late in 2020, while work on the Photo Directory was underway, Matt shared with me that the team was looking for a new project home. When I first met with them, they shared an overview of the product, which they shorthanded as an open source search engine that searches openly licensed images. We were working on a repo of openly licensed images, so clearly, this was all written in the stars. And so you might be asking yourself at this point, great, how does it work together? I think for most of us, the timeline there kind of covers the question of what is the difference between these two things. But because I never know which of you will want to strike up a conversation about open source on an elevator, I’ve also got the elevator pitch version as well. [00:03:52] Josepha: Openverse is an open source search engine that searches, indexes, and aggregates copy left media from across the web using sources such as WordPress’s Photo Directory, Flickr’s CC Tagged Media, and Wikimedia, to name just a few. Another key difference between the Photo Directory and Openverse is that in order to contribute to the Photo Directory, now that it’s all built, that’s mostly done by submitting photos or reviewing photos. So, you don’t really need to be a developer to join in. Openverse not only is a developer-centric contribution opportunity, but it also uses a different tech stack than WordPress as a whole. So, it’s a good place for folks to go if they’re looking to broaden their horizons. [00:04:37] Josepha: So that’s your elevator pitch of what is Openverse and how does it use the Photo Directory. You have a couple of ways that you can get involved with these two projects. For the Photo Directory, as I mentioned at the start, you can always contribute photos, and they could always use more photo contributions. I’ll include a link to the submission guidelines in the show notes below, and as I mentioned, it is a no-code way to give back to the WordPress project. So, no code is required, no development environments, no testing skills. The Photo Directory team also could always use more contributors to help with the moderating of photo submissions. And so I’ll link to their making WordPress page in the show notes as well so that you can get started there. [00:05:22] Josepha: And as I mentioned before, Openverse is an aggregator, so it doesn’t host any media itself, but it is always accepting suggestions for new GPL-compatible media providers. I’ll link the area where you can leave suggestions in the show notes as well. And if you are more code-inclined, there’s an open issue for adding Openverse browsing to the block editor right now. So I’ll link that issue in the show notes in case you thought to yourself, gosh, that sounds like my most favorite thing to do. That is where you can go. [00:05:53] (Music interlude) [00:06:01] Josepha: And that brings us now to our November 2023 small list of big things. [00:06:07] Josepha: The first thing that’s on the small list of big things this week is that the countdown is on for this year’s State of the Word. If you missed the initial announcement a few weeks ago, you’ll want to mark your calendars for December 11th, 2023. State of the Word will include a Q&A session, and if you want to participate, you can send your question to ask-matt@wordcamp.org. Or, ask during the event via the Q&A app Slido. A QR code for your submission will be provided during the event live stream, so if you’re choosing that option, don’t worry; there’s not anything to do right this second. [00:06:40] Josepha: The second thing on the list is that WordCamp Asia has extended their call for sponsors for the conference that is slated to take place in Taipei, Taiwan, March 7th through 9th, 2024. The new deadline has been extended to November 30th, 2023, and so if you have been on the fence about whether to sponsor that event or not, for one, please do sponsor it, and for two, you still have a little bit of time to get over there and show your support. [00:07:05] Josepha: And then the last thing on the small list of big things is that the documentation team now has a new GitHub repo created for end-user documentation and its translations into all locales. For more information about this, come check out the show notes. I will have a link right there for you. And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. [00:07:26] 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’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you have 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. [00:07:51] (Music outro) View the full article

The countdown is on for this year’s State of the Word! If you missed the initial announcement a few weeks ago, you’ll want to mark your calendars for December 11, 2023. State of the Word is the annual keynote in which WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg celebrates the progress of the open source project and offers a glimpse into its future. For the first time, State of the Word ventures beyond North America, bringing the WordPress community to a new and vibrant city that plays a vital role in the WordPress project — Madrid, Spain! The event will be live-streamed to WordPress enthusiasts and newcomers around the globe via the WordPress YouTube channel. Please visit the event website for more event details and live-streaming information. What: State of the Word 2023 When: December 11, 2023, 15:00 UTC (Start of live stream) Where: Palacio Neptuno, Madrid, Spain Streaming: Watch the live stream on the WordPress YouTube channel. Tickets: Request a ticket to attend in person. Please note that the venue’s capacity is limited; therefore, not all ticket requests will be granted. Meetups: The community will sponsor several local watch parties globally, both in person and online. Find one near you or organize one. Have a question for Matt? State of the Word will include a Q&A session. If you want to participate, you can send your question to ask-matt@wordcamp.org or ask during the event via the Q&A app Slido. A QR code for your submission will be provided during the event live stream. Given the volume of questions usually submitted, only some will be answered live, while others will be covered in a follow-up post published after the event on make.wordpress.org/project. Is this your first State of the Word? Check out prior events on WordPress.tv for an introduction to the format. See you in person and online on December 11! Thank you to Reyes Martínez and Chloé Bringmann for reviewing this post. View the full article