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When it comes to designing a website, one size doesn’t fit all. We understand that every WordPress user has unique needs and goals, whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, a passionate photographer, a prolific writer, or a bit of them all. That’s why we are thrilled to introduce Twenty Twenty-Four, the most versatile default theme yet—bundled with WordPress 6.4 and ready to make it uniquely yours. A theme for every style Unlike past default themes, Twenty Twenty-Four breaks away from the tradition of focusing on a specific topic or style. Instead, this theme has been thoughtfully crafted to cater to any type of website, regardless of its focus. The theme explores three different use cases: one designed for entrepreneurs and small businesses, another for photographers and artists, and a third tailored for writers and bloggers. Thanks to its multi-faceted nature and adaptability, Twenty Twenty-Four emerges as the perfect fit for any of your projects. As you dive into its templates and patterns, you will notice how the new Site Editor functionality opens up different pathways for building your site seamlessly. Patterns at every step Whether you’re looking to craft an About page, showcase your work, handle RSVPs, or design captivating landing pages, Twenty Twenty-Four has got you covered. Choose from an extensive collection of over 35 beautiful patterns to customize and suit your needs. For the first time, this theme features full-page patterns for templates like homepage, archive, search, single pages, and posts. Some are exclusively available during the template-switching and creation process, ensuring you have the right options when you need them. Moreover, you can take advantage of a variety of patterns for page sections, such as FAQs, testimonials, or pricing, to meet your site’s most specific requirements. With this diverse pattern library, Twenty Twenty-Four offers a flexible canvas to quickly assemble pages of any kind without having to start from scratch—saving you time and energy in the creation process. Just let your creativity flow and explore the possibilities! Site editing in its finest form Twenty Twenty-Four ushers in a new era of block themes by bringing together the latest WordPress site editing capabilities. Discover newer design tools such as background image support in Group blocks and vertical text, providing an intuitive and efficient way to create compelling, interactive content. Find image placeholders with predefined aspect ratio settings within patterns, allowing you to drop images that perfectly fill the space. To go one step further, make your visuals interactive by enabling lightboxes. Ideal for showcasing galleries or portfolio images, this feature allows your visitors to expand and engage with them in full-screen mode. Activate it globally for all images throughout your site or for specific ones. For a smoother browsing experience on your site, you can disable the “Force page reload” setting in the Query Loop block. This ensures that the necessary content is loaded dynamically when switching between different pages without needing a full-page refresh. Elegance with purpose Twenty Twenty-Four goes beyond versatility with a beautiful aesthetic inspired by contemporary design trends, giving your website a sleek and modern look. Key design elements include: Cardo font for headlines: The Cardo font adds a touch of elegance to your site, creating a sophisticated visual experience. Sans-serif system font for paragraphs: The sans-serif font ensures that your texts are cleaner and easier to read, enhancing overall readability. Eight style variations: Twenty Twenty-Four presents a light color palette for a fresh and inviting appearance out-of-the-box, but you can customize it with seven additional style variations. Each includes fonts and colors carefully curated to work beautifully alongside the patterns and templates. Sans-serif variations: Besides the default styles, the theme offers two additional sans-serif variations, providing more choices for your site’s typography. Along with its design, Twenty Twenty-Four has been meticulously optimized for performance. This ensures that your website not only looks great but also delivers a fast and efficient user experience. Explore Twenty Twenty-Four now More information can be found in the following links: Download Twenty Twenty-Four Twenty Twenty-Four Documentation Twenty Twenty-Four Kick Off The Twenty Twenty-Four theme was designed by Beatriz Fialho and made possible thanks to the passion and tireless work of more than 120 contributors. View the full article

WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, speaks to the strategic approach to integrating open source solutions within your company and offers insight into initiating open source advocacy conversations. Tune in for a session that could redefine your company’s technological approach. 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 Small List of Big Things WordPress 6.4 “Shirley” – The final major release of 2023 launched on November 7 – WordPress 6.4 “Shirley.” Download and check out this empowering release. The Training Team recently published several new Learn resources for training guides to support Meetup Organizers. From lesson plans to online workshops, there are several ways to help you in your goals as a contributor to WordPress. The Diversity Team recently published a new Diverse Speaker Training page, providing resources for new and experienced contributors to bring more diverse speaker lineups and inclusive, diverse WP events for official WordPress Meetups and WordCamps. If you have a story showing how WordPress has impacted what you are doing or what people you know have done, record something and send it to wpbriefing@WordPress.org. We’d love to hear from you. 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 talking about something I used to have a lot of experience with in my career before WordPress. I worked at a marketing agency. I wasn’t a developer. I was in data and strategy sorts of things. But part of the work heading into every project was an evaluation of what software was best. There were always a variety being considered, but WordPress was frequently one of them. Now, I don’t know if any of you have had that moment where you’re having to talk open source with a CTO or a CEO, but it can be nerve-wracking, to say the least. And it makes sense, right? Open source has a PR problem, especially when you’re speaking to leadership inside a business. And it doesn’t really matter the size, right? You’re advocating for something that requires a completely different mental model. It doesn’t fit into accepted concepts of what makes a business thrive or what makes a bet a sure thing. There were three, maybe four, concerns that came up every time I had this conversation. So, I’m going to share those concerns with you and a few possible counterpoints to get you started. [00:01:48] Josepha: First and always is the concern around security. I believe that this particular mismatch is rooted in an idea that controlled equals secure, which isn’t always the case. So the talking point is this. Since open source has a transparent development process, it is often more secure than proprietary software, contrary to what you might hear. That transparency allows vulnerabilities to be identified by independent researchers and community members and then patched quickly because you aren’t limited by who or what you know personally. And if you’re not having a conversation where you’re having to defend the security in open source and you just want to bring it up yourself, here is a conversation opener for that. Security is a top concern for all of us. Surprisingly, open source solutions often have stronger security measures due to the collaborative nature of their development. It’s a proactive approach to minimizing risks. [00:02:43] Josepha: A second thing that frequently came up was questions around innovation and future proofing of open source products. I think this mismatch is fully rooted in the Cathedral and the Bazaar methods of advancement. So the talking point for that one is this. Embracing open source fosters innovation. We can tap into the latest technologies and stay ahead of industry trends that way. It is specifically because we have a diverse set of viewpoints that we can make sure to quickly account for future risks, along with taking advantage of future opportunities. And by our organization being more active, we can potentially get exactly the solutions we need for our clients long term. And the conversation opener for this, if you are the one bringing up the topic, is I’ve been thinking about our long-term goals and how to keep our technology stack relevant. Open source not only keeps us current but also positions us as innovators in our field. [00:03:40] Josepha: And finally, the thing that seems to make or break the decision is the concept of independence. Part of any good business decision, especially around software, is determining upfront costs to getting started, long-term effectiveness of the chosen solution, and long-term mobility should circumstances change. Open source can address these from multiple vantage points. So here’s a good talking point for that one. Open source liberates us from vendor lock-in. We’re not tied to a single vendor’s roadmap or pricing changes, providing us with more options that suit our needs our clients’ needs. Also, given how ubiquitous WordPress is in particular, there will always be a disaster recovery option should a senior developer leave. And beyond all of that, clients can own all of the content, audience attention, and clientele that we have all worked so hard to help them earn. And again, if you’re not defending things and instead choosing to bring them up as somebody who is trying to affect change in your own organization, here is a good place to start for that. Considering the dynamic nature of our industry, having the freedom to choose solutions independent of a specific vendor makes sure that we are always in control of our destiny. [00:04:59] Josepha: So, those are the three most frequent things I encountered when I was having conversations about which software to choose and what software was the best choice long term for both our organization and our client’s organizations. If you have been in the midst of this type of conversation and have been longing for some counterpoints, I hope this helps. But if you have been feeling in your heart of hearts that your company or organization would be better off using open source software, and of course, in my context, particularly WordPress as that software, but you’ve been worried about bringing it up, I hope this gives you the courage to get out there and be an agent of change in your organization. You can do it, and I know you can. [00:05:44] (Music interlude) [00:05:51] Josepha: All right, my friends, that brings us now to our small list of big things. [00:05:57] Josepha: First on the list, big, big thing. We launched WordPress 6.4 on November 7th, about a week ago. Be sure to download and check out the latest update on this monumental release. And while you’re doing it. Be sure to check out the new default theme that came out with it. It has a lot of patterns in it. I know I’ve talked about it quite a bit over the course of the year, but it’s really beautiful, and I think that it’s worth a good, strong highlight. So WordPress 6.4, you can get it on WordPress.org/download or inside your own host, probably. [00:06:29] Josepha: The second thing that we have is that the training team recently published several new Learn resources to support meetup organizers. So we’ve got over there some lesson plans, tutorials, online workshops. And there are also new materials that help you figure out how to accomplish your goals as a contributor to the WordPress project. [00:06:49] Josepha: And we also have a recently published new diverse speaker training page. It provides incredible resources for new and experienced contributors to bring more diverse speaker lineups and inclusive, diverse WordPress events for official WordPress meetups and WordCamps. [00:07:06] Josepha: And the fourth thing on our small list of big things today is that I would love to get a few voice recordings from you all, from folks who are listening to the WordPress Briefing, or folks that you know, to learn more about how WordPress has impacted you. One of the things that I miss the most from my days as a WordCamp organizer is that annually, I got to see people who had shown up, once at a meetup, you know, to learn what WordPress was, and then came back year after year to our WordCamp with these new goals and new successes and I got to watch their businesses change over time. And so if you have a story like that where WordPress impacted what you are doing or what people that you know have done, record something and send it to wpbriefing@WordPress.org. So that, my friends, is your small list of big things. [00:08:04] Josepha: Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcasting app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there is a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at wpbriefing@WordPress.org. I’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. [00:08:31] (Music outro) View the full article

September-October 2023 was yet another fun and eventful chapter in WordPress, with more WordCamps hosting exciting discussions, knowledge sharing, and learning. This month also welcomed the release of WordPress 6.4 and the Twenty Twenty-Four theme. Let’s check it out. Meet WordPress 6.4 “Shirley” WordPress 6.4 “Shirley” was released on November 7, 2023, and named after the iconic jazz artist Shirley Horn. With the release of WordPress 6.4 comes the new Twenty Twenty-Four theme, a multi-faceted, highly flexible default theme pre-loaded with more than 35 templates and patterns. This release includes more than 100 performance-related updates for a faster and more efficient experience. There’s also a host of new features and enhancements that help improve the content creation process and streamline site editing. WordPress 6.4 was made possible by more than 600 contributors in at least 56 countries. Learn more about WordPress 6.4 State of the Word 2023 Mark your calendars for State of the Word! The annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, will be held on December 11, 2023. For the first time, the event will take place outside North America—this time with the Spanish community in Madrid, Spain. A live stream will be available for WordPress enthusiasts who will not be able to attend in person. Stay tuned for more information, including how to reserve a ticket, soon! Learn more about this year’s State of the Word New in the Gutenberg plugin Two new versions of Gutenberg shipped in October: Gutenberg 16.8 was released on October 11, 2023. It introduced enhancements to the Cover block and Font Library, and added the option to view the active template when editing pages. Gutenberg 16.9 was released on October 25, 2023. This update lets you rename nearly every block from within the editor, as well as duplicate or rename individual patterns. October’s Core Editor Improvement post dives into all the writing enhancements expected in the latest WordPress 6.4 release. https://wordpress.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/ Team updates The journey to update WordPress.org continues with the launch of a new Showcase design. The Performance Team held a Hallway Hangout to discuss WordPress 6.3 performance impact in the field, diving into WordPress 6.4 performance improvements and looking ahead at what can be learned for WordPress 6.5. The Documentation Team created a new GitHub repo for end-user documentation and its translations to all locales. You can find out more about this here. Openverse has been awarded the 2023 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Open Infrastructure category. Congratulations! Learn more about the next chapter for the FSE (Full Site Editing) Outreach Program, which looks to transition into a focused space for solving issues, creating resources, and facilitating conversations around adopting Phase 2 of Gutenberg. The Accessibility team is holding weekly office hours to discuss accessibility principles and best practices for the project. Requests for feedback & testing Version 23.6 of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is ready for testing. https://wordpress.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/ WordPress events updates WordCamp Asia has extended their call for sponsors for their conference slated to take place in Taipei, Taiwan, March 7-9 2024. There will be a WordPress #WPDiversity Speaker Workshop for Women Voices in Latin America in San Jose, Costa Rica on November 11, 2023. WordCamp Valencia 2023 will take place on November 10-11, 2203. WordCamp Verona 2023 will take place on November 17-18, 2203. WordCamp Hong Kong 2023 will take place on November 18, 2203. WordCamp Islamabad 2023 will take place on November 25-26, 2203. 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 and Reyes Martínez for their contributions to this edition of The Month in WordPress. Subscribe to WordPress News Join over 2 million other subscribers and receive WordPress news directly in your inbox. Subscribe View the full article

WordPress 6.4.1 is now available! This minor release features four bug fixes. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the Release Candidate announcement or view the list of tickets on Trac. WordPress 6.4.1 is a short-cycle release. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically. If your site does not update automatically, you can also update from your Dashboard. You can download WordPress 6.4.1 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site. Thank you to these WordPress contributors This release was led by Aaron Jorbin and Tonya Mork. Thank you to everyone who tested the RC and 6.4.1, and raised reports. WordPress 6.4.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their quick and concerted coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community. @afragen @clorith @desrosj @pbiron @schlessera @azaozz @davidbaumwald @tomsommer @nexflaszlo @howdy_mcgee @baxbridge @earnjam @timothyblynjacobs @johnbillion @flixos90 @joedolson @jeffpaul @zunaid321 @courane01 @audrasjb @tacoverdo @ironprogrammer @webcommsat @otto42 @barry @chanthaboune @rajinsharwar @aaroncampbell @peterwilsoncc @anandau14 @iandunn @matthewjho @coffee2code @boogah @jason_the_adams @joemcgill @johnjamesjacoby @jrf @renehermi @dlh @mukesh27 @sumitbagthariya16 @starbuck How to contribute To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core channel. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook. Thanks to @jeffpaul and @webcommsat for proofreading. View the full article

Say hello to WordPress 6.4 “Shirley,” named after the iconic jazz artist Shirley Horn. Her distinctive voice and extraordinary connection to the piano established her as one of the leading jazz musicians of her generation. Horn’s journey from the Washington D.C. jazz scene to the international stage is a testament to her dedication and perseverance. Her influence reached far beyond the confines of traditional jazz, breaking boundaries and inspiring audiences worldwide. Enjoy the easy pace of Shirley Horn’s music as you take in all that 6.4 offers. This latest version of WordPress introduces a new, versatile default theme and a suite of upgrades to empower every step of your creative journey. Craft your content seamlessly with further writing improvements. Explore more ways to bring your vision to life and streamline site editing with enhanced tools. Whether you’re new to WordPress or an experienced creator, “Shirley” has something for you. Discover the unmatched flexibility of building with blocks and let your ideas take flight. Many of the features and enhancements in WordPress 6.4 fall in the “small but mighty” category. Along with the adaptable beauty of the Twenty Twenty-Four theme, these updates help content creators and site developers alike save time and effort while delivering the high value, low hassle WordPress experience the world has grown to expect. Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of WordPress Download WordPress 6.4 today What’s inside 6.4 Meet Twenty Twenty-Four Experience site editing at its finest with Twenty Twenty-Four. This new multi-faceted default theme has been thoughtfully crafted with three distinct use cases in mind, from writers and artists to entrepreneurs. Save time and effort with its extensive collection of over 35 templates and patterns—and unlock a world of creative possibilities with a few tweaks. Twenty Twenty-Four’s remarkable flexibility ensures an ideal fit for almost any type of site. Check it out in this demo. Let your writing flow New enhancements ensure your content creation journey is smooth. Find new keyboard shortcuts in List View, smarter list merging, and enhanced control over link settings. A cohesive toolbar experience for the Navigation, List, and Quote blocks lets you work efficiently with the tooling options you need. The Command Palette just got better First introduced in WordPress 6.3, the Command Palette is a powerful tool to quickly find what you need, perform tasks efficiently, and speed up your building workflow. Enjoy a refreshed design and new commands to perform block-specific actions in this release. Categorize and filter patterns Patterns are an excellent way to leverage the potential of blocks and simplify your site-building process. WordPress 6.4 allows you to organize them with custom categories. Plus, new advanced filtering in the Patterns section of the inserter makes finding all your patterns more intuitive. Get creative with more design tools Build beautiful and functional layouts with an expanded set of design tools. Play with background images in Group blocks for unique designs and maintain image dimensions consistent with placeholder aspect ratios. Do you want to add buttons to your Navigation block? Now you can do it conveniently without a line of code. Make your images stand out Enable lightbox functionality to let your site visitors enjoy full-screen, interactive images on click. Apply it globally or to specific images to customize the viewing experience. Rename Group blocks Set custom names for Group blocks to organize and distinguish areas of your content easily. These names will be visible in List View. Preview images in List View New previews for Gallery and Image blocks in List View let you visualize and locate where images on your content are at a glance. Share patterns across sites Need to use your custom patterns on another site? Import and export them as JSON files from the Site Editor’s patterns view. Introducing Block Hooks Block Hooks enables developers to automatically insert dynamic blocks at specific content locations, enriching the extensibility of block themes through plugins. While considered a developer tool, this feature is geared to respect your preferences and gives you complete control to add, dismiss, and customize auto-inserted blocks to your needs. Performance wins This release includes more than 100 performance-related updates for a faster and more efficient experience. Notable enhancements focus on template loading performance for themes (including Twenty Twenty-Four), usage of the script loading strategies “defer” and “async” in core, blocks, and themes, and optimization of autoloaded options. Accessibility highlights Every release is committed to making WordPress accessible to everyone. WordPress 6.4 brings several List View improvements and aria-label support for the Navigation block, among other highlights. The admin user interface includes enhancements to button placements, “Add New” menu items context, and Site Health spoken messages. Learn more about all the updates aimed at improving accessibility. Other notes of interest PHP 8.1 or 8.2 are recommended for use with WordPress 6.4. Find in-depth details on PHP support in this post. WordPress 6.4 disables attachment pages for new installations. Learn more about WordPress 6.4 Check out the new WordPress 6.4 page to learn more about the numerous enhancements and features of this release. Explore Learn WordPress for quick how-to videos, online workshops, and other free resources to level up your WordPress knowledge and skills. If you are looking for detailed technical notes on new changes, the WordPress 6.4 Field Guide is for you. Don’t forget to subscribe to the Developer Blog to stay on top of the latest development updates, tutorials, and more. For more information on installation, fixes, and file changes, visit the 6.4 release notes. The 6.4 release squad ​​The WordPress 6.4 release comes to you from an underrepresented gender release squad to welcome and empower diverse voices in the WordPress open source project. Being part of the 6.4 release coordination team has allowed me to closely observe the intricate release process, where every detail, no matter how minor, is meticulously addressed—taking into account various factors like performance and backward compatibility. There’s still much to learn, but I feel fortunate to have had the chance to contribute to WordPress 6.4. Akshaya Rane, 6.4 release coordinator team member Over several weeks, the 6.4 release squad kept the release on track and moving forward by leading collective work, connecting ideas, and removing roadblocks. Release Lead: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Release Coordinators: Chloé Bringmann, Ebonie Butler, Akshaya Rane, Francesca Marano. Cohort: Dee Teal, Jaimie Olmstead, Jyolsna J E, Mary Baum Core Tech Leads: Mike Schroder, Tonya Mork. Cohort: Stephanie Walters Editor Tech Leads: Sarah Norris, Siobhan Bamber, Tammie Lister. Cohort: Devan Ferguson, Frédérique Battel, Jessica Goddard, Katie Ayres, Marta Torre, Nyasha Green, Pooja Bhimani Core Triage Leads: Nicole Furlan, Olga Gleckler Editor Triage Leads: Anne McCarthy, Birgit Pauli-Haack. Cohort: Emily Leffler Schulman Documentation Leads: Abha Thakor, Femy Praseeth, Mushrit Shabnam. Cohort: D.J. Billings, Jamie VanRaalte, Laura Byrne, Tiffany Bridge, Winstina Hughes Marketing and Communications Leads: Meher Bala, Reyes Martínez, Sé Reed. Cohort: Meagan Hanes, Michelle Frechette Test Lead: Pooja Derashri. Cohort: Anne Bovelett, Birgit Olzem Design Leads: Ellen Bauer, Estela Rueda. Cohort: Allison Tarr, Ana Cirujano, Cathi Bosco, Sonia Gaballa, Ohia Performance Lead: Emily Clarke. Cohort: Linnea Huxford Training Leads: Courtney P.K., Courtney Roberston Default Theme Leads: Jessica Lyschik, Maggie Cabrera Thank you, contributors WordPress believes in democratizing publishing and the freedoms that come with open source. Supporting this idea is a global and diverse community of people working together to strengthen the software. WordPress 6.4 reflects the countless efforts and passion of more than 600 contributors in at least 56 countries. This release also welcomed over 170 first-time contributors! Their collaboration delivered more than 1150 enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all—a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress open source community. 6adminit · Aaron D. 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Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way. Thank you to everyone who helps make WordPress available in 200 languages. Last but not least, thanks to the volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users worldwide. Get involved Participation in WordPress is not limited to coding. If contributing appeals to you, learning more and getting involved is easy. Discover the teams that come together to Make WordPress, and use this interactive tool to help you decide which is right for you. Looking ahead Over the past two decades, WordPress has transformed the digital publishing landscape and empowered anyone to create and share, from handcrafted personal stories to world-changing movements. The present and future of WordPress hold exciting opportunities for everyone, builders and enterprises alike. The foundational work for Phase 3 of the roadmap continues, with efforts focused on fostering real-time collaboration and streamlining publishing flows to improve how creators and teams work together in WordPress. Stay on top of the latest news and contributing opportunities by subscribing to WordPress News and the WP Briefing podcast. A release haiku The smooth feel of jazz The cutting-edge of the web Install 6.4 View the full article

The third release candidate (RC3) for WordPress 6.4 is ready to download! This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC3 on a test server and site. WordPress 6.4 is slated for release on November 7, 2023—less than a week away. If you haven’t tried it, now is the time. You can test WordPress 6.4 RC3 in three ways: Plugin: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). Direct download: Download the RC3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress site. Command line: Use the following WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=6.4-RC3 Read the RC1 announcement for featured highlights, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.4-related posts. If you are looking for detailed technical notes on new features and improvements, the WordPress 6.4 Field Guide is for you. The WordPress 6.4 release is brought to you by an underrepresented gender release squad to welcome the participation and partnership of those who identify as gender-underrepresented in the WordPress open source project. What’s in WordPress 6.4 RC3? Thanks to everyone who has tested the beta and RC releases. Since RC2 was released on October 24, there have been more than 25 issues resolved. You can browse the technical details for all recent updates using these links: GitHub commits for 6.4 Closed Trac tickets since RC2 GitHub commits for Twenty Twenty-Four PHP compatibility update It’s recommended to use PHP 8.1 or 8.2 with the upcoming 6.4 release. Refer to WordPress 6.4’s PHP compatibility post for more details. Contributing to 6.4 WordPress is open source software made possible by a community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help, regardless of your technical expertise. Get involved in testing Your feedback and help in testing are vital to developing the WordPress software and ensuring its quality. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. Check out this guide for instructions on testing WordPress 6.4 features. The core Query block requires more testing and feedback to ensure the latest changes to prevent full page reloads work smoothly. Note that this setting was called “Enhanced pagination,” but it has been recently renamed, and it’s now referred to as “Force page reload” instead. If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs. Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack. Search for vulnerabilities During the release candidate phase of WordPress 6.4, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper. Update your theme or plugin Do you build themes and plugins? Your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for users worldwide. Hopefully, you have already tested your themes and plugins with WordPress 6.4 betas. With RC3, you will want to continue your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.4. Please post detailed information to the support forums if you find compatibility issues. Documentation Help the Docs team put the finishing touches on end-user documentation in time for the 6.4 release. Find out what’s needed and how you can help in this post. Help translate WordPress Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Português? Русский? 日本? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. A RC3 haiku One more week of prep One more week to test the code One more week til launch Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @meher, @rmartinezduque, @sereedmedia. View the full article

Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she looks at a recent WordPress success story, the clean energy solution Little Sun, and learns about their WordPress story. 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 Special Guest: Romane Guégan Special Guest: Ashley Mrozek Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Brett McSherry Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes Website: Little Sun Small List of Big Things State of the Word – This year’s annual keynote, State of the Word, will be on December 11. Save the date to hear the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, share reflections on the project’s progress and aspirations for the future of open source. Celebrating 10,000 Photos in the WordPress Photo Directory – On October 11, the 10,000th photo was approved! The Photo Team is one of the newest ways to contribute to the WordPress open source project. Community Team Training #11: Using the Translate Live tool – Uncover the potential of the “Translate Live” tool, which is ideal for presenting at local meetups to engage and onboard new translators for your native language. If you’re organizing a WordCamp, consider introducing this tool during your Contributor Day. A New WordPress Showcase – The journey to update WordPress.org continues with the launch of a new Showcase design. The Showcase is a natural starting point for visitors arriving on WordPress.org, and it both inspires creativity and demonstrates what’s possible with WordPress. Transcript [00:00:00] Josepha: Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing. The podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. [00:00:28] (Intro music) [00:00:40] Josepha: Today, I’ve got a special guest with me. I have here a couple of folks from Little Sun, a nonprofit organization that recently moved its entire online presence to WordPress. And we’re talking everything from their mission statement and donations all the way to their blog and shop. Welcome both to the WordPress Briefing. [00:00:59] Ashley: Thank you. [00:01:00] Romane: Thank you. [00:01:01] Josepha: We have with us Little Sun today. Can you start by introducing yourselves and your organization? Just tell us a little bit about what you all do. [00:01:08] Romane: Hi, my name is Romane Guégan. I’m a Senior Press and Communications Manager at Little Sun. [00:01:14] Ashley: And I am Ashley Mrozek. I’m the Senior Digital Manager. [00:01:17] Josepha: So what does Little Sun do for the folks who are listening and maybe don’t know about it yet? [00:01:22] Romane: Little Sun brings full power and light to communities that live off the grid, with the focus on sub-Saharan Africa because most of the people who lack access to electricity and need them. And we also inspire people to take climate action globally. [00:01:39] Ashley: So access to solar energy helps kids who don’t have electricity and study at night. They can complete their homework at night. If their schools are in a more rural area, they will have a light to kind of guide them back home. We also work on a lot of electric vocation projects and hospitals. So we’re, we’re kind of supporting labors that are, are taking place in the evening, after the sun goes down, among other things. [00:02:07] Josepha: Yeah. It’s, I, I think that that is one of the things that folks, probably most of my listeners, probably take for granted, like the easy access to light. And as we all know, the sun is around a lot. And so that is one of our most readily available resources other than potentially wind power. But I think that that is a great mission. And I really think that that’s wonderful work that y’all are doing. So, is there a particular reason that you focus on sub-Saharan Africa? Is that where you find a majority of people who don’t have access to that kind of resource are? [00:02:43] Romane: Yeah. 70% of those people actually need in sub-Saharan Africa, where solar is actually a viable source of energy. Actually, it’s only 1% of solar, of the solar capital of the generation when we actually deliver solar energy there because there is so much potential. [00:03:04] Josepha: That’s amazing. So you said that you all were funded in 2012. I imagine that your business has evolved over time. So, obviously, you all are WordPress users. That’s why we have you here with us today. But before we get into the questions about WordPress itself. Why don’t you tell us a bit about how your business needs evolved over time and how you wound up needing a solution that did use WordPress? [00:03:31] Ashley: So I would say our focus and kind of the different initiatives that we’ve taken on since 2012 have shifted a lot based on various reasons, where our donors are, where we’ve kind of found the most need, and where we can be the most impactful. And I think as we go into those new geographies, our online presence has become more and more important. [00:03:55] Josepha: So, before you all switched to WordPress, I understand that you had several sites that you had to merge into one. And so I assume that as you evolved the business and your focus has changed, you realized you needed something a bit more streamlined. So, how was that transition, that migration from a lot of different sites to one big site? [00:04:17] Romane: Yeah, because we started as a global project. And then, with the time, we evolved, actually also getting new donations. And in the past, we used to have one website where we have our webshop and our mission, our vision, all of our project descriptions. But then we had another website only for the foundation. And then you had another foundation in the U.S. So it was the question, okay, how do we put everything together? So we actually switched from littlesun.com to littlesun.org with WordPress, and it was amazing to see how we managed with the team to create an ecosystem approach, including impact, but also sales, and fundraising. [00:05:02] Josepha: That was a big footprint that you all had, and you kind of consolidated it into one. And for all of our folks listening on the podcast, I’m going to include some links, not only to their site but then also to a few other things that we’ve mentioned in here today. So, since you made that change, how has it, how has that impacted the way that you all work with your site or with your online presence? [00:05:27] Ashley: Yeah, I think using WordPress and having access to WordPress has been hugely valuable for us. We’re a small team, we’re a nonprofit, so it is pretty scrappy. Everyone is kind of doing a lot of different things. We don’t have a dedicated development team. And so being able to easily customize our pages and create new landing pages or make adjustments on the site without that development help has been valuable. [00:05:55] Josepha: Yeah, so you don’t have a developer team now. Did you have a developer team when you had all the sites? [00:06:01] Romane: We just still work with freelancers. [00:06:03] Josepha: Okay, yeah. I am also not a developer, for what it’s worth, and have been working with nonprofits for a while. And I understand that problem where you have all these things you need to do and want to do, but there are also things you absolutely have to focus on in order to make your mission possible and your vision come true. [00:06:23] Ashley: Yeah, and I think, I think WordPress has given us a lot more, like a lot more flexibility to kind of produce new content quickly. And because of that, it’s just been a lot more efficient, too, for us, you know. [00:06:38] Josepha: And you all are using Blocks? Are you, like, the best Block builders? [00:06:42] Romane: Yeah, I love Blocks. [00:06:43] Josepha: Blocks are a fairly new innovation for the history of WordPress. WordPress has been around for 20 years, so we’re a nice, mature project. And we’ve really only had blocks as a functional part of the CMS for probably the last five or so. We’ve been working on the project a little bit longer. And it has been fascinating to me, like, in my own work that I have done with WordPress, kind of outside of my work with the project, to see, like, how much autonomy you get to have back as somebody who is not a developer, maybe isn’t a designer, but you do know exactly what you need to have on your site today, right? And having to stop and find a freelancer or stop and find some set of developers who can make those changes. For me, when I was specifically working on nonprofit stuff. That was always kind of a moment where I was like, well, I guess I’ll just go to Facebook and put that on there or something because I was faster than trying to find someone to come help you. And so, I’m so glad you love the block. [00:07:48] Ashley: We’ve created many a landing page. [00:07:50] Josepha: Also, your site is adorable, and your brand is adorable, in case no one’s mentioned that lately. Super cute. Super cute. [00:07:58] Josepha: So, we’ve talked about how you kind of took a bunch of stuff and made it into one big thing and how that’s been easier for you all to manage it. But from the standpoint of just, like, somebody who’s running a nonprofit, someone who’s running an organization, how has that transition been for your team? I know you said you don’t have a huge team, but was the move toward WordPress a net benefit over time, or was it immediately beneficial? Like, how has that been for your team? [00:08:27] Romane: So what’s interesting actually is that we have a team that is spread also all over the world. And so we have teams in Berlin and in U.S., and New York. In Zambia, too. What was really interesting was how people identify to the new website because now we have to really think, okay, what is the content we want people to see, but also we want our critics to see. And so it kind of unified all of our content at Little Sun. And it was much more like much easier to understand afterwards. [00:09:03] Josepha: Yeah. [00:09:04] Romane: And it was because we also work at the intersection of creative communications, impacts, fundraising, technology, and to be able to put everything and have it on the front. And then have the stories to tell the stories from sub-Saharan Africa, from universities who got either a Little Sun lamps or solar systems, and then we have the donation page, so basically everything could be integrated in a super easy way, and it could target different audiences easily, either it’s someone who wants to partner with us, or a donor, or just someone who wants to be part of our solar training. [00:09:46] Josepha: Yeah, and I mean, I think that no one will be surprised to hear that if you have multiple things that you have to get everybody to, it really increases the amount of marketing that you have to accomplish, rather than having one place for everyone to go too, and they can see everything that they might want once they arrive. So, that’s wonderful. [00:10:06] Ashley: I think I was just going to say, or kind of echo what Romane said about the fact that we have so many different audiences, we have partners, we have donors, we have people who are just coming to learn about solar energy, or who are interested in purchasing a lamp. I think prior to this, it was a little bit confusing for those different audiences to kind of navigate to where they were intended to go to on the site, and now it’s much more cohesive. And we often hear that from people where it’s like, it’s quite easy to, to kind to find what they need to find on the site. [00:10:39] Josepha: I define the WordPress community as anyone who is using WordPress, regardless of whether they know it or not. And so you all, in my mind, are part of the WordPress Community. And I just wondered if being part of that community has changed your approach to the way that you manage your content online or the way that you have chosen work with your business as like an online entity that also does on-the-ground, in-person thing? [00:11:06] Ashley: I think definitely. I think we’re kind of going back to what I said before. I think we’re much more efficient now. I think in the past, it’s the idea of, like, well, getting this web page live or publishing this is going to be, you know, we have to think about a huge timeline, that’s, is going to require a lot of resourcing, a lot of different types of expertise and people, and everything now feels like something that we can, we can launch pretty immediately, which is really wonderful too. I would also say just like being a part of the WordPress community too. It’s the sort of support that we’ve gotten from your team. It’s always really tailored. And I think as a nonprofit working with a, like, a much bigger business, you can be apprehensive sometimes, feeling like you won’t really get that personalized support. And I think that’s something that’s been so nice with WordPress. Is really feeling like the people we’re working with are understanding our business and taking the time to understand our needs. And I think that makes us think differently about our online presence as well because then we feel like we have that additional support, which is great. [00:12:12] Josepha: I’m always a fan of hearing that people who are passionate about WordPress are also passionate about helping others with WordPress. That’s one of my favorite things about us. That’s not true. I have like 25 favorite things about us. And so I need to stop saying that I have one favorite, but I never will. Okay, well, do you all have any last thoughts that you just want to share with me or podcast listeners that we have? [00:12:36] Ashley: Yeah, I think the, the plugins and integrations have been really useful for us. I think it can be really intimidating to bring on, like, a new tech solution or tool and feel like everything that you are already working with or have is going to become outdated or obsolete in some way. And I think it’s just been really nice to work with WordPress and have all of those transitions be really seamless for everything to connect really well. Yeah, I think that’s been. That’s hugely helpful too. [00:13:07] Josepha: So, was that part of the decision-making process? Like, do I know that this software will be around in the future so that you’re making an investment in the site now and know that it’s going to hang around now you can find people help? Like, was that part of the decision-making process? [00:13:21] Ashley: I think so. I mean, I guess I wasn’t completely around during the time, but I would say, like, that’s definitely something that we’re considering in any kind of tech that we’re thinking about is it can require so much work to, to kind of bring something on with such a small team. So we want to ensure that, yeah, it’s going to last, it has longevity, and it’s going to work with the tools that we already have. So I think all of that is really important for sure. [00:13:48] Josepha: Well, thank you both so much for joining me. Like I said, we’ll have a link to littlesun.org in the notes so that you all can learn more about their project and see their beautiful site with their beautiful little solar sunflowers. Thank you both for being with me today. [00:14:04] Romane: Thank you so much. [00:14:05] Ashley: Thank you so much for having us. [00:14:07] (Music interlude) [00:14:11] Josepha: What a wonderful organization. I’m so glad that they found WordPress and that it works for them. Let’s continue our tour today with the small list of big things. Item number one, it’s time to save the date: December 11th, 2023, for this year’s State of the Word. State of the Word is the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress Project co-founder Matt Mullenweg. Every year, the event shares reflections on the project’s progress and aspirations for the future of open source. And so, if that is something that you like to tune into, December 11th is your day. Second thing on our list is that we are celebrating our 10,000th photo submission. So, on October 11th, the 10,000th photo was approved. The Photo Team is one of the newest ways to contribute to the WordPress open source project, and it feeds all of those photos into Openverse as well. The third thing on our list today is that I want to tell you about a community team training module that just came out. It’s specifically about the Translate Live tool, and it is ideal for presenting at your local meetups to engage and onboard new translators for your native language. If you’re organizing a WordCamp, consider introducing this tool during your Contributor Day. I will leave a link for this in the show notes so that it is easy to find. And item number four, the journey to update WordPress.org, continues with the launch of a new Showcase design. The Showcase is a natural starting point for a lot of visitors who are on WordPress.org. It inspires creativity and also demonstrates what’s possible with WordPress. So, stop on by there, it’s WordPress.org/showcase, and give it a bit of a look. [00:15:58] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. And 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 a new episode drops. And if you like what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard today, you can share those with me at wprebriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. [00:16:24] (Music outro) View the full article

In an effort to keep the WordPress community up to date, this post provides an update on the PHP compatibility of the upcoming WordPress 6.4 release scheduled for November 7, 2023. Recommended PHP version for WordPress 6.4 It’s recommended to use PHP 8.1 or 8.2 with this upcoming release. Please refer to the Hosting page for more detailed information, including a few known issues. Reach out to your hosting company to explore PHP upgrade options. Why does compatibility matter? PHP is a programming language on which the WordPress code is based. This language runs on the server, and it is critical to keep it updated for security and functionality. Various teams within the WordPress open source project work to both test and fix any issues with new PHP versions so you can update with confidence that the WordPress core software is compatible. Happy WordPress-ing! Thank you to @annezazu @barry @ironprogrammer @hellofromtonya @chanthaboune @jrf @costdev @javiercasares for reviewing and contributing to the effort of this post. View the full article

The second release candidate (RC2) for WordPress 6.4 is now available! This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC2 on a test server and site. WordPress 6.4 is slated for release on November 7, 2023—two weeks from today. If you haven’t tried it, now is the time. You can test WordPress 6.4 RC2 in three ways: Plugin: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). Direct download: Download the RC2 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress site. Command line: Use the following WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=6.4-RC2 Read the RC1 announcement for featured highlights, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.4-related posts. If you are looking for detailed technical notes on new features and improvements, the WordPress 6.4 Field Guide is for you. The WordPress 6.4 release is brought to you by an underrepresented gender release squad to welcome the participation and partnership of those who identify as gender-underrepresented in the WordPress open source project. What’s in WordPress 6.4 RC2? Thanks to everyone who has tested the beta and RC releases. Since RC1 was released on October 17, there have been more than 25 issues resolved. You can browse the technical details for all recent updates using these links: GitHub commits for 6.4 Closed Trac tickets since RC1 GitHub commits for Twenty Twenty-Four Contributing to 6.4 WordPress is open source software made possible by a community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help, regardless of your technical expertise. Get involved in testing Your feedback and help in testing are vital to developing the WordPress software and ensuring its quality. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. Check out this guide for instructions on testing WordPress 6.4 features. If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs. Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack. Search for vulnerabilities During the release candidate phase of WordPress 6.4, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper. Update your theme or plugin Do you build themes and plugins? Your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for users worldwide. Hopefully, you have already tested your themes and plugins with WordPress 6.4 betas. With RC2, you will want to continue your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.4. Please post detailed information to the support forums if you find compatibility issues. Help translate WordPress Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Português? Русский? 日本? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. A RC2 haiku You have been waiting Download and give it a test RC2 is here Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @meher, @rmartinezduque, @michelleames, @cbringmann View the full article

It’s time to save the date, December 11, 2023, for this year’s State of the Word! State of the Word is the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg. Every year, the event shares reflections on the project’s progress and aspirations for the future of open source. For the first time, State of the Word will take place outside North America–this time with the Spanish community in Madrid, Spain. The event will be live-streamed to WordPress enthusiasts around the globe via WordPress.org social media platforms. Join Matt as he provides a retrospective of 2023, demos the latest in WordPress tech, and comments on the future of the WordPress open source project. Details including how to reserve a ticket for the in-person event, the link to watch the live stream, and information on how to submit questions for the Q&A portion will be provided in November and shared on WordPress.org and affiliated social media accounts. Thanks to Reyes Martínez and Chloé Bringmann for reviewing this post. View the full article

The journey to update WordPress.org continues with the launch of a new Showcase design. The Showcase is a natural starting point for visitors arriving on WordPress.org, and it both inspires creativity and demonstrates what’s possible with WordPress. From unique personal blogs and portfolios to enterprises and celebrity fan sites, the Showcase celebrates WordPress’s flexibility, popularity, and the freedom to own one’s content. This new design provides much-needed improvements to the aesthetics and user experience. It emphasizes bold visuals and a more dynamic browsing experience through tags and categories. Individual site pages now include desktop and mobile screenshots, while the site introduces an improved layout on mobile devices. This redesign also brings new block-based functionality and several components that will be used elsewhere on WordPress.org. All of this was made possible through collaboration between Design, Marketing, and Meta teams. Thank you to everyone. @adamwood @alexstine @annezazu @bengreeley @cbringmann @chanthaboune @dufresnesteven @eidolonnight @fcoveram @joen @jonoaldersonwp @jpantani @laurlittle @matt @markoserb @ndiego @pablohoneyhoney @pkevan @renyot @ryelle @sereedmedia @_dorsvenabili If you would like to propose a change or report an issue, please do so in the wporg-showcase-2022 GitHub repository. Also, make sure to join the #website-redesign Slack channel if you are interested in additional updates coming to WordPress.org and want to contribute. View the full article

The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.4 is now available! This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC1 on a test server and site. Reaching this phase of the release cycle is an important milestone. While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains vital to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.4 is the best it can be. You can test WordPress 6.4 RC1 in three ways: Plugin: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). Direct download: Download the RC1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress site. Command line: Use the following WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=6.4-RC1 The current target for the WordPress 6.4 release is November 7, 2023. Get an overview of the 6.4 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.4-related posts. The WordPress 6.4 release is brought to you by an underrepresented gender release squad to welcome the participation and partnership of those who identify as gender-underrepresented in the WordPress open source project. What’s in WordPress 6.4 RC1 This release contains 420 enhancements and 445 bug fixes for the editor, including more than 260 tickets for WordPress 6.4 core. Browse the technical details for all issues recently addressed using these links: GitHub commits for 6.4 Closed Trac tickets since Beta 4 GitHub commits for Twenty Twenty-Four Highlights WordPress 6.4 is the third and last major release of 2023. It introduces a multi-purpose default theme, new features, and a keen focus on details to enhance every aspect of your creation journey—from site editing and design to writing flows. A new flexible default theme brings together the latest and greatest of WordPress. Discover its vast collection of templates and patterns to tweak and match your brand. Built for versatility, Twenty Twenty-Four is an ideal fit for nearly any type of website. Enable lightbox functionality in images for immersive viewing experiences. Organize your patterns with your own custom categories. Find them all more intuitively with advanced filtering in the Patterns section of the inserter. Enjoy more writing improvements, including new keyboard shortcuts, smoother list merging, and enhanced control over your link settings. A revamped toolbar experience for Navigation, List, and Quote blocks ensures cohesive and organized access to the tooling options you work with. A redesigned Command Palette with new commands helps you find what you need, perform tasks efficiently, and speed up your workflow. Rename Group blocks to organize and distinguish areas of your content easily. See and locate your content’s media assets at a glance with new gallery and image previews in List View. Build beautiful yet functional layouts with an expanded set of design tools. Play with background images in Group blocks for unique creative designs, keep image dimensions consistent with placeholder aspect ratios, and effortlessly add buttons to your Navigation block without custom CSS—among other new capabilities. Block Hooks enable developers to automatically insert blocks at their chosen content locations, enriching the extensibility of block themes through plugins. While developer-centric, this new feature improves your building experience with blocks and gives you complete control to customize Block Hooks to your needs. Over 60 accessibility updates, including significant List View enhancements, aria-label support for the Navigation block, and upgrades to the admin user interface. More than 100 performance updates, focusing on template loading performance for classic and block themes, usage of the script loading strategies “defer” and “async,” and optimization of autoloaded options. Are you looking for a deeper dive into details and technical notes? These recent posts cover a few of the latest updates: Changes to attachment pages for improved SEO Miscellaneous Editor changes in WordPress 6.4 Introducing Block Hooks for dynamic blocks Script loading changes in WordPress 6.4 Improvements to template loading in WordPress 6.4 Introducing admin notice functions in WordPress 6.4 Updates to user-interface components in WordPress 6.4 New `registerInserterMediaCategory` API Ways to contribute WordPress is open source software made possible by a community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help, regardless of your technical expertise. Get involved in testing Testing for issues is critical to developing the software and ensuring its quality. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute—whether you have experience or not. Check out this guide for detailed instructions on testing key features in WordPress 6.4. If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs. Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack. Search for vulnerabilities During the release candidate phase of WordPress 6.4, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper. Update your theme or plugin Do you build themes and plugins? Your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for users worldwide. You most likely have already been testing your latest themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.4 betas. With RC1, you will want to complete your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file to 6.4. Please post detailed information to the support forums if you find compatibility issues. Help translate WordPress Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Português? Русский? 日本? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages. This release also marks the hard string freeze point of the 6.4 release cycle. A haiku for RC1 RC1 in hand WordPress evolves and takes shape Testing, a sneak peek, in place Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @meher, @rmartinezduque, @webcommsat, @annezazu, @cbringmann, @priethor. View the full article

Join WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, as she goes back to the basics and offers some insight into block patterns for WordPress. Don’t miss this exciting insider’s look! 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 Using Block Patterns Pattern Library Taking Advantage of Query Loops Small List of Big Things The WP Annual Survey is available! Each year, the WordPress community (users, site builders, extenders, and contributors) provides valuable feedback through an annual survey. WordCamp Asia is searching for volunteers for the upcoming WordCamp on March 7–9, 2024. They are looking for Contributor Stories, Event Volunteers, Emcee support, A/V Team Crew, and even designers to help create the official Wapuu for the event. Local WordCamp Meetups! Use this opportunity to find upcoming local events or volunteer to help at the next one. They are an excellent opportunity to meet with others in the community. Transcript [00:00:00] Josepha: Hello everyone. And welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. [00:00:28] (Intro music) [00:00:39] Josepha: Today’s briefing topic is going to take a bit of a back-to-basics look at block patterns. Block patterns are one of my favorite enhancements that came through the Gutenberg project, and they’re pretty much exactly what they sound like. Groups of blocks that are arranged together. These patterns can be as simple as a block that holds a series of social sharing icons, but they can also be as complex as an entire landing page, complete with a call to action and interactive gallery. They can be used as a starting point where you activate an entire pattern and then modify the pieces that don’t quite work for you or as a sort of inspirational catalog of design elements for you to build your own patterns from. So, where do these block patterns come from? Who created them? As with most things in WordPress, the answer is lots of places. Some patterns are included with WordPress by default, and there are also sometimes specialized block patterns that are bundled with a particular theme or plugin. There’s also a pattern library that includes both curated block patterns and all the patterns that are created and shared by the WordPress community itself. So from the CMS, from themes, from plugins, from designers, from hobbyists, from people who just like love creating things and putting it out in the world, that’s, that’s where those patterns come from. But you can also create and curate your own block patterns, either to share back to the community as some folks do or because you are a site administrator and everyone needs to be able to add, I don’t know, an author block or something. But you don’t always want to be the one that has to put the photo on the page. There are a few blocks that have their patterns built into settings, most notably the Query Loop Block. I’ll share a tutorial about how to work with that in the show notes, but ultimately, what’s important to remember here is that block patterns are a really powerful tool with a lot of ways to implement them. You can start as simple as you want or as complex as you want, but either way, getting familiar with this concept in the software will give you a leg up on your next project. [00:02:53] (Music interlude) [00:03:00] Josepha: That brings us now to our small list of big things. First up, the annual survey is available. Each year, the WordPress community, so users, site builders, extenders, contributors, artists, you all provide valuable feedback through an annual survey. And every year, I look into the results to get a sense for what areas need the most attention in the project. So click the link in the show notes to take the 2023 survey and help co-create WordPress. The next thing on our small list of big things is WordCamp Asia is currently searching for volunteers for the upcoming event on March 7th through 9th, 2024. They’re looking for Contributor Stories, Event Volunteers, Emcee support, A/V Team Crew, and even designers to help create the official Wapuu for the event. I’ll include a link to applications for that in the show notes as well. And finally, I think it’s important to mention that if you don’t really know what a WordCamp is, so you don’t really understand why you should volunteer to help this one, or why you would want to, then head over to your local meetup. If you look in your WordPress dashboard, there’s a widget in there that tells you when the next local event will be. And I know that they will all be delighted to have you there. And who knows, maybe your city will be the next to host a WordCamp. I’ll also include in the show notes just a list of all of the meetup groups that we have in the world. And so if you don’t trust your dashboard or you don’t share your location there for some reason, you can just find it on your own. And that, my friends, is your small of big things. [00:04:32] Josepha: Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. 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 a new episode drops. 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 directly with me at wpbriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks again for listening, and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. [00:05:00] (Music outro) View the full article

This security and maintenance release features 19 bug fixes on Core, 22 bug fixes for the Block Editor, and 8 security fixes. WordPress 6.3.2 is a short-cycle release. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the Release Candidate announcement. 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. The next major release will be version 6.4 planned for 7 November 2023. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically. You can download WordPress 6.3.2 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site. 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: Marc Montpas of Automattic for finding a potential disclosure of user email addresses. Marc Montpas of Automattic for finding an RCE POP Chains vulnerability. Rafie Muhammad and Edouard L of Patchstack along with a WordPress commissioned third-party audit for each independently identifying a XSS issue in the post link navigation block. Jb Audras of the WordPress Security Team and Rafie Muhammad of Patchstack for each independently discovering an issue where comments on private posts could be leaked to other users. John Blackbourn (WordPress Security Team), James Golovich, J.D Grimes, Numan Turle, WhiteCyberSec for each independently identifying a way for logged in user to execute any shortcode. mascara7784 and a third-party security audit for identifying a XSS vulnerability in the application password screen. Jorge Costa of the WordPress Core Team for identifying XSS vulnerability in the footnotes block. s5s and raouf_maklouf for independently identifying a cache poisoning DoS vulnerability. Thank you to these WordPress contributors This release was led by Joe McGill, Aaron Jorbin and Jb Audras, with the help of David Baumwald on mission control. WordPress 6.3.2 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, Akihiro Harai, Alex Concha, Andrew Ozz, Andy Fragen, Anthony Burchell, Aurooba Ahmed, Ben Dwyer, Carolina Nymark, Colin Stewart, Corey Worrell, Damon Cook, David Biňovec, David E. Smith, Dean Sas, Dennis Snell, Dhruvi Shah, Dion Hulse, Ehtisham S., Felix Arntz, George Mamadashvili, Greg Ziółkowski, Huzaifa Al Mesbah, Isabel Brison, Jb Audras, Joe Hoyle, Joe McGill, John Blackbourn, John James Jacoby, Jonathan Desrosiers, Jonny Harris, Jorge Costa, Justin Tadlock, K. Adam White, Kim Coleman, LarryWEB, Liam Gladdy, Mehedi Hassan, Miguel Fonseca, Mukesh Panchal, Nicole Furlan, Paul Biron, Paul Kevan, Peter Wilson, Pooja N Muchandikar, Rajin Sharwar, Ryan McCue, Sal Ferrarello, Sergey Biryukov, Shail Mehta, Stephen Bernhardt, Teddy Patriarca, Timothy Jacobs, Weston Ruter, Zunaid Amin, ahardyjpl, beryldlg, floydwilde, jastos, martin.krcho, masteradhoc, petitphp, ramonopoly, vortfu, zieladam 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 #6-4-release-leads channels. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook. Already testing WordPress 6.4? The fourth beta is now available (zip) and it contains these security fixes. For more on 6.4, see the beta 3 announcement post. Thanks to @jeffpaul, @chanthaboune, @peterwilsoncc and @rawrly for proofreading. View the full article

WordPress 6.4 Beta 3 is now available 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 that you evaluate Beta 3 on a test server and site. You can test WordPress 6.4 Beta 3 in three ways: Plugin: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). Direct download: Download the Beta 3 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. Command line: Use the following WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=6.4-beta3 The current target for the final release of WordPress 6.4 is November 7, 2023. Get an overview of the 6.4 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.4-related posts in the coming weeks for more information. The WordPress 6.4 release is brought to you by an underrepresented gender release squad to welcome the participation and partnership of those who identify as gender-underrepresented in the WordPress open source project. Want to know what’s new in WordPress 6.4? Read the Beta 1 announcement for details. Get involved in testing Your help testing WordPress 6.4 Beta 3 is key to ensuring its quality. 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 6.4. 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. Learn more about Gutenberg updates debuting in WordPress 6.4 by reviewing prior editions of What’s New in Gutenberg posts for 16.2, 16.3, 16.4, 16.5, 16.6, and 16.7. Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack. Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta 3 Between Beta 1 and the final release candidate (RC) for each new WordPress version, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper. Update on the Font Library The Font Library feature, initially planned for WordPress 6.4, is now set to release in 6.5. WordPress is committed to delivering the best possible experience. This decision allows time to address enhancement opportunities, test, and get enough feedback to meet WordPress’s quality standards. Thanks for your support as contributors work towards an exceptional Font Library experience. Beta 3 highlights WordPress 6.4 Beta 3 contains more than 60 updates since the Beta 2 release, including 29 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 6.4 Closed Trac tickets since Beta 2 GitHub commits for Twenty Twenty-Four A Beta 3 haiku Beta 3 arrives Testing where progress derives Iterate, it thrives Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @meher, @rmartinezduque, @cbringmann, @sereedmedia and @michelleames View the full article

WordPress 6.4 Beta 2 is now available 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 6.4 Beta 2 in three ways: Plugin: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). Direct download: Download the Beta 2 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. Command line: Use the following WP-CLI command wp core update --version=6.4-beta2 Local environment: Use wp-now to set up a Node.js-based WordPress 6.4 Beta 2 install locally by running the command wp-now start --wp=6.4-beta2 The current target for the final release of WordPress 6.4 is November 7, 2023. Get an overview of the 6.4 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.4-related posts in the coming weeks for more information. The WordPress 6.4 release is brought to you by an underrepresented gender release squad to increase participation and partnership with those who identify as gender-underrepresented in the WordPress open source project. Want to know what’s new in WordPress 6.4? Read the Beta 1 announcement and tune into Episode 63 of the WP Briefing podcast for details. How to get involved with testing Your help testing the WordPress 6.4 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 6.4. The Font Library feature, currently available in Gutenberg 16.7, requires more testing and feedback to ensure it is ready for inclusion in the upcoming 6.4 release. Check out this guide for further instructions on how to test it. 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. Learn more about Gutenberg updates debuting in WordPress 6.4 by reviewing prior editions of What’s New in Gutenberg posts for 16.2, 16.3, 16.4, 16.5, 16.6, and 16.7. Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack. Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta 2 Between Beta 1 and the final release candidate (RC) for each new WordPress version, 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 highlights WordPress 6.4 Beta 2 contains more than 50 updates since the Beta 1 release, including 18 tickets for WordPress core. Each beta cycle focuses on bug fixes; more are on the way with your help through testing. You can browse the technical details for all issues addressed since Beta 1 using these links: GitHub commits for 6.4 Closed Trac tickets since Beta 1 GitHub commits for Twenty Twenty-Four Note on Twenty Twenty-Four Please note that some images in Twenty Twenty-Four may not load correctly. A fix is in the works! Learn more on this Trac ticket. Note on pattern management improvements in non-block themes While WordPress 6.4 will bring several exciting pattern advancements, improvements to pattern management in non-block themes will eventually be addressed in WordPress 6.5. The Beta 1 announcement has been updated to reflect this change accordingly. A Beta 2 haiku Not the first, nor last A second space to reflect Both new and not new Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @meher, @sereedmedia, @rmartinezduque, @cbringmann, @priethor, @annezazu. View the full article

Join WordPress Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, as she offers an exclusive preview of the upcoming WordPress 6.4 release, accompanied by special guest Sarah Norris, one of the Editor Tech leads for this release. Don’t miss this opportunity for an insider’s look! 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 Guest: Sarah Norris Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Brett McSherry Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes TwentyTwentyFour Theme Repo Figma File Font Library Image Lightbox Github Block Hooks Upcoming WordPress Meetings for Contributors Small List of Big Things Find announcements for WordPress 6.4 Beta at: #Core Slack Channel WordPress.org/news/ Proposal: Documentation translation/localization Seeking proposals for Interop 2024 – Interop 2024 is happening! WordPress developers, please contribute your proposals for 2024 on GitHub or as a comment on this post. WordCamp US 2023 Q&A – With a successful WCUS in the books, an extensive list of post-event questions and answers are available and inspired by the event’s community and Q&A. Accessibility Office Hours – In an effort to improve accessibility knowledge in the WordPress project, the accessibility team will hold Office Hours every Wednesday at 14:00 UTC Transcript [00:00:00] Josepha: Hello everyone. And welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project some insight into the community that supports it. And get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go! [00:00:28] (Intro Music) [00:00:39] Josepha: I have with me today, Sarah Norris. She is the Core Tech Editor in the WordPress 6.4 release. Welcome, Sarah. [00:00:47] Sarah: Oh, hi, and thanks for having me. [00:00:50] Josepha: First, I should give everyone kind of a concept of what we’re doing. So this is the WordPress 6.4 sneak peek episode of our podcast, which means that we’re going to talk a little bit about like the stuff that we are excited to get into the release stuff that we’re hoping is actually going to make it into the final release. But also, we’re going to talk a little bit about like stuff that we wish people knew. That we were working on. Things that are going to be really cool for users or developers or plugin authors, theme authors, things like that, that otherwise people would miss because it’s just hard to see. And so before we get started on all of that, is this your first release where you’re part of a squad like this? [00:01:31] Sarah: Ah, so, it’s actually my second. I was part of 6.1 as well. I led the default theme of 2023. But I am finding that the experience is a little bit different. So I’m still learning probably just as much. [00:01:42] Josepha: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and in 6.1 versus 6.4, for one, the themes are very different. Like the default themes are very different, but also the tasks involved with leading a default theme are very different from like leading things happening in the core editor in that Gutenberg plugin. [00:02:01] Sarah: Yeah, there’s so many different tasks. Yeah, like, I guess maybe there’s such, there’s maybe just like a set of tasks for every part of the release squad. But they’re so different. And much more involved. [00:02:12] Josepha: Yeah, absolutely. And as of the time of this recording, we’re recording this on September 27th. It comes out a little bit later. But as of the time of this recording, like we just wrapped up beta 1 for WordPress 6.4 yesterday. But I understand that, like an hour ago, you wrapped up a final release of the Gutenberg plugin as well. So you’re just kind of everywhere with us right now. [00:02:36] Sarah: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Yeah, we tried to make the beta 1 for 6.4 and the latest release of Gutenberg quite close together to make it easier to, to merge those latest changes for beta 1 of 6.4. So yes, that’s why it’s so close together, and fingers crossed, they both went really smoothly, so I’m really happy about that. [00:02:53] Josepha: Now we all sit around and watch the support queues and hope. That part, the sitting around and watching the support queues, is both my most favorite and least favorite sometimes part of releases. Like, it’s a little bit my most favorite because I get to talk to our support folks. I’m like, hey, is anything happening? But also, it’s my least favorite because it’s like the Schrödinger’s cat of releases. You’re like, as long as I don’t look at it, it could be all well or all bad, and I just don’t know. [00:03:23] Sarah: I hear you. I’ve just been doing something similar with watching test releases. [00:03:27] Josepha: Yeah. Just waiting and waiting and waiting. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let’s talk a little bit about 6.4. So WordPress 6.4 is our third major release of 2023, which is kind of a big deal for one because, like, three major releases a year is always exciting. But this particular one is, on the one hand, much larger from a feature standpoint than we kind of expected it to be, or so far, it looks like it’s going to be a bit larger than we expected. But also, it is our second iteration of an underrepresented gender release squad. Which I am very excited about. It’s a way for us to kind of bring in a lot of voices that otherwise we don’t see in the space. And so we’re going to just kind of talk through both of those things today. But let’s start with first: what are the things that are going into the release that you personally are most excited about, that you are most interested in making sure that we get all the way to the end of the release cycle? [00:04:27] Sarah: So, ones that I am particularly excited for. So, the first one on my list is the Font Library. This is looking really good to include as well. So it’s gonna do your way for users to manage fonts across their site regardless of their active themes. So similar how to how their media library works at the moment for images and other media. [00:04:44] Josepha: And if I recall correctly when I was looking at the prototypes for that, like the early demos of it, that has a lot of local font management as well, which helps us with GDPR concerns that we have had with font management in the CMS for a while. One, is that still correct? And two, does it look like it’s going to make it into the release? [00:05:04] Sarah: Yes. Yeah. Both correct. Yes. Yeah. Very easy. Yeah, that’s exactly right. So yeah, all the fonts will be managed locally. So, including things like Google Fonts. And any of the popular libraries and the way it’s been built, as it calls its files like this, it’s been built with extensibility in mind. So yeah, hopefully, the possibility should be endless for any number of font collections to be added. [00:05:23] Josepha: Yeah. Yeah. I, I know, for folks who are listening to this later, hopefully not much later, but if you are listening to this between when beta 1 came out and between and beta 2 is coming out, we didn’t get as much of that into beta 1 as we expected, but beta 2 should have a good chunk of it in there. So get out there and test that. [00:05:43] Sarah: It’s also just been released with Gutenberg 16.7 as well. So, I guess for anyone that you just mentioned listening in between. [00:05:51] Josepha: I’m one of those folks that has not; I don’t run trunk because I’m not that good with like preventing WordPress from falling apart. I’m not a developer, but I do run the nightlies and for the major releases for Core, and I run also the beta of Gutenberg. And so, I got both updates done this morning and started going in and looking at everything because I don’t run trunk. I didn’t have some of the weird edge cases that I saw reported over the last few weeks, which is probably good. [00:06:21] Josepha: But also, if anyone’s running trunk and is running all of the nightlies of anything, let us know where the problems are because there are not a lot of you. It feels like, like, a thousand people in the particular combination. What else is in there that you are very excited to see? [00:06:37] Sarah: I’m also looking forward to, so we have a new feature called Block Hook, and for anyone who follows Gutenberg, you might have heard it’s called Auto Inserting Blocks, but we’ve renamed it to Block Hook. And yes, this is another powerful feature that expands the extensibility of block themes. And so it allows plugins to automatically insert blocks into content relative to another block. And so, a good example that we’ve been using is automatically adding a like button to the post content block. And so yeah, I think it’s a, it’s maybe a more developer-centric feature. [00:07:09] Josepha: So, like, it detects what block you have and suggests bits and pieces that otherwise would make sense there that other people are usually using in those blocks. [00:07:20] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. So you can add all through JSON as well. You can add a block that will automatically be added. [00:07:25] Josepha: All right. Excellent. That was part of the Interactivity API, or is, is early parts of it rather, I guess. [00:07:35] Sarah: Yes, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. It’s the start. [00:07:39] Josepha: Another thing that is a part of the Interactivity API, which we’ve been working on, folks. I think everybody knows for like a year or two. The other part that is shipping in 6.4 is, I think, the Lightbox for images. Is that right? [00:07:55] Sarah: Yes, that’s right. Yes. And yeah, that’s due to be included with 6.4 as well. [00:07:59] Josepha: I’m going to just tell us all a weird story. So, for maybe my entire life, like I understand what a lightbox is from a image and photography standpoint, but for the majority of my life, I thought that lightbox referred to those like big initial letters in old manuscripts. I don’t actually know what those are called if not lightboxes, but in my mind, that’s what they were. [00:08:22] Josepha: And so when we first started talking about this, I was like, that’s what we’re shipping is like the drop capital letter, like the big one, but it’s not. In case anyone else also was confused about what a lightbox is, it’s the image-based concept of a lightbox. [00:08:37] Sarah: I think it’s an important one because previously you would have to install, maybe a third-party plugin or, or build lightbox yourself so. It may sound like a, oh, it’s a tiny feature that’s been included, but it’s actually pretty awesome. You don’t have to include even more extra code. [00:08:51] Josepha: Speaking of things that we have been working on for two years or so, I think that every sneak peek for the last year, the folks of WordPress have heard me say that I was super excited about navigation and how we’re managing it, but it turns out that is a very complicated thing. Like we know that, managing menus, managing navigation on a site is complicated from just like a philosophical standpoint. When our users of WordPress, when consumers of WordPress like go through that process, that is the hardest one to explain. And therefore, very hard to manage as well. We have had like a requirement that you know three different admins in order to manage your menu, manage your navigation on your site, but we shipped some early components for it in 6.3 and in 6.4. I believe that we are planning; I’m crossing my fingers no one can see it, crossing my fingers. We’re planning on getting an updated treatment for the toolbar out. Is that correct? [00:09:53] Sarah: Yes, yeah, I was a little bit worried because I didn’t know too much in detail, but I did know about the toolbar. So, yes, yes, I believe that is planned to get into 6.4. [00:10:01] Josepha: Yeah. So, and the point of that, because for folks who have not tried this out yet, the point of that is that the navigation is kind of, when you look at it, individual components, it’s like a bunch of little blocks together, and then we wrap it as like a collection that shows up as the navigation block, but because it’s a bunch of little blocks and each of the little blocks has their own like toolbar that goes with it, it took a lot of work to kind of figure out how to get all of those toolbars to have a primary expression with the navigation. Versus like every single thing that you put into your navigation has its own toolbar, and good luck to you. [00:10:44] Sarah: Yeah, it’s a really, really complicated problem, and I guess maybe it always has been, and hopefully we just keep improving and all the time, and we probably never will stop improving because it’s, yeah, it’s just such a complicated thing to edit, and I think particularly in an editor without using any code. [00:11:00] Josepha: Yes. [00:11:01] Sarah: We’re getting there, it always, it always is getting better. [00:11:04] Josepha: Yeah. Before we move into the question of like things that you wish people knew about the release that maybe they’re not going to know, I do want to stop and talk about the default theme a little bit. Everyone loves the default theme at the end of the year. But every year, Matt and I talk about, like, what would it look like if we didn’t have a default theme. What if we just were like, all themes are great. Just do whatever you want, which seems too difficult, frankly. But the way that this default theme is envisioned is so different. It’s got basically three different focuses. Do you know much about this year’s default theme? [00:11:41] Sarah: Yeah, a little bit, so I, yeah, I know, I don’t know, I think it’s shaping up to be a really good starting point for so many different types of projects. So, I know that that is maybe the aim of every default theme. But we usually show off a lot of the features that are going into the release, like via the default theme. I know we did that last time as well, but this time, we’re doing that stealth. But we’re also creating like a great baseline for so many different types of projects. And I think maybe in the past, we’ve maybe only hit like one type of project. And, like, this is a good example for this one very specific thing. But yeah, this time, I know that that’s always like, especially working with other themers, they’re like, what’s the best base theme for this type of thing? And I’m hoping Twenty Twenty-Four is going to be the new answer for so many people. [00:12:23] Josepha: Yeah, yeah, I looked at the early designs for that with the, because what it has, and these, we’ll put a link to this in the show notes to the repo about it and the Figma file and all those things. But what it has is like a really robust set of default patterns for anyone who’s wanting to have like a big commercial site with a lot of things that are required, a really complicated site. Then we have a suite of default patterns that are shipping so that artists and people who are focused primarily on visual assets on their site have the specific patterns and blocks and things required for that and then one that is specific to people who focus on the content in their site. I am one of the people who specifically focuses on the content in the site. I was delighted to see that, but it kind of has three different levels of varying complexity based on what it is that people might, might want to have to, oh, not want to have to, might want to be able to do on their sites. And I think that’s kind of cool. [00:13:31] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. It’s super cool. And I think while we’re still in the development cycle as well, for 6.4, this is a; the default theme is a great way to jump into contributing if people are looking for good ways to jump in. [00:13:44] Josepha: Yeah, it runs in a separate repo. And so it has a little bit of a different process, but also it feels like a little bit of a faster process. It kind of runs independently of the release cycle that we have for either the plugin or core. And so it kind of goes a bit faster. [00:14:03] Sarah: Yes. [00:14:05] Josepha: Yeah. Excellent. So, then, obvious next question. What Is happening in this release that you wish people knew about? [00:14:15] Sarah: Yep. Okay. So, I think maybe things that are difficult to fit into the bigger categories that will be easy to shout about when we talk about the release when it’s been released. There’s a lot of accessibility enhancement that are going to be included. So there’s things like better button placements and upgraded spoken messages, especially in site health. There’s also so many performance improvements that are scheduled to be included, so I know there was many performance improvements included in 6.3. We are continuing that for 6.4. There’s many more improvements to block themes and classic themes in the way the templates are loaded. And we’ve also got a we’re including a usage of the new defer and async loading strategies as well for script. So these are sort of like, nitty-gritty detail sort of things that will be included that don’t sound too exciting but are actually really, really cool. [00:15:07] Josepha: Yeah. I understand the whole like, this is not very exciting. This doesn’t sound interesting but trust me, it is like, sometimes it feels like half of my job is that I’m like, I know that nothing I’m about to say sounds cool, but trust me, it’s amazing. We’ve been working on it for a long time, and it’s cool. That’s great. That’s great. And so. For those things, it sounds like a lot, this is going to particularly be of interest to folks who are developing for other people using WordPress. But also obviously a little bit of, of benefit, maybe invisible benefit, but still benefit for our end users as we go. [00:15:46] Sarah: Yeah, yeah, that’s right, exactly. [00:15:48] Josepha: So those are kind of the sneak peek items that we’ve got going into the release. As always, with this particular episode, we’re not promising that any of those things will 100 percent for sure get in there. There is part of being a release squad that kind of doesn’t really get talked about outside of WordPress but is probably worth mentioning, which is that the release squad has the really unpleasant job of saying no at the last second for things that are breaking something, things that are not actually a better user experience. Like we have the uncomfortable job of saying like, no, it wasn’t good enough. Sorry, thank you. Come again in the next release cycle. And so, like, all of these things are things that are currently in and being tested, but in the event that we discover it breaks 10 percent of the sites that we have on WordPress, like, we’re gonna, we’re gonna pull it. So, right now, that’s all in there, we hope, and if listening to me for a whole year get excited about the changes in navigation, and then also not getting them in didn’t teach you anything, just because I want it in doesn’t mean that I get to have it in either. So, but yeah, so that’s exciting. The other exciting thing about this release, we mentioned it a bit at the top of the discussion, is that it is a gender-upresented, gender-underrepresented release squad. Not upresented, because that is a, not a word. And so this is the second one. Did you participate in the first one? [00:17:22] Sarah: No, I didn’t no. Yeah, but I have read all about it, especially in prep to this release as well. [00:17:28] Josepha: Oh, did you learn anything from it that you brought into this one, or was it just like, I need to know what I’m getting into kind of reading a lot about it? [00:17:36] Sarah: Yeah, basically, yeah, I was trying to prep myself, ever since I was involved in 6.1, I’ve tried to be, I’ve tried to follow along closely with the releases. But sometimes, there’s just so much going on all the time. Sometimes it’s a little bit much. But yeah, I just wanted to see if there was any, any big differences. There shouldn’t be, right? So yeah, it’s all good. [00:17:54] Josepha: I think all of the differences were in that boring part where people don’t, they’re like, that sounds so un-fun, we’re going to just stop listening. But it was like, in the planning and preparation for it, and the way that we did all the training, like the initial one had like an 18 month period between like, we’re gonna do it, and now it’s done, where we did a lot of additional work to get everybody in there. [00:18:18] Josepha: And this time, we were like, get in here! That’s all we did. So, how has your experience been on the release squad? I know that you did one before. You did one in 6.1, but is this particular squad any different compared to your last experience of it, or what you expected? [00:18:35] Sarah: So, I would say everyone is equally as amazing as every release and, including the resource they’re involved with. I think that the biggest difference for me, and maybe this links to something you just said, is that I, I knew I was going to be involved in the release squad a lot earlier, especially compared to me for 6.1, but I think I’ve heard other people say that as well. So, I think that’s a great thing for this release. We all have had some time ahead of the release and including during this 6.3 release as well, so I was able to watch particular people in, not in a non-creepy way, and make sure I knew which, like what the processes were. Yes, to try and get my head around when when I’d be doing it. And, and obviously, the big help was that I’d be doing it immediately after they’d just done it as well. And the previous release squad has been a massive help as well when I’ve come across either very, very complicated issues or like super silly issues; I can write them and answer your questions so that I think if we could carry that forward with the future releases as well. [00:19:28] Josepha: Yeah, absolutely. So this time around, we had almost 50 percent new folks that that, like, let us know that they were participating, probably quite a few more than that. But, like, of the people who let us know that they wanted to participate in this release, we had like 28 out of 50 people, something like that, who are brand new to contributing to WordPress in some cases, but certainly, all of them are brand new to contributing to a major release like this. Have you, cause this is not your first time doing this, but it is your first time in this type of release. Have you found that, like, you’re feeling able to help new people see what’s happening also, like, do you feel seasoned enough for that? Or are you just like, nope, I’m also new. [00:20:17] Sarah: Maybe a little bit of both. I guess I, yeah, I’m fortunate to have at least experienced, maybe, like how the deadlines roll. Actually, especially the point we’re at at the moment, where the weekly beta cycles happened. Last time, it took me by surprise. I was like, oh wow, okay, we have a week. Until the next one, and then a week, and so yeah, I feel a bit more psyched up for that this time around. And hopefully, I can tap that on you to the new folks as well. But yeah, I also noticed we have a lot of new people. We have, especially from a core editor tech lead; I think we have nearly 30 people who are sort of officially following us along or shadowing us. So yeah, yeah, but it’s really cool. I hope we can teach so many more people if they want to get involved with the next release or even just contributing in general. Yeah, it’d be amazing. [00:21:00] Josepha: Yeah. If you are listening to our podcast, and you think to yourself, well, I’m here. And I wonder if anyone knows because I’m just watching everyone in a non-creepy way, like feel free at the next meeting that you’re watching to, to raise your hand and say, I’m new. We want to know that you’re there. Not because we feel creepy otherwise. But also because we just want to celebrate that you exist new folks that are scared of us. Don’t be scared of us. Oh, man, I feel compelled now to tell everybody about the first time that I led a core chat. So the core chat, I watched that without telling anyone I was watching it for like a year before I had to actually lead it, and I just didn’t tell anybody I was there like I didn’t even participate in the waving part at the start where it’s just like, Hey, everyone, I exist, like, when I was just silently watching it all go by and so when I got announced as part of a release squad. It was shocking for everyone, I think. And there is a public record of a moment where I was panicking. I felt like everyone was asking me a thousand questions, and I didn’t know the answers to any of them. And I just told all of them, like, there are a million of you and one of me, and you’re kind of scaring me, so would you stop? And so there’s a public record of me calling out every developer that existed in WordPress at the time. I felt bad about it in the moment, but also like, whew, that was, I don’t think we have experiences like that for new contributors anymore, but it was, it was quite a moment. I remember distinctly, so Jeffrey Paul, he’s like one of our, I think we have three or four like self-declared project managing people. He is a project manager person in WordPress that I really rely on, and I was DM’ing him in the background in a full panic. I was like, I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. What am I supposed to do? And he was like no is also an answer. So, like, just tell them no. Tell them you don’t know. That’s fine. And I was like, Oh, God! So, I think that we maybe don’t have too much of that happening anymore, but I also understand that I wouldn’t see it if it were happening. No one’s coming to me to be like, is this normal? Should I panic? They’re probably coming to you with that. [00:23:21] Sarah: I think it’s a sort of good, I’m not good for you, maybe, but good for observers especially. You know, to see you go through that as well. I can really relate to, like, not even showing, like, a wave emoji because I’ve totally been in that situation. I think maybe we’re similar in that regard, like, it, sometimes I just feel really nervous even just showing an emoji. And I think, again, shouting out about that and to, to those people who also feel like that, who are watching yeah, yeah, wave if you, if you feel like you want to, and don’t wave, it’s also fine just to watch. [00:23:48] Josepha: Once you’ve been to 52 meetings, then you can wave. Oh, it’s so hardworking in open source that way because, like, there is a lot of, like, basically faith in other people because trust comes with, like experiencing things together. But initially, you do just kind of have to have faith that no one’s going to laugh you out of the room or say that your ideas are stupid or that you are like even remotely understanding the problem, and so that’s a, it’s a part of the new contributor experience that I always find so interesting I used to routinely give presentations about like this is how you get started first get ready to be uncomfortable I don’t give those presentations very often anymore but probably probably I should ask someone to get out there and be like, It’s scary for everyone, including you! Come be scared together! Cause I think that’s important to normalize. Fear’s normal. When you first started contributing to WordPress in general, let alone like being on a release squad, what is the team that you first joined through? [00:25:02] Sarah: So, I guess, full-time contribution, it was themes. I was very involved with themes, and I still am as well; I really love themes, especially block themes. And also with the editor. But, like, years and years ago, I guess it was still themes. I used to build themes. But that was very much; I was a forum user, and well, actually, I guess it goes back to me being very nervous and not wanting to admit the question that I wanted to ask, so I would hunt the forums, but afterwards just so helpful. Like, yeah, I know this is a lot of people’s story, but yeah, the forums and just chatting amongst other community members is so, so helpful. So yeah, when I became a full-time contributor, I really, I love talking to other people who are trying to get help or, yeah, reaching out any way they can because I was like, I feel that I was you and still am you as well. [00:25:50] Josepha: I mean, the good thing about it, like, we will always feel like we’re learning something because we are, but in my experience of folks in WordPress, and I haven’t been new in a long time, obviously been doing this for like eight years now which is ancient by technology standards, but like my favorite thing about folks in WordPress is that they are wanting to like learn enough to probably not break it forever. Like it’s the probably is in there, and the forever is in there like I want to. I want to know just enough to be mildly dangerous and then bring everybody with me. Let’s go be dangerous together. And I think that is really charming in a way because it’s like we know enough to sort of break it. But not break it a lot. So let’s go see how we break it a little bit to make it better. I think that’s such a charming attitude for some reason because then we all just get to kind of learn and be a little bit messy together, which is the nature of openly collaborating on a half-written software—all the time. But yeah, I think it’s kind of neat. [00:27:05] Sarah: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It’s exciting too, like if you’re staying, you’ve got that enough red push and edge that you’re just like, Ooh, I might break something. But then there’s so many people that help you out that, you know, just before you could actually break something important. [00:27:18] Josepha: Exactly. The one time when I did a very breaking thing because I didn’t know to ask about it and fixed it immediately was that I mentioned in the middle of a core chat that we were about to have a security release. But it wasn’t about it wasn’t like in the next 15 minutes, it was like three weeks away, which is not what you’re allowed to do like you are not allowed to mention that you have a security release coming in three weeks, and then hope that nobody figures out what it’s patching. Yeah, I got so many messages in such a short amount of time from it felt like every lead developer of WordPress. That was my, my worst moment. And I fixed it immediately. So that was good. But also, I don’t remember if we had to like move up the, the timeline for that release or what. I don’t; I have no idea what the outcome was because I was just in an outright panic about what I had done incorrectly. Anyway, so that’s the; I’m just going to tell everybody my most embarrassing early contribution stories today. That’s what I’m doing. Excellent. Well, Sarah, before we head out of here, is there a final thought that you would like to share with either our listeners here or future potential contributors to WordPress? [00:28:37] Sarah: Please help test 6.4, especially through the next few cycles of beta. It would be amazing to have everyone and anyone who would like to help. That is one of the best ways you can help is to test. And then, yeah, if you want to get involved a little bit further, then yeah, I guess, please reach out wherever you think you fit, which I know sounds a bit fake, but there are a lot of different places, and I’m sure there will be somewhere you fit as well. 00:28:59] Josepha: I will leave in the show notes a link to the page that has all of the upcoming meetings on it. You can probably go to almost any meeting and say, I think this is where I would like to contribute, but also, this is the kind of thing I can contribute, and they will be able to head you in the right direction if you’re not already in the right direction. But also, like, sometimes your skills that you have are going to be applicable in places where you’re not aware of yet. And so, go to any meeting—wave to the friendly WordPressers that are around, the Sarah Norrises that exist in the project. [00:29:36] Josepha: Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today. This was a delight. [00:29:39] Sarah: Thanks so much for having me on; I really enjoyed it. [00:29:42] (Music interlude) [00:29:42] Josepha: That brings us now to our small list of big things. First thing to know is that tomorrow we have Beta 2 for WordPress 6.4. This is our final release of the year, as you know because we’ve been talking about it for the entire episode. But, just like Sarah said at the end of our conversation, we absolutely need people to help us test it, make sure that it is working in as many places as possible so that we can have the best release possible. So keep an eye out on the core channel in the Making WordPress Slack, and of course, keep an eye on WordPress.org/news as those releases get packaged and ready to go. So the second thing is a proposal for documentation translation localization process update. This is an initial step to consolidate all of that documentation into a single easy-to-reach location. So we need some feedback on it. Head on over there, leave a comment to share your feedback about where that should possibly go, where is most useful and valuable for you. The second proposal that I have is actually sort of a tangentially related one, but so it’s not specific to WordPress but does need some WordPress input. There is a call for proposal for Interop 2024. There’s a post that has a lot more information about it than I do, but we would like for any WordPress developer who’s interested to head over there and submit a proposal for what they could speak about at Interop, I believe. You can leave your thoughts on the post itself as a comment, or there’s also a GitHub repo where you can interact as well. The next thing on our small list of big things is that the WordCamp US Q&A, the questions that we didn’t get to because there were something like 87 or something in the queue. The questions that we didn’t get to, the answers have been posted. They’re over on make.WordPress.org/project, but I’ll include a link to those to that post in the show notes. And the final thing on the small list of big things, I’m actually quite excited about. We are hosting now accessibility office hours. In an effort to improve accessibility knowledge in the WordPress project in general, the accessibility team will be holding office hours every Wednesday at 14:00 UTC. That started on September 20th. And so it’s been going for a couple of weeks now. And the purpose is to make sure that we have a dedicated space and time to discuss accessibility principles and best practices as we go through those things. [00:32:29] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Hayden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. [00:32:38] (Music interlude) View the full article

Each year, the WordPress community (users, site builders, extenders, and contributors) provides valuable feedback through an annual survey. The results can influence the direction of the WordPress project by identifying areas that need attention. Annual surveying can also help track trends over time, with data points often finding their way into the yearly State of the Word address. This survey helps those who build WordPress understand more about how the software is used and by whom. The survey also allows WordPress open source project leaders to learn more about our contributors’ experiences. To ensure your WordPress experience gets represented in the 2023 survey results, take the survey now (link). Take the 2023 Survey You may also take the survey in other languages by using the link above and switching to another language, thanks to the efforts of WordPress polyglot contributors. The survey will be open for five weeks. Results will be published on the News blog in early December. This year, like last year, the survey has undergone some improvements to the flow and question set. A new platform is also being piloted, offering an updated interface, enhanced multi-lingual support, expanded analysis and visualization tools for the results, and more. The new platform also has built-in accessibility and privacy controls, ensuring the survey meets the diverse needs of the WordPress community. Spread the word Please help spread the word about the survey by sharing it with your network, through Slack, or within your social media accounts. The more people who complete the survey and share their experience with WordPress, the more the project will benefit. Security and privacy Data security and privacy are paramount to the WordPress project and community. With this in mind, all data will be anonymized: no email addresses or IP addresses will be associated with published results. To learn more about WordPress.org’s privacy practices, view the privacy policy. Thank you Thank you to the following WordPress contributors for assisting with the annual survey project, including question creation, strategy, survey build-out, and translation: adamsilverstein, adurasjb, alvarogóis, atachibana, bjmcsherry, chanthaboune, dansoschin, eidolonnight, fierevereu, fxbénard, hassantafreshi, juliagasparyan, kittmedia, manudavidos, nao, nilovelez, rmartinezduque, and tobifjellner. Thanks to Hostinger, JetPack, and WordPress.com, for assisting with promoting the survey to their respective clients. Take the 2023 Survey View the full article

WordPress 6.4 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, it is recommended you evaluate Beta 1 on a test server and site. You can test WordPress 6.4 Beta 1 in three ways: Plugin: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin on a WordPress install (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). Direct download: Download the Beta 1 version (zip) and install it on a WordPress website. Command line: Use the following WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=6.4-beta1 The current target for the final release of WordPress 6.4 is November 7, 2023. Your help testing this version is key to ensuring everything in the release is the best it can be. The WordPress 6.4 release is brought to you by an underrepresented gender release squad to increase participation of and partnership with those who identify as gender-underrepresented in the WordPress open source project. Get an overview of the 6.4 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.4-related posts in the coming weeks for further details. How you can help: Testing Testing for issues is a critical part of developing any software, and it’s a meaningful way for anyone to contribute—whether you have experience or not. This detailed guide will walk you through testing key features in WordPress 6.4. If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs. 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. Learn more about Gutenberg updates that have debuted since WordPress 6.3 by reviewing prior editions of What’s New in Gutenberg posts for 16.2, 16.3, 16.4, 16.5, 16.6, and 16.7 (release pending). WordPress 6.4 Beta 1 contains over 400 enhancements and 370 bug fixes for the editor, including more than 190 tickets for WordPress 6.4 core. Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta 1 Between Beta 1 and the final release candidate (RC) for each new WordPress version, 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. A first look at WordPress 6.4 WordPress 6.4 will introduce a versatile default theme, new features, and numerous updates designed to enhance your WordPress experience across multiple areas—from writing and design to workflow efficiency. All while the foundational work continues for Phase 3 of the WordPress roadmap. Read on for some highlights. Meet the Twenty Twenty-Four theme Twenty Twenty-Four is a new default theme that will launch with 6.4. With a versatile collection of templates and patterns, this theme covers a diverse range of use cases, from entrepreneurs to small businesses to artists and writers. Twenty Twenty-Four also emphasizes the latest design tooling and site editing features, enabling you to leverage the flexibility of blocks and unlock numerous creative possibilities with just a few tweaks. Follow the theme’s progress and report any issues on this GitHub repo. Manage fonts across your site WordPress 6.4 will introduce new font management features: The Font Library enables you to handle fonts across your site, regardless of your active theme—just like you manage assets in the Media Library. Easily install local and Google Fonts and choose which to activate for each theme. This new font manager is a powerful way to control a fundamental piece of your site’s design and branding without coding. Thanks to its extensibility, custom typographic collections can expand your font choices. On the other hand, Font Face provides server-side @font-face style generation and printing support. It introduces a new global function called wp_print_font_faces(), which processes font data received from styles set in the editor or by the active theme. Please note: The Font Library is slated for inclusion in upcoming 6.4 beta releases. Add lightbox functionality to your images Showcase your images in an interactive fashion with lightbox functionality. This new core feature will be available for Image blocks, allowing visual assets to be opened and enlarged on top of the existing content. Enjoy new writing improvements Many enhancements in 6.4 will ensure that your WordPress writing experience remains smooth and enjoyable, from new keyboard shortcuts to more reliable pasting from other sources. Moreover, a fresh toolbar experience will be available for the Navigation, List, and Quote blocks, making working with their tooling options more efficient and intuitive. More design tools, greater creativity New design tools will improve the overall creation experience with WordPress while providing greater layout control and flexibility. Some updates include: Background images for Group blocks, allowing for creative and customized layouts. Aspect ratios for image placeholders—a new feature that’s particularly useful when creating and using patterns. After setting a placeholder’s desired aspect ratio, you can drag and drop an image, and it will adjust to maintain the design consistency. Button and heading color customization in Group and Columns blocks, enabling you to define the appearance of these elements when placed within these container blocks. This feature takes a step towards allowing section-specific styling, which will continue to develop in upcoming releases. Alignment settings in synced patterns. When creating and converting a synced pattern with wide, full-width, left or right-aligned blocks, this improvement ensures alignment attributes remain intact for a seamless site editing and pattern creation experience. Upgrades for smoother workflows As the Site Editor continues to evolve and expand its capabilities, so do the interface and tools that support it. First introduced in WordPress 6.3, the Command Palette helps you perform actions, search, and quickly navigate your site’s content and settings. It will receive significant updates in 6.4, featuring an updated design, new commands to accomplish block-specific actions, and better command language and action consistency. List View provides a great way to browse and work with the blocks that make up your site. This release will introduce enhancements to its interface and usability, making it even more powerful. You can rename Group blocks, view media previews for Gallery and Image blocks, and duplicate blocks with a keyboard shortcut. Pattern advancements Patterns play an essential role in site editing, and its importance remains prominent in the upcoming release. 6.4 will allow you to better organize your synced and unsynced patterns with categories as part of the creation process. These categories are available for sorting within the insertion flow to make discovering and adding patterns easier. In addition, you can conveniently access all your custom patterns from the same place—the Patterns section of the Block Inserter, which removes the separate tab for synced patterns. Other improvements include importing and exporting patterns as JSON files, ensuring backward compatibility with Reusable blocks, and enabling pattern transfer across sites. Lastly, this release will improve compatibility with Classic Themes, building on the groundwork laid in WordPress 6.3 for pattern creation and management. A new Patterns tab under the Appearance menu of your dashboard will grant access to the pattern interface available in the Site Editor. Introducing Block Hooks Block Hooks is a new powerful feature that enriches the extensibility of block themes, drawing inspiration from the familiar WordPress Hooks concept. Upon activation, plugins can automatically insert blocks into content relative to another block. For example, a “Like” button block can automatically be inserted after the Post Content block. While developer-centric, Block Hooks enhances the user experience by making block usage more intuitive and allowing for further customization and control over where and how the auto-inserted blocks appear. A new block inspector panel named “Plugins” is designed to respect creators’ preferences, ensuring you can add, dismiss, or relocate Block Hooks as desired. Accessibility WordPress 6.4 has 70 accessibility improvements slated for inclusion, 60 of those are included in Beta 1. Notable updates focused on enhancing the user interface (UI) experience include better button placements, improved context for “Add New” admin menu items, and upgraded spoken messages in Site Health. Additionally, fixes for image editing in the Media Library, error reporting on the login screen, and “no motion” settings for GIFs have been implemented. The cause of some false positives in automated UI tests has been corrected, and users without JavaScript now see a direct link to install the Classic Editor plugin. Learn more about these changes and other accessibility improvements for 6.4 on WordPress Trac. Performance WordPress 6.4 will include more than 100 performance-related updates, including improvements to template loading performance for Block Themes and Classic Themes, usage of the new script loading strategies “defer” and “async” in core, blocks, and themes, and new functions to optimize the use of autoloaded options. Please note that features in this list are subject to change before final release. A haiku for 6.4 Inline fonts, lightbox Command blocks like CLI Almost to 6-4 Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @meher, @sereedmedia, @meaganhanes, @rmartinezduque, @annezazu, @cbringmann, @flixos90, @richtabor, @francina, @joedolson, @priethor, @davidbaumwald, @chanthaboune, @luminuu. View the full article

Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she discusses the role WordPress Enterprise plays along with the WordPress community. 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 The 2023 Community Summit in Washington, DC WordPress Enterprise NASA Website (beta) A small list of big things (SLBT) Evolving the FSE Outreach Program – With WordPress 6.3 bringing Phase 2 to completion, it’s time for the FSE Outreach Program to evolve alongside the broader WordPress project and needs. Proposal: An update to the Field Guide – This proposal is one step, but not necessarily the only step, at improving communication around WordPress releases and making it easier for WordPress updates to instill confidence. We are still looking to receive more ideas on the future of WordPress events – We have brought this up in the past, but there is still time to submit ideas. Proposal for updated support guidelines – As these result from work during WordCamp Us 2023, if you are at the venue and wish to discuss something, please feel free to reach out. Call for Testing: Performant Translations – Provide your feedback; if you encounter any issues or have questions about the plugin, please comment or open a new support topic. In addition to that, contributions can be made on GitHub. WordPress Diversity Training – This is a 2-day workshop for women in India (other countries are welcome to join us, too) who are considering speaking at a WordPress Meetup or WordCamp. Let’s talk about WordPress! – The WordPress Community team is looking for some folks to take the lead in hands-on organizing your Meetups WP Includes WordPress Insights: WCUS Recap and WCEU Vision with Ruth Kalinka Transcript [00:00:00] Josepha: Hello everyone. And welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it. And get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go! (Intro Music) [00:00:29] Josepha: In our last episode, we talked about the Community Summit and some trends that I was seeing. I’ve spent a lot of time since then summarizing the notes from each session, and I was processing notes from the session about aligning WordPress Enterprise and WordPress Community, which is a session that explored the various strengths and weaknesses of WordPress from an enterprise perspective, but especially when it comes to contributing to or communicating about WordPress. Now, my vantage point on analyses like these is generally pretty different. Since I work mainly in an operations space for the project, I’m almost always looking at the health and safety of our ecosystem, product excellence, funding, things like that. So, I especially like to attend sessions that are from the vantage point of people who are much closer to the work than I am. [00:01:15] Josepha: When I looked at the brainstormed list of things from the session, my first inclination was to catalog the relationships between what we saw as a positive or a negative and the things that we saw as intrinsic to us versus part of the environment. But the more I look at it, the more I see that there’s confirmation of what I have always known to be true. That WordPress is a valuable starting point for web-based solutions of all sizes and any purpose. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest themes that shine through from that session. I was able to distill them down to about nine primary themes, but I especially want to focus on some that come up year after year in talking with our community. [00:01:57] Josepha: The first, of course, is the community and ecosystem. If you’ve listened to this podcast 62 times, then you’ve heard me say at least like 60 times that the community is what sets us apart from other open source projects. But, I would encourage you to expand that understanding to include the ecosystem that the community provides. The community not only helps to plan and create WordPress, our primary software, but it also makes it distributable through the Polyglots team and Accessibility and Docs and Training. It also makes it extendable through plugins and themes and all of the work that goes into reviewing plugins and themes and the support that’s provided to people who come to the WordPress.org site, trying to figure out how to make this thing work for them. And we also, this community, make it knowable, not only through the community part with our event series but also in marketing and the videos that we provide on WordPress TV and all of the training and learning cohorts that we provide on learn.WordPress.org, all of those teams make WordPress learnable and knowable and easy to use and usable to more people and available across the world, regardless of whether you speak English or not. And so yeah, the community and the ecosystem are some of the things that makes WordPress valuable for enterprise, but also WordPress valuable in general. [00:03:24] Josepha: The second is the software’s usability and flexibility. I said at WordCamp US that we exist for as long as people want to use our software, and that’s a funny little two-sided coin for us. WordPress remains very usable for folks who come to it in the same way that I came to it, which is as a user who is trying to accomplish a goal unrelated to WordPress. I didn’t start using WordPress because I wanted to figure out how WordPress worked or because I wanted to figure out how to contribute to WordPress. I came to WordPress because I was trying to market something, and WordPress was the best choice for that. But it’s also flexible for our brilliant developers out there who are doing things like building a suite of sites for NASA or creating bespoke social networks. So, our usability and flexibility, both of those things working together, are certainly one of the things that make me know that WordPress is incredibly valuable for anyone who needs to use it. [00:04:22] Josepha: But the final thing is WordPress’s longevity or our resilience. So, I used to work at a marketing agency that served enterprise-level clients. And any time we pitched a new site build to a client, one of the main elements of discussion during decision-making was how long the decision would last. Do you want a page that you can launch in a day, run a six-week campaign through, and then abandon it forever? Or do you want a site that can take up to six weeks to build but can be yours to refine and hone for years after that? I know this seems like a silly example, but when you’re looking at the potential for a long-term bet, what you’re worried about, what you’re asking is, is this a software trusted in my industry? Is it time-tested by those companies I aspire to be? Is the available workforce composed of seasoned professionals or flash-in-the-pan peddlers of the latest craze? And of that workforce, how many will still be doing this in five years? The question of how long we’ve been doing this and why it matters that WordPress has been here for 20 years and has no intention of going anywhere should be so much higher on everyone’s list of reasons to use this software. Yes, the WordPress software is powerful enough to be everything you might want it to be someday, but the WordPress ecosystem brought to us by this community has shown resilience through major breaking changes in 2008, 2016, 2018, 2020, and probably a lot of things between there that we have forgotten. So, if I were hoping to hedge my bets on a long-term solution, I would absolutely place those bets on this community, this ecosystem, and this software. (Music interlude) [00:06:17] Josepha: And now, it’s time for our small list of big things. I actually have a very big list today, so I’m just gonna break it out into two chunks. The first chunk is that we actually have a lot of calls for feedback and testing right now. We have six calls for feedback and testing that I really could use your input on. The first one is that we still are having that discussion about how to evolve the FSE outreach program. That program started as a way to get faster, more fluid user feedback, specifically about full site editing inside Gutenberg. But there is a question now about where it needs to exist, how it’s serving current project needs, and what the future project needs will be. And so stop by that one. That should be a good, lively discussion. [00:07:06] Josepha: Speaking of discussions that are lively, we also have an update to the field guide. We have a proposed update to the field guide. This is not something that we’re looking to put in place for WordPress 6.4, just because that is coming so quickly. But it is something that we want to look at for future iterations of the field guide that come out with every major release. We want to make sure that we’re getting valuable information to the right people at the right time without having so much that it’s overwhelming but also without having so little that we miss really important things. [00:07:47] Josepha: There is another request for feedback, which is about additional ideas on the future of WordPress events. I brought this up in the past. I think I mentioned it on one other small list of big things, but there’s still time. So, if you’ve been shy about sharing your ideas, let this be your sign to get brave. Go share your thoughts on what events of the future should be for us. [00:08:03] Josepha: There’s also a proposal for updated support guidelines. This proposal comes out of a discussion that was had at WordCamp US, and so there is a summary of the discussion and then also the proposal that’s out there. I think that for all guidelines like this, support guidelines, and probably all things that require some review from ourselves, we always could stand to take a look at where those are, what brought us to where we are today, and what we can use to be better and more current in our client’s needs and our customers needs users needs as we are looking through those guidelines I think that the deadline for feedback on that is around the middle of September as well. [00:08:47] Josepha: And then the final bit of feedback/call for testing is on performant translations. That is a testing call for feedback. Contributions to that can be made on GitHub as well if that’s something where you test it and you immediately know how to offer some patches to make things better. That’s great, but you can always just leave your feedback in a comment or a new support topic. [00:09:19] Josepha: Okay, so that was the first chunk of the small list of big things. We have the second chunk of the small list of big things, which is to say that if all of that was new to you and sounds a little bit daunting and, you need some support to get started. There are also a couple of kind of group things that you can do in the coming weeks to get you started on that. There is a new WordPress diversity training session that’s happening. It’s a two-day workshop for women, specifically in India, but other countries are welcome to join us, too. We’ll be thinking about how to pull together your first presentation proposal, I believe. The next one is that the WordPress community team is looking for folks to learn more about organizing meetups. And so, I’ll include a link to that in the show notes as well, but if you’ve never done this before and that did not sound like a getting started thing, trust me, organizing meetups not only is something that is easy to do because it’s kind of casual, you can get people together like in a coffee shop to talk about WordPress, but also the team over there has excellent onboarding. And so give it a try; at the very least, give it a read. The third thing on that set of things is that there’s a new group called WP Includes working to pair women in the WordPress community with one another for support and advice along their career paths. I will include a link to that in the show notes as well. And then the final thing is that there is a meetup event that’s focused on flagship events coming up on September 21st. It will recap WordCamp US and host an open discussion for ideas for WordCamp Europe as well. Like I said, that’s going to take place on September 21st. I will include a link to that in the show notes as well. [00:11:04] Josepha: If you don’t know where the show notes are, if you, sorry, if you’re listening to this on, like, Pocketcasts or Spotify or any other thingy, and you don’t know what I mean when I say the show notes, and you’ve literally never seen them in your life. You can go to WordPress.org/news/podcast, and there are transcripts and show notes with every podcast I put up, and that’s what I mean when I say that. WordPress.org/news/podcast, and then you get a bunch of links. It’ll be great. That, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. (Outro music) View the full article

WordPress is excited to announce that Openverse has been awarded the 2023 Open Education Award for Excellence in the Open Infrastructure category! The Open Education Awards for Excellence, organized by the non-profit organization Open Education Global (OEG), celebrate people, resources, and initiatives that have significantly contributed to the open education field and community. This year, they received 172 nominations across 16 award categories, representing individuals and projects from 38 countries. This award honors Openverse’s work to make it easy for everyone to discover and use open educational resources. The award reviewers were particularly impressed by Openverse’s one-click attribution feature. Moreover, they highlighted the tool’s ability to filter searches by source collections and other parameters, such as image orientation and specific license, which they noted “provides seekers of open content important affordances to find clearly licensed media they can reuse.” “This is an exceptional search engine for the open education community. The one click attribution copy for images makes attribution very straight-forward and easy, even for novice users. The design is excellent; the results are returned fast.” Award reviewer for the 2023 OEG Award for Open Infrastructure This recognition not only underscores Openverse and WordPress’s commitment to open content but also celebrates the work of their dedicated contributors, community, and partners in advancing open education and creative works. Learn more about this Openverse award on the OEG page. Congratulations, Openverse! View the full article

August 2023 marked another exciting chapter in WordPress, with the Community Summit and WordCamp US bringing the community together for meaningful discussions, knowledge sharing, and learning. This month also welcomed the long-awaited WordPress 6.3 release and offered a glimpse of what’s to come. Let’s dive into it. Meet WordPress 6.3 “Lionel” WordPress 6.3 “Lionel” was released on August 8, 2023, and named after the acclaimed vibraphonist, pianist, and jazz percussionist Lionel Hampton. This major update makes bringing your vision to life with blocks more intuitive and efficient. Your content, templates, and patterns are now seamlessly integrated into the Site Editor, enabling you to craft every aspect of your online presence within a single location. You can sharpen your designs with new tools, enjoy fine-tuned control over navigation menus, and work faster with the Command Palette. Explore what’s new. WordPress 6.3 features over 500 features and enhancements with a continued emphasis on performance and accessibility. This release was made possible by more than 650 contributors from 52 countries. While the Site Editor will continue to be enhanced, this release means a significant milestone as it marks the conclusion of Gutenberg Phase 2. Take a moment to watch “Designed with WordPress”—an ode to this remarkable journey worth celebrating. Download WordPress 6.3.1. Roadmap to 6.4 Contributors are already working on WordPress 6.4, expected to be released on November 7, 2023. This release, led by an underrepresented gender release squad, will focus on enhancing different aspects of the WordPress experience while continuing the foundational work for Gutenberg Phase 3. Users can anticipate features like font management and a new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Four. Twenty Twenty-Four aims to be a versatile theme, featuring a range of templates and patterns specifically designed for three use cases: entrepreneurs and small businesses, photographers and artists, and writers and bloggers. Check out the 6.4 roadmap post for a tentative preview of expected features. New in the Gutenberg plugin Two new versions of Gutenberg shipped in the last month: Gutenberg 16.4 was released on August 9, 2023. It introduced a new “auto-inserting blocks” experimental feature, a progress bar component that can be used throughout the interface, and block supports for the Footnotes block. Gutenberg 16.5 shipped on August 23, 2023, and focused on enhancements to the Command Palette and enabling further customization of blocks. Follow the “What’s new in Gutenberg” posts to stay on top of the latest enhancements. Team updates: Next generation of WordPress events, WP Admin redesign, and more The Community team has been busy ushering in the next generation of WordPress events. Four pilot events were successfully held in July and August, with another five planned before the end of the year. The Admin Design Kickoff post elaborates on the concepts explored so far to revitalize the WordPress admin experience. In response to Europe’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), leaders from Drupal, Joomla!, TYPO3, and WordPress co-authored an open letter addressing concerns about the current CRA definitions and terms and the implications for open source projects. Check out WordPress.org/blocks—A new page that explores the power of blocks within WordPress and as a broader framework. WordPressCS 3.0.0 is now available. This update to the WordPress Coding Standards introduces improvements in accuracy, performance, stability, and compatibility with modern PHP versions. The first cohort of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program, which aims to help new contributors onboard to Make teams, successfully concluded last month. WordPress Remembers went live in August to honor contributors who left a lasting impact on the project and have since passed away. Core team members proposed to sync Gutenberg code with core earlier in the release cycle to streamline the integration of new features and reduce risks and delays in major release milestones. Blue Note, the second block theme born from the Community Themes initiative, is live on the Theme Directory. Every month, the Training team works to expand the Learn WordPress catalog with new courses, tutorials, online workshops, and more. See what’s new. Openverse maintainers met in Copenhagen for an exciting exchange with Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK), Denmark’s largest art museum. Learn about their discussions and collaboration efforts to advance openly licensed works. Keen to see new WordPress event formats happening in your local community? Get inspired by these creative concepts and share your ideas! Feedback & testing requests Core team members suggested updating the WordPress Field Guide by publishing it earlier in the development cycle and introducing a simplified Field Guide on the WordPress Developer Blog. Feedback is open until September 15, 2023. Help test the new Performant Translations plugin, which aims to make localized WordPress sites faster. A new proposal aims to refine and update WordPress’ support guidelines. You can provide your input by October 1, 2023. Version 23.2 of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is ready for testing. The Training team seeks feedback on the first learning pathways outlined to improve the Learn WordPress educational experience. Share your thoughts by September 15, 2023. WordPress events updates On August 22-23, a group of WordPress contributors gathered at the Community Summit to discuss key topics concerning the project. Read the notes from each session and join the conversations at make.wordpress.org/summit. Following the Summit, Washington, D.C. hosted WordCamp US 2023 from August 24-26. This event brought together nearly 2,000 attendees for a Contributor Day and two conference days filled with engaging sessions, conversations, and open source art. Saturday’s agenda concluded with keynotes by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy and a subsequent Q&A session. Check out the event recap for highlights. Join #WPDiversity with a free online speaker workshop for Indian women in the WordPress Community. The event will take place on September 23-24, 2023. The WordCamp Asia 2024 organizing team opened calls for speakers, volunteers, sponsors, and media partners. Be sure to visit WordCamp Central to find out about upcoming WordCamps. Join Josepha Haden Chomphosy in Episode 61 of WP Briefing as she discusses her takeaways from the Community Summit. Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know. The following folks contributed to this Month in WordPress: @rmartinezduque, @laurlittle. View the full article

Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she discusses the latest from the Community Summit and her takeaways from the 2023 event in Washington, D.C. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arc Production: Brett McSherry Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes The 2023 Community Summit in Washington, DC WP Briefing Episode 49: Everything You Need to Know About the Community Summit! The Next Generation of WordCamps Idea generation: Next Gen WordCamps! PressNomics LoopConf WordPress Community Summit A small list of big things Call for ideas: new features for our NexGen WP events central page – Open call for ideas to find the most desirable features for a future homepage that would host a list of all NextGen WordPress events. Introducing Twenty Twenty-Four – Announced at Contributor Day, this new theme will be part of the 6.4 release. With the release of 6.3 behind us, we are working hard on bringing 6.4 to the community. You can get involved with the development of this important release. A successful WCUS is behind us, and if you missed the event, we have you covered. Here is a recap of the event. Transcript [00:00:00] Josepha: Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. [00:00:28] (Intro Music) [00:00:39] Josepha: We are back and catching up from our midyear break. And in true WordPress fashion, we’re just going to start off running. The WordPress Community Summit happened a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been talking about it on this podcast for a few months now, but if you’ve missed it and you want a refresher, go ahead and give episode 49 a listen. At the Community Summit, there were 125 people, if I remember correctly. And we covered a wide array of topics that were brought to us directly from the community itself. While the event is small, it is specifically designed for gathering and sharing information. So, I’ve got some top-level trends that I noticed that I’m going to share with you all today, as well as just like a reminder of what happens after a Community Summit. [00:01:27] Josepha: So there are three, maybe four, big trends that I noticed. The first one that I noticed is that we have a lot of discussions right now about contributor acknowledgment. That also, for what it’s worth, came with an unresolved question around whether acknowledgment and recognition are the same. I don’t think they are the same. But it also was part of a conversation around whether we treat those two things the same. And if they are not the same, should we treat them differently? And et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. For folks who’ve been around for a bit, you know, that we spent a lot of time working on our contributor recognition a few years back and had really made quite a bit of difference in just reported feelings about how the community felt they were being recognized for their contributions. And so a lot of the conversations that we ended up having were around whether or not the project as a whole has changed the way that we provide that recognition or acknowledgment. Or, as an alternative, if the community that is supporting WordPress has changed how they would like to be recognized. [00:02:32] Josepha: There were also some questions about whether or not making sure that contributors can see their impact. Like they can say, I contributed 10 hours last month, and these are the two things that I got accomplished over there, and that everyone else can see those things too. So, how we can do that more easily while also not having so many metrics and making the metrics so prevalent that we start to close out the people who are truly just doing this for fun. Like many of the problems that we have at the Community Summit, this is a bunch of pretty much unsolved mysteries at the moment. But it did; it came up across probably five or six different sessions that I heard about, quite a few that I went to myself, and so contributor acknowledgment and recognition is on our minds again. A second thing that I noticed across multiple sessions, and this one honestly is not a surprise at all, is that there were a lot of questions about what the next big thing is after Gutenberg. I always love when people are asking big questions about what comes next because it means that we all still believe that there will be a next. [00:03:43] Josepha: And so I never hesitate when I hear these questions to give some ideas about what I think might be coming. But a lot of the discussions that we were having were around, we think this is coming, but now that we think this is coming, what should we do now to make sure that we are ready for it? One of the biggest assumptions that we all had is that for the CMS, for the software itself, probably our next big area after Gutenberg is going to be something about artificial intelligence. Matt pointed out in his presentation that he has told us twice to learn something deeply. One was in 2016 when he said, learn JavaScript Deeply. And then one was in 2022 when he said to learn AI deeply. And so we all kind of are guessing that that is our future area. And so that’s an area for everyone to spend some time in. Make sure you understand it. Make sure you know it a bit. The second thing that came up as like a future, where are we going here? It was kind of on the business-y side. It was on a lot of questions about enterprise and are we selling properly to enterprise. Can we sell, can we appeal to enterprise? Whose job is it to sell any of these things? Questions like that. So, lots of business questions again. This is not something that I have any concerns about. I’m very excited to see that people are talking about it. That’s been a topic of conversation since, I want to say, February of this year. And so it also wasn’t a surprise inclusion today. And, and I was excited to see, am excited to see what we get out of those conversations over time. [00:05:17] Josepha: As far as like questions around what’s next for the community, I’m going to address that separately because it was a huge question for everyone. So I’m going to discuss that as soon as we get finished with this chunk about like the big thing that, that is coming after Gutenberg. But, from an ecosystem perspective. Like a WordPress project operations perspective, this came up a couple of times. Never in as clear a word, a set of words as that, but the question about, like, what are we doing with our tools? Are we making sure that we are keeping the tools that our contributors use maintained and still in an excellent space with features that are useful and, necessary, and requested? And so that is a big question. I do have a lot of questions about that. Also, there are so many tools that I have wanted in order to make organizing the WordPress community better and easier, but also making contributing better and easier. And hopefully, here soon, we have an opportunity to get to some of those. [00:06:16] Josepha: So, the third big trend that I kept seeing at the Community Summit is actually about the community itself, specifically about events. So I was part of or listened to many, many, many conversations over the course of the week that were specifically focused on what we’re going to do with the future of our events. Like are meetups still sustainable? Are WordCamps still sustainable? And that’s from not only the idea of sustainability that we all tend to know from like an ecological standpoint but also, you know, checking in on the resources. So the kinds of questions that folks had were, is it time to continue having many small events, or is it time to move to a few giant events? Should we bring back midsized, WP-adjacent events like PressNomics or LoopConf? And if we are bringing those back, do we want to have them be part of a semi-official thing along with a clearly WordPress event and like do joint sales in there? Try to figure out how to get people from one to the other, so that it’s not just WordPress people that we’re talking to, but also business people and advanced developers, things like that. There was also a lot of discussion about whether or not we have gotten too big, should we double down on our grassroots efforts? Just go all the way back to, like, BarCamp style, WordPress in a forest kind of thing. [00:07:46] Josepha: And yeah, and among all of these conversations, there were questions about the resources that we need. Do we have what we need now? Do we have plans for how to maintain those resources in the future? Do we have enough time? Do we have enough money? Do we have an expertise? The people? So many questions, so many questions. And on the community side of things, we also had a lot of questions that are routine in open source. Like, do we have a pipeline for future maintainers, for future team reps, for future leaders in the project? All of the questions. So, those are the three slash four, depending on how you break it out, really big trends that I saw across the conversation at the Community Summit. And I don’t necessarily know the answers to all of these things. Like, I know what my gut tells me, I know what I believe the answer to be. From my own perspective, but as you’ve been told many times with many eyes, all bugs are shallow. And so here is what happens next with a Community Summit. So we’ve gathered all of these things together. We’ve had these conversations, and now all of the notes from every conversation that we had will be put on make.wordpress.org/summit. [00:09:10] Josepha: There, you can do any of the following three things, but at least do one before we get any further. I think it’s important to remind everyone that no decisions were made at the Community Summit. There are a few things that will come out of the Community Summit where the answer the way forward is really obvious. And so those probably will get done quickly thereafter because it’s just an obvious thing to do. It makes sense for everyone in the project. It makes sense for everyone who’s using WordPress. Whatever reason. So those things will probably move quickly, but mostly not even mostly there were no decisions made. And so if it looks like something is moving quickly there, it is because it makes sense after the fact. So there’s that. But the three things that you can do in order to take part in this information gathering and sharing that happened at the Community Summit. Number one, head over to make.wordpress.org/summit and just read the notes. There are a lot of them you can pick and choose based on the teams you contribute to or the topics that are specifically interesting. Or if you have been assigned to read one of these things, obviously, go ahead and read that. But find the notes read them. Take a look at the discussion as far as you can tell it happened and get a sense for what the essential question is. The second thing that you can do while you’re there is that you can join in that discussion right there in the comments if you would like to. You can, if you feel like your perspective is not quite accounted for in that, obviously leave some comments and let folks know. But also, if you feel like your perspective was accounted for, but there’s also a very specific question that was not necessarily answered or not even brought up, share those as well. That’s stuff that we would like to know as we are working through this. And then the third thing that you can do is you can take those conversations, and if there’s anything that looks like it’s particularly relevant to your local WordPress community, absolutely take those there and have those conversations with them. [00:11:23] Josepha: And once you’ve had those conversations, let us know what you thought also in those comments, or take it directly into your weekly teams’ chat, either way. We want to hear what you think about the questions that were brought because you brought them to us. And so you should have an opportunity to tell us what you think. [00:11:39] (Music Interlude) [00:11:48] Josepha: That brings us now to our small list of big things. My friends, there’s nothing but big things left for the rest of the year. And so here we go. Number one, uh, I mentioned it quite a bit. There’s a conversation, an ongoing conversation about the future of events for our community. Right now, there is an open call for ideas, new features for our NextGen WordPress events, especially on the page that exists on WordCamp Central. So, we want to find the most useful and desirable features for a future homepage on central.wordcamp.org that would host a list of all of our upcoming WordPress events. And so we want your opinion there. Please let us know what would be especially useful to you as you are looking for WordPress events to attend. The second thing is that we introduced 2024, the default theme that is coming with WordPress 6.4, was announced. We have had, I think, 32 contributors to it at the time of this recording. And yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s got a lot of different implementation options, a lot of default patterns, and curated patterns so that you can get exactly what you want out of that theme. I think it’s going to make a great default theme, a great starter theme for our final release of the year. And then, speaking of 6.4, with the release of 6.3 behind us, we are working hard on bringing 6.4 to the community. You can get involved with the development of that. There is a core chat every Wednesday. It happens. I want to say at 21:00 UTC, but I don’t actually know off the top of my head. I just go when my calendar tells me to go, and I live in the central time zone. And so, my UTC conversion is not the best, but we will leave the actual information about that in the show notes so that you can see it. But you can also go over to make.wordpress.org, and then there’s a little card on that homepage that tells you exactly when those core meetings are, including the new contributor meeting, which happens every two weeks. And then the fourth thing is that there is a successful WordCamp US behind us. That is our final flagship event of the year, which is always exciting. If you missed it, for one, we missed you. And for two, we have you covered. We’ve got a recap of the event. There is a link to that in the show notes as well. [00:14:05] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. [00:14:15] (Music Outro) View the full article

WordPress 6.3.1 is now available! This minor release features 4 bug fixes in Core and 6 bug fixes for the block editor. You can review a summary of the maintenance updates in this release by reading the Release Candidate announcement. WordPress 6.3.1 is a short-cycle release. The next major release will be version 6.4 planned for November 2023. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically. You can download WordPress 6.3.1 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. For more information on this release, please visit the HelpHub site. Thank you to these WordPress contributors This release was led by Jb Audras and Andrew Ozz, with the help of Sergey Biryukov on mission control, and Isabel Brison who worked on Gutenberg backports. WordPress 6.3.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of the following people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver maintenance fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community. @antonvlasenko, @audrasjb, @austinginder, @azaozz, @dd32, @dlh, @frankit, @get_dave, @hellofromTonya, @khokansardar, @mathsgrinds, @mukesh27, @peterwilsoncc, @Presskopp, @rajinsharwar, @RavanH, @sergeybiryukov, and @tmatsuur. 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 #6-4-release-leads channels. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook. Thanks to @jeffpaul for proofreading. View the full article

Nearly 2,000 attendees gathered for two days of keynotes, sessions, and community-building conversations at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in the largest attended WordCamp US ever. Saturday’s sessions concluded with back-to-back keynotes by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy. What’s Next for WordPress Josepha launched her keynote by celebrating 20 years of WordPress and reflecting on its journey from a blogging tool to the world’s most popular community-driven web platform. On WordPress as a platform for empowerment and change, Josepha shared, “The more people that know about WordPress, the more people can access the incredible opportunities that WordPress can provide.” And that sustaining the platform for future generations ensures these opportunities will persist. She added, “We exist for as long as people want to use our software.” The community is the key to sustaining WordPress, and Josepha touched on the importance of WordCamps, workshops, and events that create value, promote inclusivity, and spark inspiration. WordPress can be a catalyst for positive change in the life of a contributor, end user, or site builder. Concluding her keynote, Josepha asked the audience to think about the story they’d want to tell about themselves and their time in WordPress; and the story they would want WordPress to tell the world. What’s Next for Gutenberg Matt began his keynote with a touch of nostalgia, referring to a comment on his personal blog in 2003 by WordPress Co-founder Mike Little, and then looked ahead to the most recent release, WordPress 6.3. As this year’s largest release, it includes new features such as the Command Palette, a quick way (⌘+k on Mac or Ctrl+k on Windows) to search your site and access common commands. Matt continued, “WordPress never rests, so right around the corner is WordPress 6.4 on Nov 7… with some cool new features.” He shared that 6.4, like 5.6, will be an underrepresented gender-led release. A new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Four, is tailored for entrepreneurs and small businesses, photographers and artists, and writers and bloggers. Additionally, 6.4 will feature integrated font management and Image block options to expand single images for optimal viewing. Looking further into the future, Matt highlighted Phase 3 of the Gutenberg project, which will focus on workflows and collaboration, “moving WordPress from a single-player to a multi-player tool.” In that spirit of collaboration, a new #LMS working group will also bring WordPress learning management systems together to improve the web standards for courses and learning content. Beyond Phase 3, Matt shared thoughts about what it means to support WordPress many years from now. A new 100-Year Plan from WordPress.com is an exploration into long-term planning for your online presence. He encouraged attendees to be inspired by the region’s history, reflecting on what it would mean to honor the past while anticipating and planning for the future. Q&A A Q&A session followed the keynotes, with questions submitted by the in-person audience and live stream viewers. Additional questions will be answered in a future post on make.WordPress.org/project/. Join the global community making WordPress and be part of our journey toward a brighter future! Thank you to @angelasjin, @bmcsherry, @cbringmann, @dansoschin, and @eidolonnight for collaborating on this post. View the full article