Wordpress

WordPress 5.9 Beta 2 is now available for testing! This software version is still under development. Please do not run this software on a production site. Instead, install it on a test site, where you can try out the newest features to get a feel for how they will work on your site. You can test the WordPress 5.9 Beta 2 in three ways: Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). Option 2: Direct download the beta version here (zip). Option 3: When using WP-CLI to upgrade from Beta 1 to Beta 2 on a case-insensitive filesystem, please use the following command sequence: Command One: wp core update --version=5.9-beta1 Command Two: wp core update --version=5.9-beta2 --force The current target for the final release of 5.9 is January 25, 2022, which is just seven weeks away. Your help testing this version is a vital part of making this release as good as it can be. Some Highlights Since Beta 1, 24 bugs have been fixed. Here are a few of the changes you will find in Beta 2: Block Editor: Remove navigation areas (#54506)Block Editor: Navigation block view JavaScript error (#54456)Block Editor: Block template theme error related to child themes (#54515)General: Fixing existing links to Customizer when the Site Editor is enabled (#54460)Media: Media library showing only the selected image (#53765)Media: Fatal error uploading media on PHP8 (#54385)REST API: Add Global Styles REST API endpoints from Gutenberg into Core (#54336) Also, note that some users testing 5.9 Beta 1 faced some fatal errors upon upgrade. In turn, these errors revealed the need for some extra work on the filesystem and upgrader. Those fatal errors are no longer a problem, and the enhancements will be part of version 6.0. How You Can Help Do some testing! Testing for bugs is vital for polishing the release in the beta stage and a great way to contribute. If you think you’ve found a bug, please post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs. Where can I get more information? In the coming weeks, follow the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.9-related developer notes that cover these items in detail. So far, contributors have fixed 305 tickets in WordPress 5.9, including 110 new features and enhancements. More bug fixes are on the way with your help through testing. Props to @psykro, @estelaris, @hellofromtonya, @marybaum, @webcommsat, @cbringmann, @davidb, @audrasjb, and @pbiron for contributions to this post. View the full article

Despite the holiday season being around the corner, the WordPress project didn’t slow down. In a recent episode of WP Briefing, Executive Director Josepha Haden shares the first thing she wants people to notice about WordPress, which is also the heart of this open source project: Now, the first thing I want people to see on that site is that WordPress has not only 18 years of learned knowledge that every single new user benefits from, but that it also has thousands of really smart people making sure it works and gets better every day. Josepha Haden, Executive Director of the WordPress project As always, contributors across various teams are working hard to ensure the upcoming release of WordPress 5.9 doesn’t disappoint. With State of the Word 2021 coming up soon, there are many exciting things in the works. Read the November 2021 edition of the Month in WordPress to learn more about what’s happening. WordPress 5.9: Expected to release on January 25, 2022 The Core Team announced the WordPress 5.9 Revised Release Schedule, and the release is now planned for January 25, 2022.WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 was recently released and is available for testing. This version of the WordPress software is under development. Check out the release post to learn more about what’s new in version 5.9 and how you can help testing. Check out “A Look at WordPress 5.9” for a first peek into the exciting features included in this major release.WordPress 5.8.2, a security and maintenance release, was out on November 10, 2021. This release includes two bug fixes and one security fix. Are you interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC. Gutenberg releases: 11.9 and 12.0 are out Two new Gutenberg versions have been released! Version 11.9.0 brings new Gutenberg blocks for working with post comments, a fullscreen pattern explorer modal, further iterations on the Navigation block, and many other improvements.Gutenberg 12.0.0, released on November 24, improves the Block Styles preview and includes featured image block visual enhancements, a site Editor welcome guide, official JSON schema updates, and much more. Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. Follow #gutenberg-new for details on the latest updates. State of the Word 2021: Join a watch party in your local community State of the Word 2021, the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, will be held on December 14, 2021 between 5 and 7 pm ET/10 pm – 12 am (December 15) UTC. The event will be livestreamed from New York City, and include a Question and Answer session. Host or join a State of the Word watch party to enjoy the event with your WordPress friends. Check Meetup to see if a watch party is scheduled to be held in your local community! Add the event to your calendar so you don’t miss State of the Word 2021! Want to ask Matt a question during State of the Word? Please send your questions ahead of time to ask-matt@wordcamp.org or ask them live during the event via YouTube chat. Team updates: Nominations for some team representatives are still underway Requests 2.0.0 has been released. This release is fully compatible with PHP 8.0 and 8.1, indicating that a legacy codebase can be modernized, made more stable and secure without breaking backward-compatibility. The Requests project is a dependency of WordPress core, which was adopted into the WordPress organization earlier this year. The 2020 WordPress Annual Survey results are available to be viewed. The Core Team added six new committers.Last month, the Marketing Team opened its call for team representatives, joining Core, Themes, Accessibility, Support, and Hosting from October 2021.The Core Team announced its new Team Rep for 2022 (and beyond).The Design Team and the Accessibility Team’s meetings will be held bi-weekly moving forward.The Marketing Team published the latest edition of People of WordPress, featuring Devin Maeztri from Indonesia.There’s an open call for suggestions for Global Community Team, Training Team, and Polyglots goals for 2022. Please drop your ideas by December 6, 2021.The Accessibility Team has opened 1-2 volunteer positions for the #diverse-speaker-support channel.The November 2021 edition of the Polyglots monthly newsletter is out. The Marketing Team welcomes any help to promote WordPress Meetups on a weekly basis and thus keep the community connected. We want to hear from you! Suggest your 2022 goals for the Global Community Team by December 6, 2021. Feedback/Testing requests: Test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1; Take the 2021 Annual WordPress Survey to share your experience WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 is now available for testing and we’d like to hear from you! Testing is vital to ensure the release is as good as it can be—it’s also a great way to contribute. Read the comprehensive guide, “Help test WordPress 5.9 Features,” to learn how to test WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 and report any bugs.There’s an open call for testing for WordPress iOS 18.7 and Android 18.7. The 2021 WordPress Annual Survey is out! Please respond to the survey, so your WordPress experience is reflected in the results. Keep an eye out for WordCamp Taiwan and Sevilla, along with several WordPress workshops in December 2021 Several WordPress Social Learning Meetups were held in November by the Training Team, and there will be more in December 2021.Tuesday Training sessions are paused until 2022.WordCamp São Paulo was held online on November 27, 2021.Get excited for WordCamp Sevilla 2021, coming up on December 11-12! Sevilla is the first in-person WordCamp happening in over 18 months, since WordCamps moved online in March 2020 due to COVID-19.Don’t miss the following upcoming WordCamps: WordCamp Taiwan 2021, WordCamp Birmingham 2022, and WordCamp Europe 2022!Check out the latest episodes of WordPress Briefing with Josepha Haden on“All Things Block Themes!”“WordPress=Blogging+”“The People of WordPress” Give back to open source. Please donate to the WordPress Foundation’s mission this holiday season. Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out this form. The following folks contributed to November 2021’s Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan, @harishanker, @rmartinezduque, @callye, @jrf, @webcommsat, and @nalininonstopnewsuk View the full article

WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 is now available for testing! This version of the WordPress software is under development. You don’t want to run this version on a production site. Instead, it is recommended that you run this on a test site. This will allow you to test out the new version. You can test the WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 in three ways: Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).Option 2: Direct download the beta version here (zip).Option 3: Use WP-CLI to test: wp core update --version=5.9-beta1. Do not use this option if your filesystem is case-insensitive. The current target for the final release is January 25, 2022, which is just eight weeks away. Your help testing this version is vital to make sure the release is as good as it can be. Check the Make WordPress Core blog for 5.9-related developer notes in the coming weeks which will break down all upcoming changes in greater detail. How You Can Help – Testing! Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing the release in the beta stage. It is also a great way to contribute. If you’ve never tested a beta release before, this detailed guide will help walk you through what and how to test. If you think you’ve found a bug, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. That’s also where you can find a list of known bugs. To see every feature in the Gutenberg releases since WordPress 5.8, check out the What’s New In Gutenberg posts for 10.8, 10.9, 11.0, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, 11.5, 11.6, 11.7, 11.8, and 11.9. Beyond the noted changes, which include 580 enhancements and nearly 450 bug fixes, contributors have fixed 297 tickets for WordPress 5.9, including 110 new features and enhancements. More fixes are on the way. Happy testing! Want to know what’s new in version 5.9? Read on for some highlights. Full Site Editing The Styles Interface Combine all the features that went live in 5.8 with those making their entrance in 5.9, and you get Full Site Editing. Formerly known as Global Styles, the Styles Interface lets you interact directly with your blocks and elements right in the WordPress Admin. From typography to color palettes, this cohesive design interface means a design change—even a dramatic one—can happen without a theme switch. No code needed. Theme.json Introduced in WordPress 5.8, theme.json has been improved to enable features and default styles for your site and its blocks. With 5.9, theme.json can support child themes and the duotone treatment. Coordinate layers of style with theme.json, taking the weight off of your theme’s required CSS. Other features supported by theme.json include: Border: color, style, and width augment the border-radius property that landed in 5.8.Flex layouts: Block Gap support, courtesy of spacing.blockGap.Typography: font families, font style, font weight, text decoration, and text transform.Images: Duotones. A New Navigation Block Welcome to the most intuitive way to build navigation: the Navigation Block. Here are the features that need testing the most: Responsive menu options you can turn off, have always on, or opt to use only for small screens.Built-in keyboard accessibility. For accessibility, for speed, or both.Add extra blocks like Search and Site Icon blocks (and customize them to your liking).Submenu items with styling options.Horizontal or vertical alignment.Reusable navigation? Even across themes? Yes. Because the Navigation Block you build gets saved as a custom post type. A Better Gallery Block What if you could treat single images in your Gallery Block the same way you treat the Image Block? Now you can. Make every image in your gallery different from the next, with inline cropping or a duotone and change layouts with the ease of drag and drop. With the improved gallery block, every image is its own Image block. One thing to note: Have you built a plugin or theme on the Gallery Block functionality? Be sure to review this Dev Note, which details what you need to do for compatibility. Focused Template Part Mode Building template parts can take a level of focus all its own because you’re making decisions for the entire site. So WordPress 5.9 adds a focus mode that shows you only the part you’re working on right now (and you can get back to the regular view with a keystroke). Block Pattern Directory The Pattern Directory offers a range of prebuilt block patterns, from a couple of blocks that show an image and text, to an entire page layout with columns and sections. Since the 5.8 release, the directory has become a hub for exploratory UI and patterns, taking submissions and offering them to the community. So now, your creation can help other people build out their perfect site. Twenty Twenty-Two Default Theme A whole new way of building WordPress themes. WordPress 5.9 introduces features that make Full Site Editing possible, including the first default block theme. Using minimal CSS, theme styles reside in theme.json so that you can configure them in the Styles interface of the WordPress Admin. Make this theme take on its own personality site-wide, with a wide array of color schemes, type combinations, page templates, premade components (forms), and image treatments to choose from. More Improvements and Updates Do you love to blog? New tweaks to the publishing flow let you add new posts just seconds after hitting Publish on your latest post.List View lets you drag and drop content as easily as you could always cruise through it – and collapse entire sections – so you can concentrate on a task or get the bigger picture.The Buttons and Social icons blocks now absorb and display their parent block’s toolbar controls. Choose your language on the login screen.More performance improvements (i.e., speed). Props to @chanthaboune, @priethor, @psykro, @annezazu, @webcommsat, @marybaum, @hellofromtonya, @davidbaumwald, and @rmartinezduque for their research and copy. View the full article

In this series, we share some of the inspiring stories of how WordPress and its global network of contributors can change people’s lives for the better. This month we feature a translator and campaigner who uses WordPress to highlight good causes and helps people in her area benefit from the open source platform. Going to a WordCamp can be a life-changing experience, as Devin Maeztri discovered. Every event she attends is a further step on a journey of discovering the WordPress community and its many opportunities. “It is not that hard to fall for WordPress if you have a chance to experience WordPress. For me, it took a WordCamp.” Devin Maeztri Devin’s first experience with camps came when she volunteered impromptu at an Indonesian event, WordCamp Denpasar, Bali in 2016. Here, she made a profound discovery: “WordCamps can bring people who will give back to the community, even if they don’t get anything from WordPress directly.” With every WordCamp after that first experience, she became more interested in WordPress and the community. Over time, Devin found she wanted to be part of WordPress events more often. She became a regular at Meetups in Ubud and Jakarta, joining as a co-organizer at WordCamp Jakarta in 2017 and 2019. Later, she took on the role of co-organizer for Meetups in Jakarta and Ubud. Smitten by what WordCamps can offer and how they can bring people together across national borders, she joined the organizing team for WordCamp Asia 2020. Sadly, this event was to become the first major WordPress event to be cancelled in the COVID-19 pandemic. Naturally, Devin hopes WordCamp Asia will happen someday very soon. Beyond the expected WordPress learning and sharing that event will promote, she believes its very scale will showcase how WordCamps add international tourism and cultural understanding everywhere they take place. WordCamp Asia 2020 Organizers at WordCamp Europe 2019. Devin is pictured in the front row, second from left. Photo Credit: Abha Thakor Showing how WordPress can be used locally After experiencing several events, Devin had questions: “At WordCamps and Meetups, you hear stories about how WordPress powers the web. How it changes the lives of so many people, how it helps dreams come true. It made me think, considering WordPress is that powerful, why are there not even more people in Indonesia using websites, and more using WordPress? Why aren’t more talented Indonesian WordPress users, developers, designers, and business owners taking part in WordPress.org projects? Language, for me, was the main answer.” The solution Devin felt was to make WordPress available in the main local language. She said: “I believe, the more content translated into Indonesian, the more Indonesian WordPress users see WordPress as more than just a blogging platform or a content management system. They will realize it’s a huge open source community that works together to make the web a better place. The more plugins and themes translated, the easier the work of the developer and designer will be. The more people see how WordPress can enhance their life, the better the ecosystem for business owners becomes.” Encouraging others to translate WordPress After talking with others about how WordPress could be even more useful in Indonesia, Devin felt she had to make a personal commitment to reviving the polyglot project in Indonesia. With another volunteer contributor and through promotion, the local polyglot team got bigger and the interest in translation grew. She also took on the responsibility of a General Translation Editor for the language. Through the efforts of Devin and the other translation editors, Indonesia took part in WordPress Translation Day in 2020, and in 2021 held sprints and learning sessions spanning the whole 30 days of the event. Her enthusiasm and dedication to helping others translate WordPress locally and promoting the global community were recognized in the Polyglot Appreciation Nominations for 2021. Helping to give access to more diverse audiences Through her involvement in translation, Devin noticed there were not many women involved in the WordPress community in Indonesia. Often, she found herself the only woman at an event. So, along with a couple of community members, she started Perempuan WordPress, a local initiative. This group is open for everyone to join, but prioritizes women as event speakers. Devin has gone on to support the work of the Diversity Speaker Training group in the Community Team, translating materials and promoting initiatives in Indonesia. She is keen to encourage others to get involved with this initiative which helps increase the diversity of presenters at Meetups and WordCamps. Organizing at WordCamp Jakarta 2019 In her professional roles, Devin is an advocate for WordPress as a tool for people with a wide variety of skill sets. She does not code, but uses the platform extensively for her projects. In 2014, she signed up for a free account on WordPress.com to keep and share notes about what she saw or was thinking about as she commuted on public transport to work. This site did not turn into a blog, but instead introduced her to other opportunities and the vast capabilities of the platform. WordPress can support your skills and passions With a background in environmental activism, Devin has worked for international development organizations on everything from policymaking to campaigning. Behind the desk, she worked with policymakers and organized conferences and meetings. That meant doing a lot of writing and translating and working with people on the ground who were impacted by the policies. “My work on the ground usually involved researching, movement building and community empowerment,” she noted. Her work with events inspired Devin to get involved in WordCamps and Meetups and share her energy for making things happen. As in her professional work, she felt WordPress was an opportunity to work and share with people about something that can make a positive impact on someone else’s life. “For me, everything comes from the heart. I do things that I feel so strongly about. Things that call me, and things that I am good at but still giving me room to learn and become better at. WordPress can be the perfect place for this.” While she was between jobs, Devin was encouraged to volunteer at WordCamp Denpasar 2016. With some help, she created an online CV. She also learned to manage a WordPress site, navigate the wp-admin, and make the content appeal to potential employers. She eventually got a job as a campaigner to build a movement online and offline. The brainchild of many university friends in America, who used digital campaigns to go global, the campaign used WordPress. Devin worked alongside a digital campaigner and helped shape the content, the call to action, and the user experience. She also had to use the wp-admin to make some amendments. As a global movement, it developed its resources in English, so she also reviewed the work of the translators she worked with. Devin’s cat became a regular on social media posts about #WPTranslationDay 2021 She left her job as a campaigner at the end of 2018 to concentrate on freelancing – and to spend more of her free time contributing to the WordPress community. She also took up the initiative to help street cats in Jakarta. Devin said: “So, I am busy helping these cats but also learning how to fundraise using a website. I’m learning to use online forms, set up a payment service provider, work on SEO, and do other new things I need to learn to grow my initiative. I do have the privilege to learn directly from a personal guru. The same person who convinced me to volunteer at WordCamp Denpasar, and who I married in 2018.” WordPress gives everyone a chance to learn Devin was so enthused by being a contributor for WordPress, she took part in the video shorts following the Translation Day events. Devin talks about translating in this short video (opens in a new tab on YouTube) She is also active in other Contributor Teams and decided to become a Community Team Deputy to support meetups in new cities across Indonesia and perhaps future WordCamps. She said: “One of the things that I like about WordPress is that it is very welcoming and open to people like me, who don’t code at all. At the same time, it shows me a different way of looking at the world.” Devin believes in the power of WordPress to give ‘everyone a chance to learn new things’ and allows her to contribute and share her knowledge and experience. “By contributing, I hope to make a difference in someone’s life. I hope they feel the benefit of using WordPress and want to give back to create a healthier WordPress community.” Contributors Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) and Mary Baum (@marybaum) for the interviews and writing this feature, and to Devin Maeztri (@devinmaeztri) for sharing her story. Thanks to Meher Bala (@meher) for work on the images, and to Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann) and Collieth Clarke (@callye) for proofing. Thanks to Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support for the series. This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. #HeroPress #ContributorStory View the full article

In episode 21 of the WordPress Briefing, Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, talks all things block themes with developers and theme specialists Maggie Cabrera and Jeff Ong. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin HartzlerLogo: Beatriz FialhoProduction: Chloé BringmannSong: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod References 5.9 Beta 1 Delay Announcement 5.9 Revised Release ScheduleWordCamp Sevilla 2021Charitable Giving: WordPress FoundationBig Orange HeartHeroPress (Update: This organization is not a non-profit.) Transcript Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. See, here we go! Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:40 Well, today, folks, in our podcast, I am joined by a couple of special guests. I know it’s been a bit since I’ve had a guest, so I’m very excited to introduce you to who I have with me today. Today, I have Maggie Cabrera and Jeff Ong. They both are working on themes, and especially the future of themes as we move into this low code, no code block based experience of editing things in WordPress. And there have been so many questions lately about what does the landscape of being a theme developer turns into once we move fully into this excellent promise of user empowerment for Gutenberg? I figured who best to come and talk to us about that than these two. So welcome, Maggie. Welcome, Jeff. I’m really excited to have this conversation with you today. Jeff Ong 01:39 Thank you for having us. Excited to be here. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:45 I’m just gonna hop right in, and we will see what happens. The first thing that I want to chat about, I hear so many questions and so much discussion about patterns in a lot of different places. Like obviously, the work that I helped to steward the most is around like the Block Pattern directory and various other user-facing tools. And so I have never really been able to give a really solid answer about like patterns and how they work inside themes. And so I wondered if you all had anything that you could offer to our listeners to help clarify what is the power of patterns inside themes in the future? Implementation of themes? Jeff Ong 02:34 I can try to start unless, Maggie? Okay. Well, if you take a look at what I’ve been doing for the last couple of months working on Twenty Twenty-Two. And if you look at that theme, it’s mostly just the collection of patterns. Patterns. As you know, if you read the description, the theme, it’s designed to be the most flexible and kind of like flexible theme ever, dare I say ever created. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 03:04 I think you can dare to say it. Jeff Ong 03:03 And, you know, I think a huge part of that is because of the Full Site Editing being launched, introduced in 5.9. And also that theme itself ships with all of these patterns in it that work with the overall design, but really can be configured to your own kind of unique liking and kind of taste and ultimately, what you want to accomplish, whether that’s I want to make a portfolio, I want to make, you know, a single-page website promoting like my podcast, or there are patterns for that kind of shipping with the theme. And they’ve all been kind of designed and tailored to work with the typography choices at a baseline level with the color choices at a baseline level, but can very easily be tweaked. And you can kind of rely on them to work with the editor. And I guess, kind of zooming out for a little bit, not just about Twenty-Twenty Two. Jeff Ong 04:04 But like patterns as this idea that a theme, hopefully, what it is, it’s a collection of different design options or layout options that are ultimately presented as patterns to the user, the patterns are just a really easy way to basically say “I want you this layout, like two columns of text or with like some images here.” Basically, a theme becomes a way of packaging the patterns together in a way that feels like a coherent piece of a coherent website. And I think that’s a pretty powerful idea. I know that the patterns directory is also opening up making those patterns pretty widely available. But I think a theme you could think of as like a curation of those patterns in a way that makes sense. And I think Twenty-Twenty Two is a really good example. I mean, I’m biased. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:03 I also think it’s a good example. Maggie, did you have anything that you wanted to add to that? Maggie Cabrera 05:08 Yeah, What I really like about patterns is how it empowers the user, even if they don’t really have like a deep knowledge of code, or they’re not used to the more complex blocks. When the theme developer gives you this pattern about using the query block, for example, it lays out your posts in a very compelling manner. And you can edit it if you want it or just use it out of the box. And you have this dynamic blog that it’s, like, such a big important part of your website. Like if you want to have a page where you have, you have maybe a podcast website, and you want to showcase your podcasts differently than your regular blog posts. So you can use a different gray pattern for that. And it’s like, really, really easy to use, even if you’re not familiar with it. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:07 One of the things that I have found compelling about this new version of themes and kind of the way that themes are planning to look in the future; it’s going to be like a super throwback, so everyone get ready for me to sound old, my guests and my listeners alike. It reminds me of my original days of blogging on the web. I was not a developer and even though I had this really short stint of working with JavaScript in my career, at some point. Like no one actually would ever look to me and be like, that one is excellent at design and fixing everything with code, like I was just killer at searching for the right pieces of code, right. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:57 And so I remember sitting there on Zynga, which is, of course, now powered by WordPress, I absolutely just went out and found bundles of code that are now what we would consider themes and modified the small pieces that I needed to change in order to like really suit what I wanted to have happen on the site at the time. And they’re like, I knew I could break it all. Really easily. But also, it was, it was not scary to think about breaking it. Like it was clear how I could fix it if I really broke it. The content, like what I had written, was separate from everything to do with the way that it was looking. And so like, I wouldn’t destroy all of my work, just because I didn’t put a semicolon in the right place, or whatever it was in that moment. And so like, this future of themes really reminds me of this a lot where someone has curated how it can look how it should look. And you can just like add in modular pieces that will augment what was already intended, but still kind of work. And if it’s not gonna work, it’s kind of easy to fix too. So like, I’m excited. That was a really exciting time in my learning of the web and certainly was formative in my career, as we all now see. And so yeah, I think that’s really exciting. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 08:20 I did have actually another question that this conversation has kind of brought up for me. I have, obviously just use the term modular, which no one has ever used in the context of themes for WordPress. And I know that there is a lot there are a lot of terms kind of wandering around about themes right now. And especially as we’re moving into what themes can look like in the future. There was block based theme as a term for a while. And now it’s block themes. There was like this floating around the term, universal themes. And now we’re looking at just like block themes forever. And so I wondered if y’all could give us a just like a clear understanding of these terms that had been being used and maybe are going out of fashion? Like, are they important for us to keep knowing? Jeff Ong 09:11 So yes, the history of terms around themes. And obviously, even my knowledge only goes back so far. But it was around when we started doing the block based themes meeting. And trying to I think that’s where that term kind of came from is like, oh, let’s, let’s start talking about this idea that themes can be completely made up out of blocks. And what does that mean? Jeff Ong 09:33 I think over time, it wasn’t just block themes, because, you know, previously, there were themes and even default themes that used and took into account the fact that blocks existed. So there was some confusion there. Enough time has gone on where we focus on this idea that themes whose templates are ultimately made out of blocks are block themes. And to me, it’s kind of as simple as that. Its themes that supply a set of templates that previously in the past were a collection of PHP and various template tags and whatnot is all transitioned to themes made up including other blocks, as well as themes that supply styles through theme.json configuration instead of supplying it in raw CSS. To me this idea is really crystallizing around like this is a block theme, one that is really, at its core, supplying a set of templates, and styles through a language that WordPress understands natively, and can allow it to be configured and customized in a really powerful way. And then maybe someday in the future, they’ll just be called themes again. If we do a good enough they will just be called themes. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 10:57 I’m gonna, I’m gonna take us into a philosophical area now that you’ve just put us in there. You said, someday they’ll be called Themes. Again, I’ve talked about this on this podcast a few times. And for anyone who’s worked with me for any length of time, like you all probably heard this from me as well. But like, adjectives are so frequently the realm of things that are not what you expect, right? Because like you have coffee, and then decaf coffee, no one’s like caffeinated coffee, because that’s what you expect out of it. And so when you’re like themes, and block themes, it makes it look like block themes are secondary, which at the moment, they are, ish. But in the future, I think you’re probably right, there will be a time when the modifier isn’t necessary anymore because it will be hopefully a much better way for people to kind of change the way that their themes work and make it more usable for users and people who are, you know, having to manage their own site without necessarily wanting to or being able to, like, have a Maggie in the room to fix everything that they break. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 12:08 Maggie is nowhere near me. And so she’s never been in the room when I’ve broken anything. But I believe that Maggie on one occasion, at least, has come in and helped me fix something that I definitely broke. I’m an excellent breaker of WordPress things. Maggie, did you have anything you wanted to add to that question? 12:29 Yeah, I guess, maybe clarify a bit, what universal themes are because, yeah, maybe some people have heard about the term but they don’t really know what they are. And maybe just clarify that. The term was born when developing block themes wasn’t something that you could actually do for production websites like you could build them to test some experiments, but they weren’t really ready for users to use. So universal themes want to grasp the power of love themes while still being ready for users. So the way they do it is they are block based, like we used to call them in the sense that the templates are made of blocks. But they are also able to be customized using the customizer, which is the old way of customizing themes, instead of using the site editor. So they can have a balance between two worlds between the worlds of classic themes and block themes. But they are, at heart, a temporary concept. They are bound to be blocked themes in the future, but with maybe a foot in the past, where they can actually serve users who are not ready for full-on site editor. But they are bound to be full block themes in the future. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 14:00 There’s a really interesting concept in there. So universal themes, it sounds like are basically kind of like an on-ramp for people who are not really ready to fully commit to this for any number of reasons. Like we never want to say that we know the reason that people would be a little bit shy to get started with this. But like it’s kind of like an on-ramp, it’s a safe way to get back to something that they do know, in the event that what they don’t know, really hinders their progress makes it hard for them to get the work done. Maggie Cabrera 14:31 I think I wouldn’t say that they are for people shyer to get into new stuff rather than developers who want to embrace the new stuff before it’s even really ready. They really want to embrace the power of the blocks instead of doing things the old way. But even if it’s not fully ready. Jeff Ong 14:54 They still need to support the old way of doing things. Maggie Cabrera 14:58 Like being backward compatible and being ready for any kind of user. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 15:05 So mostly for developers, everyone who heard me just talking about how it was a great thing for users, ignore it. Maggie Cabrera 15:12 It’s also good for users; If they feel secure in using the customizer. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 15:20 Well, I think that there’s something important here that we certainly learned with the adoption of Gutenberg in 5.0. Right, which is that there is certainly one method of helping people to adopt things, which is to go like the art of war style, and kind of smash their rice pots and burn all their boats, like, that’s one way. Which works for a lot of companies in the world, I’m sure. But WordPress has always had kind of a commitment, not even kind of, has always had a commitment to backward compatibility. And like, we know that a lot of the work on Gutenberg is going to represent some breaking changes around the around workflows and around the user experience the interface, especially like, we know that. But the opportunity to like have a thing that gives you an early taste of what’s coming but also the ability to keep kind of working in your old space where you need to, I think it’s an excellent way to bring people forward into the future of things, I have never been a fan of the just like cut off all avenues and hope that they stay with your method because of course, like you can’t cut off all the methods. You can’t cut off all the ways people can get away from you. And even if we could, it wouldn’t be in line with how WordPress hopes to kind of help people through some tough stuff like making your first website is hard. If you are doing it as part of, an overall campaign that’s supposed to bring in leads for you or generate revenue like you don’t want to necessarily play with that in a way that could break things and be risky for you in the long term. So I think all the tools that we offer to help people kind of move forward with the technology move forward with the CMS as it’s moving forward, I think it’s really smart. And so universal themes are one of those things, but also not around to stay. As we move into non modified themes, just the word themes that happen to be based in blocks. If I’ve confused anyone, please email me at wpbriefing@wordpress.org. And tell me how I confused you. And I will do a follow-up to unconfuse everyone. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 17:40 So speaking of the way that we help people kind of move forward with WordPress and with the technology. So much has been done in the CMS in the past 12 months in the past 18 months to be able to move themes into this same future as the rest of the editor. Right. So like, for folks who have not been listening to me for the last five years, you may not know this. So I’m going to tell everybody now, like one of the pain points that Gutenberg overall is solving is the fact that you for a long time had to learn five different editing interfaces to get one thing done in WordPress, right. And so like the advent of blocks and moving it into more and more spaces in the CMS is intended to really flatten the editing experience by making the type of user interaction the type of workflow really similar across all of the editing interfaces in the CMS. And so themes are a natural extension of that, where we can take similar user patterns and workflows, and work them out into themes. So over the last 12 months or so probably a little bit more, there’s been a lot of work on the CMS to move us forward in that that is now enabling the work that we want to be able to do to move things forward ahead. And so, I mean, this is probably our last question. Is there anything that you all want to offer to people who maybe saw themes early on or saw Gutenberg early on and felt like this is just not for me, in that in that context of like, how far it’s moved ahead in the past 12 months or so. Jeff Ong 19:23 So you’re asking like, what in the last 12 months has maybe like really surprised me or like sticks out to me as something that like, Wow, look how far we’ve come? Josepha Haden Chomphosy 19:36 Yeah, yeah. So like, if you’re looking at what is the one thing that you saw in the last 12 months, that changed in the CMS that really enabled something wonderful for themes or from the other side of it. Like if someone had looked at themes or WordPress 18 months ago, and now they’re looking at it and seeing this new and different way to do things with the look and feel of their site, like what is one thing that they should be aware of? On either side of that question, Maggie Cabrera 20:05 I think there’s more than one thing that has really evolved through this last year, year and a half. Like the maturity of some of the blocks is astounding now, like navigation blog, for example, was really bare-bones at the start and now it’s full potential, and it’s really looking really great. I would say the same thing about those days or the features on fire, like how basic it was at the start, was full potential. But now it’s really, really mature in terms of how much you can do with it. Like, I think the example, the perfect example of that is the work that Kjell [Reigstad] has done on Twenty-Twenty Two with the alternative theme.json files, where just changing that file basically feels like a new theme, with just the configuration and the styles. And without writing any CSS without changing any templates. It’s really, really amazing how that can turn into a reality. And it’s so easy for users to tinker with that if they want to. And it’s much easier than having to delve deep into CSS and changing everything in like 2000 lines of code. Jeff Ong 21:23 Yeah, I probably would echo most of that. What the thing that astounds me is global styles and how the UI can be shipping a theme or default theme with basically like, 20 lines of CSS, and have it be one of them. A beautiful, beautiful, like crisp and sharp, like, experience. It’s super fast. And it’s like, what this is a theme, you know, I thought a theme was supposed to supply all the styles like no, like, it’s just yeah. And workers do for you. Exactly. And like that. That’s pretty amazing to think in the last 12 months, we can go from, you know, shipping 1000s of lines of CSS to you none, it’s like, Wow, pretty cool. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 22:10 Well, my friends, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a really interesting conversation. I hope that all y’all out listening. Also find it interesting. As I mentioned, if you have any follow-up questions, absolutely. Send them to me via email. And I collect all of my questions that I get through the year for answering at the end of the year, mostly because I don’t get lots of questions that people want to be answered on this. Everyone just asked me their questions on Twitter and in Slack, which is fine as well. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 22:41 So, Maggie, Jeff, thank you both for joining me. And I’m sure that we’ll talk to you all again soon. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 22:56 That brings us now to our small list of big things. In the last episode, I got all excited about being in the beta phase. But today, I’m rolling that back a little bit. As part of our usual open source processes, a group of contributors did a deep dive review on the WordPress 5.9 release and found a workflow that needed some refinement. So we are delaying the beta. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 23:19 Since we are in the midst of a major commerce slash/sales season, and of course, a lengthy holiday season, that delay also means that it makes sense to delay WordPress 5.9 final release a little as well. And so we are delaying that all the way into 2022 to January 25. For me, the trade-off works really well there. Every decision that we make in open source, of course, has some balance to it. It’s great for these aspects, it is less great for these aspects over here. But for myself, the opportunity to make sure that we have a really excellent experience for our users and also an opportunity to kind of avoid all of the chaos and hustle and bustle of the end of the year. Really, it seemed like a no-brainer for me. So in case you want to learn a little bit more about why we made the decision and get some insight into the actual milestones and where they have moved now, I’ll include some posts in the show notes below in case you want to read more and of course, if you have any additional questions you can always ask. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 24:33 The second small list of big things is that the first back to people WordCamp. I don’t think that’s what we’re calling it. Our first back to people WordCamp is happening in a couple of weeks actually. WordCamp Sevilla is happening in person on December 11. And I’m so excited I wish I were local, but I’m not so if you are local stop by their website and pick up your ticket. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 24:55 And the third thing on our smallest a big things is that it is, of course, charitable giving season. I don’t know if you do your charitable giving at the end of the year or if that’s even part of your general ways of giving back. But I can think of two or three charitable organizations inside the WordPress ecosystem. There’s of course the WordPress Foundation, but also Big Orange Heart and HeroPress. If there are others out there, I certainly do want to know about them. WordPress Foundation also does additional giving on behalf of just like the open web and open source as a whole. So if you’re the sort of person who does their charitable giving at the end of the year, just a reminder that you have some options inside the WordPress ecosystem if you were trying to figure out some new places to donate to in 2021. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 25:42 And that is your small list of big things. Thank you so much for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. Thank you again to our special guests, Maggie and Jeff. I’m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. View the full article

State of the Word 2021 is just around the corner! Although attending State of the Word in person would be ideal, not all WordPress community members get to enjoy the experience of attending the speech live with friends. This year, as State of the Word is streamed live for the second time, we want to restore that in person camaraderie through State of the Word watch parties for WordPress Community members around the world. We encourage WordPress meetup organizers and community members worldwide to (safely) host State of the Word 2021 watch parties —read this handbook to learn more. Why organize a watch party? If you are a WordPress meetup organizer, many folks in your meetup may be unaware of the State of the Word, and a watch party could be a great opportunity to introduce or remind them.As meetup organizers slowly bid goodbye to a tough year, the watch party could be an excellent opportunity to revitalize your group, especially if you haven’t had many events this year.Along with your Meetup group members, you get a platform to ask questions directly to Matt Mullenweg.And last but not least, even if you are not a Meetup Organizer, a watch party can be the perfect opportunity to reconnect and have a blast with your WordPress friends! How do I organize a State of the Word watch party? You can choose to host a watch party online or in person. Check out our handbook for detailed instructions on how to schedule an event (including event templates). Online The simplest way to organize an online watch party is to schedule an online event for your WordPress group and add the State of the Word YouTube streaming link directly on Meetup.com. Alternatively, you can schedule an online meeting using tools like Zoom and broadcast the live stream over there by screen sharing––thereby facilitating better engagement. Organize an Online Watch Party In Person If your region meets the guidelines for in person events (if vaccines and testing are freely available), you can organize an in person watch party event (for fully vaccinated OR recently tested OR recently recovered folks) for your WordPress Meetup! Group members can hang out together (following local safety guidelines of course) and watch State of the Word live. Plan an In person Watch Party NOTE: If State of the Word is happening at an odd hour in your timezone, you can still organize a watch party by organizing a replay of live stream, at a date/time that is convenient for your group. If your Local WordPress Meetup is organizing an in person watch party, fill out this form so that we can ship some swag for your group to celebrate! Deadline: November 30, 2021 What else do I need to know about organizing a State of the Word watch party? Excited? To help you get started, we’ve put together a few resources: Check out this handbook for detailed instructions on how to organize a watch party, be it online or in person.Looking for a Zoom Pro account to host your online watch party? Request a community zoom pro account for your event right away!We have prepared some email templates that Meetup Organizers can use to spread the word in their Meetup groups.Don’t forget to share on social media about your watch party events using the hashtag #StateOfTheWord so we can join in on the fun! NOTE: The guidelines in this post are primarily aimed at WordPress Meetup organizers. However, you do not need to be a Meetup organizer to schedule a watch party! You can simply hang out together with your friends online or in person (while following local safety guidelines) and catch the event live! Join a State of the Word Watch Party near you! We have compiled a list of State of the Word Watch Parties around the world. If you don’t see a watch party in your region listed here, check this page on Meetup.com to see if your local WordPress group is organizing one. If not, why don’t you consider organizing a watch party on your own? [WordPress NYC Meetup] An In Person MeetUp: The State of the Word 2021 is in Manhattan. [South Jersey WordPress Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [Morris County NJ WordPress Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [WordPress Montclair Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [WordPress Santa Clarita Valley] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [The Houston WordPress Meetup Group] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [North East Ohio WordPress Meetup] State of Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Birmingham WordPress Meetup] State of the Word Watch Party [Lehigh Valley WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Greater Milwaukee Area WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [The East Bay WordPress Meetup Group] State of the Word 2021 (Online) [Sacramento WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [WordPress Louisville] State of the Word Watch Party and Discussion (WP Louisville, KY) [WordPress Medellín] State of the Word 2021: Discurso de Matt & Fiesta de Comunidad (Online) [Port-au-Prince WordPress Meetup Group] Rejoignez-nous le 14 décembre pour regarder State of the Word 2021 (online) [WordPress Coventry Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [WordPress Exeter] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [WordPress Meetup Torino] State of the Word 2021 Video Party (Online) [Kigali WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Lagos WordPress Community] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Ijebu WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Jinja WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party – WordPress Community Uganda (Online) [Kampala WordPress Meetup] State of the Word Livestream [WordPress Meetups Lahore] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (In-person) [WordPress Bhopal] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (In-person) [Bengaluru WordPress] WordPress Meetup – State of the word -Watch Party [WordPress Singapore] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) If you are planning a watch party for State of the Word, and have questions, please drop us an email to: support@wordcamp.org if you have any questions. We are happy to help you in the best way possible. The following folks contributed to this post: @anjanavasan @eidolonnight @evarlese and @rmartinezduque View the full article

WordPress 5.9 is expected to be a ground-breaking release. It will introduce the next generation of themes with Twenty Twenty-Two joining the fun and over 30 theme blocks to build all parts of your site. In anticipation of the January 25th release, we hope you enjoy this sneak peek of 5.9. New design tools will allow you to create exactly what you want, from adding filters to all your images to fine-tuning the border radius on all your buttons. With WordPress 5.9 providing more design control along with streamlined access to patterns, you can easily change the entire look and feel of your site without switching themes. No matter what you’re editing, whether it’s crafting a new post or working on a header, improvements to List View make it simple to navigate content regardless of complexity. More improvements and features for everyone are to come in this release and we can’t wait to see what you create with WordPress 5.9! Stay Tuned Stay tuned for more updates as the date draws near. If you want to help, the best thing you can do is test everything! For all the details, check out this Make Core post. Video props: @annezazu (also co-wrote the post) @michaelpick @matveb @beafialho @javiarce @critterverse @joen. View the full article

As previously announced, State of the Word will be livestreamed from New York City. That means that you can join the fun either online or in person, on December 14, 2021, between 5 and 7 pm EST! To join State of the Word 2021 online, check your Meetup chapter for a local watch party, or simply visit wordpress.org/news, where the livestream will be embedded. If you would like to participate in person in New York City, please request a seat by filling out the registration form by Sunday, November 28. Not all requests will receive a seat due to venue capacity, but everyone who requests one will receive further notification on Tuesday, November 30. In person attendees will be asked to show their COVID vaccination card at the venue entrance, and are expected to follow the safety measures in place. Because of these safety measures, there is a maximum of 50 attendees. Request a seat Whether you participate in person or online, we are so excited to see you on December 14! Don’t forget, State of the Word will be followed by a Question & Answer session. If you have a question for Matt, you can send your question ahead of time to ask-matt@wordcamp.org, or ask during the event in the YouTube chat. View the full article

In this episode, WordPress’s Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, answers two recently asked questions. Tune in to hear what those questions were and her response, in addition to this week’s small list of big things. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin HartzlerLogo: Beatriz FialhoProduction: Chloé BringmannSong: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod References W3Techs WordPress Usage Statistics WordPress 5.9 Development Cycle Call for Team Rep Nomination Transcript Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go! Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:40 So I was in a meeting recently, which I realize isn’t saying much for me since I spend a quarter of my time in meetings. But in this particular meeting, I was asked a couple of questions that I absolutely loved. The first question was, “if there were one thing you could change in people’s minds about WordPress, what would it be?” And my answer, predictable though it may be, was that I want to change the idea that WordPress is just a blogging platform. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:06 WordPress has grown into a lot more than that. But the idea of a content management system, even now, sometimes gets a mental shorthand where content is a stand-in for the word writing or words. If you’re using WordPress today in an enterprise context, or as part of a governmental agency, or if you use it in a classroom setting, you know that your content cannot be confined that way. And if you’re supporting or building anything to hand off to clients, you know that timely, easy-to-ship changes on a site are considered a vital part of any overarching brand and marketing strategy. And when was the last time that any marketing strategy was literally only about the words? Josepha Haden Chomphosy 01:51 So that was the first question. And also my first answer. There is also this kind of annual, not fear, necessarily, but this annual question that is sort of related that is raised to me and has been asked of me recently, that I’m just going to give you a small answer to. One annual worry that I get every year around November and December is, “What are we going to do about the fact that the term blog and blogging are declining in search popularity?” And I was gonna say it’s been a while since I answered that in any sort of public format. But I think maybe I’ve never answered it in a public format at all. And so I’m just going to answer it here. Because I think maybe a lot of people have that same question. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 02:36 So number one, I think that the way that people search now is different. There’s a lot more semantic cognition. This is not the way to answer this — search engines are smarter now. So like, it used to be the case with early search engines that yeah, there was a lot of just like, individual search terms that were looked for. But now, people are asking full questions; they have, essentially, an entire sentence that they are searching for. And then, search engines are able to parse that information better and get more high-quality answers and information for them. So like, that’s one thing that I’m already not worried about. If people are searching for individual words anymore, it’s so that they can get a definition of that word. So I’m not specifically worried about a decline in search volume for the word blog or blogging for that reason. But the answer to my first question, if there is probably the real reason that I’m not actually super worried about any decline in search volume for the word blog, or blogging, is that WordPress has really moved beyond that. And since we have moved beyond that, then it doesn’t necessarily make sense for WordPress as an entity for WordPress as a project to get overly hung up on the idea that the term blog has gone out of fashion. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 03:52 Okay, now that I did my first question, and the answer, and then an additional question that only ever gets asked in private and is being answered by me for the first time in public, I will tell you now, the second question that I loved, someone asking of me, and that question is this: “What is one thing you’d like people to see or experience, right when they first land on wordpress.org?” Now, I often don’t get asked questions about the wordpress.org website, like administrative tasks, things that we need to update, move around where they should go. Sure. But like, “Josepha, what’s the point and purpose of this site?” Never. I’ve never been asked that, and so I was really excited that someone asked me, and I’m going to give you a heads up. I think some of you might disagree with my answer. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 04:40 So the primary thing that I want people to see or experience when they first get to wordpress.org, the website is the depth of WordPress. Not which audience segment they should belong to or that we believe they should belong to or raw data about the CMS or even how much we care about the freedoms of open source. Now the first thing I want people to see on that site is that WordPress has not only 18 years of learned knowledge that every single new user benefits from, but that it also has 1,000s of really smart people making sure it works and gets better every day, now. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:19 WordPress is a Goliath in its field. I know that we cite this bit of context. Frequently, we say that we are 42% of the web. And that is true that is the percentage by usage. But in its field, which is websites that are using a content management system, we actually have a 65% market share. This is very easy to find. It’s on the W3Techs website: I can put a link in the show notes, but you could find it just by searching for it. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:46 So WordPress is a Goliath in its field of websites that are run using a CMS. Because we have always brought our learnings forward with us with the understanding that knowledge, when shared grows rather than diminishes. But open source, the heart of what defines this project, open source is not a Goliath; it’s barely even David somedays. Even though the web is built on scads of open source software, there’s a pervasive public perception that it is built by and for hobbyists or that it is inherently risky, and that if there were if it were worth something, then people would pay something. And I just know that if the first impression of WordPress, we’re, “we’ve got 18 years of experience and learning that brought us to today,” the rest of the sale to adopt software that protects other people’s freedoms would take care of itself. And I guess, to quote John Oliver, at this point, “And now this.” Josepha Haden Chomphosy 06:59 Alright, that brings us now to our small list of big things. There are actually quite a few big things on this small list today. So number one, we have reached the beta phase for the year’s final release, which means that WordPress 5.9 beta one is happening tomorrow, Tuesday, November 16. And then seven days later, I believe on the 23rd, if I recall correctly, comes beta two. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 07:24 The second thing on my list is that team rep nominations are happening all over the project right now. I’ve got a post that I will share in the notes below that I believe all the team reps have put their team’s nomination posts on. So if you have had an interest in learning more about that and what it means to help keep teams kind of running in the WordPress project, then this is a great opportunity to check those out. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 07:49 And the third thing, this last thing actually isn’t in the next two weeks, but it is very important, nonetheless. Matt’s annual State of the Word is coming up on December 14. So basically a month from today. It’s going to join the growing list of in-person events that are on the calendar. It will be in New York City but will also be live-streamed across the world as usual. Keep an eye out for additional updates about that for anyone who, like me, really looks forward to this particular presentation from our project co-founder every year. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 08:25 And that is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. View the full article

Howdy, World! Mark your calendars; it’s almost time for State of the Word 2021! State of the Word is the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg. Every year, the event allows us to reflect on the project’s progress and the future of open source. This year will include that and more. Due to the pandemic, we moved the State of the Word online for the first time ever in 2020. This year, the event will be livestreamed from New York City. That will enable us to take as many folks as possible along for the ride! Join Matt as he provides a retrospective of 2021, discusses the latest trends he’s seeing, celebrates the community’s amazing wins, and explores the future. Expect to hear about a range of topics, from WordPress 5.9 and Openverse to Web3 and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). What: State of the Word 2021 When: December 14, 2021, between 5 and 7 pm ET/10 – 12 am (December 15) UTC How: If you’re watching from the comfort of your home or local watch party, the livestream will be embedded on wordpress.org/news. Have a question for Matt? State of the Word will be followed by a Question & Answer session. If you want to participate, you can either send your question ahead of time to ask-matt@wordcamp.org, or ask during the event in the livestream chat on YouTube. If you’re new to State of the Word, the previous years’ recordings (below) will help you get a sense of what the event is about. Check them out: State of the Word 2020 (online)State of the Word 2019 – WordCamp US, St. LouisState of the Word 2018 – WordCamp US, NashvilleAll recordings We hope to see you online on December 14th! Join a State of the Word Watch Party near you We have compiled a list of State of the Word Watch Parties around the world. If you don’t see a watch party in your region listed here, check this page on Meetup.com to see if your local WordPress group is organizing one. [WordPress NYC Meetup] An In Person MeetUp: The State of the Word 2021 is in Manhattan. [South Jersey WordPress Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [Morris County NJ WordPress Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [WordPress Montclair Meetup] JerseyPress: State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [WordPress Santa Clarita Valley] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party [The Houston WordPress Meetup Group] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [North East Ohio WordPress Meetup] State of Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Birmingham WordPress Meetup] State of the Word Watch Party [Lehigh Valley WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Greater Milwaukee Area WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [The East Bay WordPress Meetup Group] State of the Word 2021 (Online) [Sacramento WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [WordPress Louisville] State of the Word Watch Party and Discussion (WP Louisville, KY) [WordPress Medellín] State of the Word 2021: Discurso de Matt & Fiesta de Comunidad (Online) [Port-au-Prince WordPress Meetup Group] Rejoignez-nous le 14 décembre pour regarder State of the Word 2021 (online) [WordPress Coventry Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [WordPress Exeter] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [WordPress Meetup Torino] State of the Word 2021 Video Party (Online) [Kigali WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Lagos WordPress Community] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Ijebu WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) [Jinja WordPress Meetup] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party – WordPress Community Uganda (Online) [Kampala WordPress Meetup] State of the Word Livestream [WordPress Meetups Lahore] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (In-person) [WordPress Bhopal] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (In-person) [Bengaluru WordPress] WordPress Meetup – State of the word -Watch Party [WordPress Singapore] State of the Word 2021 Watch Party (Online) If you are planning a watch party for State of the Word, and have questions, please drop us an email to: support@wordcamp.org if you have any questions. We are happy to help you in the best way possible. Thanks to @anjanavasan @eidolonnight @rmartinezduque for their work on this post. The featured image was created by @beafialho. View the full article

Each year, members of the WordPress community (users, site builders, extenders, and contributors) provide their valuable feedback through an annual survey. Key takeaways and trends that emerge from this survey often find their way into the annual State of the Word address, are shared in the public project blogs, and can influence the direction and strategy for the WordPress Project. Simply put: this survey helps those who build WordPress understand more about how the software is used, and by whom. The survey also helps leaders in the WordPress open source project learn more about our contributors’ experiences. To ensure that your WordPress experience is represented in the 2021 survey results, take the 2021 annual survey now. Take the Annual Survey! (English) You may also take the survey in French, German, Japanese, Russian, or Spanish. These are the top five languages (other than English) based on the number of WordPress locale downloads. For 2022, additional languages may be considered for translation. The survey will be open through the end of 2021, and the results will be published in a future post on this blog for anyone to view. Next year, there will be a new format for this survey, including which segments and questions are included, so that your valuable time spent responding results in equally valuable information. 2020 Survey Results For the 2020 survey, more than 17,000 responses were collected, representing the highest submission volume in four years, up three times from the prior year. In the inaugural year of the survey (2015), over 50,000 responses were collected. Given the reach and adoption of WordPress, there is a significant number we have not reached. As you take the 2021 survey, consider sharing the link on social media and with other colleagues who use WordPress. Gathering feedback from more folks who benefit from WordPress will strengthen our project. View the 2020 Survey Results (PDF) The 2020 survey results show that the pandemic has had a major impact on how we operate as a community. With few in-person events, many community members continue to find it challenging to balance community contributions with their own personal and professional obligations. Footnotes: Data security and privacy are paramount to the WordPress project and community. With this in mind, all data will be anonymized: no email addresses nor IP addresses will be associated with published results. To learn more about WordPress.org’s privacy practices, view the privacy policy. Like last year, the 2021 survey will be promoted via a banner on WordPress.org, and throughout the make blogs. However, taking a moment to amplify these posts through your own social media and Slack accounts will ensure broader participation. Each of the translated surveys will be promoted through banners on their associated localized-language WordPress.org sites. Thanks to @dansoschin for the initial draft of this post, and to @annezazu & @zackkrida for review! View the full article

WordPress 5.8.2 is now available! This security and maintenance release features 2 bug fixes in addition to 1 security fix. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 5.2 have also been updated. WordPress 5.8.2 is a small focus security and maintenance release. The next major release will be version 5.9. You can download WordPress 5.8.2 by downloading from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard → Updates and click Update Now. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process. For more information, browse the full list of changes on Trac, or check out the version 5.8.2 HelpHub documentation page. Thanks and props! The 5.8.2 release was led by Jonathan Desrosiers and Evan Mullins. In addition to the release squad members mentioned above, thank you to everyone who helped make WordPress 5.8.2 happen: Ari Stathopoulos, Bradley Taylor, davidwebca, Evan Mullins, Greg Ziółkowski, Jonathan Desrosiers, Juliette Reinders Folmer, Mukesh Panchal, Sergey Biryukov, shimon246, and Yui. Props @circlecube and @pbiron for peer review. View the full article

October 2021 brought a lot of new things to WordPress, from release updates to new versions of Gutenberg. More notably, in the latest episode of WP Briefing, Executive Director Josepha Haden reminded us about the importance of freedom in open source platforms like WordPress. Free speech has with it a lot of responsibility, just like being a part of a community. Governments or communities, or in our case, this software is built by the people who show up. For WordPress, at 42% of the web, every small choice we make can cause huge changes in the way that people experience the web today and tomorrow. Josepha Haden, Executive Director of the WordPress project Last month was yet another chapter in this journey. So keep reading to learn what’s new. WordPress 5.9: All proposed updates will likely be included We announced the go/no-go for WordPress 5.9 features in mid-October. The release will probably include all the proposed features—though not all of them are ready yet, they should be by the proposed release date (December 14, 2021).WordPress 5.9 will include a new default theme called Twenty Twenty-Two! The theme’s foundation will be strong, and the unpredictable yet reliable behavior of birds inspired the intentionally subtle design. 5.9 bug scrub sessions began in September and will continue each week until the release on December 14, 2021. View the full bug scrub schedule. Many of you requested a few “must have” enhancements for the 5.9 release—follow the 5.9 Must-Haves project board to track their status.The Test Team shared an overview of the team’s approach to testing WordPress 5.9. Interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC. Gutenberg releases: 11.6, 11.7, and 11.8 are here We released three new versions of the Gutenberg block editor between the end of September and October: Version 11.6 brings site logo cropping and rotation, block-level locking, improvements to Query Pagination block, support for child themes and thunks, template focus mode, and enhancements to the writing flow.Gutenberg version 11.7 includes bug fixes and polishes to the navigation block and editor, global styles and full site editing (including a handy back button that lets you quickly return to the site editor), and columns block support, among other improvements.Finally, Gutenberg 11.8 is the second to last version to make it into the WordPress 5.9 release, and it comes with plenty of developments to the editing experience: featured Block Patterns, new animations for a few elements (like Dropzone and Insertion Point), spacing tools for heading blocks, and a lot more. Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. For details on the latest updates, follow the “What’s next in Gutenberg” post. WordCamp US returned virtually this year with more than 3,600 attendees WordCamp US 2021 was on October 1, and it was online for the first time. The event drew more than 3,600 attendees, 27 sponsors, and 18 remarkable speakers on topics ranging from accessibility and sustainability to e-commerce, to name a few. Matt Mullenweg’s “State of the Word” is expected to be held as a separate event later this year, rather than being part of WordCamp US. If you missed the live event, you can still watch the Yukon Track and the Columbia Track of WordCamp US 2021. Team Updates: Polyglots monthly newsletter, a new Performance team, and more The first edition of the Polyglots monthly newsletter went out on October 15, 2021.The following teams opened up their call for team representatives last month, and more are coming soon: Core, Community, Themes, Accessibility, Support, Training, and Hosting.A draft of the 2022 Global Community Sponsorship program proposal was released on October 8, 2021. The October 2021 edition of People of WordPress, featuring WordPress e-commerce specialist Ronald Gijsel, went live.Following excellent responses to the initial proposal, members of the Core Team announced the next steps in launching a performance team that aims to increase the performance (speed) of WordPress.The Polyglots Team kicked-off bi-weekly Glotpress meetings aimed at improving the functionality of the plugin that powers translate.wordpress.org.A sprint is planned on November 10-12 to explore a dedicated volunteer program for the Training Team, similar to the Deputy program in the Community Team.WordPress.org profiles now display activity from the WordPress GitHub organization.The Test Team shared results of the tenth Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach Program: Pattern Party. Answers from the third round of questions from the FSE Outreach Program are now out!The Docs Team is consulting with independent legal experts to explore whether there are issues with having Gutenberg (which is dual-licensed GPL + MPL) coexist with other contents in WordPress (our documentation has a CC0 license and the code is GPL). The Themes Team shared a recap of work happening on automation and improvement processes for the WordPress Themes directory. The Team also shared a p2 post highlighting the performance impact of jQuery on WordPress themes.The Marketing Team participated in a contributor ladder workshop to help plan their future activities.The feature recap of the WordPress Translation Day 2021 is out from the Polyglots and Marketing teams, with the results of the Polyglots appreciation nominations 2021. Sign up for the Polyglots monthly newsletter, if you haven’t already. Feedback/Testing requests: Deadline for redesigned Gutenberg landing page is November 5, 2021 The Design Team is working on redesigning the wordpress.org/gutenberg landing page, and has already shared a prototype. The team has also shared a few other concepts where they have requested feedback from contributors:Site Editing iA Concepts: Part1 and Part 2Block theme switching conceptsVersion 18.5 of WordPress for iOS and Android are now available for testing!The Accessibility Team is requesting feedback on a new Gutenberg Pull request that announces formatting changes or screen readers. Share your feedback on the new Gutenberg landing page design in Trac or by commenting on the blog post by November 5, 2021. Keep an eye out for WordCamp Spain, Sâo Paulo, and Taiwan 2021 We had several WordPress events in October, and several more to look forward to the rest of the year: We’re seeking a new host city for WordCamp US 2022.WordCamp Europe 2022 has extended its call for organizers.WordCamp Italia 2021 was held online on October 22-23, 2021. The event had 23 speakers, 17 sponsors, and more than 1,000 registrants. Check out its YouTube channel to watch the event replay.Another highlight of the month was WordCamp Nicaragua 2021 which was held on October 8-9, 2021.The #WPDiversity working group of the Community Team organized an Allyship workshop for event organizers on October 28. Sign up now for the diversity events planned by the team for November! A two-day contributor event focused on Learn WordPress, took place on October 29 and 31, 2021. There was also another contributor day on October 8, 2021, which involved working groups across the board, from accessibility to user testing.The Test Team organized the following Hallway Hangouts this week—check out their recaps:Pattern Party Testing Walkthrough 5.9 Go/No go, Site Editor Internal Audit, and more Don’t miss the following upcoming online WordCamps: WordCamp Spain 2021, WordCamp Sâo Paulo 2021, and WordCamp Taiwan 2021! Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out this form. The following folks contributed to October 2021’s Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan, @harishanker, @rmartinezduque, @callye, @webcommsat, and chaion07. View the full article

In the thirty-seventh episode of the WordPress Briefing, WordPress users and contributors reflect on how WordPress has changed their understanding of the web as we celebrate World Wide Web Day. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Beatriz Fialho Production: Santana Inniss & Chloé Bringmann Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Guests: Adam WarnerAlice OrrùDee TealFemy PraseethJill BinderMary JobOneal RoseroTheophilus AdegbohungbeUgyen Dorji References Diverse Speaker Training Group Support Underrepresented Speakers at WordCamp US Call of Speakers – WordCamp Asia 2023 Refocusing the WordPress App on Core Features WordPress.org Homepage and Download Redesign Transcript [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] Hello, everyone! And welcome to the WordPress Briefing: the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go! [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:39] Today is one of my favorite niche holidays – World Wide Web Day – which serves to raise awareness about the origins of the World Wide Web project. WordPress, as part of Web 2.0, only ever had a chance to exist because the web, as we have come to know it exists. So in order to mark this nerdy day on the WP Briefing, I invited a number of community members to share a bit about how WordPress has been a part of their lives. But first, let’s do some introductions. [Adam Warner 00:01:07] My name is Adam Warner, and I’m originally from a small town in west Michigan, now residing in Orlando, Florida. [Alice Orrù 00:01:15] My name is Alicia Orrù. I’m Italian. I was born in the beautiful island of Sardinia, but I’ve been living in Spain in the province of Barcelona for 10 years. [Dee Teal 00:01:26] My name is Dee Teal; Dee is short for Denise. I’m from New Zealand, but I live In Melbourne. [Femy Praseeth 00:01:33] Yeah, my name is Femy Praseeth. I was born and raised in India and now live in San Jose, California, with my family and cuddly Doodle. [Jill Binder 00:01:41] My name is Jill Binder, and I’ve just moved back to Vancouver, Canada. [Mary Job 00:01:47] My name is Mary Job. I’ve been using WordPress since 2015, and I’m from Nigeria. I’m from the Western part of Nigeria. Ijebu precisely. [Oneal Rosero 00:01:57] Yes. My name is Oneal Rosero. I am from the Philippines and I’ve been using WordPress since 2007. [Theophilus Adegbohungbe 00:02:06] Thank you. My name is Theophilus Adegbohungbe . And I’m from Lagos, in Nigeria. [Ugyen Dorji 00:02:14] My name is Ugyen Dorji and I’m from Bhutan. And I’m working with WordPress for more than five years. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:22] One of the things I enjoy the most about being part of any community is being able to see how people change and grow over time as they learn and gain confidence in their own expertise. So a favorite early question is naturally, ‘How has WordPress changed your World?’ [Alice Orrù 00:02:37] WordPress changed my world in many ways. But, uh, starting from the moment, it allowed me to become part of a global connected and welcome community. I started using WordPress as a blogger many, many years ago, but it was in 2015 that I started working behind the scenes of WordPress with a plugin company. And that was the moment when everything changed, basically, because I realized that WordPress was much more than a CMS for creating websites. It was a world full of opportunities for networking, making new friends and walking a new professional path as well. [Ugyen Dorji 00:03:15] During one interview, I was asked many questions about WordPress and although I had a basic understanding of WordPress, I struggled to give detailed answers. After that interview, I resolved to develop my skills and learn as much about WordPress as possible. A few months passed and I received a call from ServeMask In, [who] had developed a plugin called All-in-One WP Migration plugin. They offered me a position which fulfilled my wish to work with WordPress full time. And because of that, I am now an active contributor to the WordPress community as bread and butter, with the best career in the world. [Theophilus Adegbohungbe 00:04:03] If you are very familiar with my country, Nigeria things here, it’s not as smooth as it is in other parts of the world. That is, when you are done in school in my university, you have to find means of surviving yourself. There is nothing like the government have work for you. There is nothing like you finish our institution and you get job instantly. So it’s very tough here. And, year by year, schools keep producing graduates with no companies to employ them and no government job again as well. So I personally, I was able to gain freedom from this with the help of WordPress. [Femy Praseeth 00:04:51] WordPress completely changed my work life. I started working independently. I started freelancing with agencies and designers and, uh, building websites from their web designs. And this was around the time my son was born. Actually, he was in elementary school and I think this was around 2014 or so. I started working remotely when remote was not even a thing. And there were very few companies that let you work from home and remote was not a mainstream thing at all, but with WordPress, I could set my own working hours while my son was in school. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:29] And of course, my preferred follow-up question of, ‘How did you hear about us?’ or ‘How did you connect to this global community?’ [Oneal Rosero 00:05:36] Yes, actually what I love about WordPress is that it’s a community. It’s not a business. It’s not a company. It’s a community. It’s a community that’s always ready to help support, teach and encourage people. That’s how I felt when I joined the community. There’s always somebody who has your back. There’s always somebody who’s going to guide you. There’s always an expert who will take your hand and lead you into the beauty that is WordPress. [Adam Warner 00:06:05] The way that I connect with the global community these days are one, of course, is .org Slack. Another of course is Twitter as there’s a very active WordPress community there. And then with WordCamps all over the globe. I’m lucky enough to have been able to travel to several hundred WordCamps through the years in the US and abroad. And that’s one of the most rewarding parts is meeting people from all over the world and you see really how small and the world really is and how similar we really all are. [Theophilus Adegbohungbe 00:06:39] So, not until 2020. I don’t know if you know this lady, a very vibrant lady in WordPress. She’s from Nigeria; her name is Mary Job, and she’s really promoting WordPress here. So it was through her that I got to know about the community. Yes. [Jill Binder 00:06:54] My work is the global WordPress community. So we hold our three programs for the global WordPress community, and we are always trying to reach more and more countries. For quite a while, it was very North America-heavy, and then I made some efforts to expand. And it’s very exciting that this year, some contributors in our team have actually launched an Asia Pacific branch of our group. And so we have two meetings every other week where we have the America/Europe and the APAC, and we’ve also been able to reach other countries as well, but we typically reach something like between 20 and 50 countries a year, depending on the year. So a hundred percent global. Yes. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:39] How has WordPress, either the CMS or the project, made you feel more connected? And are there any surprising connections that came from WordPress? [Dee Teal 00:07:47] I guess the surprising connections I think that have come from WordPress have been the fact that I feel like I’ve got friends all over the world. And a lot of those have come out of community involvement and from contributing. That I could go to a, a meetup pretty much anywhere in the world and probably find somebody I know, or at least a second degree connection of somebody that I haven’t, you know, that I might not have met, but know somebody that I know. And certainly that happens fairly regularly. [Mary Job 00:08:13] WordPress. The WordPress project, the community, has made me feel connected in a huge way, because I am literally surrounded by everything WordPress. So I like how, when you meet somebody who does WordPress, there’s this instant, ‘Oh, we’re brothers,’ or ‘Oh, we’re sisters!’ You know? There’s that feeling? That’s how I feel. So when I see somebody who does WordPress, as I do, I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re, kin.’ You know? We are family. That’s how I feel when I meet people who do WordPress. And I’ve met quite a number of people who do WordPress from like around the world. Like I have a friend here, he’s from the Benin Republic, and we host started a dinner on Friday night and one of my guests was asking me, ‘How did you guys meet?’ I was like, ‘Oh yeah, we work in the same WordPress ecosystem.’ He attended our WordCamp, we became friends, and we just literally became really good friends. So I have tons of people that I’ve met like that I hold in high esteem. [Ugyen Dorji 00:09:12] WordPress Meetups are the seeds that lead to the growth of WordPress communities. WordCamp is a platform for plugin and theme developers to meet WordPress users and website developers. It’s a great environment where many incredible discussions about WordPress takes place. With each WordCamp there is a “tribe” meeting, where I think people [can] get more connected. It’s a fantastic opportunity for aspiring computer engineers, generators and get to showcase their talent and meet each other. [Alice Orrù 00:09:51] On the project level, it has given me the opportunity to feel like an active part of a global project. The idea that I can give my contribution to making the web a better place – it’s amazing. And I do so with the Translation team, so making WordPress accessible to all the people that use the core plugins and themes in Italian, and prefer to do that in Italian. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:18] What area of the WordPress world is most important to you? [Jill Binder 00:10:21] I have a little bit of a passion for diversity in tech and diversity in WordPress, specifically around events. And so, here’s a chance to name the three programs that we’ve been working on this year. So as mentioned a few times, we have our Diverse Speaker Workshop that helps people go from not even having the thought that people could step up on stage. And then the second program is because of the pandemic. There was no longer the straight path from taking our workshop to speaking, because we used to hold them or people used to hold them for their WordCamps and meetups. And so it was like, okay, you’ve taken. Apply for our next WordCamp or meetup. But during the pandemic, that wasn’t a thing. So we have this amazing channel that we welcome everyone to join, allies and people from underrepresented groups who are interested in speaking or interested in supporting people and speaking. And that’s the Diverse Speaker channel diverse-speaker-support channel on the Make WordPress slack. And the third program is, and we, we went through a name change recently. So I’ll try to remember the new change it’s Organizing Inclusive and Diverse WordPress Events. And this is for WordCamp and meetup organizers to learn. We’ve learned over the last couple years, how important it is to create inclusive spaces and be good allies. But how do we actually do that? And a few of us created a very action oriented workshop in 2019 for WCUS, and that is now the basis of the work that we are bringing to people and people are loving it.. We’ve had people report a 40%, self-report 40%, increase in feeling prepared to create an inclusive event from before and after taking that workshop, which is super cool. Yeah. So, that’s my passion. [Oneal Rosero 00:12:13] I really love helping the WP Diversity team. I love running the workshops. I love running the workshops for myself, because I used to do training for software back before the pandemic. I used to train up to a thousand people a year in person, sometimes like 500 people in a room at once. But of course I had to shift. I had to pivot to online training, which is what the training team has brought for me. And the focus on the diversity. I like running the workshops. I like running workshops for different groups, different countries, because it’s nice to meet new people. It’s nice to hear about their culture, about the limitations that people have in Africa with connectivity. So they, they resort to using WhatsApp on their phone in order to do a meetup. That’s how they do their, their meetings, their discussions. It’s unlike other countries where we can do video calls. They have to use their mobile phones because connectivity isn’t accessible. Places like in the Philippines that get affected when it starts to rain a little bit, we lose our internet. So we have backups and our backups have backups. So there are many things that you learn that are different when you’re living in the city, when you’re living in the provinces, in the country. So it’s so many things that you learn about people and how they’re able to adapt. [Adam Warner 00:13:35] Enabling end users to reach their goals. And whether that means participating in contributing to the software, to the Core software itself, in terms of UI/UX usability. That can include participating in the community and sharing your knowledge proactively with users who may be new to the platform, or have used WordPress for a while, but now want to step up their game, get a little deeper into using their websites as a tool for growth, for whatever business that they’re in. So, I mean, overall, the, the most important part of the WordPress world to me are the end users. And, you know, there, there is this quote unquote inner circle of WordPress community people. People who are involved in .org, people who contribute to the software, people who contribute to the 20 plus make.wordpress.org teams. Those we have to keep in mind, are not the average user by and far. They are not the typical user that hears the word WordPress and then goes out and searches it and then has to figure out how to use it. So I think user experience is probably the most important part for me and making sure that any of that innate knowledge that we have in that inner circle of WordPress because many of us have been using it for so long, keeping in mind that is not the norm. And it’s not the scale at which WordPress is used and, and making sure we translate complex concepts down to a layperson’s terms that might not be as familiar. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:15:17] One of the things that I have always found so fascinating about the web and WordPress’ role in it is how it has made the world simultaneously smaller and bigger. By giving voices to the voiceless we help each other find our community niches regardless of where they are in the world. Some of your closest friends could be people you would never meet in your own neighborhood. Well, let’s hear what some of our community members had to say about that. [Dee Tea 00:15:42] I think the thing that has been most empowering is, is coming into the project either in terms of contributing time and efforts to the community, which is where most of my contribution has been – has always been about this is a really cool thing, and I really want to build this. And so I’ll put my time and efforts into building WordPress. Not for me, but because I see its value and I see its community and I see that the contribution that it’s making to the world and I, and that’s really important. But finding that on the other side of that was a huge amount of personal benefit for me in my career, in the friendships that I’ve made. But I feel like if I had been approaching the community with, I want a better career, I wanna meet all of these people and I want, and I want all of this. From, “I want” for me, instead of, I want for this project, for the community and effectively for the world with that, you know, that whole democratized, the democratizing of publishing is this thing that serves the world. I think that’s been the key for me is that I absolutely have reaped amazing benefits from it, but it came out of that sense of, I see this value here and I want to contribute to that because it’s gonna have value, not just for me, but for a whole slew of people. And so, uh, you know, for much, much bigger impact than just on me. And so I think that’s the important thing for me is that sense of, if you approach it with that attitude of what can I do to help? It’s amazing what you will find yourself helped with in return. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:17:24] I hope that you enjoyed this tour of WordPress in the World Wide Web. I want to share a big thank you to all of the folks who contributed to our little WordPress Briefing celebration of World Wide Web Day today. And that brings us now to our small list of big things. So firstly, we’ve got a couple of updates from our upcoming flagship events. WordCamp US has announced a speaker support fund specifically for historically underrepresented speakers at the event. You can donate to the fund on the page if you’d like, and there are also directions on how to request support, if you are part of an underrepresented group. From the folks over at WordCamp Asia, the call for speakers is live. That’s taking place in February, 2023. But it’s never too early to brush up those presentations and get them submitted. Next big thing is that there are some changes coming to the WordPress mobile app. A lot of the Jetpack functionality will be removed from it, so this is going to have a little bit of an effect on daily users of the app, but it will also have an effect on regular contributors. I’ll have a link to the full write up in the show notes so that you don’t have to guess or hold it all in your memory. And finally, this excellent design that you see on wordpress.org/news is finally making its way out to the next parts of the wordpress.org website. Before you know, it, there will be a fresh looking homepage as well as few other pages and then… to infinity and beyond (or something like that). And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. And next up I’ll be taking just a mid-year break from the podcast. And so the next time that I actually see you again, will be in September. 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