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This month we feature Hauwa Abashiya, a project manager in Nigeria and the UK, whose passion for community support led her to an adventure in open source. The People of WordPress series features inspiring stories of how people’s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global community of contributors. As we travel through life, sometimes we are drawn to a particular cause, one to which we can get behind and join in. This cause, in whatever field it may be, can help lift us beyond our everyday lives and can help us take stock. This is the journey that depicts Hauwa’s finding a global sense of place and providing a way to re-look at her life and plans. That change agent was discovering and becoming part of open source through WordPress. Learning development and WordPress In 2017, Hauwa was working full time as an experienced and successful project manager, but was becoming increasingly aware that she did not feel the same excitement for projects as she once had. She was starting to feel bored. “I knew I still loved working with and in project management, but I needed to do something different.” she said. Hauwa enrolled in a web development course and studied HTML, CSS and some JavaScript. One of the course options was WordPress, which she elected to take. It was then that a course tutor encouraged her to attend a WordCamp, an event focused on the open source software and its global community. She felt that she needed to have a basic knowledge of the software before she arrived at the event, so started to learn WordPress. The first WordCamp she attended was in the seaside town of Brighton on the south coast of England. There she met people who would be friends and mentors for years to come. She said: “I was inspired by meeting people in the WordPress community. My life and my wish to support communities have been shaped for the better by some of the people I met, and I continue to be grateful for knowing them.” Global WordPress community: from Germany to Nigeria After discovering a WordPress community in the UK, Hauwa wanted to see first hand just what a global connection it had. She had heard that WordCamp Europe was a flagship event and brought thousands from across the world together. She wanted to be part of this, and its organization appealed to her project management training. She applied to be a volunteer at the three day conference, which in 2019 was held in Berlin, Germany. At this event, Hauwa discovered both a global movement and an active local WordPress community in her home country of Nigeria. She was able to connect with all the different parts of this vast community from wherever she was working through an instant messaging tool. Inspired by people she met who were using WordPress to help improve people’s lives in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, Hauwa started to delve further into how this open source software and its global community could provide opportunities and improve understanding across cultures and continents. Rosalind and Hauwa Hauwa’s father, Dr Audu Kwasau Abashiya and her mother Rosalind Zulai Abashiya, were both well known for their philanthropy, especially in giving practical support to people in Kaduna, in the north of Nigeria and Abuja in the center of the country. Hauwa explained: “My mum comes from a family who give and share their skills to give practical help. From friends I had got to know in WordPress, I saw that there were parts of the community that had this same ethos. This could be something I could be part of, and also take back to Nigeria in the future.” Her parents had established a charitable foundation focused on helping widows, orphans and children get access to education skills, from finance to music. It connects those who need help and those who can give support. Hauwa said: “Teaching practical skills people which can be used to raise an income or be re-shared with family and others in the local area is so important. Projects like this can help grow a community and keep it strong. Skills such as sewing and cookery are not just skills to put clothing and food on the table, but also are about gaining independence and pride. They are examples of how micro-economies can grow and inspire others to have dreams that they can see becoming real. In how technology can work in local communities, projects like WordPress can be part of this empowerment through localized translations and software to use to share ideas.” With her project management and IT background, Hauwa is getting more involved with how IT skills can be used for not just instilling a sense of community belonging, but also the practical longer term input into the local infrastructure and introduction of fast changing technology. She said: “I would love to see and help further some of the people who have been helped by the foundation my parents started, so they can share their ideas and what they have been doing to encourage others. One of the routes I had looked into was open source software that is free to access and can work on mobile phones. As a previous volunteer team rep in the WordPress Training Team, I saw first-hand just how important it is that a non-technical end user can use software to share their ideas without having to become a developer. We can all help give people a voice, and if we are working in technology, we have a role where we can push for genuine accessibility of the tools.” On Hauwa’s wish list is to help African countries access software in their local language. “This is part of identity, and respecting and valuing different cultures, and not expecting everything to be translated from the English as it is read. It makes things possible for older people who may not find it as easy to access information all presented in English.” Hauwa learned Hausa (a language spoken across several African countries) and English at the same time at home in Nigeria. She had a multi-location education, like her parents, studying and going on to work in different countries. At 16, she first studied computer science on what she describes as a ‘whim,’ not knowing it would be a significant part of her working life in the future. She intended to go to university to study finance and sociology. When she went to say goodbye to her computer studies teacher, the teacher asked what she was going to study. On hearing it was finance and sociology, the teacher said: “You don’t want to be doing that, you want to be doing something in computing.” This conversation proved to be a turning point for Hauwa. She went on to study Computing and Information Systems at Oxford Brookes University and Object Oriented Information Systems for her Master’s degree at South Bank University in the UK. From her second year of university, she worked doing data entry and related areas as she was determined to learn as much as she could about the moving parts of a project. After she completed her master’s, she chose jobs that enabled her to work on systems, out of hours support, project management, supply chain, and procurement to give her the best structure and experience to work on a variety of projects and really understand what both clients needed and how to help them reach workable and timely solutions. These skills proved to be transferable in later years to give her time to support WordCamps, meetups, and the Training Team. She said: “Contributors to open source have so many different professional and cultural backgrounds. It is a great way to share your skills.” Hauwa continued with her fascination for project management and learning, and gained qualifications in the field, including Prince 2 and PMP. She continues her commitment to learning now as she works with Agile and other methodologies and draws parallels with this and her interest in those . “If you use software, you can advance your skills by joining specialist forums, community learning groups, and online tutorials. In open source, there are also many options for community-based learning. Sometimes you only discover new work areas by learning more about those fields. Skills you learn in tech can be transferred to new environments much more easily than people know.” Hauwa is a regular guest on a well-known IT podcast, where she has shared her passion to keep learning and updating your skills, and helping others do so. Hauwa welcomes attendees at WordCamp London in 2019 Committed to supporting her local community in the UK too, Hauwa joined the London WordPress Meetup and in 2019 became an organizer for WordCamp London. During these events, she had many conversations to encourage others to develop their IT skills and even managed to use some of her project management expertise for the same purpose. This interest in driving up the skills levels of others naturally led her to become further involved in the Contributor Teams. Inspired to share her skills by another contributor to the project, she joined the Training Team with her first introduction at a WordCamp Contributor Day. In this team, Hauwa began to find a need for easier ways for people to keep up with the software, its features, and how to be part of open source in their own local area. At the heart of this, Hauwa felt accessibility should be key, and she gave time to better understand documentation. She felt this was essential to give people genuine access and identify where more work was needed. Her belief in this grew when she joined the accessibility team for release 5.6, and she continued to contribute to the team in the area of documentation and training. Hauwa devoted many hours to supporting the Training Team for a number of years as part of her conviction that the right resources can really help communities globally use open source software. She also stressed the importance of materials being user-friendly and easy to translate as WordPress has such a large international usage. Volunteering in open source can re-energize you Through the combination of volunteering efforts in UK and Nigeria, and supporting contributors globally, Hauwa began to find her passion for projects again. She was able to share her 15 years of project management experience in her volunteering role and encouraged others to consider it as a career. She said: “Through volunteering you work alongside people. Project management is about people. It is about helping people achieve. This can be the same through volunteering, and you can learn much through meeting people from different places. “One of my drivers is using technology to solve problems. As a project manager, it is a privilege to help guide people and organizations to identify and reach goals. It is helping them gain that value. This is one of the reasons I was drawn to finding out tech communities and contributing to them. If this is something that drives people reading about my experience, there are vast opportunities to to share your skills. Find something that fits you for for where you are now.” Hauwa encourages anyone working in technology to further their understanding of managing projects and working with different teams. “Project management skills are so important in whatever kind of project you are in. With long working hours over many years, I felt I had lost the connection with the people element. I was stuck in what seemed to be a repeat cycle. With the people I met in the WordPress community and my professional skills being used, I was reminded of my own values and how as a project manager I can support and be part of someone or an organization reaching new heights or creating something of value and quality that others can benefit from and use.” Hauwa has returned to working full time for both national and international, medium and large scale projects. Though her volunteering time to global community building initiatives has reduced accordingly, she focuses on encouraging skills learning and on the community cultural side. “I will keep my interest in how open source like WordPress, working alongside other solutions, can help not-for-profit ground level and community building. For me, if there are technology-based solutions out there, we can all play some part in helping them grow and making a difference. How we give to wider communities does not have to be the same throughout time. It is important to keep relooking at what is needed and the difference it can make. It is equally important if solutions can be about improving infrastructure to technology that makes access to sewing skills for clothing and micro-businesses. Find your central wish for the communities you are connected with, and there may be technologies that can support them. I am grateful for the friends and mentors I have met in open source, and for re-finding my professional and community focus. ” Share the stories Help share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series. Contributors Thanks to Hauwa Abashiya (@azhiyadev) for sharing her adventures in WordPress. Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) for interviews and writing the feature, and to Meher Bala (@meher), Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann), Mary Baum (@marybaum), Nalini Thakor (@nalininonstopnewsuk) and Maja Loncar (@mloncar) for work on photographs and review. The People of WordPress series thanks Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support. This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. #HeroPress View the full article

On Episode fifty of the WordPress Briefing podcast, join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy as she explores the three big trends from the inaugural WordCamp Asia. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Santana Inniss Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes Create Block Theme Plugin WordPressing Your Way to Digital Literacy PostStatus Networking Opportunities WordPress 6.2 Live Demo will be held 2 March, 2023 at 17:00h UTC Future Plans for the HelpHub How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events WP Diversity Training 1 March 2023 Transcript [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40] The inaugural WordCamp Asia happened a couple of weeks ago in Bangkok. There were almost 1300 people in attendance, and I was lucky to be able to talk with a lot of them about their thoughts around the WordPress project and community. So today, let’s talk about three of the most interesting trends that I heard from people: the future of themes, the future of work, and the future of contributions. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00] So first up, the future of themes. This one was not a surprise to me. Not only has it been on my mind lately, but every WordCamp I’ve ever attended in Asia or Australia has had themes as a central element. There are a lot of theme creators making a living in WordPress in this part of the world. So it’s natural that they want to know what to prepare for. Now, it’s hard to predict the future, but there are a couple of things you can do to kind of get a leg up on it. Firstly, the theme review team, if you know how to make block themes but are still struggling to understand what might make them high value to your users, donating a little bit of time to review them can help. While I was at the contributor day, the team rep who happened to also be there to represent the table told me that reviewing block themes is way faster than reviewing classic themes. So if it’s been a bit since you stopped by, I would encourage you to give it a shot. It’s a lot easier than it used to be for a lot of reasons, and they can always use a little bit of help. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00] The second thing is this plugin called the Create Block Theme plugin. If you don’t know how to make block themes, you know how to make classic themes. You don’t know how to make block themes. This is a wordpress.org maintained plugin that will make theme creation simpler. It’s a relatively new plugin, though, so if you’re the type of contributor who likes to create good tools for good people, you can also feel free to grab a ticket or two from their repo and help get that moving. The second thing that came up was the future of work. This was also not a surprise to me. There have been a lot of reports of layoffs in the tech industry and worries about the possibility of a recession. Since WordPress is not only a tool that folks use in their jobs but also a tool that empowers people to create jobs for themselves, it’s entirely expected for questions about career prospects to come up during a WordCamp. Here are a couple of thoughts on that. So I mentioned this briefly during the Q&A session on that Sunday, but I’m gonna repeat it here because I believe it with every fiber of my being. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:06] You can learn every 21st century skill that you need while contributing to an open source project. I talked about it in episode 17 of this podcast. I’ve talked about it at WordCamps and major event series outside of WordPress for years. Like I really, really believe this, and it’s not just like a WordPress only thing. Although obviously, that is my primary perspective, that’s true for contributing to almost any open source project. On top of that, if you are contributing to WordPress and you’re doing that in the way that we encourage folks to do, you’ve got public examples of proactive, asynchronous collaboration across cultures and time zones. And I don’t know about y’all, but sometimes it’s hard to explain what my job is. And so having examples of how the whatever it is that you were doing, however, you were collaborating or contributing or working on a project together, having concrete examples to be able to share with someone can never hurt. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:04] I’m gonna give us a necessary side note here. I know that volunteering time is a privilege, and if you find yourself between jobs, the last thing you want to do is give up any more of your time for no money. But if you have contributed to any team in the past, that benefit still exists for you. Your contributions are not taken away just because you’re no longer with your employer. The second thought on that is actually one that Matt mentioned during the Q&A on Sunday. He said in his experience that open source shines in recessionary times. I’ll have to take his word for that one since I discovered WordPress in 2009 or so and so after the last recession that I would have experienced in the US. However, I have heard from a lot of people in the WordPress ecosystem and in tech in general who have shared their stories from the last time that we all experienced a recession. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00] And certainly, when they suddenly found that they did not have a company to call the place that they were working, a company that they were working for, they were able to, at the very least, freelance until they found the next thing. I know that that’s cold comfort if you’re in the middle of things right now, but it certainly is something that people always have looked back to as like one of those turning points for them in the 2007-2008 era here in the US. Now I know that is sometimes not what anybody wants to hear. And also like, who am I to be speaking about observed experiences from other people? I did want to let you know that the folks over at PostStatus have opened up some networking opportunities for anyone that’s been caught up in the current downsizing around the ecosystem. I’ll link to that in the show notes here on wordpress.org/news, but also, if you’re a part of the PostStatus network, they’ve got it posted over there on their sites and things as well. So easy to find and definitely worthwhile if that’s a situation that you find yourself in right now. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:02] And the third thing that I heard from a lot of folks about is the future of contributions. So 635 people attended the contributor day that happened ahead of WordCamp Asia, And at WordCamp Europe in Porto last June, it was 800 people or something, which was the biggest one on record. And so this is really close to that. There’s a lot of people. And a lot of them were attending for the first time. Over the course of the day, I checked in with quite a few of the table leads and heard some pretty consistent feedback, both about what we’re doing to help onboard contributors now but also about how we can help to onboard contributors in the future. Firstly, we all generally agree that documentation, which is our current problem to solve toward easier contributor onboarding, we all generally agree that that’s going pretty well. We now have a ton of our preferences and processes documented in various team handbooks, but with a ton of documentation comes the potential for overwhelm. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:00] So across the board table leads shared the need for sort of a quick start guide for each of their teams. Secondly, we also generally seem to agree that mentorship plays a big role in the success of many long-term contributors. I’ve talked about it before. I had some mentors as I was getting started, and I would never have made it past organizing meetup events if it hadn’t been for their help. And so a bonus item I heard about is actually Meetup events. Meetup groups are one of our most resilient ways to contribute to WordPress, and they also happen to be one of the hardest working. If you’ve never been to one of these events, you may not know that you can learn a skill that’s new to you or teach a skill that you’ve had for a long time. You can also network to find the jobs that you want or network to hire the people you need. It’s where people learn how to use the CMS or learn how to become an entrepreneur. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:00] But it’s also where they discover our community and eventually learn why we think that open source is an idea that will change our generation. So if you took nothing else away from this, I guess the takeaway is that you too can organize a Meetup event that will strengthen your local community and the world! [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:27] Which brings us now to our small list of big things. So first up, we have a live product demo for WordPress 6.2 on March 2nd, that’s going to be at 17:00 UTC. There is a post that has gone up about it, which I’ll include in the show notes. This is an opportunity for folks to watch a live walkthrough of the current release with a collection of people from the release squad as well as avid contributors and testers. It’ll give you an idea of upcoming changes, but also we’ll probably expose a bug or two along the way. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:00] Come with your questions, and we will see you there. Item number two is documentation. So apparently, that’s just half of what I wanna talk about today. Documentation, so wordpress.org, has docs that are specifically written for users and pulls in not only the documentation that we have but also information from the codex, the documentation space of yesteryear. There’s a bit more to do here, and I realize this project has been going on since 2015. It’s because there’s a lot of stuff we have to do. There’s a lot of documentation, and we have to kind of get it in order. But that is the area that we’re in now. We have launched the new documentation page, the new look and feel is out there. And so the next question is making sure that we have it organized in a way that’s easy to find and easy to learn from as you go. There is a whole working group that meets about it, and I will share a link to that in case you find that to be of interest to you as well. And last but not least, there is another speaker workshop coming up on March 1st. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:00] If you have not heard of these yet, it’s a workshop that helps speakers learn the process of presentation brainstorming and creation. It is a great workshop. It was created over the course of many years within the WordPress project by Jill Binder and crew. It is a wonderful opportunity. It’s not a WordPress link that we’re on, but there is an event link that I will make sure that we all have access to here, in case that is something that you have always wanted to try, learning how to speak at WordPress events. And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks! View the full article

Episode forty-nine of the WordPress Briefing explores the What, Why, and Who behind the upcoming Community Summit in National Harbor, DC, USA, August 22-23, 2023. Join Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy to learn the importance of the gathering to the WordPress project. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Santana Inniss Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes Observations on WordPress Contributor Team Structure Apply to attend the 2023 Community Summit Topic Submissions for the 2023 Community Summit Tuckman’s Theory: Stages of Group Development Chatham House Rules Proposal for a project-wide mentorship program Openverse.org 6.2 Beta 1 is open for testing Transcript [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40] A couple of episodes ago, I mentioned the Community Summit in the small list of big things. That’s coming up on August 22nd and 23rd, right before WordCamp US. And for some of you, that made complete sense, and the only thought in your mind was, wow, our last one was in 2017, how could so many years have passed since then? And since so many years have passed, today we’re gonna talk a bit about the Community Summit, what it is, where it came from, and why it’s so important for the WordPress project. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:09] First things first, let’s talk about what exactly the Community Summit is. The Community Summit is a small event where folks from around the WordPress project and community come together to work through some of the most difficult topics the project currently faces, many of which are easier or at least less fraught when we can be face-to-face. The Community Summit is usually done in an “unconference” style, and when we were smaller, we left topic gathering and voting to the day of. That’s evolved a bit as our group of fearless contributors has grown over the years, and this year, we have been asking for topics ahead of time so that we can make sure we have the right folks in the room and are making the best use of everyone’s limited time. It’s easy to take a look at this event and think it’s like some fun exclusive thing with a who’s who of WordPress. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00] But I assure you it’s a working event. Decisions are not finalized during the event, but since we try very hard to account for many, many viewpoints, it ends up being two days of hard discussions, contentious viewpoints, and problem definition at a level of complexity you don’t really see every day. Hearing how hard this event is, you may be wondering why we put in that effort. There are a lot of reasons, but there are three that come to my mind immediately. So for starters, working across cultures is hard. Apart from the cultural differences, we tend to be aware of things like where we’re located or our lived experiences, things like that– working remotely or distributedly is a whole different set of skills than working in person. This helps remind everyone that we’re humans, that there are humans behind those comments and behind those messages in Slack. The second thing is that I’m a big supporter of Tuckman’s theory of group development. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:00] If you don’t know what that is, you can look for it, we’ll put a link in the show notes, but it’s that forming, storming, norming, performing kind of concept of how groups come together. Because there are so many of us and our community has such a large footprint, there are little storms a-brewin all the time. Some get really big, some stay small. But at some point, most of them have to be addressed. And this is a space that is specifically designed to help us do that. Which brings us to the third reason that we do it. This event uses something called the Chatham House Rule, which creates a kind of temporal psychological safety. Right. Psychological safety, if you’re a leader, you know that that’s something that is built over time and requires a lot of trust and a lot of conversations with people that you’re working with, and we can’t quite do that. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00] And so Chatham House Rule builds an environment that helps create that suddenly in the moment and requires, you know, some, some faith in one another. But basically, no one can be quoted about what they said in those conversations. No one’s examples can be attributed to them. But the conversations can be summarized and published, which we do on the Community Summit website. And then, we publish those for our collective knowledge over time. This lets folks who are attending advocate for themselves and others fully without worrying over whether they’re gonna be taken out of context later. And finally, one of the biggest questions we get ahead of any Community Summit is why it is by invitation only. The most commonly cited reasons for keeping this small and invite only have everything to do with logistics and leadership. You want it to be large enough to have good representation but small enough to have high-quality interactions. It’s just a really narrow Goldilocks moment, if you will. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00] But that reason doesn’t necessarily address the need for invitations rather than letting it be first come, first served. The reason for that is more of a philosophical one and requires you to go on a mini historical journey with me. This also has changed a bit over the years. The first ever Community Summit, way back in 2012, was before my time, but if I recall my history correctly, it was truly by invitation only. The summit after that included a closed nomination process. The next included a team nomination process, and then the last two, 2017 and 2023, have included open nominations. Now, even in the nomination era of Community Summit organizing, there is still a selection process. The organizers review the list of suggested attendees and check for the same types of things we expect major WordCamp organizers to look for in their speaker selection. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00] Things like which teams they contribute to, what communities they advocate for, and how long they’ve been a member of the community. And then they adjust for balance. In addition to those things, there are also four types of voices that we always want represented at our Community Summit. So first is leading voices, people who are already in the community and kind of are helping us to make decisions. I am considered one of those leading voices; I have put in my application to be included in the Community Summit. Really hope we select me. The second one is future leading voices. Specifically, those are people who are active in the community already and are showing a lot of promise, either because they really understand the values that the WordPress open source project is putting forward or understand the basic processes of communicating and guiding people in such a complex ecosystem as the WordPress project represents. Or because they have said quite plainly they are interested in helping us to make sure that the WordPress project is able to move and continue to create and continue to support democratizing publishing. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:00] So it’s a little bit potentially folks who are self-selecting for that. People who already are showing that they are doing that either in WordPress or in their local communities. That’s one of the types of voices we want to include. A third one that we want to include all the time is voices we need, so voices that we need to hear. People that specifically we are building WordPress for, people that have indicated to us that the CMS is not necessarily perfect for some of the use cases that they run into regularly. So the people and users and community organizers that can and are able to advocate for the types of user interactions, the types of community interactions that we absolutely want to be able to see. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:00] And so that’s a third group of voices that we want to make sure we have represented. And then the fourth and final group that we always want to have represented is a group that I call voices we miss. And so those are the people that we want to be able to hear more from in our project that we don’t necessarily either have a good group of representative voices for, so it’s hard to hear them, or that we know are probably users of the CMS or they are attending events, they are somehow involved in the WordPress project. But we don’t necessarily have any way to have accounted for them while we were building solutions way back in 2012 or 2006 when things were being built for us. And so those are the four groups of people, the four types of voices that I absolutely want to have represented at our Community Summit. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:00] And I ask organizers to go through this incredibly complicated selection process because we want not simply a microcosm of the WordPress community as we see it today and hope to see it in the future but also an equitably voiced forum during that critical problem definition phase. So TLDL. For, listen?! T L D Real Listen. Although if you didn’t make it through that, you definitely are not getting to this point. So a TLDR for folks who skimmed the transcript and got here, I guess we keep this invitation structure because we want to account for voices we don’t hear every day in the WordPress project. Not because we don’t value them but because we already hear them. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:09:44] And now that brings us to our small list of big things. This week it’s actually kind of a big list of big things, but you know, there it is. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:00] First things first. The applications for the Community Summit are now open. Those are the applications to attend. It’s pretty short. I filled mine out this morning and it’s three questions about who you are and your username on wordpress.org, and then three questions about the topics you are most interested in and the experience that you have in those conversations so far. Yeah. It took me, like, I think, 90 seconds. Like, a full minute and a half. So head on over there. We have a link in the show notes, but also, you’ll be able to find it in newsletters across the entire WordPress media ecosystem. I am pretty sure about that. The second thing is that there is a proposal out for a project-wide mentorship program. This is a huge potential win for us. It is aiming to fix some of our broken ladders. If you’re not familiar with my Broken Ladder Theory of the WordPress project, I’ll try to remember to find a link to that post and put that in the show notes. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11:00] Number three is that Openverse moved. I shared this last week that happened last week. They didn’t move very far, though. They have a new URL, you can find them at openverse.org. It’s the same team. It’s the same product. It’s the same group of excellent openly-licensed images and media that you have come to expect. It just has its own standalone URL now. Huge kudos to the contributors who got that done. Another thing that happened last week is that WordPress 6.2 has moved into its beta phase, and so now is the time to get out there and test. There also was an excellent, excellent write-up about how to test any given release. And I think it also includes how to file a good bug. And so we’ll send all of those things into the show notes. They’ll be easy to find. Get out there and do your testing. And number five, longest, small list of big things in recent history. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:12:00] I got some interest on [a] women, and non-binary led release for 2023, and so since there was some interest shown for that, it is hereby verbally confirmed. Keep an eye out on make.wordpress.org for more information about what that process is gonna look like and how to volunteer your time for that if that is something that calls to you. Woo. And that, my friends, is your small list of big things, your big list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. View the full article

WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 is ready for download and testing! This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, you should test Beta 1 on a test server and site. You can test WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 in three ways: Option 1: Install and activate the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream). Option 2: Direct download the Beta 1 version (zip). Option 3: Use the following WP-CLI command: wp core update --version=6.2-beta1 The current target for the final release is March 28, 2023, which is seven weeks away. Your help testing this version is vital to ensuring everything in this release is the best it can be. Get an overview of the 6.2 release cycle, and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.2-related posts in the coming weeks for further details. How you can help: testing! Testing for issues is a critical part of developing any software, and it’s a meaningful way for anyone to contribute—whether you have experience or not. This detailed guide is a great place to start if you’ve never tested a beta release. If you build products for WordPress, you probably realize that the sooner you can test this release with your themes, plugins, and patterns, the easier it will be for you to offer a seamless experience to your users. Want to know more about testing releases in general? You can follow along with the testing initiatives that happen in Make Core. You can also join the #core-test channel on the Making WordPress Slack workspace. If you think you may have run into an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can file one on WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs. Interested in Gutenberg features? Find out what’s been included since WordPress 6.1 (the last major release of WordPress). You will find more details in the currently available What’s new in Gutenberg posts for 15.0, 14.9, 14.8, 14.7, 14.6, 14.5, 14.4, 14.3, and 14.2. This release contains more than 292 enhancements and 354 bug fixes for the editor, including more than 195 tickets for the WordPress 6.2 core. A major release for a major project milestone WordPress 6.2 is one of the last planned major releases of Phase 2 on the Gutenberg project’s roadmap. The platform has come a long way in the past few years. The 6.2 release both celebrates that progress and looks toward a future of publishing that puts ever more powerful tools in your hands. Next stop: collaboration tools and more, in Phase 3! Notable highlights Want to know what’s new in WordPress version 6.2? Read on for a taste of what’s coming. Beta label is gone—signaling that the Site Editor is stable and ready for anyone to explore, create, and experiment! Distraction-free mode for a clear, focused writing experience. A new Site Editor interface shows you previews of your templates and Template Parts first, so you can choose exactly where you want to start editing. Scaled block settings with split controls organize your Styles and Settings options to easily find what you need—and clearly see everything a block can do. Color-coded labels help you find your Template Parts and Reusable Blocks fast, everywhere you look: in the List View, the Block toolbar, even on the Canvas. An improved Navigation experience makes menus simple to create and manage—right from the block settings sidebar. Patterns are easier to find and insert—with even more categories to choose from like headers and footers! A new Style Book offers one place to see all your Styles across every block, for a complete overview of your site’s design details. Custom CSS support for specific blocks, or your whole site, for another level of control over how you want things to look. Openverse integration lets you pull free, openly-licensed media directly into your content as you work—along with a quicker way to insert media from your existing library. Widgets become Template Parts when you switch from a Classic to a Block Theme—making the transition that much smoother. Please note that the features in this list may change before the final release. A haiku for 6.2 Last of Phase 2 now Let’s get the party started WordPress turns 20 Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @marybaum @laurlittle @cbringmann, @webcommsat, @audrasjb, @annezazu, @bhp View the full article

Welcome to the first 2023 edition of The Month in WordPress! January kicked off with an overview of WordPress’ big goals for 2023 and new projects beginning to take shape. Moreover, work on the next major release, WordPress 6.2, continues with Beta 1 scheduled for next week. Read on for the latest news. WordPress 6.2 Beta 1 is on its way The first beta release of WordPress 6.2 is scheduled for next Tuesday, February 7, 2023. As you may have heard, this version will wrap up work on Gutenberg Phase 2 (Customization), but what does this mean in the larger context of the WordPress project? Tune in to Episode 48 of WP Briefing to hear Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy discuss what it means to conclude a Gutenberg phase. What’s new in Gutenberg Gutenberg 15.0 was released on January 18, 2023. Some highlights include a new “paste styles” feature to easily create multiple blocks with identical styling, and a “sticky” option to keep a block at the top of the page while the rest of the content scrolls. In addition, block settings have been split into two tabs in the sidebar: Styles and Settings. This makes blocks with more controls, such as the Group block, easier to customize, and allows the interface to scale with the growing number of design tools. The latest “Core Editor Improvement” post highlights the newest style features enhancements. Learn how they can help give your site a unique and cohesive look and feel. Team updates: Matrix exploration, WordPress.org redesign news, and more WordPress and Matrix contributors published a proposal to explore the open source chat system Matrix as a possible replacement for the WordPress community’s Slack. Several sections of WordPress.org have been redesigned lately, including Documentation (HelpHub), Enterprise, and Mercantile (the official WordPress swag store). Learn more about the latest redesign updates. The implementation of the block editor in the WordPress.org forums is progressing well and the feedback so far has been very positive. This comprehensive post clarifies how WordPress Community Support (also known as WordCamp Central) and WordPress Foundation entities are set up and addresses some misconceptions about them. The bug scrub schedule for WordPress 6.2 is now published. The goal of bug scrubs is to ensure tickets move towards a resolution—anyone can join these sessions to learn, help, or even lead one. The Plugin Review Team is looking for your (intentionally) wrong plugins. The latest edition of People of WordPress features Daniel Kossmann, a software engineer from South America. As part of the discussion on improving the contributor journey, Josepha wrote some thoughts on the Eternal September phenomenon in open source and invites you to share yours. Feedback & testing requests The Community Team is gathering feedback on a proposed move to GitHub for standardizing the project’s management tools. To mark WordPress’ 20th anniversary milestone, Core Team contributors are organizing several bug scrub sessions to tackle long-standing Trac tickets. Version 21.6 of the WordPress mobile app for iOS is available for testing. The Training Team calls all WordPress users to complete this short Individual Learner Survey by February 15, 2023. Your feedback will help identify the most high-impact resources for Learn WordPress. WordPress events updates Would you like to be a speaker at WordCamp Europe 2023? Submit your application by February 5, 2023. The organizing team released the first batch of tickets and is also calling for volunteers and photographers. The first WordCamp to be held in Africa in 2023, WordCamp Entebbe, is well underway and set to take place on March 10-11. Don’t miss these other upcoming WordCamps: WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama, USA on February 4-5, 2023 WordCamp Cebu, Philippines on February 11, 2023 WordCamp Chiclana, Spain, on March 3-4, 2023 WordCamp Asia 2023 in Bangkok, Thailand, is only two weeks away! Check out the livestream schedule if you are attending virtually. Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know. The following folks contributed to this edition of The Month in WordPress: @webcommsat, @rmartinezduque. View the full article

This month we feature Daniel Kossmann, a software engineer from South America who shares his enthusiasm for WordPress at every opportunity. The People of WordPress series features inspiring stories of how people’s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global community of contributors. Daniel’s adventure into WordPress began in 2009 when he needed a way to publish and share articles on films. From that small spark, he now enjoys an interesting and varied career in Brazil and beyond, and an ever-expanding community network. Following WordPress and its new features fascinates Daniel and he is always looking for ways to share what it has to offer with others. His initial focus on WordPress for content publishing soon became a wider appreciation of the platform’s capacity for building communities and careers. Daniel has served as a community organizer for seven years in Curitiba, Brazil and co-organized four annual WordPress Translation Day events in the city. Community building initiatives, like these, bring in new volunteers and help spur on local user groups. Now working as a software engineer manager, Daniel maintains his interest in supporting the WordPress community through a newsletter in Brazilian Portuguese. Finding WordPress to publish content can be life-changing Daniel’s developer skills were initially self-taught, and built on his interest in technology and from his earlier interest in video games. He developed systems in ASP and PHP, and created online resources to teach others how to create websites. When the time came to choose his academic path, he had no doubt that it would be something related to computers and picked Computer Science at the Federal University of Paraná. “In order to focus more on content rather than coding, I ended up getting to know WordPress. It was love at first sight!” In 2009, he launched a public blog about films that became a hub for cultural content related to cinema, literature, and comics. The blog had collaborators from several cities in the country. He found WordPress an easy tool for publishing articles. It allowed him to spend more time on writing content rather than having to use his software engineering skills to write code. Discovering what the software was capable of, he soon wanted to build themes and features in WordPress to customize websites. As he searched for learning resources, he came across an event focused on WordPress actually happening in his own city. WordCamp Curitiba 2010 had a deep impact on Daniel. “Other tech events I attended charged more than double this WordCamp, but hadn’t offered half of the things it did.” Daniel was inspired not only by the talks but also the kindness shown by others at the event. His inherent shyness meant he had to step out of his comfort zone to socialize. However, the friendliness of attendees and the welcome he received made this less foreboding. He was hooked by the community he met, and he pledged to volunteer at the next WordCamp and even apply as a speaker. Daniel Kossmann giving a talk at WordCamp São Paulo 2018 about Gutenberg Less than two years later, Daniel helped to organize WordCamp in Curitiba 2012, and this was where he gave his first public talk. It was an important moment in his journey. He is determined to keep improving his public speaking skills each time he presents, and help others to do so too. From WordPress user to entrepreneur Daniel had dreamed of starting his own company since childhood. Following his university graduation in 2011, he decided to fulfil that dream. He started a web development company, envisioning it as a creative project lab. Initially, he worked with a variety of systems and programming languages. Soon, he realized that maintaining multiple solutions took considerable time and effort. So he opted to use a single platform, WordPress. It offered ease of use for his clients and the possibility of offering various types of websites. “This decision allowed me to dive even deeper into the system, making better and faster-to-deliver solutions for my clients,” said Daniel. As the company grew, he expanded the services it offered to include support, maintenance, courses, consulting, and optimized hosting for WordPress. This gave Daniel access to a wider range of clients and greater specialization in the WordPress platform. Even as a small company, Daniel wanted to give back to the WordPress community. Through using this open source software, the business had not faced the costs of using commercial platforms. He felt he should invest back into the software and its community it as much as he could, from sponsorship of events to collaborating in the Contributor Teams. His community contributions include speaking at meetups and WordCamps to share what what he has learned in his day-to-day work. “It was always and still is a big pleasure to be able to make these contributions,” he affirmed. In 2019, he decided to close his company after eight years and start a new chapter in Development Coordination. His focus and support for WordPress continues to this day. Supporting local: re-energising the Curitiba’s WordPress community Daniel Kossmann Speaking at a meetup in Curitiba in 2016 After WordCamp in Curitiba in 2012, the community there took a break from organizing events. Three years later, Daniel was eager to help restart meetups in Curitiba. He connected with others in the Brazilian community to find a way forward to support both end users of WordPress and firms using the platform. Through instant messaging tool Slack, a rebooted meetup was organized in August 2015. All the planning was done virtually and they only met for the first time in person on the day of the event. Although they did not have much initial experience in event planning, the meetup organizers were determined attendees should have fun and enjoy a relaxed atmosphere. They wanted people to feel comfortable socializing and to chat before and after the talks. The tips that attendees shared at every meeting were one of the most successful elements of these user-focused meetups. For Daniel, getting up in front of people to introduce the meetup was still not easy. However, he knew continuing to practice and improve his self-confidence was the only way to overcome his shyness. This determination and sense of achievement inspires him to encourage others to present talks and share the tips he uses when presenting. The Curitiba meetup continues to flourish. Though Daniel has moved to supporting the community in new ways, he has a lasting fondness for it. It has made him an advocate for local groups at the heart of the WordPress community. He believes the shared interest and enthusiasm for learning at meetups helps to increase attendees’ interest in both the software and its community, and their willingness to participate . Sharing the benefit of WordPress across Brazil Daniel speaking at a meetup in Curitiba in 2019 In June 2019, Daniel created a newsletter to spread content about WordPress in Brazilian Portuguese and inspire others to create content in the language. Translating, Daniel believes is a powerful way to make WordPress more accessible to people who do not speak English, which is the case for a lot of people in Brazil. In 2021, Daniel started writing regularly about WordPress on his blog too. He continues to publish weekly news, tutorials, tips, and share events. Advice to future WordPress contributors Daniel believes that the WordPress community is a key strength of the platform. It attracts people with a range of technical skills and backgrounds, and strives to have a diverse and open space for exchange. There are so many ways to contribute to WordPress without working with the code. He said: “I’m a big evangelizer of learning in public. A great way to collaborate is to create your blog in WordPress itself and share your journey of using it, and to write about tips and useful resources. This will eventually lead you to the official WordPress documentation and, the more you use it, the more opportunities for improvements you will see. Then you can start contributing to improving it. Besides this, you can pick a plugin or theme that you use and help with its translation.” He added: “My biggest advice for those who are starting to contribute to WordPress is to start with a small step, maybe solving an easy bug or fixing a typo, and create a routine to consistently work on it, like an hour every weekend.” Daniel has made several lasting friendships, received professional referrals through his participation in community events, and enjoys a career that continues to have variety and new things to learn. His final message is to join WordPress meetups locally or online in other cities, and be inspired like he has been for 14 years and still counting. Share the stories Help share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series. Contributors Thank you to @kossmann for sharing his adventures in WordPress. Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), Larissa Murillo (@lmurillom), Meher Bala (@meher), Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann) for research, interviews, and contributing to this feature article. The People of WordPress series thanks Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support. This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. #HeroPress View the full article

On episode forty-eight of the WordPress Briefing podcast, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy reflects on the closing of Gutenberg phase two, and what that means in the larger context of the project. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Santana Inniss Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes Removing Block Editor Beta Label GitHub Issue Reporting Bugs make.wordpress.org/design Contribution Conversations: Improving the Contributor Journey Contribution Conversations: Ending the Eternal September Contribution Conversations: WordCamp Mentorship WordCamp Asia Livestream Info Transcript [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] 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, Jospeha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40] We’ve barely gotten moving here in 2023, but even so, WordPress is already working toward its next major release– coming to us at the end of March. You’ve probably heard by now that with this release comes the “end of Phase 2.” But for a lot of folks, that’s raising some questions about what to expect. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00] So I’m gonna spend a little time today sharing what I currently know. Let’s start with what that phrase does mean. Firstly, all of the projects, with the exception of two, I believe, in the Phase 2 scoping ticket, will be shipped in the Gutenberg plugin before WordPress 6.2 release comes out. Barring any major breaking issues, those will then land in that major release in WordPress 6.2. So, like, 99% of the features we considered in scope for Phase 2 will be in core by April. It also means the block editor may finally shed its beta label. We’ve been discussing that possibility with the input of the community over the course of the last few major releases, and we’ll do the same as we get ready for the 6.2 release as well. That discussion is tracked over in GitHub, and I can share a link to that in the show notes. For anyone who is a little super nerd, like me, the ticket number is 39293. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00] So not only if you’re going to memorize it and be one of those cool WordPressers who can call tickets to mind based on the numbers. This is a good one because not only is it an important topic, to be able to recall, but also it’s a palindrome, so you get to be fancy and know that forever. But anyway, I’ll put a link to it in the show notes for all the rest of us. Fingers crossed that we get to remove that label this time around, but also, the acceptance criteria on it are pretty clear. So it’s really a matter of yes or no on all of the columns all the way down. So what does that phase not mean? Firstly, it does not mean that we will stop accepting user feedback or bug reports on any features up to this point. It is always encouraged to file a ticket on track or GitHub detailing any bugs that you’ve encountered. If you’ve never reported a bug before, don’t worry. We have all been there. I’ll gather a link or two with some information for first-timers. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:00] If you ever run into me at a WordCamp, feel free to ask me about my first bug-reporting experience. And after you’ve heard that, you will immediately go and file that bug that has been sitting screenshotted on your desk for six months because it honestly cannot get any worse than my first one. Secondly, it definitely does not mean that we will stop shipping refinements to the user experience. As much as I’d like to say this isn’t true, I think all open source contributors know that no matter how much you test a solution, you can’t actually account for all possible use cases when you work on a project this size. So as we find things that we didn’t realize were a little rough to use, we will, of course, make the effort to smooth those workflows as quickly as possible. So that’s my little reassuring tl;dr for what that phrase means. If you are listening to this and haven’t spent much time in the block editor as it exists today, I encourage you to do so. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00] It has really changed substantially since it was first merged in 2018, and it represents thousands of hours of research and problem-solving and creation, and outreach. If you know someone who has contributed to the project or whose content helped you make sense of some inscrutable part of it, also maybe, drop them a line and let them know you appreciate their hard work. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:26] That brings us now to our small list of big things. Firstly, we are thinking a lot right now about the paths to contribution. Both at the start of your contribution journey and as you grow into a long-term, seasoned contributor. There are a couple of different discussions related to that right now. So there are actually two project-wide discussions that are on make.wordpress.org/project. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00] And then there’s one that is specific to WordCamp membership, and that is on make.wordpress.org/community. You can head over to any of those and share your experiences, thoughts, and any wild ideas that you have. The second thing on my small list is that there are a lot of pages across wordpress.org that are getting shiny new designs. If you want to get involved in those discussions, or you just wanna catch early previews of what’s coming to the site, you can hop over to make.wordpress.org/design or join the design team meetings in Slack. And the last thing is that WordCamp Asia is coming quickly, my friends. This event is near and dear to my heart. I hope to see a lot of you in person, but if you won’t be able to make it in person, we still have you covered. There will be a live stream, and the schedule for that is already on the site. It shows the times for each session in your local time zone so you can easily decide which presentations you absolutely must see right in the moment. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00] And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. View the full article

Last month at State of the Word, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shared some opening thoughts on “Why WordPress” and the Four Freedoms of open source. In this recent letter, she expands on her vision for the WordPress open source project as it prepares for the third phase of Gutenberg: “We are now, as we ever were, securing the opportunity for those who come after us, because of the opportunity secured by those who came before us.” Josepha Haden Chomphosy December brought with it a time for reflection—a time to look back, celebrate, and start planning new projects. Read on to find out what 2023 holds for WordPress so far. WordPress is turning 20! 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of WordPress’ launch. The project has come a long way since the first release as it continues to advance its mission to democratize publishing. From its beginnings as a blogging platform to a world-leading open source CMS powering over 40% of websites. Join the WordPress community in celebrating this important milestone. As the anniversary date approaches, there will be events, commemorative swag, and more. Stay tuned for updates. WordPress 6.2 is scheduled for March 28, 2023 Work on WordPress 6.2, the first major release of 2023, is already underway. It is expected to launch on March 28, 2023, and will include up to Gutenberg 15.1 for a total of 10 Gutenberg releases. The proposed schedule includes four Beta releases to accommodate the first WordCamp Asia and avoid having major release milestones very close to this event. Read more about the 6.2 schedule and release team. What’s new in Gutenberg Two new versions of Gutenberg have shipped in the last month: Gutenberg 14.8 was released on December 21, 2022. This version features a reorganized Site Editor interface with a Browse Mode that facilitates navigation through templates and template parts. In addition, it includes the ability to add custom CSS via the Style panel and a Style Book that provides an overview of all block styles in a centralized location. Gutenberg 14.9 became available for download on January 4, 2023. It introduces a new “Push changes to Global Styles” button in the Site Editor, which allows users to apply individual block style changes to all blocks of that type across their site. Other features include typography support for the Page List block, and the ability to import sidebar widgets into a template part when transitioning from a classic theme. Learn how Gutenberg’s latest releases are advancing the Site Editor experience to be more intuitive and scalable. Team updates: WordPress big picture goals, new Incident Response Team, and more Josepha shared WordPress’ big picture goals for 2023, which support the vision set out in State of the Word 2022 and her recent letter to WordPress. Let’s welcome the newly formed WordPress Incident Response Team (​​IRT)—a group of contributors who will help as a community resource when behavior or actions do not align with the code of conduct. A number of Make teams have announced their team representatives for 2023, including Community, Core, Marketing, Polyglots, Themes, and Training. As part of the WordPress.org redesign project, the Theme Directory will soon get a refreshed look and feel. The return of in-person events and the Meetup Reactivation project are some of the highlights that marked a challenging but successful year for the Community Team. Learn more about what they achieved in 2022. #WPDiversity also celebrated its accomplishments in this report. Last year, the training group held 15 events attended by more than 200 participants. A Year in Core – 2022 provides a data overview of contributions made to the WordPress core codebase in the past year. Are you into WordPress development? Don’t miss this post on 2022’s most notable milestones and learning resources for block developers. The January 2023 editions of the Polyglots monthly newsletter and the Meetup Organizer newsletter are now available for reading. Check out the 2022 State of the Word Q&A post, which answers submitted questions that Matt could not address at the live event. Feedback & testing requests Join the latest FSE Program testing call to help strengthen the upcoming WordPress site editing experience. Leave your feedback by February 1, 2023. The WordPress Developer Blog is gathering ideas for content topics. Version 21.4 of the WordPress mobile app for Android and iOS is available for testing. Have thoughts for improving the Five for the Future contributor experience? This post calls for ideas on how this initiative can better support the project and the people behind it. WordPress events updates Get ready for WordCamp Asia 2023! The first flagship WordCamp in Asia is happening on February 17-19, 2023, in Bangkok, Thailand. Check out the schedule to learn more about the sessions and speakers. The WordPress Community Summit and WordCamp US 2023 will take place in Maryland, USA, in August 2023. You can now apply to join the organizing team and help bring the next WCUS to life. Join #WPDiversity with a free online workshop on How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events APAC. The event will take place on January 28, 2023. Don’t miss these other upcoming WordCamps: WordCamp Zaragoza, Spain on January 20-21, 2023 WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama, USA on February 4-5, 2023 WordCamp Cebu, Philippines on February 11, 2023 Would you like to be a speaker at WordCamp Europe 2023? Submit your application by the first week of February. Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know. The following folks contributed to this edition of The Month in WordPress: @cbringmann, @laurlittle, @rmartinezduque. View the full article

On episode forty-seven of the WordPress Briefing podcast, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shares her vision and current thinking for the WordPress open source project in 2023. Rather read it? The full letter is also available. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Santana Inniss Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Show Notes make.WordPress.org/core Join the 6.2 Release! Submit Topics for the Community Summit! Transcript [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:40] Last month at State of the Word, I shared some opening thoughts about why WordPress. For me, this is an easy question, and the hardest part is always knowing which lens to answer through. Though I always focus on the philosophical parts of the answer, I know that I often speak as an advocate for many types of WordPressers. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00] So as we prepare ourselves for the start of a new year, I have a few additional thoughts that I’d like to share with you, my WordPress community, to take into the year with you. Firstly, the Four Freedoms. If you have already listened to State of the Word, you have heard my take on the philosophical side of open source and the freedoms it provides. But if you didn’t, then the TL;DR on that is that open source provides protections and freedoms to creators on the web that I really think should just be a given. But there are a couple of other things about the Four Freedoms, and especially the way that WordPress does this kind of open source-y thing that I think are worth noting as well. One of those things is that WordPress entrepreneurs, those who are providing services or designing sites, building applications, they have proven that open source provides an ethical framework for conducting business. No one ever said that you aren’t allowed to build a business using free and open source software, and I am regularly heartened by the way that successful companies and freelancers make the effort to pay forward what they can. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:02] Not always for the sole benefit of WordPress, of course, but often for the general benefit of folks who are also learning how to be entrepreneurs or how to kind of navigate our ecosystem. And the other thing that I love about the Four Freedoms and the way that WordPress does it is that leaders in the WordPress community, no matter where they are leading from, have shown that open source ideals can be applied to the way we work with one another and show up for one another. As a community, we tend to approach solution gathering as an us-versus-the-problem exercise, which not only makes our solutions better, it also makes our community stronger. As I have witnessed all of these things work together over the years, one thing that is clear to me is this: not only is open source an idea that can change our generation by being an antidote to proprietary systems and the data economy, but open source methodologies represent a process that can change the way we approach our work and our businesses. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:01] The second big thing that I want to make sure you all take into the year with you is that we are preparing for the third phase of the Gutenberg project. We are putting our backend developer hats on and working on the APIs that power our workflows. That workflows phase will be complex. A little bit because APIs are dark magic that binds us together, but also because we’re going to get deep into the core of WordPress with that phase. If you want to have impactful work for future users of WordPress, though, this is the phase to get invested in. This phase will focus on the main elements of collaborative user workflows. If that doesn’t really make sense to you, I totally get it. Think of it this way, this phase will work on built-in real-time collaboration, commenting options in drafts, easier browsing of post revisions, and things like programmable editorial, pre-launch checklists. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00] So phases one and two of the Gutenberg project had a very ‘blocks everywhere’ sort of vision. And phase three and, arguably, phase four will have more of a ‘works with the way you work’ vision. And my final thought for you all as we head into the year is this, there are a couple of different moments that folks point to as the beginning of the Gutenberg project. Some say it was State of the Word 2013, where Matt dreamed on stage of a true WYSIWYG editor for WordPress. Some say it was State of the Word 2016, where we were all encouraged to learn JavaScript deeply. For a lot of us though, it was at WordCamp Europe in 2018 when the Gutenberg feature plugin first made its way to the repo. No matter when you first became aware of Gutenberg, I can confirm that it feels like it’s been a long time because it has been a long time. But I can also confirm that it takes many pushes to knock over a refrigerator. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00] For early adopters, both to the creation of Gutenberg as well as its use, hyperfocus on daily tasks makes it really hard to get a concept of scale. And so I encourage everyone this year to look out toward the horizon a bit more and up toward our guiding stars a bit more as well. Because we are now, as we ever were, securing opportunity for those who come after us because of the opportunity that was secured for us by those who came before us. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:33] That brings us now to our small list of big things. It’s a very small list, but two pretty big things. The first thing on the list is that the WordPress 6.2 release is on its way. If you would like to get started contributing there, you can wander over to make.WordPress.org/core. You can volunteer to be part of the release squad. You can volunteer your time just as a regular contributor, someone who can test things — any of that. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00] We’ll put a link in the show notes. And the second thing that I wanted to remind you of is that today is the deadline to submit topics for the Community Summit that’s coming up in August. That comes up in the middle of August, like the 22nd and 23rd or something like that. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. If you already have chatted with a team rep about some things that you really want to make sure get discussed at the community summit, I think that we can all assume that your team rep has put that in. But if not, it never hurts to give it a second vote by putting a new submission into the form. And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. View the full article

Last month at State of the Word, I shared some opening thoughts about “Why WordPress.” For me, this is an easy question, and the hardest part is knowing which lens to answer through. The reasons that a solopreneur will choose WordPress are different than the reasons a corporation would. And while artists and activists may have a similar vision for the world, their motivations change their reasons, too. That’s why I always focus on the philosophical parts of the answer because I know that I am speaking as an advocate for many types of WordPressers. I have a few other reasons, too, which you may not be aware of as you use our software every day. Why WordPress? Most importantly, the Four Freedoms of Open Source. If you have already listened to State of the Word, you have heard my thoughts on the philosophical side of open source and the freedoms it provides. If you didn’t, then the tl;dr on that is that open source provides protections and freedoms to creators on the web that should be a given. There’s an extent to which the idea of owning your content and data online is a radical idea. So radical, even, that it is hard for folks to grasp what we mean when we say “free as in speech, not free as in beer.” Securing an open web for the future is, I believe, a net win for the world especially when contrasted to the walled gardens and proprietary systems that pit us all against one another with the purpose of gaining more data to sell. A second reason is that WordPress entrepreneurs (those providing services, designing sites, and building applications) have proven that open source offers an ethical framework for conducting business. No one ever said that you cannot build a business using free and open source software. And I am regularly heartened by the way successful companies and freelancers make an effort to pay forward what they can. Not always for the sole benefit of WordPress, but often for the general benefit of folks learning how to be an entrepreneur in our ecosystem. Because despite our competitive streaks, at the end of the day, we know that ultimately we are the temporary caretakers of an ecosystem that has unlocked wealth and opportunity for people we may never meet but whose lives are made infinitely better because of us. And the final reason is that leaders in the WordPress community (team reps, component maintainers, and community builders) have shown that open source ideals can be applied to how we work with one another. As a community, we tend to approach solution gathering as an “us vs. the problem” exercise, which not only makes our solutions better and our community stronger. And our leaders—working as they are in a cross-cultural, globally-distributed project that guides or supports tens of thousands of people a year—have unparalleled generosity of spirit. Whether they are welcoming newcomers or putting out calls for last-minute volunteers, seeing the way that they collaborate every day gives me hope for our future. As I have witnessed these three things work together over the years, one thing is clear to me: not only is open source an idea that can change our generation by being an antidote to proprietary systems and the data economy, open source methodologies represent a process that can change the way we approach our work and our businesses. WordPress in 2023 As we prepare for the third phase of the Gutenberg project, we are putting on our backend developer hats and working on the APIs that power our workflows. Releases during Phase 3 will focus on the main elements of collaborative user workflows. If that doesn’t make sense, think of built-in real-time collaboration, commenting options in drafts, easier browsing of post revisions, and programmatic editorial and pre-launch checklists. If Phases 1 and 2 had a “blocks everywhere” vision, think of Phase 3 with more of a “works with the way you work” vision. In addition to this halfway milestone of starting work on Phase 3, WordPress also hits the milestone of turning 20 years old. I keep thinking back to various milestones we’ve had (which you can read about in the second version of the Milestones book) and realized that almost my entire experience of full-time contributions to WordPress has been in the Gutenberg era. I hear some of you already thinking incredulous thoughts so, come with me briefly. There are a couple of different moments that folks point to as the beginning of the Gutenberg project. Some say it was at State of the Word 2013 when Matt dreamed of “a true WYSIWYG” editor for WordPress. Some say it was at State of the Word 2016 where we were encouraged to “learn Javascript deeply.” For many of us, it was at WordCamp Europe in 2017 when the Gutenberg demo first made its way on stage. No matter when you first became aware of Gutenberg, I can confirm that it feels like a long time because it has been a long time. I can also confirm that it takes many pushes to knock over a refrigerator. For early adopters (both to the creation of Gutenberg and its use), hyper-focus on daily tasks makes it hard to get a concept of scale. So I encourage you this year to look out toward the horizon and up toward our guiding stars. We are now, as we ever were, securing the opportunity for those who come after us, because of the opportunity secured by those who came before us. Rather listen? The abbreviated spoken letter is also available. View the full article

2023 marks the 20th year of WordPress. Where would we all be without WordPress? Just think of that! While many technologies, software stacks, and fashion trends have come and gone throughout the past two decades, WordPress has thrived. This is due to the fantastic work and contributions of the WordPress community, comprised of thousands of contributors; and millions of users who have embraced the four freedoms of WordPress and the mission to democratize publishing. Let’s celebrate! Throughout the beginning of 2023, leading up to the official anniversary date of WordPress’s launch (May 27, 2003), a number of different events will celebrate this important milestone, reflect on the journey, and look toward the future. Please join in! Over the next few months, be sure to check WordPress’s official social media accounts along with the official anniversary website for updates on how you can be involved in this exciting celebration by contributing content, collecting cool anniversary swag, and much more. Use the hashtag #WP20 on social media so the community can follow along. If you have something planned to celebrate that you would like to be considered for inclusion on the official website, please use this form to share the details. View the full article

This episode of the WP Briefing features all the Josepha bloopers our little elves have stored away over the year. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Santana Inniss Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod Transcript [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can normally catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project with the hope that deeper understanding creates deeper appreciation. But on today’s bonus episode, instead of catching quick explanations, you’ll catch some quick bloopers. The end of the year is a time when many people and many cultures gather together, and whether you observe traditions of light or faith, compassion, or celebration from everyone here at the WordPress Briefing Podcast, we’re wishing you a happy, festive season and a very happy New Year. Sit back, relax, and enjoy some of the laughs and outtakes from recording the WP Briefing over the year. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress. This is the thing I’ve done 25 times, and I know how to do it for reals. Welcome to WordPress Briefing, episode 20. Oh no, 7? 27? 26? Episode 27. I know how many things I’ve done. Ooh, neat. This is Josepha recording episode 46 of the WP Bonus Briefings. Not because we’ve had 46 bonus Briefings, but because this is the 46th one and it is a bonus, it will also have a fancy name. But right now, I’m just calling it the bonus. It’s gonna be quick. Here I go. Group them into two big buckets, themes, uh, themes and tools. Mmm, I’m gonna have to redo the whole thing! No! I thought I could save it, and I didn’t save it. I had a typo in my script, and then I messed it up. I, it said into you big buckets instead of into two big buckets. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00] I’m gonna start over from the target release date because I kind of smeared it all together, um, despite what I intended to do. And gives everyone, no. What is this ringing of phones? Oh, I was doing so well. Where was I? Let’s see if I can just pick it up. All righty, live from my closet. It’s episode 20, the WordPress Briefing, WP Briefing. So I have a title for this, and when I started writing it, I really had every intention of writing it to the title. And then what I wrote doesn’t fit the title at all, but does really hang together well. And so we’re gonna have to come up with a new title, but at the moment, it’s called So Many Ways to WordPress. Here in a minute, you will see why it doesn’t fit. Also, at the end, I feel like I get very, like, angry nerd leader. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:00] And so I may, I may at the end, give that a second go and see if there’s a way that I can soften it a little bit, but, I, I don’t know that I can soften it. I feel very strongly about it. So, maybe I am just an angry nerd leader. Oh, okay. I’ll get us started now that I apparently have filled the room with apologies, not the room, the closet. We’ll figure out something very catchy as a title or as an alternative. Very descriptive, and people will click on it because they must know, but we’ll figure out the title later. @wordpress.org. However, I don’t know why I decided to do an invitation to email me in the middle of that. I’m gonna start from the top of that paragraph. I just got too excited by the opportunity to get mail. I gotta slow it down. I’m like the fastest talker, had too much coffee. Okay, slowing it down now. Huh? What am I saying? No, no, that’s what I’m saying. It’s fine. I, I can do this. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00] Hold on. Oww. Sorry. I was adjusting my microphone, and then it fell down. I happened to be holding it at the time, so it didn’t, like, slam down, I think, and hurt your ears and so I apologize. Good thing I stopped so it didn’t just, like, slam down in the middle of a recording. That’s all right. I’m gonna give myself that win, even though it’s a hollow one. All right. Trying again. Starting right there, at now since. This year, it starts on October 18th, 2001. That’s the year? No, 2021. That’s the year. Oh man. I’m doing such a great job of this. Um, I’m recording this slightly before, um, you’re hearing it? What, how am I gonna start this? Hold on. I don’t know how to start this. All right. I’m, I can do it. Oh, I’m so glad I remembered. We had guests that could have been so embarrassing. Now for me, the trade-offs work well. How many times can I say now? [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00] Do I just start every sentence with now now? Is this just how I do things? Uh, now, now, now, now. I’m gonna start all over again because I’m in my head about the words in my mouth now. So. In some near timeframe, some near timeframe. This is not a thing that people say, Dustin, I’m sorry. That’s not a thing people say. I’m just gonna retry that one sentence to sound like I speak with other human beings sometimes. Today is the start of… I can do these things. This was a terrible ending. I need to just finish that last part. I’m gonna redo the part where I started with my name and not the name of the podcast. Um, and we’ll do that. And if you’re supporting or building anything to hand off to clients, you know that timely, easy to ship changes on a site are considered a vital part of any overarching brand and marketing strategy. Wow. It’s like, I don’t know what words are right there. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00] I tripped over my own tongue a lot. I’m gonna sit, I’m gonna do that paragraph again because I didn’t do a very good job of it. I’ll do a better job. I literally digress, and now I don’t know. I am in my thing. What was I saying? Oh, there we go. Topher DeRosia, who founded Word not WordPress. Holy moly. That was a, I knew I was gonna say that, and I was like, don’t say that when you actually get around to saying this, but here I am, and I did it. Even though I knew I was gonna do it and I told myself not to. Doing it again. Right from there. Not which audiench segment. Oh man. Audiench is not a word, folks. I was on a roll. I’m gonna start right from the primary thing. I don’t even remember how I started this podcast. What is the last thing I said? I said, here we go. All right. Kind of covered some interesting ground, and so, oh no, this is not where I’m gonna start it. I know exactly where I’m gonna start it. Okay. I’m really ready now. Here we go. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:00] I suddenly, I’m gonna pause right here because I suddenly got really worried that I didn’t actually hit record. Oh my gosh. I did. Woo. I’m all over the place. Okay. We’ll now continue. Wait, did I? Oh my goodness. I did, super sorry. Of the WordPress Briefing. I’m gonna do some singing in the middle of some talking, but I keep trying to talk myself out of the singing, so I’m gonna go ahead and do the singing, and then I’ll do the talking before I talk myself out of the singing. Here I go, probably. I added a word. That was so good. I’m gonna start again. I’m gonna get some water, and then I’m gonna start again. Not again. Again. Just from the ‘and finally.’ I don’t know how I finish my show. Y’all, I do this literally every week. I never know how to finish my show. Here we go. I don’t know why I shouted at you from the other side of the tiny closet. I apologize. I’m gonna start again from ‘and finally.’ Tada we did it. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:00] Ha. I hate it. I hate the whole podcast. It’s gonna be fine. Done. Nailed it. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] With that, I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Merry Christmas from me. Happy holidays to you, and we’ll see you again in the new year. Done. View the full article

In the forty-fifth episode of the WordPress Briefing, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses highlights from this year’s State of the Word address. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Santana Inniss Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod References LearnWP WordPress Playground ICYMI: State of the Word Recap Take the 2020 WordPress Survey! Exploring WordPress Certifications Community Summit WordCamp Site Submit Topics for the 2023 Community Summit 20th Anniversary– Stay Tuned for Updates Check Out Style Variations and the 2023 Theme Transcript [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:00:39] Last week, WordPress hosted its annual State of the Word. As usual, this was delivered by our project co-founder Matt Mullenweg and represented a year-long labor of love from the WordPress community as a whole. There are many things I love about State of the Word, but consistently the thing I love the most is being able to shine spotlights on the great work of our global network of contributors. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:02] Since that presentation goes by at the speed of light, I wanted to highlight a few things as well. First things first, I wanted to highlight that we had nearly 1,400 contributors, and by nearly, I mean just one too few. We had 1,399 contributors. So that is a big deal in general, but it’s an especially big deal to me because that’s before we start looking at any contributions that aren’t specifically tied to a release. You may be wondering what those non-release contributions are. An incomplete list of those contributions would include organizing WordPress events, training others how to use WordPress, the myriad podcasts, articles, and newsletters that make up the WordPress media community, and any participant in a call for testing. Not to mention the unglamorous ways to contribute, like reviewing themes or reviewing plugins. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:58] Things like patching security vulnerabilities and the bazillion things that Meta does to make sure that our community has all the tools that it needs to function. So I want to echo, once again, the huge, huge thanks that Matt already shared in State of the Word, and thank all of you for showing up for our project and for each other this way. The next thing I wanted to be sure to highlight was LearnWP. It was briefly noted that 12,000 learners had found their way to courses on learn.wordpress.org, and then during the Q&A, there was a related question about certifications in WordPress. The need for certifications has been a regular topic in our project, and I mentioned that there are two different ongoing discussions at the moment. One of those discussions is happening directly on the make.wordpress.org/training site, so I’ll share a link in the show notes for that. But I’ve also been personally chatting on and off with Training team reps and other members of the community about what makes that so hard. In case you have not heard my whole spiel about what makes it difficult, it’s the logistics and our speed of iteration, and public perception. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:05] So not exactly a small set of hurdles. I’ll be doing a more complete post on this in the New Year so that we can get some solid documentation of the state of things and not let it be lost forever in this podcast. But I do know that it is something that we are very interested in as a community and something that, historically, I have really been resistant to. Not because I think it’s a bad idea, but because as someone who’s looking out for our operations side of things and our logistics side of things, it is not clear how we’re gonna get that done. Like I said, in the New Year, keep an eye out for a big, big post that takes a look at the benefits versus the costs and everything that we can do to help make those match each other a bit better. And then the last thing I wanted to highlight was the WordPress Playground. Okay, so this was the last thing that Matt mentioned, and I want to be sure that it’s clear what’s going on with this project because when I first heard about it, I very nearly lept from my chair! [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:03] It was such a remarkably big deal. Okay, so the WordPress Playground uses technological magic called ‘web assembly.’ I don’t know what it is, but it’s magic. And when I say magic, I mean that this tool makes it possible to run WordPress, an instance of WordPress, including a theme and a handful of plug-ins entirely inside your browser as a logged-in admin. You don’t need a server. You don’t need to select a host. You don’t need to download anything at all. You don’t need to know what your domain’s going to be. You simply select the theme you want to test. Add some dummy content and see how all of the posts and pages function as though we’re a real live WordPress site running on your favorite top-tier host. Then when you close the tab, it’s gone forever. Poof. Just like that. Now, this is a brand new project. It’s brand new to us and has a long way to go. So if working on that sounds cool, stop by the Meta Playground channel in the Making WordPress Slack. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:09] But this, in my mind, changes the way that we stage sites. It could change the way we determine whether a theme or plugin is right for us. And arguably, it can become a stress-free way to introduce new or undecided users to WordPress’s admin area so that they can tell what they’re getting into. So when I say that this is a mind-blowing thing, and when I say that it is powered by magic, like it is astounding, it is astounding. And the applications for our users as a whole, I think, are untapped yet, and potentially even the applications for our learners and future learners of WordPress– equally untapped. I’m very excited to see what we can do with this project in the future. So stop by the Meta channel. Stop by Meta Playground. See what’s going on over there. We would love to have you. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00] So those are my highlights of the day for State of the Word. Like I said, there are a few things I want to do more of a deep dive on in the text, so keep an eye out on make.wordpress.org/projects for most of those. But right now, let’s make some time for the small list of big things. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:17] Today I actually have kind of like a big list of big things. But I pretended it was small, so you didn’t turn off the podcast. So the first thing that I have is that in case you missed State of the Word, if you didn’t have a Watch Party to go to, or you didn’t know it was happening and so you didn’t really tune in at the time, I’m going to drop in a link of the recording. It’s gonna probably start right when everything gets going. And so you shouldn’t have to scrub through anything. If you end up on one of the recordings that includes like the whole live stream, there is jazz for the first 30 minutes, and just, you know, skip through that. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:07:00] The second thing on my big list of big things is our annual community survey. So Matt mentioned this in State of the Word, and he pointed out that one of the things that makes WordPress and open source in general so effective is that we have a way to communicate with people who are using our software and we make every effort to be responsive to it. So the annual survey that we send out, it used to be quite big, and we’ve cut it down to 20 questions. If you want, you can think of it as like a census, so have your type of work and how long you’ve been working in WordPress, and what you wish to do with WordPress– have all those things be counted so we have a good idea of the type of person who’s currently using WordPress, and we can account for your needs and wants. But also, if you want to think of it more as an opportunity to share the things that were especially useful for you in the project this year or especially valuable for you as a contributor, this is also an excellent place to do that. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:01] There’s a QR code running around on the internet somewhere, but I’ll also put a link in the show notes. If you do not know where the show notes are, by the way, they are at wordpress.org/news/podcast, and you’ll be able to get to the survey. The third thing on my big list of big things is that next year we’re hosting a community summit. So if you’ve never been to a community summit, Matt mentioned that it is an opportunity for the best and most prolific contributors that we have to show up and discuss the things that are the biggest problems for the WordPress project right now. But we also want to make sure that we are making space for the voices that we know that we are missing from the community as well as contributors who look like they are probably excellent future stewards of this open source project that we are taking care of together. And so there is a whole website for that. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:08:55] I believe it’s communitysummit.wordcamp.org. Right now, there is a form up asking for topics that you want to be able to discuss while we are there, but it’s taking place, if I recall correctly, on August 22nd and 23rd of 2023. Number four on my big list of big things is that next year is WordPress’s 20th anniversary. So on May 27th of next year, WordPress will officially be 20 years old. So on our 10th birthday, anniversary rather, and our 15th anniversary, we pulled together some parties all across the world. We had some images, some logos, and things that were specific to the celebration that we printed into stickers and that folks put on, like, mugs and backpacks and cakes and stuff. So if you want to learn more about that, keep an eye out in the community channel in making WordPress Slack. They will keep you posted on how to one, find any of those logos and designs so that your local community can join in the celebrations. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:10:03] But they will also help you learn how to have any sort of WordPress celebration party that we’re doing there in May of 2023. And then the final thing on my big list of big things, it was mentioned that on the 2023 theme that was shipped with a bunch of style variations and there was this really, I think, excellent illustrative video that Rich Tabor put together for us that shows that you can switch through style variations on a single theme and have a site that looks totally different. Now, that feels like that’s just a thing that should always have been in WordPress, but it is new this year. And so, if you have not yet had a chance to look at the 2023 theme, it is the default theme that shipped with 6.1. And so, if you have it on your website and just haven’t had a look at it yet, I encourage you to do that. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:11:00] It’s a really interesting implementation that makes a single theme potentially look like an infinite number of other themes, and those style variations can be specific to the theme or can just kind of be around and about in the patterns that are also available in Core. Give that a look. I think it’s super worthwhile. And that, my friends, is your big list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in the New Year. View the full article

WordPress enthusiasts tuned in last week for the State of the Word address to celebrate the project’s yearly accomplishments and explore what 2023 holds. But that’s not the only exciting update from the past month. New proposals and ideas are already emerging with an eye on the year ahead—let’s dive into them! Highlights from State of the Word 2022 WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg delivered the annual State of the Word address on December 15, 2022, before a live audience in New York City. Most attendees joined the event via livestream or one of the 33 watch parties held across 11 countries. Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of WordPress, kicked off this year’s event with an introduction to the Four Freedoms of open source and the importance of WordPress in ensuring “a free, open and interconnected web for the future.” Similar to past State of the Word events, Matt reflected on the project’s achievements over the past year, including Gutenberg’s adoption beyond WordPress, the steady progress in advancing the site editing experience, and the return to in-person events. In addition, he took the opportunity to remind everyone of the 2023 Community Summit and the 20th anniversary of WordPress coming up next year. Ahead of 2023, Matt announced new taxonomies in the WordPress.org theme and plugin directories to help users identify the extensions that best fit their needs and plans for Phase 3 of Gutenberg—Collaboration—among other notable updates. People who watched the State of the Word enjoyed a demo of WordPress Playground, an experimental project to explore, experiment, and build apps with a WordPress instance that runs entirely in the browser. Missed the event? Read the recap or watch the State of the Word recording and Q&A session on WordPress.tv. The 2022 WordPress Survey is open The annual WordPress survey helps project leadership and those who build WordPress understand more about the contributor experience, how the software is used, and by whom. This year’s survey will remain open through the end of 2022 and is available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish. Take the 2022 WordPress Survey to help make an impact on the project. What’s new in Gutenberg Two new versions of Gutenberg have shipped in the last month: Gutenberg 14.6, released on November 23, 2022, came with many refinements to core blocks. Notable highlights include a variation picker that allows users to choose a desired layout when a Group block is inserted on a page, a new list view for editing the Navigation block, and a keyboard shortcut to transform paragraph blocks into headings. Gutenberg 14.7, released on December 7, 2022, introduced an experimental tabbed sidebar, colors to help identify some block types in list view, and improvements to the Page List block to make it easier to manage page links in the content. Follow the “What’s new in Gutenberg” posts to stay on top of the latest enhancements. Team updates: Introducing the block editor in the support forums, a revamped Showcase page, and more The Support and Meta Teams are bringing the block editor experience into the WordPress.org support forums. WordPress.org’s redesign continues with a refreshed Showcase page. A proposal for the 2023 Global Community Sponsorship Program has been published. WordPress is accessible to more people thanks to 19,357 contributors who translated more than eight million strings this year. Learn more about the Polyglots Team’s achievements in 2022. Speaking of accomplishments, supporters of the Global Meetup Reactivation project helped reactivated 126 meetup groups in 2022! There are also some discussions on how these efforts can support the Polyglots Outreach Effort project, and vice versa. The Community Team met with members of the Meetup.com team to help report some feedback and issues with an accessibility overlay that they ultimately agreed to remove. The Training Team highlighted the latest updates that have been made to Learn WordPress. In addition, part 1 and part 2 of the Developers Guide to Block Themes are now available on the platform. The Themes and Polyglots Teams announced their team representatives for 2023. The final releases for WordPress 3.7-4.0 were made available on November 30, 2022, with a notice that they are no longer receiving security updates. WordPress 4.1 and later will continue to receive such updates. Fresh off the press, the December 2022 edition of the Polyglots monthly newsletter is available for reading. The latest edition of People of WordPress features Huanyi Chuang, a front end developer from Taiwan. Curious about why WordPress has so many releases? Tune in to Episode 44 of WP Briefing to learn about the role of major and minor releases in the project. Feedback & testing requests Help efforts to wrap up Gutenberg Phase 2 by testing the Site Editor’s latest updates. Leave your feedback by January 6, 2023. The Performance Team shared a new proposal for enhancing the Scripts API with a loading strategy. The Full Site Editing (FSE) Outreach Program is looking for volunteers to use Replay.io for capturing bugs. Express your interest by December 28, 2022. Version 21.4 of the WordPress mobile app for Android and iOS is available for testing. The Community Team is calling on WordPress contributor teams to suggest topics for the 2023 Community Summit by January 16, 2023. WordPress events updates The #WPDiversity working group organized several workshops during the past few months. Among other highlights, attendees of the Speaker Workshop for Women Voices in Latin America reported a 52% increase in self-confidence to speak in public. Stay tuned for the next events. The WordCamp Europe 2023 organizing team shared their content vision for next year’s flagship event in Athens, Greece. WordCamp Asia 2023 is just a few months away, scheduled for February 17-19, 2023, in Bangkok, Thailand. Organizers have announced the first recipient of the WordCamp Asia Diversity Scholarship, Awais Arfan. Three more WordCamps are happening in the next few months: WordCamp Zaragoza, Spain on January 20-21, 2023 WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama, USA on February 4-5, 2023 WordCamp Cebu, Philippines on February 11, 2023 WordCamp Europe 2023 is calling for sponsors and speakers. Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know. The following folks contributed to this edition of The Month in WordPress: @cbringmann, @webcommsat, @sereedmedia, and @rmartinezduque. View the full article

WordPress belongs to all of us, but really we’re taking care of it for the next generation.” Matt Mullenweg A small audience of WordPress contributors, developers, and extenders gathered on December 15 for the annual State of the Word keynote from WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. Those who could not join in person joined via livestream or one of 33 watch parties held across 11 countries, with more than 500 RSVPs. Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, introduced the event with a reminder of why so many of those gathered choose WordPress—the Four Freedoms of open source. As Haden Chomphosy noted, open source is an idea that can change our generation, and WordPress is one of the most consistent and impactful stewards of those freedoms. As with past State of the Word events, Matt reflected on the year’s accomplishments, learnings, and aspirations as the project moves into 2023. From Gutenberg concluding its second phase of site editing in preparation for phase three—Collaborative Workflows, to the reactivation of meetups and global WordCamps, to the introduction of a new theme and plugin taxonomy to musings on the potential of machine learning, WordPress enters its 20th year continuing to define bleeding edge technology in thanks to the ecosystem’s vibrant community. The one-hour multimedia presentation was followed by an interactive question and answer session where Matt fielded questions from the livestream and studio audience. All questions will be responded to in a follow-up post on Make.WordPress.org/project. Discover everything that was covered by watching the official event recording and join the ongoing #StateOfTheWord conversation on Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. For another way to get involved, consider sharing your experience with WordPress in the 2022 WordPress Community Survey. Referenced Resources WordPress on Tumblr Engineawesome.com using Gutenberg WordPress Community Summit 2023 WP20.wordpress.net learn.WordPress.org Openverse Create Block Theme plugin Make.WordPress.org WordPress Playground Matt on Tumblr Distributed.blog Special thanks to @laurlittle and @eidolonnight for review and collaboration. View the full article

Each year, members of the WordPress community (users, site builders, extenders, and contributors) provide 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 2022 survey results, take the 2022 annual survey now. Take the 2022 Survey (English) You may also take the survey in French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, or Spanish, thanks to the efforts of WordPress polyglot contributors. These are the most frequently installed languages based on the number of WordPress downloads. The survey will be open through the end of 2022, and then WordPress plans to publish the results sometime in 2023. This year, the survey questions have been refreshed for more effortless survey flow, completion, and analysis. Some questions have been removed, while a few new ones are now present, reflecting the present and future of WordPress. If you’re looking for the analysis of the 2021 survey results, those will also be shared in early 2023. Spread the word Help spread the word about the survey by sharing it with your network, through Slack, or within your social media accounts. The more people who complete the survey and share their experience with WordPress, the more the project as a whole will benefit in the future. Security and privacy Data security and privacy are paramount to the WordPress project and community. With this in mind, all data will be anonymized: no email addresses nor IP addresses will be associated with published results. To learn more about WordPress.org’s privacy practices, view the privacy policy. Thank you Thank you to the following WordPress contributors for assisting with the annual survey project, including question creation, strategy, survey build-out, and translation: dansoschin, _dorsvenabili, angelasjin, arkangel, audrasjb, atachibana, bjmcsherry, chanthaboune, eidolonnight, fernandot, fierevere, fxbenard, jdy68, jpantani, laurlittle, nao, nielslange, peiraisotta, piermario, rmartinezduque, santanainniss. View the full article

This month we feature Huanyi (Eric) Chuang, a front end developer from Taiwan, who helps connect local groups to WordPress and the worldwide open source community. He is part of the team helping to make the first WordCamp Asia a success in 2023. The People of WordPress series shares some of the inspiring stories of how people’s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global network of contributors. Discovering WordPress and the benefit of child themes Huanyi’s first footsteps in WordPress began in 2017 when he worked for a firm that built blogs and developed ad content for clients. After building a few sites using the platform, he discovered child themes and through them opened up a world of possibilities for his clients. To this day, he uses child themes to deliver truly custom designs and functionality for clients. Later in his career, Huanyi moved into digital marketing, integrating sites with massive ad platforms like Google and Facebook. This led him to learn to work with tracking code and JavaScript. He also began his learning journey in HTML, CSS, and PHP, to be able to improve his development skills and customize child themes. Meetups bring together software users to learn together Huanyi pictured in Australia during one of his travels meeting a koala bear. When Huanyi had a problem with a client’s site, he looked to WordPress meetups near where he lived in Taipei to help find the solutions. “When I encountered an issue with the custom archive pages, a local meetup announcement showed up on my WordPress dashboard.” Huanyi Chuang At the meetup, he met more experienced WordPress users and developers there, who answered his questions and helped him learn. “When I encountered an issue with the custom archive pages, a local meetup announcement showed up on my WordPress dashboard. That was my original connection with the local community,” Huanyi said. The WordPress community gave Huanyi a chance to connect with people, feed his curiosity about the software, and join a circle of people he could share this interest. At first, he thought meetups were an opportunity to source new clients, and he took his business cards to every event. However, he soon found that these events offered him the opportunity to make friends and share knowledge. From then on, Huanyi started focusing more on what he could give to these events and networks, making new friends, and listening to people. This led him to share as a meetup speaker his own commercial website management experience. The road to WordCamp It was going to his first meetup and then getting involved with WordCamps that changed Huanyi’s whole relationship with WordPress. In 2018, he took the step to help as an organizer, having joined the Taoyuan Meetup in Taiwan. He played several parts across the organizing team, and the welcoming feeling he got in every situation encouraged him to get more involved. He recalls meeting new friends from different fields and other countries, which gave him a great sense of achievement and strengthened his passion for participating in the community. When the team started this meetup, numbers were much lower than in the group in the city of Taipei, but they were not disheartened and gradually grew the local WordPress community. They created a pattern of ‘multiple organizers,’ which spread the workload and grew friendships. “Being connected to and from meetups is the most valuable part of the community. Having these friends makes me gather more information. We share information and benefit from others’ information, and thus we gain more trust in each other. With such credibility, we share more deeply and build deeper relations.” Huanyi Chuang Before the pandemic, the meetup met every month and grew to become the second largest meetup in Taiwan. Huanyi also contributed to the WordPress community as an organizer of WordCamp Taipei 2018 in the speaker team and lead organizer of WordCamp Taiwan 2021. So why should you join the community? According to Huanyi, you will always have something to take home with you. It might be new information or experiences. It might be plugins or theme ideas. But most of all, it is the chance to meet fascinating people and make new friends. Huanyi’s message to other contributors: “Keep participating, and you will find more you can achieve than you expect.” He added that long-term participation will ‘let you feel the humanity behind the project’. Localize: the road ahead for WordPress Huanyi believes WordPress has the power to break down the barriers between designers, project managers, developers, marketers, writers, and publishers. In Taiwan, he said WordPress is ‘a common protocol’ that lets people from all of these disciplines work and communicate together more easily than they ever have before. That is why he works on and encourages others to localize plugins today. He believes localization of the software is the foundation for the extension of the WordPress community as it enables people to ‘Flex their Freedom’ in a language they speak! He has helped to organize online events around previous WordPress Translation Day events. Huanyi said: “I think it’s important to localize WordPress because its very concept of ‘open source’ means that people can access it freely. In another way, free from the monopoly of knowledge and speech. To achieve it, it’s important that people can access it with their own language. “Localization is the foundation of the extension of WordPress community because it helps people using different languages to access the project and lowers the hurdle to understand how things work.” Share the stories Help share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series. Contributors Thank you to @no249a002 for sharing his adventures in WordPress. Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), Mary Baum (@marybaum), Meher Bala (@meher), Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann), Surendra Thakor (@sthakor), Adeeb Malik (@adeebmalik) for research, interviews, and contributing to this feature article. The People of WordPress series thanks Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support. This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. #HeroPress View the full article

In the forty-fourth episode of the WordPress Briefing, our host Josepha Haden Chomphosy highlights the role of major and minor releases in the WordPress open source project. Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Santana Inniss Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod References Twelfth Man State of the Word 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 00:00:27] At the top of November, a new major release for WordPress shipped. That was WordPress 6.1. I know I talked about it basically nonstop. Then two weeks later, there was a new minor release for WordPress. It was WordPress 6.1.1, which I did not talk about at all. Way back in episode four of this podcast, I dug into the overall release cycle and what someone could expect from a high-level logistics aspect. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:05] And today we’re gonna take a quick look at minor releases in particular. Just as a general heads up, I always want to lean into sports metaphors when I’m talking about releases, and I think it’s because of the words major and minor. And so, I’ve done my level best to not include that in any of my explanations today. But I do have one, I do have one that’s a sports thing. So just if you don’t like sports, know that it’s just one little bit and we’ll try to be carefully quick around it together. All right, so minor releases. You may have noticed that I don’t mention minor releases nearly as often as I mention major releases. And yet, most of the time, when we have a major release of WordPress, there’s a minor release that gets started almost immediately after. So first major versus minor. Major releases in WordPress happen roughly three times a year, give or take a release. Inside a major release, you will find that we include features, so– brand new abilities, enhancements, which you can generally call improvements to existing abilities, and also any bug fix that we can find, big or small, we’ll take ’em all. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:16] So minor releases in WordPress happen about four or five times a year on average. Minor releases include patches for issues introduced in the major release and any bug fix that doesn’t add or change functionality. If you’re with me so far, you probably have noted that there’s basically always at least one minor release per major release. And you might have also noted that I said minors include patches for issues we introduced in a major. Now, if I were hearing this with fresh ears, the first thing I would wonder is, okay, so if you start working on the minor right after you release the major to deal with issues you know you introduced in the major– why just not ship the major while there are bugs in it? Great question. I’m glad you asked. So there are a few things worth knowing here. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:09] Firstly, there is this concept of “ship and iterate,” which is present in both agile and open source. The idea is that we ship software as soon as we have confidence that what is in the release is non-breaking and represents our best guests at a better experience for our users. Once that is out there, we use feedback on the initial release to quickly iterate and ship another release. That way, we don’t hold back any good features. And since we already planned the immediate minor, any major issues that show up can be fixed in as little as two weeks. Secondly, there is the concept that with many eyes, all bugs are shallow, which is primarily present in open source. The idea here is that with enough people looking at a problem, that problem doesn’t stand a chance. So when a release is shipped in a workable state but with interactions that could use some refinement, the fastest way to find those refinements is to take it to the community of WordPress users and developers and invite them to co-create this CMS with us. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:10] Which touches on my final thought. The concept of the user as co-creator. If we think about the development and evolution of our software as a team effort, then we can think of the people who use our software as what’s called the “Twelfth Man” That’s in quotes, and I will, I’ll leave a link to that in the show notes as well. In sports, this refers to the fans. And if you’ve ever been to a live sporting event or played in any, you will know that the cheering and jeering from fans turns into this distinct motivating entity all its own. As a whole team or individual member, you know what you have to do. You know what you need to do in a game, but there’s something about that chaotic, loud roar of feedback that just brings life to what you’re doing, and that’s how I see our community of users. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:02] So at the end of the day, the answer to the question of ‘why so many releases’ and the follow-up question of ‘why tolerate stable imperfection’ is largely the same. To get features into the hands of our users quickly so that we can always be breathing life into this CMS we care so much about. I hope that answers your questions about our release cadence, and if you didn’t come into this podcast having any questions about release cadences at all, I hope this new information brings a little extra light to the complexity of working in open source. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:32] That brings us now to our small list of big things. Big thing number one is that the State of the Word has been announced and is scheduled for December 15th. It’s a little earlier in the day than in past iterations, so I hope we get a new crew of listeners tuning in at the same time. I’ll leave a link to that in the show notes, or you can pop over to wordpress.org/news to see the announcement for yourself. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00] Big thing number two is that team rep nominations are open on most teams right now. So if organization and people wrangling are high on your list of ways you can give back to WordPress, head on over to the team you contribute to and see how you raise your hand for that. Then big thing number three is that big-picture goals, hopes, and timelines are being gathered, and I will ship those shortly after the start of the new year. It will give us all an idea of where we want to focus our attention to ensure that WordPress continues to grow toward the future. You can keep an eye out for that on make.wordpress.org/project. And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. View the full article

With the end of the year fast approaching, the WordPress project has not slowed down. Read on to learn more about the latest major release, WordPress 6.1, and the State of the Word 2022 live event, among other exciting news. It’s time to catch up on all things WordPress! Say hello to WordPress 6.1 “Misha” The third and last major release of 2022, WordPress 6.1 “Misha,” shipped on November 1, 2022. Named after jazz pianist Mikhail “Misha” Alperin, this release comes packed with many improvements that refine the site-building experience introduced earlier this year in WordPress 5.9 and 6.0, as well as accessibility and performance upgrades. WordPress 6.1 is also bundled with a new default block theme, Twenty Twenty-Three (TT3), that features 10 style variations designed by WordPress community members. These intentionally unique designs ensure that you can change the visual details of your site with ease—and within a single theme. Learn more about what’s in 6.1: WordPress 6.1 “Misha” Announcement WordPress 6.1 Field Guide Following WordPress 6.1 “Misha”, a 6.1.1 maintenance release landed on November 15, 2022. This minor release includes about 50 bug fixes. Download WordPress 6.1.1 State of the Word 2022 is coming on December 15 State of the Word 2022, the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, will be held on December 15, 2022. The event will take place in person in New York City and live-streamed via various WordPress.org social media platforms. You can also host or join a State of the Word watch party to enjoy the event with your WordPress friends. Learn more about State of the Word 2022 What’s new in Gutenberg Two new versions of Gutenberg have shipped in the last month: Gutenberg 14.4 was released on October 26, 2022, with support for a distraction-free mode that allows a more focused writing experience. Other notable highlights include a redesigned pattern inserter, content locking to the Navigation block, and improvements to fluid typography. Gutenberg 14.5 sets the groundwork for future releases with code quality improvements and bug fixes. This version introduces a new “Document Overview” panel for easier access to the list view and document information, expands margin and padding support, and improves spacing visualizers. It was released on November 9, 2022. Explore some of the latest enhancements to the writing experience in this Core Editor Improvement post. Team updates: Documentation Contributor Day, WordPress.org redesign updates, and more After a lively discussion around the site editing terminology, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced that the term “Site Editor” will be used going forward in reference to the suite of site editing tools. Last month, the Docs Team successfully held its first online Contributor Day to collaborate in real-time, help onboard new contributors, and work on backlog tasks. Progress and next steps for the WordPress.org website redesign were shared in this post. The following pages that will get a refreshed look and feel soon include Showcase and Documentation (HelpHub). The WordPress.org Theme Directory introduced a new feature that allows visitors to preview style variations in block themes. Inspired by the Community Team’s efforts to reactivate meetup groups, the Polyglots Team is looking to start a Polyglots outreach project and welcomes help. The Training Team shared an overview of some of the new Learn WordPress courses they have been recently working on. Openverse’s catalog now includes more than one million audio records! The WordPress Photo Directory also reached a significant milestone by surpassing 5,000 photos! Check out this celebratory retrospective from the Photos team. Speaking of Openverse and the Photo Directory, don’t miss the latest episode of the WP Briefing podcast—it covers the differences between these two resources, and how they work to further openly-licensed media. The latest edition of People of WordPress features Raghavendra Satish Peri. Enjoy a spooky Halloween Mad Libs story completed by community contributors in Episode 42 of WP Briefing. Feedback & testing requests The Plugin Dependencies feature plugin is available for testing. Provide your feedback by December 1, 2022. What does a genuinely sustainable WordPress community look like to you? Share your vision and thoughts in this discussion post. The new WordPress developer blog is in public beta and ready for feedback. The Core Team requests assistance with testing a new Rollback Feature in WordPress core. Version 21.2 of the WordPress mobile app for Android and iOS is available for testing. Were you involved in WordPress 6.1? Share your thoughts on the release process by December 15, 2022. Event updates & WordCamps The WordCamp Asia organizing team is collaborating with WordCamp Central to bring the WordCamp Asia Diversity Scholarship. In addition, the team recently announced the first round of speakers. Preparations for WordCamp Europe 2023 are underway. Don’t miss these upcoming WordCamps: WordCamp São Paulo, Brazil on November 26, 2022 WordCamp Kolkata, West Bengal, India on December 17-18, 2022 Boost your speaking confidence in WordPress events. Register for the How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events online workshop happening December 7, 2022. Have a story that we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form to let us know. The following folks contributed to this edition of The Month in WordPress: @rmartinezduque, @webcommsat, @santanainniss, @dansoschin, @eidolonnight. View the full article

Hello, WordPress! Mark your calendars; it’s almost time for State of the Word 2022! State of the Word is the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg. Every year, the event shares reflections on the project’s progress and the future of open source. Expect this and more in this year’s edition. This year’s event will take place in person in New York City and live-streamed via various WordPress.org social media platforms. Join Matt as he provides a retrospective of 2022, the latest WordPress releases, Site Editor advancements, and a return to in-person events around the globe, among other topics. What: State of the Word 2022 When: December 15, 2022, 1–2:30 P.M. EST (18–19:30 UTC) How: If you’re watching from the comfort of your home or local watch party, the live stream will be embedded in this post and available through the WordPress YouTube channel. Would you like to join the in-person audience? Request a seat by completing this survey. Have a question for Matt? State of the Word will include a Q&A 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 live stream chat on YouTube. Given the volume of questions that are usually submitted, please note that it may not be possible to answer all of them in the live Q&A. A follow-up post will be published after the State of the Word to answer those not covered at the event. First time attending State of the Word? Check out previous years’ recordings on WordPress.tv to get a sense of the event. See you in person or online on December 15! Join a State of the Word Watch Party near You Can’t make it to New York? No problem, organize or join a watch party in your community in person or online. Like last year, the Community team has resources available to help! Check out this handbook page, which includes event templates, information on requesting a Zoom account, and how to get some swag. Gather together to look back on how WordPress has grown in 2022 and what is ahead for 2023. Stay up-to-date as a group on the latest happenings in the WordPress world and collaborate together on any questions you might have for Matt! We will be compiling a list of State of the Word watch parties in this post, which will be updated regularly as the event approaches. If you don’t see a watch party in your region listed here in the next few weeks, check this page on Meetup.com to see if your local WordPress group is organizing one. If you are planning a watch party for State of the Word and have questions, please email support@wordcamp.org. A member of the WordPress community team will assist you in the best way possible. View the full article

WordPress 6.1.1 is now available This minor release features 29 bug fixes in Core and 21 bug fixes for the block editor. WordPress 6.1.1 is a short-cycle maintenance release. You can review a summary of the key updates in this release by reading the RC1 announcement. The next major release will be version 6.2 planned for 2023. If you have sites that support automatic background updates, the update process will begin automatically. You can download WordPress 6.1.1 from WordPress.org, or visit your WordPress Dashboard, click “Updates”, and then click “Update Now”. For more information, check out the version 6.1.1 HelpHub documentation page. Thank you to these WordPress contributors The WordPress 6.1.1 release was led by @desrosj, @mamaduka, and @jeffpaul. WordPress 6.1.1 would not have been possible without the contributions of more than 105 people. Their asynchronous coordination to deliver several enhancements and fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community. 10upsimon, Aaron Jorbin, Aaron Robertshaw, Adam Silverstein, Aki Hamano, alexstine, Andrei Draganescu, Andrew Ozz, Andrew Serong, Andre, Andy Fragen, Ari Stathopoulos, azurseisme, Ben Dwyer, Bernie Reiter, Bethany Chobanian Lang, Birgit Pauli-Haack, bjorn2404, Carlos Bravo, Carolina Nymark, Clayton Collie, codesdnc, Colin Stewart, Daniel Richards, David Baumwald, David Smith, David Vongries, Dilip Bheda, Dion Hulse, Dominik Schilling, Ella, Eugene M, Felix Arntz, fpodhorsky, franzaurus, gamecreature, Gary Pendergast, George Mamadashvili, gisgeo, glendaviesnz, Innovext, ironprogrammer, Isabel Brison, James, Jan Thiel, Javier Carazo, Jb Audras, jchambo, jeffpaul, joelmadigan, Joen A., John Blackbourn, John Watkins, Jonathan Desrosiers, Jonny Harris, jsh4, Juliette Reinders Folmer, K. Adam White, kacper3355, Kai Hao, Konstantin Obenland, konyoldeath, larsmqller, Lena Morita, Leo Milo, lozula, Marco Ciampini, Marin Atanasov, Marius L. J., Matt Keys, Michal Czaplinski, Miguel Axcar, Miguel Fonseca, Mukesh Panchal, mw108, Namith Jawahar, Nick Diego, Nik Tsekouras, Nithin SreeRaj, nuvoPoint, oakesjosh, ockham, Oliver Juhas, Pascal Birchler, Paul Biron, Peter Wilson, petitphp, pkolenbr, pypwalters, ramonopoly, Riad Benguella, rjasdfiii, Robert Anderson, rodricus, Ryan Kienstra, Sarah Norris, Sergey Biryukov, stentibbing, Stephen Bernhardt, Subrata Sarkar, Sybre Waaijer, Timi Wahalahti, Timothy Jacobs, Tonya Mork, Torsten Landsiedel, and vtad. How to contribute To get involved in WordPress core development, head over to Trac, pick a ticket, and join the conversation in the #core and #6-1-release-leads channels. Need help? Check out the Core Contributor Handbook. View the full article

In the forty-third episode of the WordPress Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy explores two resources for openly licensed media in the WordPress project– Openverse and Photo Directory– and how they differ from one another! Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to wpbriefing@wordpress.org, either written or as a voice recording. Credits Editor: Dustin Hartzler Logo: Javier Arce Production: Santana Inniss Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod References Photo Directory Make Page Submit a Photo to the Photo Directory Openverse Make Page Openverse Call for Contributions: Block Editor Integration Download WordPress 6.1 Docs Team Contributor Day Recap Post Hallway Hangout Block Themes (Video) 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 00:00:00] About 18 months ago, the Openverse project became part of the WordPress open source project, and at roughly the same time, we also welcomed the Photo Directory. Since that time, we’ve seen growth in teams supporting both of these initiatives. But if you’re not involved in the day-to-day, it can be hard to know how those two things fit together or if they fit together at all. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:01:00] Today, let’s take a brief tour of those two projects and why they came to be. In my timeline, work on the Photo Directory started before the work on Openverse, so that’s where we’ll start. For as long as I can remember, the WordPress community has raised the need for WordPress-first ways to have and host GPL-compatible photos for use in themes, site builds, and marketing efforts as a whole. As recently as 2016, that was still coming up as a question at various flagship events and among the career photographers that contribute their time to WordPress. So in 2017 and 2018, as attention started to turn toward rebuilding the CMS using blocks, it dropped down the list of priority items. But it never really went away as a thing that people were hoping we could do for the project as a whole. So in 2019, it was becoming clear that having open source-first tools of all varieties for people whose businesses were built on our software would help broaden the availability of the open source freedoms we believe in. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:02:00] This began the work on the Photo Directory with the intention of providing a GPL-friendly, community-driven repository of images. It has since launched, and we have photos in it now. We have a whole team around it. It’s wonderful. But that is how that all kind of came to be. Openverse, on the other hand, was launched as CC Search in 2019 with the laudable mandate to increase the discoverability and accessibility of open access media. Late in 2020, while work on the Photo Directory was underway, Matt shared with me that the team was looking for a new project home. When I first met with them, they shared an overview of the product, which they shorthanded as an open source search engine that searches openly licensed images. We were working on a repo of openly licensed images, so clearly, this was all written in the stars. And so you might be asking yourself at this point, great, how does it work together? I think for most of us, the timeline there kind of covers the question of what is the difference between these two things. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:03:00] But because I never know which of you will want to strike up a conversation about open source on an elevator, I’ve also got the elevator pitch version. Openverse is an open source search engine that searches, indexes, and aggregates copy left media from across the web using sources such as WordPress’s Photo Directory, Flickr’s CC Tagged Media, and Wikimedia, to name just a few. Another key difference between the Photo Directory and Openverse is that in order to contribute to the Photo Directory, now that it’s all built, that’s mostly done by submitting photos or reviewing photos. So you don’t really need to be a developer to join in. Openverse is not only a developer-centric contribution opportunity, but it also uses a different tech stack than WordPress as a whole. So it’s a good place for folks to go if they’re looking to broaden their horizons. So that’s your elevator pitch of what Openverse is and how it uses the Photo Directory. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:04:00] You have a couple of ways that you can get involved with these two projects. For the Photo Directory, as I mentioned at the start, you can always contribute photos, and they could always use more photo contributions. I’ll include a link to the submission guidelines in the show notes below, and as I mentioned, it is a no-code way to give back to the WordPress project. So no code, development environments, and testing skills are required. The Photo Directory team also could always use more contributors to help with the moderating of photo submissions. And so I’ll link to their making WordPress page in the show notes as well so that you can get started there. And as I mentioned before, Openverse is an aggregator, so it doesn’t host any media itself, but it is always accepting suggestions for new GPL-compatible media providers. I’ll link the area where you can leave suggestions in the show notes as well. And if you are more code inclined, there’s an open issue for adding Openverse browsing to the block editor right now. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:00] So I’ll link that issue in the show notes in case you thought to yourself, gosh, that sounds like my most favorite thing to do. That is where you can go. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:05:12] This leads us now to our small list of big things. In case you missed it, WordPress 6.1 is now available. It launched on November 1st. Late, late, late in the day, and so it was easy to miss if you’re used to seeing it at a particular time. We were about six hours later than usual. But if you go to wordpress.org/download, you can get your own copy there. The second thing on our small list of big things is that the Docs team had a contributor day. It was excellent. There’s a recap post up. I will include that in the show notes. And then the final thing is that there was a recent hallway hangout that talked about the site editor and block themes. [Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:06:00] The video for that is also published. I will also share that in our show notes. And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. View the full article

This post was written in collaboration with Lauren Stein (@laurlittle) and Anne McCarthy @annezazu). Twenty Twenty-Three is here, alongside WordPress 6.1! The new default theme offers a clean, blank canvas bundled with a collection of style variations. Style variations are predefined design options that give you the opportunity to alter the appearance of your site without having to change your theme. This means that you can keep your template structure but change the visual details of your site with ease. For a truly diverse collection, Twenty Twenty-Three’s featured style variations were submitted by members of the WordPress community, resulting in 38 submissions from 19 people in 8 different countries. From those submissions, a curated collection of ten was chosen and bundled with the new theme. This approach to style variations ushers in the next generation of block themes, able to harness the potential of the platform’s latest design capabilities and tools directly in the Site Editor. Since style variations don’t require any code experience, you’re encouraged to tweak and/or create your own. Thank you to everyone who contributed. Useful links: Download Twenty Twenty-Three Twenty Twenty-Three Documentation Twenty Twenty-Three Project Kick Off Twenty Twenty-Three Selected Style Variations View the full article

Welcome to “Misha” Say hello to WordPress 6.1, “Misha,” inspired by the life and work of Soviet-Norwegian jazz pianist Mikhail “Misha” Alperin. Misha introduced the work of jazz ensembles in the USSR and globally. He is also celebrated as a founding member of the Moscow Art Trio. “Misha” further refines the site-building experience. Inside WordPress 6.1 you’ll interact with enhancements that continue to make site creation more intuitive while pushing your creative boundaries further than ever. Don’t forget to enjoy some of Misha’s jazz piano as you take in all WordPress 6.1 has to offer. The third major release of 2022 is here. Download it now! As of the time of this release, WordPress powers 43% of websites worldwide. Site owners and administrators should upgrade today to take full advantage of the many stability, performance, and usability enhancements. Furthermore, WordPress content creators will enjoy a suite of new features geared toward improving the writing and designing experiences. This release includes features that many in the WordPress Community have been most excited about since the start of this project. Additional enhancements and improvements to the editor give site owners more control and easier customization while offering a more cohesive experience to users. A lot of writing-focused improvements are included in the release, because if you’re giving voices to the voiceless you’ve got to focus on folks writing the copy. Some of my favorite enhancements are the refined ability to select partial paragraphs in a block; settings to keep list view open by default; and the keyboard shortcut to add internal links expanded to all blocks. Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director Download WordPress 6.1 What’s Inside Twenty Twenty-Three: A fresh default theme with 10 distinct style variations After introducing foundational elements for block themes and style variations in releases 5.9 and 6.0, WordPress site builders welcome a new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Three, that is powered by 10 different styles and tagged as “Accessibility Ready.” These intentionally unique styles ensure users can apply a different look and feel to their site with a single click—all within a single theme. New templates for an improved creator experience New and more refined templates now give site builders more control over the creation of their sites. In this suite of new templates, find a custom template for posts & pages in the Site Editor. Create and edit template parts like headers and footers more quickly with a new search-and-replace tool and easily view your new site. Design tools for more consistency and control Thoughtful upgrades to the controls for design elements and blocks make laying out and building your new site a more consistent, complete, and intuitive experience. Manage menus with ease New fallback options in the navigation block mean you can edit the menu that’s open; no searching needed. Plus, the controls for choosing and working on menus have their own place in the block settings. The mobile menu system also gets an upgrade with new features, including different icon options, to make the menu yours. Cleaner layouts and document settings visualization View and manage post and page settings with a better-organized display improving the use of features like template picker and scheduler. One-click lock setting for all inner blocks When locking blocks, a new toggle lets you apply your lock settings to all the blocks in a containing block like the group, cover, and column blocks. Improved block placeholders Various blocks have improved placeholders that reflect customization options to help you design your site and its content. For example, the Image block placeholder displays custom borders and duotone filters even before selecting an image. Compose richer lists and quotes with inner blocks The List and Quote blocks now support inner blocks, allowing for more flexible and rich compositions like adding headings inside your Quote blocks. More responsive text with fluid typography Fluid typography lets you define font sizes that adapt for easy reading in any screen size. Add starter patterns to any post type In WordPress 6.0, when you created a new page, you would see suggested patterns so you did not have to start with a blank page. In 6.1, you will also see the starter patterns modal when you create a new instance of any post type. Find block themes faster The Themes Directory has a filter for block themes, and a pattern preview gives a better sense of what the theme might look like while exploring different themes and patterns. Keep your Site Editor settings for later Site Editor settings are now persistent for each user. This means your settings will now be consistent across browsers and devices. A streamlined style system The CSS rules for margin, padding, typography, colors, and borders within the styles engine are now all in one place, reducing time spent on layout-specific tasks and helps to generate semantic class names. Updated interface options and features Updates include styling elements like buttons, citations, and links globally; controlling hover, active, and focus states for links using theme.json (not available to control in the interface yet); and customizing outline support for blocks and elements, among other features. Continued evolution of layout options The default content dimensions provided by themes can now be overridden in the Styles Sidebar, giving site builders better control over full-width content. Developers have fine-grained control over these controls. Block Template parts in classic themes Block template parts can now be defined in classic themes by adding the appropriate HTML files `parts` directory at the root of the theme. Expanded support for Query Loop blocks New filters let Query Block variations support custom queries for more powerful variations and advanced hierarchical post types filtering options. Filters for all your styles Leverage filters in the Styles sidebar to control settings at all four levels of your site—core, theme, user, or block, from less to more specific. Spacing presets for faster, consistent design Save time and avoid hard-coding values into a theme with preset margin and padding values for multiple blocks. Content-only editing support for container blocks Thanks to content-only editing settings, layouts can be locked within container blocks. In a content-only block, its children are invisible to the List View and entirely uneditable. So you control the layout while your writers can focus on the content. Combine it with block-locking options for even more advanced control over your blocks. Other notes of interest 6.1 includes a new time-to-read feature showing content authors the approximate time-to-read values for pages, posts, and custom post types. The site tagline is empty by default in new sites but can be modified in General Settings. A new modal design offers a background blur effect, making it easier to focus on the task at hand. Enhancing WordPress 6.1 Accessibility Accessibility is an integral part of the WordPress mission of fostering an inclusive community and supporting users of all types around the world. With this in mind, WordPress 6.1 includes nearly 60 updates specifically focused on enhancing the accessibility of the platform. Read these updates to learn more about the continual initiatives aimed at improving accessibility. Improved Performance in WordPress 6.1 WordPress 6.1 resolves more than 25 tickets dedicated to enhancing performance with improvements for every type of site. A full breakdown can be found in the Performance Field Guide. Learn More About WordPress 6.1 See WordPress 6.1 in action! Watch a brief overview video highlighting some of the major features debuting in WordPress 6.1. Explore learn.wordpress.org for brief how-to videos and lots more on new features in WordPress. Or join a live interactive online workshop on a specific WordPress topic. Developers can explore the WordPress 6.1 Field Guide, complete with detailed developer notes to help you build with and extend WordPress. Read the WordPress 6.1 Release Notes for more information on the included enhancements and issues fixed, installation information, developer notes and resources, release contributors, and the list of file changes in this release. The WordPress 6.1 Release Squad The group listed below tirelessly supported the release, from conception to ship date, and beyond: Release Lead: Matt Mullenweg Release Coordinators: Héctor Prieto and Jonathan Desrosiers Core Tech Co-Leads: Mike Schroder, David Baumwald, and Jeff Paul Editor Tech Co-Leads: Michal Czaplinski, Bernie Reiter, and Carlos Bravo Core Triage Co-Leads: JB Audras and Ahmed Chaion Editor Triage Co-Leads: Nick Diego and Anne McCarthy Documentation Co-Leads: Birgit Pauli-Haack, Milana Cap, and Femy Praseeth Marketing & Communications Co-Leads: Jonathan Pantani and Dan Soschin Test Lead: Brian Alexander Design Lead: Rich Tabor Default Theme Co-Leads: Beatriz Fialho & Sarah Norris Thank you to all the contributors who dedicated time and energy to bring the best WordPress experience to everyone. Josepha Haden Chomphosy 1naveengiri · Aaron D. 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Their asynchronous coordination to deliver hundreds of enhancements and fixes into a stable release is a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community. Haiku Fun for 6.1 Another release, Mark it down as completed. Breathe, relax, and cheers! View the full article

This month, as WordPress Accessibility Day approaches, we feature Raghavendra Satish Peri, a blogger turned digital entrepreneur based in India, specializing in web accessibility and digital marketing. The People of WordPress series shares inspiring stories of how people’s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global network of contributors. Raghavendra speaking at a blogger event, 2015 Expressing myself through WordPress Raghavendra Satish Peri says WordPress is more than a way to succeed online. It’s a community that has always answered his questions and helped him learn, and has enabled his voice to be heard across the world. These are motivating benefits for Raghavendra, who has a vision impairment that introduces challenges to many of the things he wants to do. The WordPress community has helped him make some of his dreams come true. After chatting with others at WordPress events, about his wish to go trekking and running, he found he was later contacted by people in the community went with him to do just that. Raghavendra training for a marathon in 2013 He also found WordPress events a way to raise the importance of accessibility issues, share tips, and connect local communities so they can collaborate on items both within and outside WordPress. Life growing up with an enabling family A key asset for Raghavendra has been the support of his family as he coped with his progressive blindness. His sister took charge of teaching him important social and life skills, so he could navigate his country’s rigorous education system. Those were the early days of technology everywhere, and nobody much was thinking about using it in education and day-to-day life. When Raghavendra got his first computer, in 2004, it was a revelation. His sister taught him to use the internet efficiently, and he taught himself a few basics of programming. Soon he was spending 10 to 12 hours a day exploring the online world and learning about the web. Discovering WordPress and blogging In 2006, he learned basic web design and began to sell website templates. His growing interest in search engines and content led him to WordPress. As the years progressed, his eyesight deteriorated. He had to relearn his skills and acquire new ones to compensate. When he could no longer see the computer screen, he learnt to use screen readers. At that point there was a gap: he had the same business skills, but he couldn’t apply them as effectively until he got comfortable with using screen readers. Raghavendra speaking at an event in Bengalaru, India in 2014 To help achieve that, Raghavendra moved to Bengalaru, where he got a full education in screen-reader technology and took a job as a consultant in digital accessibility. He recalls learning from that time that, in his words: “Some things are important, but one needs to let them go so that more important things can take the new space.” During his stay in Bengaluru, he stumbled on the idea of blogging and audiobooks. On his 23rd birthday, he had two firsts: registering a domain and publishing a blog post. At first he wrote about things happening in his daily life, which initially got low responses. But when he started attending blogging and tech meetups, he received encouragement from fellow bloggers who complimented him on his writing style. Using WordPress to publish his story, Raghavendra found a love for writing and this made him want to learn and understand WordPress much better. “Writing freed my mind and soul from the pain and sorrow; it takes a person into a Zen state where one can understand their soul once they see their own thoughts on paper.” Raghavendra Satish Peri There were still some ongoing challenges arising from his difficulties with seeing. For example, Raghavendra found coding was made more complicated. But he took it slowly, and he improved steadily. He started as many WordPressers do, installing themes and plugins, and making minor changes to the code. Ultimately, he moved all of his sites to WordPress, and as he learned more about WordPress, he could help his friends and family more with their projects. After just a few years, Raghavendra had the skills and the confidence to build just about anything in WordPress, progressing from simple to complex websites. Today Raghavendra is a successful entrepreneur. He sees his life as full of promise. WordPress still helps him grow every day, professionally and personally. “There is always hope for tomorrow! Do not look for the light at the end of the tunnel, embrace the darkness, listen to the quietness, and feel the airflow. You will know that light is ahead even before you see it.” Raghavendra Satish Peri Contribute to accessibility and WordPress Another thing Raghavendra has in common with many WordPressers is his enthusiasm and involvement in the community. As he has learnt more about the software, he felt he needed to be involved with improving accessibility too. He started to help organize local meetups and conferences and encourages others to give time and skills to contribute too. 2016, Raghavendra speaking at WordCamp Mumbai He follows software development closely, especially where WordPress meets accessibility. In 2020, on learning about a global WordPress Accessibility event, he applied and became a speaker. His topic was Gutenberg Accessibility, A Screen Reader User’s Perspective. His interest continued as a result of this event, and he wanted to be part of growing its audience and impact, initially through joining its dedicated channel on Slack. Eventually, he joined the organizing team for future events. Helping run WordPress events brought together all of Raghavendra’s existing skills. It taught him a lot about what it takes to make an event truly inclusive, from captions and sign language to media players and more. As his involvement has grown, Raghavendra has found it has become easier to source and use resources that make events and presentations more accessible. But knows there’s always more that can be learnt in this area, and encourages others to use understanding from events like the Accessibility Days in their conferences. Join the global WordPress Accessibility Day 2022 online on November 2-3, 2022. It’s free to register! Sharing learning on accessibility can be a motivator In 2021, Raghavendra underwent his most challenging event to date, when he had a kidney transplant. To motivate himself, he started a website that focuses on accessibility and inclusive design. This prompted him to start an accessibility community to help fill the gaps in accessibility knowledge. Today, it is one of India’s largest online accessibility communities, educating developers and designers and training people with disabilities to build a career in accessibility testing. Raghavendra after his organ transplant in 2021 Raghavendra is also a keen user of the WordPress Gutenberg editor and builds all his websites using it. Though content creation and editing can still pose him difficulties, he finds the front end of the Gutenberg blocks very accessible. He believes in participating in the software to make it a better experience for all. “I decided to live my life to the fullest and make my mark on the world. This thought keeps me motivated.” Raghavendra Satish Peri After a successful transplant, he lives a disciplined life with a few restrictions. He continues to enjoy working in-depth in disability, accessibility, and inclusion spaces. Rajhavendra hopes others will join with him and the thousands of other people who collaborate to make a difference. Share the stories Help share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series. Thank you to Raghavendra Satish Peri (@tarkham) for sharing his experiences for this latest edition. Contributors Thanks to Meher Bala (@meher), Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) and Surendra Thakor (@sthakor) for interviews and writing this feature, to Mary Baum (@marybaum), Chloe Bringmann (@cbringmann), and Larissa Murillo (@lmurillom) for reviews. The People of WordPress series thanks Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support. This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. #HeroPress View the full article