a:4:{s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:3:"rss";a:1:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:3:"


";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:7:"version";s:3:"2.0";}}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:7:"channel";a:1:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:61:"
	
	
	
	




















































";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16:"WordPress Planet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:8:"language";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2:"en";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:47:"WordPress Planet - http://planet.wordpress.org/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"item";a:50:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"WPTavern: State of Digital Publishing to Host WordPress Publishers Performance Summit, July 27, 2023";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146752";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:109:"https://wptavern.com/state-of-digital-publishing-to-host-wordpress-publishers-performance-summit-july-27-2023";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2114:"<p>The <a href="https://www.stateofdigitalpublishing.com/">State of Digital Publishing</a>, a startup market research publisher focused on digital media, is hosting an online event called <a href="https://www.stateofdigitalpublishing.com/wpps/">WordPress Publishers Performance Summit</a> (WPPS) on July 27, starting at 2PM EST. The organization&#8217;s mission is to help publishers develop sustainable business models through education, guides, online courses, and other resources. They have partnered with <a href="https://www.multidots.com/">Multidots</a>, a WordPress development agency and WordPress.com VIP Gold Partner, who is sponsoring the event.</p>



<p>WPPS will feature 10 panelists speaking on best practices for managing and optimizing the performance of WordPress publishing sites. Panelists have been selected from high performance teams at The Boston Globe, Forbes, Multidots, WordPress.com VIP, Parse.ly, and other publishers. </p>



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<img />



<p>The schedule includes four 40-minute sessions over the span of four hours: </p>



<ul>
<li>How to do less: evaluate your website’s performance and metrics</li>



<li>Reasons why your Core Web Vitals are not passing</li>



<li>Successfully securing and scaling WordPress</li>



<li>Improving publishing workflow &#8211; the threats and opportunities ahead</li>
</ul>



<p>These sessions will be aimed at editorial and content strategists, SEO specialists, ad tech and integration professionals, and others working in the publishing industry.</p>



<p><a href="https://www.stateofdigitalpublishing.com/wpps/">WPPS</a> is free and attendees can register on the event&#8217;s website. Unlike many other virtual events, the organizers do not plan to record the sessions so those who are interested will need to watch them live. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and have them answered by the panel. Those who are unable to attend live can sign up on the website to receive an ebook with the panelists&#8217; recommended WordPress best practices that were shared at the event.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 12 Jul 2023 00:57:10 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:1;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"WPTavern: WordPress 6.3 Makes the “Edit Site” Link Open the Current Template";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146740";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-makes-the-edit-site-link-open-the-current-template";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2758:"<p>WordPress 6.3 will make site editing several clicks faster for users who are moving from the frontend to edit the corresponding template. When you click the &#8220;Edit Site&#8221; link in the admin bar from a category page, for example, you currently get dumped out into the Site Editor on the home page. From here it&#8217;s several clicks more to get to the template you intended to edit. The upcoming release changes it so that <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/56209">the &#8220;Edit Site&#8221; link is aware of the current template</a>.</p>



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<img />



<p>WordPress developer <a href="https://www.briancoords.com/">Brian Coords</a> pointed out the fix on Twitter today. It&#8217;s a delightful bit of good news for anyone who works regularly with the Site Editor and becomes annoyed by how long it takes to click through to the applicable template. WordPress is now more context aware, delivering site editors to the correct template directly from the admin bar.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Excited about this feature coming in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WordPress?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WordPress</a> 6.3: <br />The "Edit Site" link will now send you to edit the actual template you're looking at instead of always going to the home page. <a href="https://t.co/ztwMrDkSZC">https://t.co/ztwMrDkSZC</a></p>&mdash; Brian Coords (@briancoords) <a href="https://twitter.com/briancoords/status/1678760162017042435?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 11, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>The update applies to posts, pages, archives, 404 templates, front page, and anywhere the user happens to be on the frontend. Check out the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/37850">Gutenberg issue</a> and the related <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58746">WordPress Trac ticket</a> for more technical details on how contributors arrived at this implementation.</p>



<p>This small fix is important because it removes the requirement for the user to have to know the name of the template they intend to edit. It&#8217;s now as easy as clicking directly from the frontend. The more WordPress can reduce friction and the need to have special knowledge in order to edit templates, the more accessible it becomes as a design tool for someone who is just starting out and has no framework for the idea of underlying templates.</p>



<p>WordPress 6.3 is on track to be released with this fix on August 8, 2023. <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/07/wordpress-6-3-beta-4/">Beta 4 landed today</a> with 40+ (Editor) and 60+ (Trac) updates since Beta 3, and RC 1 is expected next week.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 11 Jul 2023 21:59:20 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:2;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:40:"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.3 Beta 4";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=15386";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/07/wordpress-6-3-beta-4/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5669:"<p>WordPress 6.3 Beta 4 is ready for download and testing.</p>



<p><strong>This version of the WordPress software is under development.</strong> <strong>Please do not install, run, or test this version on production or mission-critical websites.</strong> Instead, you should evaluate Beta 4 on a test server and site.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Get an overview of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-3/">6.3 release cycle</a>, check the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/6-3/">6.3-related posts</a>, and review the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/">new features in WordPress 6.3</a>. Also, save the date for a live product demo scheduled for Thursday, July 20, 2023, at 16:00 UTC (<a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88141234315?pwd=TE1Odk5Wd0hiVlNYWHB5Q2xCYkhSZz09">Zoom link</a>). This will be a great opportunity to join the WordPress community to celebrate the accomplishments of 6.3 and this final chapter of <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/04/phase-2-finale/">Phase 2</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Beta 4 highlights</strong></h2>



<p>Thanks to the many WordPress beta testers, this release contains 40+ (Editor) and 60+ (Trac) updates since the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/07/wordpress-6-3-beta-3/">Beta 3 release</a>. Excellent work, team!</p>



<p>Notable updates for this beta release include:</p>



<ul>
<li>Discontinuing support for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/05/dropping-support-for-php-5/">PHP 5</a>.</li>



<li>4 tickets closed regarding fetchpriority and lazy-loading features related to performance (<a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58680">58680</a>, <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58635">58635</a>, <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58704">58704</a>, <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58681">58681</a>.)</li>
</ul>



<p>Browse the technical details for issues addressed since Beta 3 using these queries:</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.3">GitHub commits for 6.3</a></li>



<li>Closed <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&status=closed&changetime=07%2F03%2F2023..07%2F11%2F2023&milestone=6.3&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id">Trac tickets</a> since July 3</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Test the new features in WordPress 6.3</strong></h2>



<p>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. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is too.&nbsp;</p>



<ul>
<li>Encountered an issue? Please report it to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a> in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">file one on WordPress Trac</a>. You can also check your issue against a list of <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</li>



<li>New to testing? This <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/">detailed guide</a> is a great place to start if you’ve never tested a beta release.</li>



<li>Want to know more about testing releases in general? Follow along with the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/">testing initiatives in Make Core</a> and join the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/">#core-test channel</a> on the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/">Making WordPress Slack</a>.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Vulnerability bounty doubles during the Beta/RC phases</strong></h2>



<p>The monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled between the Beta 1 release and the final release candidate (RC). Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the <a href="https://hackerone.com/wordpress">HackerOne page</a> and in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/security/">security white paper</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Get WordPress 6.3 Beta 4</strong></h2>



<p>You can test WordPress 6.3 Beta 4 in three ways:</p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Option 1:</strong> Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</li>



<li><strong>Option 2: </strong>Direct download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.3-beta4.zip">Beta 4 version (zip)</a>.</li>



<li><strong>Option 3:</strong> Use the following WP-CLI command:<br /><code>wp core update --version=6.3-beta4</code></li>
</ul>



<p>The current target for the final release is <strong>August 8, 2023</strong>, about four weeks away. Your help testing this version ensures everything in this release is the best.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>A Beta 4 Haiku</strong></h2>



<p>Beta ships, once more<br />Up next week, an RC1<br />6, 3, out the door</p>



<p><em>Thank you to the contributors who collaborated on this post: </em><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dansoschin/"><em>@DanSoschin</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/"><em>@Meher</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/eidolonnight/">@eidolonnight</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jpantani/"><em>@JPantani</em></a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 11 Jul 2023 16:39:47 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Dan Soschin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:3;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:105:"Do The Woo Community: Pulling the Curtain Back on WordPress, Woo and AI with Dave Lockie and Dan Walmsley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75556";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:45:"https://dothewoo.io/wordpress-woocommerce-ai/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:409:"<p>Dave and Dan takes you inside of Automattic and their own thoughts around WordPress, WooCommerce and AI.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/wordpress-woocommerce-ai/">Pulling the Curtain Back on WordPress, Woo and AI with Dave Lockie and Dan Walmsley</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 11 Jul 2023 07:48:58 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:4;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:126:"WPTavern: MalCare, Blogvault, and WPRemote Plugins Patch Vulnerabilities Allowing Site Takeover Through Stolen API Credentials";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146708";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:135:"https://wptavern.com/malcare-blogvault-and-wpremote-plugins-patch-vulnerabilities-allowing-site-takeover-through-stolen-api-credentials";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3105:"<p> Snicco, a WordPress security services provider, has <a href="https://snicco.io/vulnerability-disclosure/malcare/site-takeover-through-stolen-api-credentials-in-combination-with-sqli-malcare-5-09">published an advisory</a> on a vulnerability in the MalCare plugin, which is active on more than 300,000 sites. </p>



<p>&#8220;MalCare uses broken cryptography to authenticate API requests from its remote servers to connected WordPress sites,&#8221; WordPress security researcher Calvin Alkan said.</p>



<p>&#8220;Requests are authentication by comparing a shared secret stored as plaintext in the WordPress database to the one provided by MalCare’s remote application.</p>



<p>&#8220;This can allow attackers to completely take over the site because they can impersonate MalCare’s remote application and perform any implemented action.&#8221; </p>



<p>These potential malicious actions include creating rogue admin users, uploading random files to the site, and installing and removing plugins. </p>



<p>Exploitation requires a pre-condition to be met, such as a site with a SQL injection vulnerability in a plugin, theme, or WordPress core, or a database compromised at the hosting level, or subject to another vulnerability that allows the attacker to read or update WordPress options.</p>



<p>&#8220;MalCare has received the full details of this vulnerability three months before this public release, and despite us offering (free) help, they subtly dismissed it because &#8216;supposedly&#8217; this is the industry standard for API authentication,&#8221; Alkan said.<br /><br />&#8220;Furthermore, concerns were raised, because the vulnerability requires a pre-condition that on its own, would be a vulnerability.&#8221;</p>



<p>Two days after Snicco published the security advisory with the proof of concept, <a href="https://www.malcare.com/blog/malcare-update-improved-authentication/">MalCare pushed a patch</a> in version 5.16 on July 8, 2023, along with a notice on the plugin&#8217;s blog:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>In the rare situation, where a site has a pre-existing, high severity SQL injection vulnerability, an attacker might be able to read the MalCare key. To address such issues, we are further strengthening our authentication systems.</p>



<p>Authentication is a critical system and any improvements must be done in a careful manner. We have reviewed various plugins and best practices in our ecosystem to come up with our solution.</p>



<p>In light of the current public discourse, we are expediting the update of our plugin. We will initiate a rollout by EOD.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>MalCare reports that its users have seen no evidence of the vulnerability being exploited.</p>



<p>Snicco noted that the same vulnerability also exists in WPRemote (20k installs) and Blogvault (100k installs) plugins, as they share the same code. Users of either of these plugins or the MalCare plugin should update to the latest versions as soon as possible now that the vulnerability advisory and proof of concept have been published.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 11 Jul 2023 03:28:31 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:5;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"Do The Woo Community: Bring Your Podcast to Do the Woo";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75527";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://dothewoo.io/bring-your-podcast-to-do-the-woo/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:367:"<p>If you have an existing WordPress focused podcast, consider introducing it to our audience at Do the Woo.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/bring-your-podcast-to-do-the-woo/">Bring Your Podcast to Do the Woo</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 10 Jul 2023 08:13:48 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:6;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"WordCamp Central: WordCamp Dhaka 2023 Has Been Cancelled";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=3166653";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/07/wordcamp-dhaka-2023-has-been-cancelled/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1270:"<p>WordCamp Dhaka 2023 has been cancelled and the official announcement has been published on <a href="https://dhaka.wordcamp.org/2023/">the event website</a>. There were no tickets or sponsorship packages sold, therefore there are no tickets or sponsorships to be refunded.&nbsp;</p>



<p>To ensure the success of future WordCamps, we encourage the Dhaka community to participate in collaboration and contribute to creating a more diverse, inclusive and open community. Any members of the community, regardless their gender, company affiliations, and background, can apply and collaborate as co-organizers.<br /></p>



<p>Here are the basics of our <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/meetup-program-basics/">Meetup Program </a>and the <a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/meetup-organizer-application/">application</a> to become a Meetup organizer.<br /></p>



<p>The Community Team believes that the Dhaka WordPress Community can build a stronger community with opportunities for everyone interested in WordPress.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you have any questions, you can reach out to us by sending an email to <a href="mailto:support@wordcamp.org">support@wordcamp.org</a>.</p>



<p>Thank you,</p>



<p>WordPress Community Team</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 10 Jul 2023 07:36:05 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Devin Maeztri";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:7;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"WPTavern: WordPress to Host 6.3 Live Product Demo on Thursday, July 20";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146673";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-to-host-6-3-live-product-demo-on-thursday-july-20";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1639:"<p>WordPress 6.3 is scheduled to be released one month from today on August 8, 2023. The <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/07/6-3-live-product-demo/">live product demo</a> date and time has now been set for Thursday, July 20, at at <a href="http://time.unitarium.com/utc/1600">16:00 UTC</a>. Participants can join live via this <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88141234315?pwd=TE1Odk5Wd0hiVlNYWHB5Q2xCYkhSZz09">Zoom</a> link.  </p>



<p>Automattic-sponsored Gutenberg contributors <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu/" target="_blank">Anne McCarthy</a> and <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/richtabor/" target="_blank">Rich Tabor</a> will be hosting the event, moderated by <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/njwrigley/" target="_blank">Nathan Wrigley</a>. They will highlight upcoming changes and take questions from participants during a Q&amp;A session at the end.</p>



<p>WordPress 6.3 is set to introduce an exciting array of new features &#8211; the Command Palette, content editing and distraction-free mode in the Site Editor, pattern creation, and much more. There have also been significant <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-beta-3-released-introduces-ui-changes-to-pattern-management">changes to pattern management UI</a> as late as Beta 3. The live product demo is a good opportunity to get up to speed with a guided tour of everything new that will be landing in 6.3.</p>



<p>The event will be recorded and those who cannot attend live can catch it later when it is published on WordPress.tv. </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 08 Jul 2023 17:41:17 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:8;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:140:"Gutenberg Times: Phase 3: Collaboration – Kick-off, add commands to the palette, server-side filter for theme.json –Weekend Edition #260";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=24655";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:140:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/phase-3-collaboration-kick-off-add-commands-to-the-palette-server-side-filter-for-theme-json-weekend-edition-260/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:20047:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>Wow. This weekend edition holds a lot of date/times of upcoming online events for all WordPress users, developers, designers, site builders, and content creators. </p>



<p>The most important might be the the <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/07/6-3-live-product-demo/">WordPress 6.3 Product Demo</a> </strong>on July 20th, (16:00 UTC) roughly 14 days before the final release,  filled to the brink with new and enhanced features.  Watching the Product Demo gets you up to speed quickly. Yes, there will be a recording, too. </p>



<p>Don&#8217;t forget to consult the <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/online-workshops/"><strong>workshop schedule of the training team</strong></a> on the Learn WordPress site.</p>



<p>Have a wonderful weekend! Mine will be dominated by unpacking boxes and eating delicious food and chatting with long-distance friends. </p>



<p>Be well.  </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>




<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-word-press-6-3">WordPress 6.3 </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-g">Gutenberg Phase 3: Collaboration starts</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </a></li></ul></div>
</div></div>




<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7516879458017/WN_lqwBBSkSR1Wcdf8BUr5udQ"><strong>Next Live Q &amp; A: Design Systems and Theme.json  on July 21, 2023</strong></a></p>



<p>David Bowman and and Alec Geatches from WordPress VIP will show off how they keep design systems developed in Figma and themes in WordPress in synch and their workflows streamlined. Joni Halabi, senior developer from Georgetown University will join me as co-host. </p>



<a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7516879458017/WN_lqwBBSkSR1Wcdf8BUr5udQ"><img /></a>
</div></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>



<p><strong>Joen Asmussen </strong>published for the WordPress design team the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/07/03/design-share-jun-19-jun-30/"><strong>Design Share: Jun 19–Jun&nbsp;30</strong></a>, recounting all the great UI and UX work the design team contributed during the past two weeks. </p>



<ul>
<li>Legend Style pictograms for the Site Editor.</li>



<li>Navigation Focus Mode</li>



<li>Reusable Blocks, Library, “Patterns”, and </li>



<li>a small fix to the layout shift when editing </li>
</ul>



<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/07/03/design-share-jun-19-jun-30/"><img /></a>



<p>Reminder: <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> and <strong>Emily Clark</strong> will co-host a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/hallway-hangout-performance-improvements-for-wordpress-6-3/"><strong>Hallway Hangout to discussion WordPress 6.3 performance improvements</strong></a> on July 27, 2023, at 15:00 UTC to discuss WordPress 6.3 performance improvements led by performance reps Emily Clark and Felix Arntz and also look ahead to WordPress 6.4.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="1-word-press-6-3">WordPress 6.3 </h3>



<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> and <strong>Rich Tabor</strong> will present at the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/07/6-3-live-product-demo/"><strong>WordPress 6.3 Live Product Demo </strong></a>on July 20th, 2023 at 16:00 UTC (12 pm EDT / 18:00 CEST). &#8220;Join the WordPress community for a first look at 6.3 in action during a live product demonstration.&#8221; Attendees will learn about recent improvements to the Site Editor, Patterns, Command Palette, and Navigation. There will be a Q&amp;A session, and you may submit questions in advance via the #walkthrough channel on WordPress Make <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C039R2P1ZC1">Slack</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> reports on <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-beta-3-released-introduces-ui-changes-to-pattern-management"><strong>WordPress 6.3 Beta 3 Released, Introduces UI Changes to Pattern Management</strong>. </a>&#8220;A last-minute PR has&nbsp;renamed Library to Patterns&nbsp;in the Site Editor and was cherry-picked to get it included in Beta 3.&#8221; she wrote, and then continues with the reasons. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>Only tangentially related to the Block editor, I still want you to have this overall change on your radar: In his post on the Make Blog, <strong>John Blackburn</strong> informed the WordPress community that the project is  <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/05/dropping-support-for-php-5/">Dropping support for PHP 5</a> </strong>. </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“The minimum supported version was last adjusted in WordPress 5.2 in 2019, and since then, usage of PHP 5.6 has dropped to 3.9% of monitored WordPress installations as of July 2023,” </p>
<cite>John Blackbourn, WordPress core developer</cite></blockquote>



<p>Sarah Gooding also has the skinny for you in <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-to-drop-support-for-php-5"><strong>WordPress 6.3 to Drop Support for PHP 5</strong></a></p>



<div class="wp-block-group is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p class="is-style-no-vertical-margin"><strong>🎙️ </strong> New episode:  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-85-gutenberg-16-1-wordpress-6-3/">Gutenberg Changelog #85 – Gutenberg 16.1, WordPress 6.3</a> with special guest, Tammie Lister and host Birgit Pauli-Haack</p>
</div></div>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-g">Gutenberg Phase 3: Collaboration starts</h3>



<p>Following his March 2023 <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/24/phase-3-collaboration/">Gutenberg Phase 3</a> post, Matias Ventura, architect on the Gutenberg project, published a series of posts to go deeper on all the aspects of the next phase and outline the requirements. </p>



<ul>
<li>In <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/03/real-time-collaboration/"><strong>Real-time Collaboration</strong></a>, he outlines plans for concurrent collaboration and shared edits. </li>



<li>In <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/04/workflows/"><strong>Workflows</strong></a>, Ventura discusses the requirements for the full publishing workflow and the async collaboration needs for a content team. </li>



<li>In <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/05/revisions/"><strong>Revisions</strong>, </a>Ventura covers the full overhaul of the current system, by making it aware of Blocks and edits on all data layers at the same time. </li>



<li>In <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/07/media-library/"><strong>Media Library</strong></a>, he aims at expanding media management capabilities, unifying the interface with the block editor and improving overall media workflows. </li>
</ul>



<p>There might be more posts coming and, of course, I&#8217;ll keep you in the loop. </p>



<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/04/workflows/"><img /></a>Screenshot shared on the post about <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/04/workflows/">Workflows</a>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> summarized it all in <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-unveils-plans-for-real-time-collaboration-with-major-improvements-to-revisions-and-the-media-library"><strong>WordPress Unveils Plans for Real-Time Collaboration with Major Improvements to Revisions and the Media Library</strong></a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>In his post, <a href="https://speckyboy.com/what-collaborative-features-will-bring-to-wordpress/"><strong>What Collaborative Features Will Bring to WordPress</strong></a>, <strong>Eric Karkovack </strong>explored a few scenarios that demonstrate how new collaborative features can streamline working together in a team responsible for publishing content on a larger site. </p>




<p><strong> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2022&#8221;</a> </strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. Updated by yours truly.  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/"><em>The index 2020 is here</em></a></p>




<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



<p><strong>Nick Diego</strong> announced a new season of his &#8220;Builder Basics&#8221; series. The next event is scheduled for <strong>July 17th  7pm UTC</strong> ( 3 pm EDT) <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/294550599/"><strong>Goodbye Reusable Blocks—Hello Synced Patterns (and more)</strong></a>. He&#8217;ll review the updates coming in WordPress 6.3 for reusable blocks and explore the improved editing flows for patterns and template parts. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>In another event, <strong>Bud Kraus</strong> will<strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/294340444/"> demystify the Navigation Block</a></strong> for you on July 11 at 19:00 UTC / 3 pm EDT. You will learn how to set your site&#8217;s navigation using only blocks and not the classic menu system. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><a href="https://twitter https://twitter.com/Bijayyadavnp"><strong>Bijay Yadav</strong></a>, long-time contributor to the open-source WordPress project, published his first theme in the Theme directory. <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/geum/"><strong>Geum</strong></a> is block themes allowing the user to take full advantage of the new site editor to customize their site.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> posted a tutorial on <strong><a href="https://www.pootlepress.com/2023/07/the-best-wordpress-block-themes/">How to Choose the perfect WordPress Block Theme</a>.</strong> He started out summarizing the advantages of a block theme over a classic theme, and listed all the considerations to take into account when comparing block themes from the repository or other theme directories. He also mentioned his favorites: <a href="https://woocommerce.com/products/basti/">Basti by Ana Segota</a>, Ollie<a href="https://olliewp.com/"> WP by Mike McAlister</a> and <a href="https://wpspectra.com/">Spectra One by the Astra team.</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> published the Summary of feedback from the latest <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/07/04/fse-program-momery-makeover-summary/"><strong>FSE Program Momery Makeover Summary</strong></a>. &#8220;Since this call for testing took place during the early stages of an iterative process, several aspects of the feedback provided have already been swiftly addressed, thanks to ongoing development for WordPress 6.3. The relatively limited amount of bugs received and feedback aligning with feature development reflects a level of solidness in the direction of recent improvements.&#8221; she wrote. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>On WPTavern, <strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> reviewed the latest block theme for blogging &#8211; <strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/hey/">Hey</a></strong>, built by Automattic in here article <a href="https://wptavern.com/hey-an-elegantly-simple-wordpress-block-theme-for-blogging"><strong>Hey: An Elegantly Simple WordPress Block Theme for Blogging</strong></a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



<p>In his article for the Torque Magazine, <strong><a href="https://torquemag.io/2023/06/modify-wordpress-block-themes/">How to Modify WordPress Block Themes (JSON Beginner’s Guide)</a></strong>, <strong>Nick Schäferhoff</strong> explored ways on how you can customize a block theme&#8217;s theme.json file for those of us, who are used to tinker around via functions.php and style.css. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Jonathan Bossenger</strong> published his series for live streams on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@jon_bossenger"><strong>Developing Sendig a Block theme</strong></a> on YouTube. The goal is to create a theme following the designs by Emily Rapport. <em>(See <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/gutenberg-15-7-woocommerce-blocks-10-1-and-299-block-themes-weekend-edition-253/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Weekend Edition 253 for details</a>)</em>.</p>



<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@jon_bossenger"><img /></a>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>You can take <strong>Wes Theron</strong>&#8216;s tutorial on <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/designing-with-row-and-stack-blocks/"><strong>Designing with row and stack blocks</strong></a> on <em>Learn WordPress. </em>&#8220;Using the Group block is one of the cornerstones of mastering the block editor. When you select a Group block, you have the variations of the Group block, the standard group, rows, and stacks. In this video tutorial, you learn how you can use rows and stacks to achieve various designs.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/RonaldHuereca">Ronald Huereca</a></strong> published a tutorial on <a href="https://dlxplugins.com/tutorials/adding-commands-to-the-wordpress-command-palette/"><strong>Adding Commands to the WordPress Command Palette</strong></a> can be accomplished, ahead of the official WordPress 6.3 Dev Notes. He explained what the Command Palette is, what it can be used for, and step-by-step how you can add your custom commands to it via a plugin. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>A new post on the <em>WordPress Developer Blog</em> covers <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/07/how-to-modify-theme-json-data-using-server-side-filters/"><strong>how to modify theme.json data using server-side filters.</strong></a> Discover, with <strong>Nick Diego</strong> as your guide,  the possibilities of theme.json server-side filters. Learn how to modify color palettes dynamically or restrict block controls based on user permissions.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>The recording of this week&#8217;s Live Q &amp; A is now available on YouTube: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5IrkgryD6s"><strong>Leveraging Gutenberg&#8217;s architecture to take plugin development to new levels</strong></a>. Learn how Gutenberg components and scripts can be used outside the block editor to revamp a plugin’s code base in this Case Study of GiveWP 3.0 with J<strong>ason Adams</strong>, Director of Development, <strong>Jon Waldstein</strong>, Lead Developer of GiveWP and co-host <strong>Lena Morita</strong>, JavaScript Developer on the Components team. The list of resources is available in the description of the video. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> announced the topics for the next Twitch streams: </p>



<ul>
<li>Jul 13, 2023 –&nbsp;<a href="https://href.li/?https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/294583083/">Reviewing all existing SlotFills</a></li>



<li>Jul 20, 2023 –&nbsp;<a href="https://href.li/?https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/294583132/">Reviewing Gutenberg Features 16.2</a></li>



<li>Jul 27, 2023 –&nbsp;<a href="https://href.li/?https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/294583179/">Using custom SlotFill to extend a codebase</a></li>
</ul>



<p>Recordings of previous streams can be viewed on his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/ryanwelchercodes">YouTube Channel.</a></p>




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>. </p>



<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />




<p>Featured Image: Victoria Pickering &#8220;Old Type&#8221;,  <a href="https://openverse.org/image/2b65ee7c-b784-4c06-9c2c-041b25863bad">found on Openverse.org</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>



<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button type="submit" class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button><p class="ngl-form-text">We hate spam, too and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 08 Jul 2023 09:45:29 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:9;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:120:"WPTavern: WordPress Unveils Plans for Real-Time Collaboration with Major Improvements to Revisions and the Media Library";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146631";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:131:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-unveils-plans-for-real-time-collaboration-with-major-improvements-to-revisions-and-the-media-library";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6352:"<p>In a series of four posts, Gutenberg lead architect Matías Ventura has outlined the project&#8217;s phase 3 plans for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/03/real-time-collaboration/">Real-Time Collaboration</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/04/workflows/">Workflows</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/05/revisions/">Revisions</a>, and the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/07/media-library/">Media Library</a>. WordPress 6.3 is set to be the final major release of Phase 2, which focused on Customization. </p>



<p>Phase 3 will shift focus from the editors and move into other parts of the admin in an effort to bring seamless collaboration to WordPress.</p>



<p>&#8220;The primary aim of real-time collaboration is to build functionality into the&nbsp;block&nbsp;editors so that concurrent collaboration, shared edits, and online presence of peers are possible,&#8221; Ventura said. &#8220;Supporting these workflows is not just about concurrency, though, but also about lifting restrictions that have been present in WordPress for a long time, such as locking a post when two people try to edit at the same time.&#8221;</p>



<p>The technical challenges here are in making this available to all WordPress users, even those on the most economical hosting environments. Ventura shared a quick preview of what that might look like, along with the scope of the tasks that would be part of this effort.</p>



<img />



<p>In the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/04/workflows/">Workflows</a> document, Ventura details collaborative features that will be part of this phase, including allowing users to add comments, suggest edits, and tag other users for peer review. These enhancements would apply to both content creation and design changes on block themes. </p>



<p>There are some interesting projects listed within the scope of this section, including a publishing checklist, sharing draft links with permission controls, and exploring hook points for&nbsp;version control&nbsp;systems to take over internal revision systems if desired.</p>



<img />image credit: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/04/workflows/">Workflows</a> &#8211; Matías Ventura



<p>Users can expect that <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/05/revisions/">Revisions</a> will also be getting some major improvements as part of the Collaboration phase of the project.</p>



<p>&#8220;As part of improving the overall experience, we should also go beyond document level history and explore how the interface could let users browse through single block changes and offer the ability to restore them individually rather than requiring full post restores,&#8221; Ventura said. &#8220;For global styles, we should evolve the revisions panel to allow comparing two revisions side by side. For synced patterns, we could allow browsing edit history with side by side and overlay comparison tools.&#8221;</p>



<p>Long-awaited improvements to WordPress&#8217; <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/07/media-library/">Media Library</a> are also considered part of this phase.</p>



<p>&#8220;The main goals are to expand the media management capabilities, unify the block edit and single media interfaces, and improve upon the major media flows,&#8221; Ventura said. He highlighted a few major areas that may get some enhancements, such as categorization and tagging, better handling of attached media, and design improvements to the library view.</p>



<p>Other Media Library projects may include a revamp of the image editing interface, which remains somewhat unintuitive at this time. Ventura proposes these tools, such as cropping and thumbnail browsing, be updated to align more with the current block editor tools.</p>



<p>Contributors may also be exploring contribution to the commons from WordPress, along with improvements to attribution.</p>



<p>&#8220;As we look into expanding the presence and touch points of <a href="https://openverse.org/">Openverse</a>, it’d be interesting to see how contributions to the commons could work directly from a user’s WordPress install,&#8221; Ventura said. &#8220;Another area to look at is improving handling and presentation of other media types (audio, video, files) and their connection with blocks and the block APIs. We should resurface work on a native Playlist block, ideally powered by the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/30/proposal-the-interactivity-api-a-better-developer-experience-in-building-interactive-blocks/">Interactivity API</a>.&#8221;</p>



<p>Reactions to the outlined vision and scope for the Collaboration phase have so far been positive, as users and contributors are eager to see a strong focus come to some of the other parts of WordPress that have not had much attention for years. The newer real-time collaboration features that will take WordPress beyond the days of locking posts while another person is editing, have the potential to speed up content creation and editing for groups working on the same website.</p>



<p>&#8220;Very much looking forward to this phase. I think it will really enable larger teams to work on posts much easier,&#8221; WordPress developer Rich Holman <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/03/real-time-collaboration/#comment-45051">commented</a>. &#8220;I’ve mentioned this before but the ability to continue working on a published draft without the front-end updating seems important especially with more editors working on something, especially if doing more experimental edits.&#8221;</p>



<p>For more details on the features being considered for this phase, check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/24/phase-3-collaboration/">Phase 3 overview post</a>, along with Ventura&#8217;s more recent write-ups on how contributors will improve and expand WordPress&#8217; collaboration architecture with updates to <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/03/real-time-collaboration/">Real-Time Collaboration</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/04/workflows/">Workflows</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/05/revisions/">Revisions</a>, and the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/07/media-library/">Media Library</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 07 Jul 2023 19:40:58 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:10;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:45:"WordCamp Central: WordCamp Rochester is Back!";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=3166570";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/07/wordcamp-rochester-is-back/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1772:"<a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2023/07/cropped-14120055196ucu6-scaled-1-1.jpg"><img /></a>



<p>On Saturday, September 30, 2023, Rochester will again (for the sixth time) host the region’s WordCamp for bloggers and web designers of all skill levels.</p>



<p>Registration opens at 8:00am. Sessions begin at 9 a.m. and continue to 5 p.m. This year’s WordCamp will be held at the Rochester School of the Arts, 45 Prince Street, Rochester, NY 146017. Tickets are required in advance.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The $25 ticket cost covers WordCamp Rochester swag, morning coffee, lunch, and the evenings’s after-party food. Participants are strongly encouraged to bring their laptop or tablet computers. Ticket purchase and program details are available at <a href="http://www.rochester.wordcamp.org/2023">www.rochester.wordcamp.org/2023</a>. The capacity for this event is about 120 people, so getting tickets early is advised.</p>



<p>WordCamps are held worldwide, locally run and purposely provided at a low cost for accessibility to all. WordCamp Rochester is dedicated to WordPress, blogging and web facility. WordCamps are sponsored by WordPress, the open-source, free platform for individuals, groups and businesses to build their own blogs and websites. WordPress.org began in 2003. Its administrators call it the “largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.”</p>



<p>Similar to previous years, Rochester’s 2023 WordCamp will divide its workshops along two tracks, with sessions for every ability and level of use.</p>



<p>Speakers will include WordPress users from Rochester, Buffalo, and beyond, with experience ranging from user/blogger to advanced developer.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 07 Jul 2023 18:36:28 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Michelle Frechette";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:11;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:41:"WordPress.org blog: 6.3 Live Product Demo";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=15354";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:57:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/07/6-3-live-product-demo/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2911:"<img width="1024" height="576" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/07/Live-Product-Demo.png?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1" alt="WordPress 6.3 Live Product Demo Cover Art" class="wp-image-15355" />



<p><strong>Want to learn more about WordPress 6.3, planned for release on August 8, 2023? Join the WordPress community for a first look at 6.3 in action during a live product demonstration.</strong></p>



<p>6.3 release squad members, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu/" target="_blank">Anne McCarthy</a> and <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/richtabor/" target="_blank">Rich Tabor</a>, will team up with moderator, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/njwrigley/" target="_blank">Nathan Wrigley</a>, to guide attendees through the anticipated highlights of the upcoming release. This event will follow a similar format to the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/21/6-2-live-product-demo/">live demo for 6.2</a>.</p>



<p>Attendees will see recent improvements to the Site Editor, Patterns, Command Palette, and more. Following the demo, there will be a Q&amp;A session, and you may submit questions in advance via <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C039R2P1ZC1">Slack</a>. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Date, Time, and Location</h2>



<p>Thursday, July 20, 2023 at <a href="http://time.unitarium.com/utc/1600">16:00 UTC</a><br /><a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88141234315?pwd=TE1Odk5Wd0hiVlNYWHB5Q2xCYkhSZz09">Zoom Link</a> | Save this link and use it on July 20 to join the event.</p>



<p>The event will be recorded, archived for on-demand viewing on <a href="https://wordpress.tv/">WordPress.tv</a>, and shared in a recap post shortly afterward.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">About WordPress 6.3</h2>



<p>To learn more about WordPress 6.3, please visit the following resources:</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/">WordPress 6.3 Beta 2 Announcement</a></li>



<li>Overview of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-3/">6.3 release cycle</a></li>



<li>A <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/">detailed guide</a> for testing 6.3</li>
</ul>



<p>Props to our panelists and moderator, and to <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jpantani/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>jpantani</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>meher</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/eidolonnight/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>eidolonnight</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dansoschin/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>dansoschin</a> for helping prepare this announcement and supporting event logistics.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 07 Jul 2023 13:27:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Dan Soschin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:12;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:77:"WordCamp Central: WordCamp San José 2023: Looking For Speakers And Sponsors!";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=3166438";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:99:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/07/wordcamp-san-jose-2023-looking-for-speakers-and-sponsors/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2078:"<div class="wp-block-image">
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/sanjose.wordcamp.org/2023/files/2023/06/Wapuu.png?resize=266%2C300&ssl=1" alt="" /></div>


<p>WordCamp San José 2023 will take place on November 4-5, 2023 at Fidélitas University. That means we are currently looking for speakers who want to take the stage and share their knowledge, and sponsors who can help make this event unforgettable.</p>



<p>Costa Rica is known as a country that stands out for its natural beauty, commitment to environmental sustainability, and quality of life, so we are looking for a great and diverse group of speakers to reflect our local community. Both new and experienced WordCamp speakers are welcome. If you would like to propose multiple topics, please submit the form multiple times, once for each topic.</p>



<p><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f50a.png" alt="🔊" class="wp-smiley" /> <strong>Our deadline for submitting proposals is midnight EST on August 26, 2023. </strong></p>



<p><strong>Apply at </strong><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://sanjose.wordcamp.org/2023/llamado-a-ponentes/" target="_blank">https://sanjose.wordcamp.org/2023/llamado-a-ponentes/</a><br /><strong>WordCamp San Jose is also looking for sponsors who can help with expenses. We are the largest WordCamp in Latin America. Be part of the fun and help us by bringing a great experience in terms of food, networking opportunities, and some fun contests!</strong></p>



<p><strong><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f680.png" alt="🚀" class="wp-smiley" /> Call for Sponsors: <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://sanjose.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-sponsors/" target="_blank">https://sanjose.wordcamp.org/2023/call-for-sponsors/</a></strong></p>



<p><strong><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f39f.png" alt="🎟" class="wp-smiley" /> Buy your ticket here: <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://sanjose.wordcamp.org/2023/tickets/" target="_blank">https://sanjose.wordcamp.org/2023/tickets/</a></strong></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 07 Jul 2023 07:17:28 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"roblesloaiza";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:13;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"Do The Woo Community: Navigating the WooCommerce and WordPress Community";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75463";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"https://dothewoo.io/navigating-the-woocommerce-and-wordpress-community/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:425:"<p>If you have just started a business, or moving an existing one into this unique open source community, there is a lot to learn.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/navigating-the-woocommerce-and-wordpress-community/">Navigating the WooCommerce and WordPress Community</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 07 Jul 2023 07:07:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:14;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"WPTavern: Hey: An Elegantly Simple WordPress Block Theme for Blogging";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=144855";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"https://wptavern.com/hey-an-elegantly-simple-wordpress-block-theme-for-blogging";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2261:"<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/hey/">Hey</a> is a block theme designed by Automattic for users <a href="https://wordpress.com/theme/hey">on WordPress.com</a> and also released for free in the WordPress.org Themes Directory. It&#8217;s the kind of simple theme that enables you to quickly get started writing online, without having to configure a bunch of design elements. The homepage features a profile image (Site Logo), site title, and recent posts with dates.</p>



<img />



<p>Single posts display with the feature image at the top of the post, although this template can easily be edited if this is an undesirable feature. Previous and Next post navigation appears under the post. Users can add menu items to display at the top, but clicking the site logo brings the visitor back home in the absence of a navigation menu.</p>



<img />



<p>The Hey theme comes in two different styles &#8211; the default and a serif variation. Colors can be adjusted to create a more vibrant palette for the site design.</p>



<img />



<p>One major drawback to this theme, which may not be immediately evident by looking at the demo, is that if users want to display more than the three most recent posts, they will need to add the pagination block inside the query loop block. It will also need to be styled to match the theme better. The query loop can be edited to show more posts on the homepage.</p>



<p>Although Hey is a simple personal blog theme, it also comes packaged with templates for WooCommerce compatibility. This is likely for the benefit of WordPress.com users who may want to quickly fire up a store. Self-hosted users who want to sell products with WooCommerce will be able to easily display things like the mini-cart, customer account block, product archive, product search results, and more.</p>



<p>Overall, Hey is an elegantly simple block theme with a clean design and plentiful white space. It&#8217;s suitable for the person who wants an almost blank slate to get started, or just a theme that enables writing without any distraction for the reader. Check out the <a href="https://wordpress.com/theme/hey">live demo</a> on WordPress.com and <a href="https://wordpress.com/theme/hey">download Hey from WordPress.org</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 06 Jul 2023 21:02:08 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:15;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"Do The Woo Community: Building a WooCommerce Point of Sales with Mathias Nielsen";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75444";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"https://dothewoo.io/building-a-woocommerce-point-of-sales-with-mathias-nielsen/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:434:"<p>In this Woo DevChat we talk with Mathias from Oliver POS about his journey in building a point of sales for WooCommerce.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/building-a-woocommerce-point-of-sales-with-mathias-nielsen/">Building a WooCommerce Point of Sales with Mathias Nielsen</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 06 Jul 2023 09:08:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:16;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:49:"WPTavern: WordPress 6.3 to Drop Support for PHP 5";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146565";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:60:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-to-drop-support-for-php-5";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3537:"<p>WordPress is officially <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/05/dropping-support-for-php-5/">dropping support for PHP 5</a> in the upcoming 6.3 release, which is expected on August 8. WordPress&#8217; <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/">minimum supported version</a> has sat at PHP 5.6.20 since 2019, but will be updated to 7.0.0 in the next release. The recommended PHP version will stay the same at 7.4+.</p>



<p>&#8220;The minimum supported version was last adjusted in WordPress 5.2 in 2019, and since then usage of PHP 5.6 has dropped to 3.9% of monitored WordPress installations <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wordpress.org/about/stats/" target="_blank">as of July 2023</a>,&#8221; WordPress core developer John Blackbourn said.</p>



<p>&#8220;There’s no concrete usage percentage that a PHP version must fall below before support in WordPress is dropped, but historically the project maintainers have used 5% as the baseline. Now that usage of PHP 5.6 is well below that at 3.9% and dropping by around 0.1% every few weeks, plans to increase the minimum supported PHP version can move forward.&#8221;</p>



<p>Blackbourn also emphasized that WordPress&#8217; support for PHP 8.0, 8.1, and 8.2 is &#8220;very good&#8221; and contributors may soon act on <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/20/proposal-criteria-for-removing-beta-support-from-each-php-8-version/">a proposal for the criteria that would enable them to remove the &#8220;beta&#8221; support label</a> on new PHP versions. Nearly 26% of WordPress users are already running sites on PHP 8.0+. </p>



<img />



<p>Prior to this minimum required version boost, some hosts had even taken matters into their own hands in urging users to get on newer versions of PHP. Dreamhost <a href="https://twitter.com/idavinder/status/1673948104591122432">charges additional fees</a> for sites that require <a href="https://help.dreamhost.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004672631-PHP-extended-support">extended support</a> for PHP 7.4 and older. <a href="https://www.ionos.com/help/hosting/troubleshooting-for-php/php-extended-support/">IONOS</a> and <a href="https://www.strato-hosting.co.uk/faq/hosting/what-is-strato-php-extended-support/">Strato</a> have similar policies. </p>



<p>The decision to bump the minimum supported version is happening after a lengthy seven-month long <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/57345">discussion</a>, which surprisingly <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/57345#comment:93">drew a little resistance</a>. Although sites that remain on PHP 5.6 cannot upgrade beyond WordPress 6.2, they will still receive security updates, as the project currently <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/security/2022/09/07/dropping-security-updates-for-wordpress-versions-3-7-through-4-0/">backports them to versions 4.1+</a>. The bump to 7.0.0 for the minimum supported version will have many benefits for the WordPress ecosystem of themes and plugins, will significantly reduce memory usage for upgraded websites, and provide better security and improvements to core tooling.</p>



<p>&#8220;There are no plans to bump the minimum supported PHP version on a schedule,&#8221; Blackbourn said. &#8220;The core team will continue to monitor usage of PHP versions and work with the hosting team to encourage users and hosting companies to upgrade their versions of PHP as swiftly as possible. The 5% usage baseline will continue to be used for the foreseeable future.&#8221;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 05 Jul 2023 21:30:40 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:17;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"WPTavern: WordPress 6.3 Beta 3 Released, Introduces UI Changes to Pattern Management";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146527";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-beta-3-released-introduces-ui-changes-to-pattern-management";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3172:"<p>WordPress contributors are onto another round of testing, as <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/07/wordpress-6-3-beta-3/">6.3 Beta 3 was released</a> this week. RC 1 is expected on July 18, and a live product demo is anticipated to be broadcast on Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 16:00 UTC. These demos have become a more regular part of the release process and allow viewers to familiarize themselves with important new features and updates coming in the release.</p>



<p>Beta 3 includes approximately 34 updates to the Site Editor since the previous beta release, and more than 40 updates coming from Trac.</p>



<p>A last-minute PR has <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/52102">renamed Library to Patterns</a> in the Site Editor and was cherry-picked to get it included in Beta 3. Automattic-sponsored Gutenberg contributor Aaron Robertshaw cited three reasons for the renaming:</p>



<ul>
<li>Discovery: this is an opportunity to make patterns front and center as we are introducing the ability to save custom patterns. They should be front and center in the &#8220;Design&#8221; tab.</li>



<li>Clarity: library can be obscure and overlaps with other terminology (like Media Library). We didn&#8217;t get to add font library management in this round, but it would have made things more confusing (would a user expect to see their font library under &#8220;Styles&#8221; or an item called &#8220;Library&#8221;?). Calling it patterns removes that ambiguity.</li>



<li>Presence: patterns is a unique name that has been established in the WP branding parlance for a bit and deserves more clear placement.</li>
</ul>



<p>This video from the PR gives a quick overview of the changes testers should see in the Patterns UI as of Beta 3:</p>



Gutenberg PR: Patterns: Rename Library to Patterns <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/52102">#52102</a>



<p>Beta 3 <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51990">introduces a new lock icon</a> to designate theme patterns as unable to be edited or modified. It also adds a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51954">sync status details section</a> within the pattern sidebar navigation screen. </p>



<img />image credit: <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51990">Gutenberg PR #51990</a>



<p>There are a significant number of new things being introduced after Beta 1, which seems usual. Major features like the pattern creation and the Patterns section made their debut in <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-16-1-introduces-pattern-creation-and-library-adds-distraction-free-mode-to-site-editor">Gutenberg 16.1</a> but had very little testing before being rolled into the upcoming WordPress 6.3 release. This is likely why UI changes are being introduced after Beta 1 has already shipped. </p>



<p>Check out the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/07/wordpress-6-3-beta-3/">Beta 3 release post</a> for more information on how to test. A Beta 4 is anticipated the week of July 11, followed by RC 1 on July 18. The general release is <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-3/">scheduled</a> for August 8, 2023.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 05 Jul 2023 16:21:36 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"WPTavern: #82 – Louise Towler on How and Why You Can Make WordPress Sites Sustainable";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=146471";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:101:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/82-louise-towler-on-how-and-why-you-can-make-wordpress-sites-sustainable";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:50144:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcastwhich is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, how and why you need to be thinking sustainably when building websites.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice. Or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you, and hopefully get you, or your idea featured on the show. Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today, we have Louise Towler. She joined me at the recent WordCamp Europe in Athens to talk about websites and making them more sustainable.</p>



<p>Louise is the founder of Indigo Tree, a UK based agency with deep expertise in WordPress websites. She gave a presentation at WordCamp Europe entitled, Digital sustainability: The benefits for business and the environment, in which she emphasized the impact websites can have on our planet. Her aim was to deliver practical tips for users and developers to help them make informed decisions. This presentation is the focus of today&#8217;s podcast, and we cover quite a lot of ground.</p>



<p>Louise highlights the significant role which electricity plays in powering data centers and transmitting data to end devices. Even if data centers use renewable energy, there is still a need to address overall electricity consumption. She points out that the internet is the fourth largest polluter globally, surpassing the airline industry.</p>



<p>We discussed how the continuous and widespread use of the internet has made it difficult to reduce its own impact, while still emphasizing the importance of the steps that we can take to make the internet more energy efficient.</p>



<p>She suggests ways that we can all make a difference right away. Educating clients about the consequences of certain design choices, such as using large videos or auto-play features that require substantial data to load. Optimizing videos, images, and other website elements, which makes it possible to reduce data consumption and improve performance.</p>



<p>The conversation then explores other suggestions, such as using modern image formats, using images as placeholders for videos, self hosted fonts, and considering the carbon footprint of email communications.</p>



<p>Louise acknowledges the challenges of discussing environmental concerns with clients, whilst also explaining that we have to come up with ways to make clients understand that these decisions are beneficial to them as well. After all, an optimized website is one that is looked upon favorably by search engines. Whilst clients ultimately are the decision makers, informing them about the consequences of their choices can help them be more informed.</p>



<p>Moving onto WordPress, we talk about the responsibility theme authors play. It&#8217;s a crucial role, helping users make sustainable choices. Her agency builds custom themes for clients which allows them to have full control over design decisions.</p>



<p>We get into the subject of how legislation is certainly coming, and so getting in early and understanding the implications of such legislation will help your endeavors in the future.</p>



<p>Towards the end of the podcast, we chat about some of the tools which you can use to assess the impact that your websites have, including a tool which Louise and her team have been working on for the last few years.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in how your sites can become more sustainable, this podcast is for you.</p>



<p>If you want to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Louise Towler.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Louise Towler. Hi Louise.</p>



<p>[00:04:54] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Thank you for inviting me. Hello.</p>



<p>[00:04:56] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We&#8217;re going to talk today about, well possibly the most important topic ever, which is the environment and your website compared to the environment. Prior to that Louise, will you just tell us a little bit about you, so that we have some context. Who are you? What&#8217;s your relationship with WordPress and so on?</p>



<p>[00:05:13] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Okay. I am the founder of Indigo Tree. We&#8217;re a small but beautiful WordPress agency based about 30 minutes on the train north of London in the UK. There&#8217;s 15 of us in total at the moment. We have an engineering team, a project management team, and a support team, and we build WordPress websites.</p>



<p>I started building websites, well my first webpage that I built was built Christmas Day, the year 2000, because my husband was daft enough to buy me a book on html. So he cooked the turkey and I built myself a little webpage. I started freelancing about 20 years ago, and then one of my freelancing clients said to me, we&#8217;ve heard there&#8217;s this thing called WordPress. Would you mind building our website in WordPress? And I was like, okay, I&#8217;ll give it a go. And went off and Googled and found out how to do it, and the rest is history.</p>



<p>[00:06:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Nice. You did a talk today entitled The Benefits for Business and the Environment. Just give us a bit of a background about your thoughts on the environment. What I mean by that, is this something that you are concerned about in your normal life? Does the environment figure heavily in your daily life?</p>



<p>[00:06:27] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> It does. It&#8217;s really difficult to tread lightly on the planet. It&#8217;s very hard to do things in a sustainable way, but I think I&#8217;m very conscious of it. So I buy a few clothes, but I wear them a lot rather than throw them away, and the fast fashion thing. I use recycled paper. I try to do things in a good way. Turn off lights. Think about my travel. But it is genuinely hard. But then I have children and they&#8217;re going to live a lot longer than me, and global warming is going to affect them a lot more than it&#8217;s going to affect me. But 2050 is not that far away. And we are in trouble, as we can see by the mad world weather that&#8217;s happening at the moment.</p>



<p>[00:07:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You work in the website building industry, as do I. Which feels in my daily interaction with my computer, it feels like the cleanest thing ever. I have a shiny laptop. I have a shiny phone. None of them put smoke out of the back when I switched them on. You know, if I worked in the automotive industry, it would be obvious what my footprint was. But I switch on my computer, there&#8217;s no connection between that and the environment. And yet it&#8217;s pretty bad.</p>



<p>[00:07:49] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:07:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We browse the internet. We&#8217;re probably asking Google and all the other rivals, trivial things all the time. So make the connection for us. What is the environmental impact? What are the things which are happening between me switching on my computer and browsing WordPress websites? What are the things that are going on? What&#8217;s the technology, the bits and pieces that we need to be thinking about?</p>



<p>[00:08:13] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Well, if the internet was a country, it would be the fourth largest polluter. Compared to airlines, you know, that are 1.6%, it&#8217;s massive. It is just massive. And it&#8217;s fundamentally about electricity. Because it&#8217;s electricity that powers the data centers, whether or not they&#8217;re running on renewable energy, the fact is they still need electricity.</p>



<p>You&#8217;ve got the transmission, the wires between the data centers and the end devices, and then you&#8217;ve got the power to power your device. If you&#8217;re on a phone, you are recharging it. If you&#8217;re on a laptop, you are plugging it in, and that&#8217;s all using electricity. And not all of that electricity is renewable and the electricity that comes through the wires, you don&#8217;t have any control about what proportion of that is renewable.</p>



<p>On a hot, windy day in the UK, a vast proportion of that electricity is from renewable energy, from solar and wind turbines. But on a dark, gloomy day with no wind, a massive proportion of that is fossil fuel powered electricity.</p>



<p>[00:09:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It feels like we&#8217;re completely addicted to the internet. I use the car that I have, a bit. But I use the internet more or less continually. You know, I&#8217;ve got my phone, it&#8217;s constantly charged up. The merest thought in my head can easily lead me to whip out the phone, do some banal scrolling of Facebook or whatever it may be. And that feels like that&#8217;s crept up on us. We&#8217;re all using it all the time. You said what was it, 4%?</p>



<p>[00:09:57] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> It&#8217;s the fourth largest polluter.</p>



<p>[00:09:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Fourth largest polluter. Can you compare that to another industry? You mentioned airlines. Does the internet as a whole, so every website, all the online services that we can use and so on, does that pollute more than the airline industry? Because the airline industry is the poster child of pollution, isn&#8217;t it?</p>



<p>[00:10:15] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> I believe it does. I mean, the problem is finding out, and even measuring it is really hard. So all the estimates are that it is just massive, and it&#8217;s getting worse. With AI, the stat that I&#8217;ve read is that to do a search in ChatGPT takes four times as much energy as to do a search in Google. And to build that AI model takes a massive amount of processing power to suck in all the data and build out that model that then does predict the next word that&#8217;s going to come out in the chat box.</p>



<p>And so it&#8217;s not getting better. When you are talking about carbon footprints and getting to net zero, you&#8217;ve not just got to change the energy mix so that you&#8217;re running off renewable energy. You need to actually reduce demand. In the UK there&#8217;s a carbon reduction in task force. Their target is by 2030, they will have reduced demand by 15% for electricity in comparison to 2021. You have to reduce the demand as well.</p>



<p>[00:11:25] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Right.</p>



<p>[00:11:26] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> And the connection to IT and websites is that if you transmit less data, you are, there&#8217;s not a direct correlation always, but you are essentially using less electricity to transmit that data.</p>



<p>[00:11:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So the easiest way to mitigate your use of the internet is just to stop using it. But that&#8217;s completely unrealistic now?</p>



<p>[00:11:44] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Well, a company with zero carbon footprint is probably a company that&#8217;s not in business. You can&#8217;t not use the internet. What you have to do, we have to try and make sure the internet uses less electricity to do what it does.</p>



<p>[00:11:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, so given that we&#8217;re not going to be switching our computers off, we&#8217;re not going back to the internet stone age, if you like. We&#8217;ve got to figure out ways to reduce the amount of carbon that we put out. So we&#8217;ve got to become responsible citizens because we&#8217;re using the internet. But also, we&#8217;re in a slightly unique position, you, I, and the people listening to this podcast, because we&#8217;re sitting behind the websites that are causing the pollution. And that&#8217;s, I guess, where the rest of this conversation is going to go. What are the things that we can do to make our websites for our clients, for ourselves, pollute a little bit less?</p>



<p>[00:12:38] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Think about the data and educate your client. So in the first instance, if your client wants that amazing stock video on the banner of their homepage, that auto plays in the background and looks absolutely fab. But actually the amount of data that you are then having to load on the homepage to deliver that video is massive. Well explain to them the consequences of that decision.</p>



<p>It&#8217;ll probably mean the homepage is a little bit slower, which won&#8217;t be as good for Core Web Vitals and for search. So whether or not they care about the planet, they should be caring about the performance of their website. And the fact is it will use more data and that&#8217;s not good for people or the planet.</p>



<p>If I&#8217;m on a fixed price data plan, because I&#8217;m on a low income and my children&#8217;s school has a massive video on the homepage of their school website with lots of happy kids running around the playground. And every time I visit that website, I&#8217;m using up my scarce resources of data, auto playing that video, that&#8217;s not very respectful to me when I&#8217;m trying to go about my daily life.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s lots of levels you can talk to your clients about why it&#8217;s good to do things. So it&#8217;s things like optimizing videos, optimizing images. If you&#8217;re familiar with Core Web Vitals and trying to speed up websites, these are nothing new. But you know, design your website with two fonts rather than five.</p>



<p>Think about when you embed videos on the page. The block editor, it&#8217;s really easy to embed a video from YouTube or Vimeo, but use a plugin and put a facade in front of it so that when you actually load the page it loads an image. If it&#8217;s below the fold, you can lazy load the image. If people don&#8217;t scroll down, the image doesn&#8217;t load, and it&#8217;s only when they click on that image that the video plays and actually downloads that extra data.</p>



<p>So you are being really respectful to your visitors as well as to the planet by consciously thinking about these things. And it doesn&#8217;t cost anymore if you plan it in from the beginning. Talking to your clients and planning it, most clients are really happy to have that conversation because in the end, performance and speed should increase conversions and profit.</p>



<p>[00:14:56] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Actually, that&#8217;s a really good point. You mentioned, just as we were beginning, that you run an agency.</p>



<p>[00:15:00] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:15:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you have this conversation with your clients?</p>



<p>[00:15:03] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> I talk about performance and speed.</p>



<p>[00:15:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, so how does that go down?</p>



<p>[00:15:09] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Fine.</p>



<p>[00:15:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Have you ever had somebody push back and say, no, we need the video? Or is it generally a conversation of look, okay you could have the video, but here&#8217;s the reason why I think for the planet, you shouldn&#8217;t have the video. How does that conversation normally go?</p>



<p>[00:15:19] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> We advise them. It&#8217;s like with banners, with sliders, we advise them. I emailed something to a client last week saying, here&#8217;s the Google stats. About 8% will see banner number two. Do you really think banner number three, as one of your key important messages being viewed by 4% of your home paved visitors, you&#8217;re better off putting that content on the page. It is the client&#8217;s choice in the end, but I will educate them so they&#8217;re conscious of the choice that they&#8217;re making. Rather than not aware and then complain that nobody clicks through from banner number three. And I&#8217;m like, well, we did tell you.</p>



<p>But there&#8217;s some things I don&#8217;t give clients a choice on, like accessibility. They don&#8217;t get a choice about having an accessible website because you don&#8217;t want to give people a choice where you don&#8217;t want them to make a poor decision.</p>



<p>[00:16:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And in terms of your agency, do you advertise your environmental credentials?</p>



<p>[00:16:09] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> We don&#8217;t really talk about it at the moment, but we will be dipping our toe in the water and talking more and more about it over the next few months, because we&#8217;ve been doing some interesting stuff in the background.</p>



<p>[00:16:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You mentioned that an autoplay video, that seems like the most extreme example. You know, you go to a website, suddenly you&#8217;ve downloaded without your realizing it, I don&#8217;t know, 10 megabytes of data that you really didn&#8217;t need. Just run through the components of a typical webpage. So what have we got? We&#8217;ve got text, we&#8217;ve got images, we&#8217;ve got video, we&#8217;ve got, audio like this.</p>



<p>What are quick wins? What&#8217;s the order, if you like, that you should go through when in your head you&#8217;re trying to make a page more environmentally friendly?</p>



<p>[00:16:49] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> I would start with images because a website typically has more images than videos. And if you&#8217;re doing something with images like you are, I don&#8217;t know, using a CDN, or you&#8217;ve installed the performance plugin and you are delivering things as WebP, then one plugin and one solution might work across all images on your website.</p>



<p>So I would definitely think about images in terms of making sure you deliver the right sized image for the device as well. So make sure that in your theme, you&#8217;ve got that function which saves it all out at the various different break points.</p>



<p>[00:17:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> If you&#8217;re on a, mobile website, the image that&#8217;s loaded should be the same size as the device that you&#8217;re looking at. Not a great big image that&#8217;s been squished down, okay.</p>



<p>[00:17:30] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Exactly. And that can be a bit tricky because sometimes on mobile sites for example, we&#8217;ll have a nice banner image, but we&#8217;ll make it cropped and square. Whereas on a desktop site you might have it that letter box shape. And actually it won&#8217;t really work on a mobile. It&#8217;s too sort of narrow and thin.</p>



<p>So you sometimes need to be a bit careful about, especially with the block editor, do you need to have different versions of images unless the cropping is right in the middle. Doesn&#8217;t work very well with the block editor to just auto crop. It&#8217;s about thinking about it. So I definitely start with images.</p>



<p>Little things like making sure you are using SVGs where it&#8217;s appropriate. If you&#8217;ve got an animated gif, turn it into a video. I then look at the videos. Just make sure you&#8217;ve got facades or posters on videos and try and persuade your client not to have that large banner video.</p>



<p>I would then look at fonts and make sure all your fonts are self-hosted. Which is a good thing anyway because certainly from a GDPR perspective, if you are using Google fonts in Europe, then there&#8217;s been some case law around, it&#8217;s leaking data to Google about who&#8217;s using those fonts and you don&#8217;t want to be doing that.</p>



<p>But that again will speed it up because you can cache the fonts and things like that. And subset the fonts. So I think you can do things where if you are only, if you&#8217;ve got a font set that&#8217;s in multiple languages, but actually your website&#8217;s just in English, only use the bit of the font that you need for the language that you are working in.</p>



<p>And then I would definitely think about things, other things on the website, like email. If you&#8217;ve got a transactional site and you are sending out lots of confirmation of shipping emails. Do you need a really big logo in the email? Can it be a tiny logo or even just text on a colored background and make those emails have a lower carbon footprint as well.</p>



<p>[00:19:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How does WordPress out of the box do with helping you get to some of these targets?</p>



<p>[00:19:26] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> It&#8217;s not helpful.</p>



<p>[00:19:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So I was going to say, I imagine that most people listening to this podcast have an understanding of everything that you just said, but the typical user of WordPress is not somebody that&#8217;s listening this podcast. Used by millions of people who probably see the media library throwing the biggest image they&#8217;ve got, and that&#8217;s it.</p>



<p>[00:19:43] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> I think you&#8217;ve got to be a responsible theme author. As an agency, we build our own custom themes for each client. So we&#8217;re not constrained in any way at the design stage. But if you&#8217;re choosing either a free theme or a paid for theme, you can be quite wise about it. So if you are you&#8217;re building a brochure site for a client, you don&#8217;t need to choose a theme with every possible e-commerce, form plugin, event plugin, all that extra code. If you&#8217;re not using font awesome icons, then don&#8217;t let the theme pull in the complete font awesome icon set.</p>



<p>Just download a little SVG. So try and think about the theme that you choose. It can be a bit of a pain to actually turn off on some of those very flexible all singing, all dancing dancing themes, the options when you just want something really simple.</p>



<p>There are some plugins that can help. So for example, we often use a plugin called Perf Matters, which is really good for performance. And one of the things I particularly like about that plugin is, so if we are working with a client where they might have an inquiry form or a landing page with an inquiry form on it. You install a plugin, we use Gravity Forms. Really brilliant plugin. Love it. But of course you get that plugin code in the head of every page, just in case the form&#8217;s required. Well turn it off.</p>



<p>You can use Perf Matters and go in, and go I only want the Gravity Form code to be embedded on these three pages, on the site that have forms on. Doesn&#8217;t need to be downloaded for any other pages.</p>



<p>The same with something like Google Maps, the API for Google Maps. Often you&#8217;ll put it in so that you can have a nice map on your contact page. Well actually, number one, could you replace that map with an image, and then just link out to Google Maps? How many people are actually going to be scrolling in and out on the page?</p>



<p>Think about it from the user&#8217;s perspective, but then actually just have that Google Maps API code in the contact page. Don&#8217;t have it anywhere else on your website. It&#8217;s just not needed. But you see it a lot where all the plugins inject all their stuff into the head on every single page just in case. So go through and turn things off.</p>



<p>[00:22:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You mentioned earlier that obviously this is something you&#8217;re trying to embed in your company. You also mentioned that you don&#8217;t have the conversation about accessibility. It&#8217;s just the way it is.</p>



<p>[00:22:10] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Well, we talk about it. The only time we really push back is where clients have got brand colors, which aren&#8217;t AA accessible, and then we discuss with them whether we can change them.</p>



<p>[00:22:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But are you going to in the future be having more conversations like this?</p>



<p>[00:22:26] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Yes.</p>



<p>[00:22:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong>And if so, how forceful are you going to be with your clients if they push back? Say, no, no, no, no. There&#8217;s a delicate line here, isn&#8217;t there? You want to do the best for your client and the best for your client may be a bitter pill for them to swallow.</p>



<p>[00:22:39] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> There may be a really good a brand reason, depending on the client, as to why they have to use a particular font. But I would be going to the client and saying, I&#8217;m going to tell you why it&#8217;s not a good idea. In the end, it is your choice. It is your website. You own the site once you&#8217;ve paid me for us to build it. So it is yours to do what you want with. But do it consciously, knowing the consequences of the decision that you are making.</p>



<p>So I will always tell them, in the end it is their choice. But with things like brand and fonts and that, well you know, the consequences of pulling in an Adobe font is 6 to 800 milliseconds of a page load. That can be the difference between a first and second spot on google.</p>



<p>So sometimes you can argue it really strongly from a commercial reason, and they will listen and go, right, let&#8217;s go back to our brand designer and get them to find some web fonts or some Google fonts that we can use. And elsewhere, yes, you&#8217;ll use that fancy type kit or whatever font, but let&#8217;s use something for the web that actually will work and not impact on the performance of the site. Because if they&#8217;re a commercial client, they&#8217;re going to care about the performance. We need to make them look good to their boss.</p>



<p>[00:23:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Given exactly what you just said, is there some accreditation that websites can expose to the world to say, we made an effort here? I&#8217;m trying to think of an example, but there are badges that you can get in all manner of industries to say, okay, we went through this training. We made the effort here, and so we have a badge to prove that we made an effort.</p>



<p>Is there something that people can do on the internet to say, look, our website is consuming 50%, 30%, whatever, less energy than it might have done. We made an effort. Here&#8217;s our badge to prove it.</p>



<p>[00:24:32] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> I&#8217;m not aware of a badge, but there are lots of people doing lots of things out there. So there might be. I think it&#8217;s really hard because what might be a good score for a e-commerce site, might be of a poor score for a different type of site. And I think that in the end, yes, you can measure against other people, but actually you have to have that intrinsic motivation for just wanting to do it. It&#8217;s not about collecting badges.</p>



<p>Does it matter if your site is AA accessible and you have a badge on your site? Or does it matter that you basically have enabled 40% of the population with disabilities or temporary impairments to actually access your goods and services, and you&#8217;ll increase your profits as a result?</p>



<p>[00:25:15] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So that was the website piece. You know, can you expose this credential to visitors? What about you as an agency? Can you expose your credentials to your clients? Is there anything there?</p>



<p>[00:25:26] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Well, we&#8217;re working, and it is a very much a work in progress, towards something called B Corp, which is an accreditation thing that you can get for being, if you like, a good citizen to the planet. It covers environmental. It also covers governance, and more things to help with inclusivity and diversity. And we are rewriting our staff handbook, and we&#8217;re measuring our carbon footprint as part of that, as an agency. But we&#8217;re also doing other things as well. Making sure that we do things in a way that&#8217;s consciously responsible, and there&#8217;s got to be a business for good. We want to be a good citizen for the planet. And I think that&#8217;s quite a high standard. And there&#8217;s, I think about a thousand companies in the UK who have that. And we are not there yet, but it&#8217;s something that I think we can aspire to be.</p>



<p>[00:26:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you have any sense that this message that you are preaching here is beginning to catch on? You are definitely in the vanguard. Most people are not talking about this. If we go downstairs, we&#8217;re not really picking up on that message yet. But do you sense some kind of change? Are you communicating with people on a more regular basis about this? Clearly you are interested in it, but are you talking into the void or are people beginning to listen?</p>



<p>[00:26:37] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> There&#8217;s a lot of people in communities where the communities are talking about this a lot. I think what&#8217;s really nice is I was given the opportunity to speak at a conference, and this conference, to the entire WebPress community had a session about digital sustainability. I personally think that every conference that anyone puts on should have at least one speaker, or channel, or workshop, or something talking about sustainability in the industry, or sector that the conference is in. Because it is looming.</p>



<p>The legislation is coming. The governments are legislating now, and at the moment in the UK it&#8217;s only very, very large businesses who have to do reporting. But if you are a large business wanting a government contract with a value of more than 5 million pounds, which you know, even small consultants and agencies can go for big contracts. You have to have your scope one, scope two, and some scope three emissions and a carbon reduction plan will be coming.</p>



<p>By 2028 The National Health Service in the UK will require every product or service that is supplied to it to have a carbon footprint. So you need to be starting now because for some things that&#8217;s going to be really hard to do and it&#8217;s going to take a while to do.</p>



<p>So start now with the little things, the quick wins. Start measuring where you are, because your carbon reduction plan has to say how you&#8217;re going to reduce. And then you have to show that you are making those reductions. So start measuring now, so that all the things you start doing now can be part of that reduction that you make and you can report on.</p>



<p>[00:28:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So you are describing things in the UK. In the UK in the future, you are literally going to be unable to get certain types of website client work if you cannot prove that you&#8217;ve done the due diligence.</p>



<p>[00:28:31] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:28:31] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, that&#8217;s really interesting. But still a way off. We&#8217;re still five years out from that portcullis closing?</p>



<p>[00:28:37] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Yeah. But if you are a large business, very large business, you already have to do mandatory reporting. The government is slowly going to bring that down. It wouldn&#8217;t surprise me in the slightest if by 2030, as well as putting in my annual tax return, on my submission of my company accounts to Companies House, I have to do a carbon accounting report. Every small business.</p>



<p>The EU, 23 million organizations there are in the EU at the moment, by 2028, all of them are going to be expected to put in some sort of carbon report on what they&#8217;re doing. The legislation is coming.</p>



<p>But even quicker than that, procurement is starting to change. So I think it was the back end of 2021, Tesco sent out a letter to all of their suppliers saying, we want you to do these four things. You need to have a carbon reduction plan. You need to move to green energy. Otherwise you can&#8217;t be part of a supplier to Tesco. Doesn&#8217;t matter whether or not you are a large business or a small business, they sent it out as part of their procurement. So the government legislation is coming, but larger businesses are doing it quicker because they&#8217;re using procurement as a tool to do that.</p>



<p>And then on top of that, for some organizations now it&#8217;s affecting their access to finance. So if I&#8217;m a pension fund or I want to invest in a large enterprise or a business, why would I invest in you, if you are not sustainable in 5, 10, 15 years time? They are now beginning to ask for those carbon reduction plans, sustainability report. What are you doing for your ESG as a condition of investment?</p>



<p>[00:30:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So the window of opportunity for ignoring this is fast closing?</p>



<p>[00:30:25] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> And why not get ahead of it? Why not be that agency that can help your clients with these challenges?</p>



<p>[00:30:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Although you described that there&#8217;s no badge necessarily for this. It really does feel that for the right client this is a conversation which will win you work. If you can prove that you are going to do this work now, like you said, who&#8217;s going to say no to a more green website? Would you like your website to be much more environmentally friendly than it could have been? Well, no, actually we&#8217;d like it to pollute more, please. That&#8217;s just not a conversation you&#8217;re going to get into.</p>



<p>[00:30:56] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Exactly. Exactly.</p>



<p>[00:30:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s interesting. So the only piece that I can see in this conference where anything is mentioned about the environment is hosting. And even that, it&#8217;s probably I don&#8217;t know, one in fifty, one in a hundred who have that badge. Talk to us about that side. So obviously we build websites, we&#8217;ve got a computer, we know that it&#8217;s stored somewhere, but tell us about hosting, and what people are doing.</p>



<p>[00:31:22] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Actually some of the hosting companies here are very green, but you have to consider the political climate. So if you are a hosting company based in Texas, in the US. And you are being told that you have to support big oil because that&#8217;s what runs Texas. You don&#8217;t talk about the fact that you are running your hosting data centers on green energy. So it&#8217;s not that they&#8217;re not. It&#8217;s just that they&#8217;re not, it&#8217;s not necessarily part of their marketing message at this point, because the political climate isn&#8217;t necessarily conducive to that.</p>



<p>[00:31:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So you are saying that the hosting industry broadly are doing a fairly good job of this?</p>



<p>[00:32:00] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Well, some of them are, yeah. I know for a fact a lot of the Google Cloud hosting is green and a lot of the big, they&#8217;re using Google data centers.</p>



<p>[00:32:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That feels like one of the most grounded things that you can do. If you&#8217;re having a website, you can actually go out and look for green hosting.</p>



<p>[00:32:16] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> And the Green Software Foundation has a little URL. It&#8217;s a little tool. You can literally go and put in your domain name and it will tell you whether it&#8217;s running on a green hosting.</p>



<p>[00:32:25] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What is the Green Software Foundation?</p>



<p>[00:32:27] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> It&#8217;s a sort of organization that is talking about green software, green web, green all sorts of things. They&#8217;re doing some really interesting stuff. They work a lot with very large organizations. I think to be a member you have, like have to pay up 10,000 pounds or something. It&#8217;s like out of my league to be a member, but it doesn&#8217;t mean I can&#8217;t see what they&#8217;re doing and listen to what they&#8217;re doing.</p>



<p>They&#8217;ve also got a really interesting free course that you can do on sustainable software development. And it gives you all the background and all the things you should be considering when you&#8217;re building software and websites basically, and the things that you can do to make them run better in a greener way.</p>



<p>[00:33:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> If I wanted to make my website more SEOable, I&#8217;ve got a whole suite of tools available to me. And many of them will give me some sort of data saying, okay, this page is, you&#8217;ve done a good job here. Like a traffic light or something you, you know what I&#8217;m saying? </p>



<p>[00:33:25] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Yep.</p>



<p>[00:33:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Are there tools similar to that, that we can use in WordPress?</p>



<p>Maybe it&#8217;s some kind of extension to a browser where we can see what our browsing is doing on the internet. In other words, is there a plugin, something which will show us a dashboard saying, okay this page, based upon the hosting that you&#8217;ve told us you&#8217;re using is consuming or creating this much carbon debt.</p>



<p>[00:33:51] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> There&#8217;s individual tools at the moment that I am aware of. You can put in a URL and it will say, oh yes, your page is this many grams of CO2. Actually what we&#8217;ve done is something. We&#8217;ve been doing a thing. I did that thing of having a side project to the agency, and we&#8217;ve been building something for the past couple of years, and we&#8217;re about to launch a piece of software. It&#8217;s an extension to WordPress, which will actually, in the dashboard, show you a daily carbon footprint of your website based on daily visits and page views.</p>



<p>[00:34:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How is that working then? So presumably the daily page bit is fairly straightforward. This website has been consumed 25,000 times, we can make the connection there. But presumably it must be figuring out, okay, that page had a video on it. This one had nothing but text, and it&#8217;s based upon upon some hosting.</p>



<p>[00:34:40] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> So we&#8217;re basically measuring the page, a measure of the data or page weight for each page. And then we&#8217;re looking at the visitors to the pages as well.</p>



<p>[00:34:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> And are you giving like a score out at the end?</p>



<p>[00:34:52] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> We&#8217;re not giving a score at the moment, but eventually when the software&#8217;s launched and there&#8217;s lots of people using it, we will be able to say, oh, actually, in comparison to other people using our software, you are in the top quarter, or bottom quartile or you are in the middle. So we can give some feedback. But more importantly, if you look at it and you use things like traffic, then you can start to see where you should be optimizing.</p>



<p>[00:35:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. And is this tool going to give you helpful advice on how to optimize it?</p>



<p>[00:35:22] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Yes, we&#8217;re building out a knowledge base as well.</p>



<p>[00:35:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I was going to say, it&#8217;s all very well saying this page is doing really badly, but, you know, tough luck.</p>



<p>[00:35:27] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:35:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So, where will it point me? What are the sort of metrics that you&#8217;re going to be helping me with?</p>



<p>[00:35:31] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> We&#8217;ll be helping with all the basics. It&#8217;s actually about empowering the content editors. Because as website theme builders and as website developers and designers, we can build the most amazing AA accessible website that&#8217;s really lightweight and fast.</p>



<p>And then a year later we could audit it and find, oh, content editors added, you know, 30 images and they didn&#8217;t realize they had to add alt text to each one. And they can have loaded that really large video and not realized that it needed a poster attribute to make sure that the page didn&#8217;t take a long time to load.</p>



<p>So what we are trying to do is give that feedback to editors in the browser when they&#8217;re editing the site, in the backend of the admin. Because that continuous measurement, if they see a little spike, or they see that suddenly something&#8217;s changed, they can go in and fix it. Rather than end up just doing an annual check, or checking every so often and ending up with a list of defects to fix, basically.</p>



<p>So the whole point is, it&#8217;s about designing out people making those unconscious mistakes in the first place. And making sure the website continues to be at the standard it should be at and potentially improves over time.</p>



<p>[00:36:44] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So slightly off piste a little bit. That&#8217;s lovely. I mean I would hope to be able to see that kind of data and it would be really useful to me as a website builder. What about by just general browsing the internet? Do you know if there&#8217;s any tool which can tell me, right at the end of today Nathan, you&#8217;ve been a poor citizen. Some kind of, I don&#8217;t know, a browser extension or something which tells me.</p>



<p>[00:37:05] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> I don&#8217;t know that. Nobody&#8217;s ever asked me that question, so I will have to take that away Nathan and I will have to come back to you, because I genuinely don&#8217;t know the answer to that.</p>



<p>[00:37:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think that would be quite a useful thing to know. At the end of the year, Nathan, your internet use is the equivalent of a 20,000 mile flight or something that would be.</p>



<p>[00:37:22] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> You must be online a lot.</p>



<p>[00:37:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I really am. Yeah. Okay, when are you hoping to get this tool out?</p>



<p>[00:37:28] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> We are doing a soft launch, early adopter, by invitation to Indigo Tree clients mid-July.</p>



<p>[00:37:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. So really soon.</p>



<p>[00:37:35] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Yeah. And then from then on we&#8217;ll be building out new features and basically getting it to the point where we can launch it to people as a SaaS product.</p>



<p>[00:37:45] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So going to go beyond WordPress at some point?</p>



<p>[00:37:47] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Couldn&#8217;t possibly say, but yes.</p>



<p>[00:37:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Maybe. Maybe, yeah.</p>



<p>[00:37:50] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> Well, it depends on the roadmap and it depends what interest we get. And for me it&#8217;s not just about the commercial side of, we to build something that&#8217;s obviously profitable and successful. It&#8217;s actually where can we make the biggest impact? How can we, with what we are doing, make sure that we get the biggest carbon reduction overall.</p>



<p>And the great thing about when you&#8217;re measuring stuff is we can actually report on global stats that are sort of, you know, a thousand clients and cumulatively this month they have reduced their carbon footprint by this amount. You know, so it is going to be an interesting journey to see how we get on and where the biggest impact can be whilst being commercial as well.</p>



<p>[00:38:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. It really does sound interesting. Okay, so we&#8217;re going to have to wrap it up. We&#8217;re probably at the edge of the amount of time that we&#8217;ve got.</p>



<p>Where would we go if we are curious about the things that you&#8217;ve talked about? So maybe that&#8217;s a link to your, the product that you&#8217;ve just mentioned. Maybe it&#8217;s just a more general set of resources. What are the two or three top places that you would send people?</p>



<p>[00:38:45] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> I&#8217;d definitely have a look at the Green Software Foundation. I would also go to, there&#8217;s a Slack channel in the WordPress. I think they&#8217;re just about to create a team in Core for sustainability. So I&#8217;d be going and talking to them.</p>



<p>And then I would be keeping an eye on people like Wholegrain Digital. Tom and Vineeta talk about things a lot. Tom&#8217;s got a really great newsletter that you can subscribe to. So there&#8217;s lots of people talking about it, but I think it&#8217;s about figuring out where it fits with your particular clients. And some of our clients are very values based and will immediately go for this. Some people just need that more commercial argument as well.</p>



<p>[00:39:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, Louise, thank you for telling us all about your efforts regarding sustainability and the environment. It is a genuinely fascinating subject, and my prediction is that this conversation is only going to get louder and louder.</p>



<p>[00:39:39] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> I hope so.</p>



<p>[00:39:39] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> As the years go on. Yeah, thank you for talking to me.</p>



<p>[00:39:41] <strong>Louise Towler:</strong> You&#8217;re welcome. Thank you.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisetowler/">Louise Towler</a>. She joined me at the recent WordCamp Europe in Athens to talk about websites and making them more sustainable.</p>



<p>Louise is the founder of <a href="https://indigotree.co.uk/">Indigo Tree</a>, a UK based agency with deep expertise in WordPress websites.</p>



<p>She gave a presentation at WordCamp Europe entitled, Digital sustainability: The benefits for business and the environment in which she emphasised the impact websites can have on our planet. Her aim was to deliver practical tips for users and developers to help them make informed decisions.</p>



<p>This presentation is the focus of today&#8217;s podcast, and we cover quite a lot of ground.</p>



<p>Louise highlights the significant role which electricity plays in powering data centres and transmitting data to end devices. Even if data centres use renewable energy, there is still a need to address overall electricity consumption. She points out that the internet is the fourth largest polluter globally, surpassing the airline industry.</p>



<p>We discuss how the continuous and widespread use of the internet has made it difficult to reduce its own impact, whilst still emphasising the importance of the steps we can take to make the internet more energy-efficient.&nbsp;</p>



<p>She suggests ways that we can all make a difference right away; educating clients about the consequences of certain design choices, such as using large videos or autoplay features that require substantial data to load. Optimising videos, images, and other website elements, which makes it possible to reduce data consumption <em>and</em> improve performance.</p>



<p>The conversation then explores other suggestions such as using modern image formats, using images as placeholders for videos, self-hosted fonts, and considering the carbon footprint of email communications.</p>



<p>Louise acknowledges the challenges of discussing environmental concerns with clients whilst also explaining that we have to come up with ways to make clients understand that these decisions are beneficial to them as well. After all, an optimised website is one that is looked upon favourably by search engines. Whilst clients ultimately are the decision makers, informing them about the consequences of their choices can help them be more informed.</p>



<p>Moving onto WordPress, we talk about the responsibility theme authors play. It’s a crucial role, helping users make sustainable choices. Her agency builds custom themes for clients, which allows them to have full control over design decisions.</p>



<p>We get into the subject of how legislation is certainly coming, and so getting in early and understanding the implications of such legislation will help your own endeavours in the future.</p>



<p>Towards the end of the podcast we chat about some of the tools which you can use to assess the impact that your websites have, including a tool which Louise and her team have been working on for the last few years.</p>



<p>If you’re interested in how your sites can become more sustainable, this podcast is for you.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links.</h2>



<p><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/session/digital-sustainability-the-benefits-for-business-and-the-environment/">Louise WordCamp Europe presentation &#8211; Digital sustainability: The benefits for business and the environment</a></p>



<p><a href="https://indigotree.co.uk/">Indigo Tree website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://perfmatters.io/">Perf Matters plugin</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.gravityforms.com/">Gravity Forms website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://greensoftware.foundation/">Green Software Foundation website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C03JNV77Y57">Sustainability Slack Channel</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.wholegraindigital.com/">Wholegrain Digital website</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 05 Jul 2023 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:19;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"Do The Woo Community: What the Client Thinks They Know";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75453";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://dothewoo.io/what-the-client-thinks-they-know/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:385:"<p>Clients consider they have learned a lot through GPT or by Googling it. They assume they know what will work best for them.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/what-the-client-thinks-they-know/">What the Client Thinks They Know</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 05 Jul 2023 09:32:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:20;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:89:"Do The Woo Community: Productizing Your Agency Services with Shadi Manna and Jimmy Rosén";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75426";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"https://dothewoo.io/productizing-your-agency-services-with-shadi-manna-and-jimmy-rosen/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:438:"<p>Listen in on our Woo AgencyChat where Shadi and Jimmy talk about the journey of productizing your services.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/productizing-your-agency-services-with-shadi-manna-and-jimmy-rosen/">Productizing Your Agency Services with Shadi Manna and Jimmy Rosén</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 04 Jul 2023 06:58:10 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:21;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:107:"WPTavern: WordCamp Dhaka 2023 Cancelled Due to Concerns of Corporate Influence on Community Decision-Making";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146490";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:118:"https://wptavern.com/wordcamp-dhaka-2023-cancelled-due-to-concerns-of-corporate-influence-on-community-decision-making";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6529:"<p>WordCamp Dhaka (Bangladesh) 2023 has been <a href="https://dhaka.wordcamp.org/2023/">cancelled</a> by The WordPress Community Team due to concerns of corporate influence on the community decision-making process. The camp was scheduled for August 5, and organizers had already secured a venue and progressed on moving the camp forward. </p>



<p>The Community Team <a href="https://dhaka.wordcamp.org/2023/">published a statement</a> on the event&#8217;s website, which cited the interference of corporate interests: </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>The WordPress Community Team’s primary goal is to support and nurture the WordPress community by enabling organizers to create amazing events that celebrate WordPress, its community, and&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/wordcamp-organizer/become-an-organizer/representing-wordpress/">globally shared values</a>. The Community team cannot support the event if a WordCamp is not aligned with these values.</p>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/meetup-program-basics/#the-five-good-faith-rules">WordPress events benefit the WordPress community as a whole, not specific businesses or individuals</a>. The Community Team expects that WordCamps decisions should be guided by the community’s collective wisdom and not influenced by any one company’s interests. When companies attempt to exert influence on the planning process, the Community Team must step in to mediate. In this instance, we have decided to cancel WordCamp Dhaka 2023.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>The Community Team urged the Dhaka community to focus on collaborative organization, companies uplifting the community, and greater diversity in participation.</p>



<p>In an equally vague <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/07/03/incident-report-recent-cancelation-of-a-wordcamp/">incident report</a> on WordPress.org, which doesn&#8217;t even identify the WordCamp that was cancelled, Community Team contributor Sam Suresh called it &#8220;an unfortunate but necessary decision.&#8221; He summarized the team&#8217;s reasons for the decision:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>The decision to cancel the event was not a result of inadequate planning or insufficient effort on the part of the organizing team. Instead, there were observable actions from local community members to influence decisions that would benefit specific individuals or companies. When this influence did not immediately lead to their desired results, the individuals aimed to undermine the organizing process and event success. While the Community Team took steps to mediate, the inappropriate behavior and actions we saw necessitated the cancelation. This is a rare and extreme decision and underscores the severity of the situation.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Suresh said the issues applied to the local meetup group as well, and that all co-organizers and event organizers were removed from their roles and required to repeat their orientation to gain access again. A community deputy and a mentor were also removed from their roles in the project and the companies involved in the infractions were banned from sponsoring WordPress events for a year.</p>



<p>&#8220;In times of challenges like these, it is important to remember that anyone can organize WordPress events regardless of who they work for and that WordPress community events are for the benefit of everyone, not any one business or individual,&#8221; Suresh said. &#8220;As a community, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/handbook/community-code-of-conduct/#our-expectations">we will not tolerate harassment or influencing unacceptable behaviors</a>.&#8221;</p>



<p>Shortly after publishing, several community members commented with objections to the level of secrecy around the issues at hand and the people and companies involved. The Community Team&#8217;s nebulous posts on the matter seem to have further scandalized the situation, instead of offering clarity and transparency.</p>



<p>&#8220;This post definitely abides by the ongoing policy of not letting the community know who is being censured by the Community Services team, even in cases of egregious action,&#8221; WordPress marketing and meta contributor Sé Reed commented.</p>



<p>&#8220;I’ve seen multiple cases of people filing harassment reports and various Code of Conduct violations, and that person/people have had various consequences, including being removed from organizing teams. However, those people then cite various reasons for leaving the team, often outright lying. But because of the secrecy around these cases, no one says otherwise and those people can and often do continue to operate in the community without any repercussions beyond secretly losing their &#8216;official&#8217; role(s).&#8221;</p>



<p>Reed highlighted the damaging effects of the secrecy surrounding these incidents, most notably that explaining the situation often falls to those who filed the report, as the Community Team abdicates any further responsibility after validating the report.</p>



<p>&#8220;This action is damaging to the community as a whole, as we do not have a full picture of who we are working with and we continue to unknowingly support and empower people who have not honored their community commitments,&#8221; Reed said.</p>



<p>Not all participants in the discussion were in favor of The Community Team identifying the individuals involved, but in this situation they demand to know the companies that were banned from sponsoring WordPress events.</p>



<p>&#8220;I’m on the fence about knowing peoples’ names here, but I think people definitely need to know the <strong>companies</strong> involved; actively trying to sabotage a WordPress WordCamp is a serious breach of trust for the community,&#8221; WebDevStudios Director of Engineering Mitch Cantor said. &#8220;Especially when they may turn around and then make money from that said community they tried to sabotage.&#8221;</p>



<p>Dealing with these types of sensitive situations is not an enviable task, but the community, for whom these decisions are designed to serve, is calling for a greater level of transparency regarding those who act in ways that are not aligned with WordPress&#8217; globally shared values.</p>



<p>&#8220;One way or the other, protecting folks who have violated the Community Code of Conduct is a policy that very clearly needs to be revisited,&#8221; Reed said.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 03 Jul 2023 19:11:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:22;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:40:"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.3 Beta 3";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=15340";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/07/wordpress-6-3-beta-3/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5894:"<p>WordPress 6.3 Beta 3 is ready for download and testing!</p>



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



<p>Get an overview of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-3/">6.3 release cycle</a>, and check the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/6-3/">6.3-related posts</a> in the coming weeks for further details. Also, save the date for a live product demo tentatively scheduled for Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 16:00 UTC (link TBD). This will be a great opportunity to join the WordPress community to celebrate the accomplishments of 6.3 and this final chapter of <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/04/phase-2-finale/">Phase 2</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Beta 3 highlights</h2>



<p>Thanks to the many WordPress beta testers, this release contains approximately 34 (Site Editor) and 40+ (Trac) updates since the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/">Beta 2 release</a>. Nice work, team!</p>



<p>Testers should note that the &#8220;Patterns Library&#8221; is <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/52102">now simply called <em>Patterns</em></a> in the UI. Additionally, pattern details now include a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51954">sync status</a> and a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51990">lock icon</a> is added for theme patterns.</p>



<p>Browse the technical details for issues addressed since Beta 2 using these queries:</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6.3">GitHub commits for 6.3</a></li>



<li>Closed <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&status=closed&changetime=06%2F28%2F2023..07%2F03%2F2023&milestone=6.3&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id">Trac tickets</a> since June 28</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Test the new features in WordPress 6.3</h2>



<p>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.&nbsp;</p>



<p>While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is too. Review the many <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/">new features in WordPress 6.3</a> and focus your testing efforts on those areas in particular.</p>



<ul>
<li>Encountered an issue? Please report it to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a> in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">file one on WordPress Trac</a>. You can also check your issue against a list of <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</li>



<li>New to testing? This <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/">detailed guide</a> is a great place to start if you&#8217;ve never tested a beta release.</li>



<li>Want to know more about testing releases in general? Follow along with the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/">testing initiatives in Make Core</a> and join the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/">#core-test channel</a> on the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/">Making WordPress Slack</a>.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Vulnerability bounty doubles during the Beta/RC phases</h2>



<p>Between the Beta 1 release and the final release candidate (RC), the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/security/2023/06/28/doubling-the-bounties-for-wordpress-6-3-beta/">monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is double</a>. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the <a href="https://hackerone.com/wordpress">HackerOne page</a> and in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/security/">security white paper</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Get WordPress 6.3 Beta 3</h2>



<p>You can test WordPress 6.3 Beta 3 in three ways:</p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Option 1:</strong> Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</li>



<li><strong>Option 2: </strong>Direct download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.3-beta3.zip">Beta 3 version (zip)</a>.</li>



<li><strong>Option 3:</strong> Use the following WP-CLI command:<br /><code>wp core update --version=6.3-beta3</code></li>
</ul>



<p>The current target for the final release is <strong>August 8, 2023</strong>, which is about five weeks away. Your help testing this version ensures everything in this release is the best.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A Beta 3 Haiku for You</h2>



<p>Beta three, a peek<br />Summer here and winter there<br />A fourth in one week</p>



<p><em>Thank you to the contributors who collaborated on this post: </em><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dansoschin/"><em>@DanSoschin</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/"><em>@Meher</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jpantani/"><em>@JPantani</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/eidolonnight/"><em>@eidolonnight</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald/"><em>@davidbaumwald</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/priethor/">@priethor</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dansoschin/"><em>@DanSoschin</em></a> for the Haiku.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 03 Jul 2023 17:10:55 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Dan Soschin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:23;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"WPTavern: Ultimate Member 2.6.7 Patches Privilege Escalation Vulnerability";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146476";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:85:"https://wptavern.com/ultimate-member-2-6-7-patches-privilege-escalation-vulnerability";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3293:"<p>Authors of the Ultimate Member plugin have <a href="https://docs.ultimatemember.com/article/1866-security-incident-update-and-recommended-actions">released version 2.6.7</a> with a patch for a privilege escalation vulnerability. Last week <a href="https://wptavern.com/hackers-actively-exploiting-unpatched-privilege-escalation-vulnerability-in-ultimate-member-plugin">WPScan reported that Ultimate Member had still not fully patched the vulnerability</a> after multiple inadequate attempts. There was evidence that it was being actively exploited in the wild.</p>



<p>Working through the complexities of this security issue, WPScan researcher Marc Montpas opened a <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58679#ticket">ticket</a> on WordPress trac, identifying an issue with the meta key field in the usermeta table using accent insensitive collations:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Looking at the latest string of vulnerability issues that came up related to the Ultimate Member plugin I discovered that the usermeta table has an accent insensitive collation for the <code>meta_key</code> field. This results in queries for <code>wp_cãpăbilitiës</code> to return the actual <code>wp_capabilities</code> row! See <code>update_metadata()</code> function in wp-includes/meta.php</p>



<p>Imagine the attack surface this brings. In fact, don&#8217;t imagine, just look at the recent attacks in the wild.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>This particular issue made it more difficult to fully patch the vulnerability in question. Ultimate Member released version 2.6.7 on July 1, 2023, which whitelists for metakeys the plugin stores while sending forms. The plugin&#8217;s security advisory details a few other changes that may affect third-party developers:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>2.6.7 also separates form settings data and submitted data and operates them in 2 different variables. </p>



<p>[It] includes some significant changes to how forms submissions are handled. This may cause 3rd-party modifications to stop working. For Third-party developers, please update your customizations to support the new changes in the latest version</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Ultimate Member recommends users review and delete any unknown administrator accounts, reset all user passwords including the admin, enable SSL and backups, and send any advisories to site members and/or customers about the incident. The plugin&#8217;s developers are working on releasing a feature inside the plugin that will enable the website admin to reset passwords for all users, but it is still being finalized:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>The reason for this is a site using our plugin may have been hacked or injected with malware that sniffs login inputs, because this vulnerability issue is prone to these attacks, we recommend to reset passwords after updating with a security patch. This is to ensure the best protection for your website user’s passwords.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>All Ultimate Member users should update to the latest available version, 2.6.7, which has the patch for the vulnerability. The plugin&#8217;s developers are awaiting more feedback from WPScan and are evaluating all their extensions to ensure they are secure. </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 03 Jul 2023 16:22:27 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:24;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 59: A Polyglot’s WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=15281";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:68:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/07/episode-59-a-polyglots-wordpress/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30292:"<p>Join WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy in the 59th episode of the WordPress Briefing. Today she invites guest speaker Alex Kirk to discuss Polyglots&#8217; work to continue to help bring translation to WordPress.   </p>



<p><em><strong>Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to&nbsp;<a href="mailto:wpbriefing@wordpress.org">wpbriefing@wordpress.org</a>, either written or as a voice recording.</strong></em></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Credits</h2>



<p>Host: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a><br />Guests: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/akirk/">Alex Kirk</a><br />Editor: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a><br />Logo: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/">Javier Arce</a><br />Production: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/">Brett McSherry</a> and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/eidolonnight/">Nicholas Garofalo</a><br />Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Show Notes</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/">Polyglots team</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/about/roadmap/">Gutenberg Project roadmap</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/glotpress/">GlotPress plugin</a></li>



<li><a href="https://translate.wordpress.org/">Translating WordPress</a> &#8211; Contribute to WordPress core, themes, and plugins by translating them into your language.</li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/">WordPress Playground</a> &#8211; WordPress that runs entirely in your browser.</li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/05/08/translate-live-updates-to-the-translation-playground/">Translate Live: Updates to the Translation Playground</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/about/roles-and-capabilities/">Polyglots Roles and Capabilities</a> &#8211; Including the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/about/roles-and-capabilities/#general-translation-editor">GTE</a> and <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/handbook/about/roles-and-capabilities/#project-translation-editor">PTE</a> roles.</li>



<li><a href="https://href.li/?https://2023.wpcampus.org/">WPCampus 2023</a> &#8211; A hybrid event, July 12th through the 14th, at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Topics focus on the growth of higher education, accessibility, WordPress, and anyone who works in higher education.</li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/06/23/launch-your-wordpress-contributor-journey-through-the-mentorship-program-pilot/">Launch your WordPress Contributor Journey through the Mentorship Program Pilot</a> &#8211; A cohort-based onboarding experience with guided courses and live workshops for those interested in contributing to the project but unsure where to begin.</li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/06/20/make-team-dashboards/">Make Team Dashboards</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transcript</h2>



<span id="more-15281"></span>



<p><em>( Intro music )</em></p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:00:10]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>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&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.</p>



<p><em>( Intro music )</em></p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:00:39]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>I have with me Alex Kirk, who is a longtime WordPress contributor and who has been instrumental in recent innovations in the Polyglots&#8217; work. Phase four of the Gutenberg project is native multilingual support, and so I see this work that is being done as instrumental, not only for our global community but in support of what&#8217;s to come in that specific roadmap.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:00:59]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>So without further ado, Alex Kirk, welcome to the WordPress Briefing.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:01:03]</strong></p>



<p>Hello, how are you doing?&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:01:05]</strong></p>



<p>I&#8217;m good. I&#8217;m good. Can you, let&#8217;s, because I bet that not a lot of people know who you are, can you first start by just telling me a bit about your work with WordPress, and then let us know what GlotPress is, for those of us who don&#8217;t know yet?&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:01:19]</strong></p>



<p>All right. So, Automattic sponsors me to work in the WordPress project on the Meta team and on the Polyglots team. So I spent time on improving or helping improve the software that powers the translation on WordPress.org. But I also work on the meta team on things like Matrix and evaluating if it would be a good fit for WordPress to switch to Matrix for their chat system.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:01:46]</strong></p>



<p>So a lot of really big projects that you work on, all of that kind of stuff that has no easy solutions anymore, is where you are right now. Huh?</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:01:56]</strong></p>



<p>Yeah, there&#8217;s no clear path, but it&#8217;s our mission to find it. So that&#8217;s part of what makes things interesting.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:02:05]</strong></p>



<p>Cool. So for folks who don&#8217;t know too much about the Polyglots team or generally translating WordPress, the software, can you let us know a bit about what GlotPress is?</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:02:16]</strong></p>



<p>Right. So the translation system that powers WordPress.org is called GlotPress. It used to be a standalone software that was developed a couple of years ago, and it was transformed into a WordPress plugin at some point, and now powers the translation that happens on WordPress.org. So we translate WordPress core there from English to other languages, plugins, themes, block patterns, and it all happens through this software called GlotPress. There are a couple GlotPress installations around the world, but I think the WordPress.org one is one of the bigger ones.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:02:55]</strong></p>



<p>Probably, WordPress.org is pretty, pretty massive. Also, I think it&#8217;s great that you said that GlotPress was created a couple of years ago, like that, that indicates to me that you&#8217;re working on a really different timescale than a lot of folks are in WordPress.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:03:10]</strong></p>



<p>So Alex, tell me a little bit about what it takes to ship translated WordPress software. So, I mean, for people who don&#8217;t need translated WordPress, like obviously we don&#8217;t have a good idea of what it takes to make sure that WordPress is available in so many languages. So what goes into the work of making sure that that happens?</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:03:32]</strong></p>



<p>All right, so typically the WordPress software and plugins and themes are primarily created in English. And for it to be available in other languages, it needs to be translated. And for that to be able to happen, the programmers need to make the software translatable. Basically, they&#8217;re providing each English string for the translation software to be available to be transformed, so to speak, into another language and to what it&#8217;s being transformed to. This is what the translators do. So they go into the GlotPress software and see the list of texts that need to be translated and translate it to their language that they speak. Typically there is a process around this.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:03:32]</strong></p>



<p>So, we&#8217;ve got people who have lots of experience in translation. And specifically in translating WordPress or WordPress plugins. And they&#8217;re kind of the, the people who help ensure good quality of translation. So anybody who&#8217;s working the WordPress project, so basically who has a WordPress.org account, can come in and address the translation. And that translation enters the system, so to speak, in a waiting state. And then somebody who we promoted to be a Translation Editor will come along and take a look at your translation and will approve it or will give you suggestions how to do the translation in a better way, or come up with maybe even a better translation.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:05:03]</strong></p>



<p>You know, when you have like a small thing that&#8217;s just not right, like a missing full stop or something like that. They might just add it for you. And well, as soon as the plugin or software is translated to a certain level of translations those translations will be shipped out to the WordPress installs.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:05:20]</strong></p>



<p>So, for example, for a plugin, you would reach 90% of translated strings. Those translations will then be basically packed up into zip file, a language pack and delivered to each WordPress so that you can have the translations available there.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:05:35]</strong></p>



<p>And is 90% the threshold for plugins only, or is that also the threshold for like themes and the CMS itself?</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:05:34]</strong></p>



<p>Well. We strive for 100%, I would say.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:05:47]</strong></p>



<p>Good. <em>( laughs )</em></p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:05:48]</strong></p>



<p>And, 90% more of a motivational point. To be actually honest, I&#8217;m not sure if the threshold is 90% for every project or even if it&#8217;s actually 90%. It&#8217;s different between different GlotPress installations and it&#8217;s basically something that is made as a setting that can be changed. There&#8217;s, it&#8217;s an arbitrary number. Typically you&#8217;d actually want to make sure that the most important strings are translated first. So the ones like, if you look at the whole picture, software usually consists of many parts, many of whom are not encountered by people on a regular basis. For example, error messages that could be like obscure error messages, and you could argue that those might be not as important. Or even sometimes you could even say like, do they need to be translated? Because if you encounter an error message and you search the internet, wouldn&#8217;t you probably want everybody to search for the English one to find the solution? But that set-aside, it&#8217;s important to have like the headline of the plugin or like the most important strings translated, and typically translating those most important strings will take you to a pretty high percentage so that we can then say it&#8217;s good enough to be shipped.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:07:02]</strong></p>



<p>Gotcha. I see, I see. Okay. Well, we talked a bit earlier about GlotPress&#8217;s timeline. It has been around for a bit, I know. But with that kind of in mind, have there been any notable changes to GlotPress recently?&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:07:19]</strong></p>



<p>Yeah, so I think for GlotPress there&#8217;s been a bit of an up and down over time in terms of engagement and progress on the software. But in, in the recent year, I think we&#8217;ve added a couple of things that have been very helpful for translators. So one of them was adding the commenting functionality, so yeah.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:07:35]</strong></p>



<p>Super helpful. Shocked it wasn&#8217;t there before. Sorry, translators. Sorry, all of our polyglots.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:07:40]</strong></p>



<p>Well, it can be like there was when GlotPress was created there, there is like the, a big part of GlotPress are these states, like the waiting state when you enter translation, and then there&#8217;s approved state, which basically a translation we say it&#8217;s set to current, and there&#8217;s all sorts of process around it. So if the software is updated or translation might get fuzzy. But also like, if somebody submits a translation that doesn&#8217;t fully conform to what&#8217;s the translation editors, or like what the standards of the translation community have been set to, then you would have to need to reject it.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:08:16]</strong></p>



<p>And that has been something that we felt wasn&#8217;t a very good and enticing way of telling people like, we appreciate your work. It wasn&#8217;t just quite right, but it&#8217;s more of a rejection. So this is how we came up with this like, let&#8217;s give people the option to say what was wrong and give them a chance to try again without making them feel rejected.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:08:38]</strong></p>



<p>Yeah. Sort of a &#8220;No, but&#8230;&#8221; as opposed to a, just refusal to receive it.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:08:45]</strong></p>



<p>And other things that we&#8217;ve worked on is, like, with the recent search of AI, like getting help from AI on translation and also on reviews. So, there&#8217;s some interesting things that you can do with AI in that regard; that one important aspect of translations, it&#8217;s also that we&#8217;ve got glossaries for each language where people, basically the translation community, identifies certain words they want to translate them the same way every time.&nbsp;And with the AI, you can basically add to the prompt, like, please translate those words to those translations when you give me a translation for that. And as it can change over time, you can always adapt this to the prompt, and that has been proven quite helpful.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:09:25]</strong></p>



<p>That is great. That&#8217;s one of those things I know that AI has been like a really popular thing to talk about. And AI, specifically for translations, I think has caused some concern that maybe we&#8217;ll just like translate it all and hope that computers get it right when we know pretty certainly that computers don&#8217;t always get the translations right. But that&#8217;s not what you&#8217;re talking about, right? What you&#8217;re suggesting is that AI would suggest what could be translated and what it could be translated to, and then human beings have to confirm that that&#8217;s correct, right?</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:09:59]</strong></p>



<p>That&#8217;s exactly it. So basically, we give suggestions to the translators, and then they can modify a translation before they press save. It&#8217;s more of a, like supporting them in getting the translations, like looking up words more quickly and all of that.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:10:16]</strong></p>



<p>That&#8217;s wonderful. So is that the major sort of next step that is coming for GlotPress, or are there other things that we should keep an eye out for in that software?</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:10:27]</strong></p>



<p>So one direction that we&#8217;ve been taking GlotPress is basically making use of the fact that GlotPress is WordPress plugin now. And you know, typically, you would just use a GlotPress install. So on WordPress.Org, there&#8217;s like GlotPress installed, there&#8217;s translation projects created, something that we call &#8220;translation sets&#8221;. So for languages, you want to translate it to, it&#8217;s all pre-configured, and if you would install GlotPress to plugin on your own WordPress, it would be empty and not very useful. So what we&#8217;ve added is a way for you to basically be able to translate the plugins and themes that you&#8217;ve got installed in your WordPress into the language that you&#8217;re interested in.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:11:07]</strong></p>



<p>So you might have a non-English website that you want to use certain plugins with, and they might not be fully translated at this point, so obviously, you could go to WordPress.org and help translate them, and that&#8217;s the way to, that&#8217;s preferred. But you could also now go install GlotPress on your own website and translate there. And then you have the translations there right when you enter them. And you can then contribute those translations back to WordPress.org.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:11:35]</strong></p>



<p>So that&#8217;s with local GlotPress?</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:11:37]</strong></p>



<p>That&#8217;s something that we call local GlotPress. And you know, since we then have all these translations in the local database, it means we can do even more with those translations. So typically, language packs would be delivered to WordPress, but with local GlotPress, you&#8217;ve got like all the GlotPress software there.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:11:56]</strong></p>



<p>So we can do things like inline translation. So, on your own WordPress and wp-admin, for example, we can highlight all the strings that can be translated, and those strings just have to right-click them and enter your translation, and that way, you can basically go about and translate the whole ui, seeing your progress, as you&#8217;re making, basically turning the screen from red to green.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:12:20]</strong></p>



<p>Yeah. Yeah. So that&#8217;s something now that you can do in your local WordPress installation.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:12:26]</strong></p>



<p>Basically, it&#8217;s completely independent of WordPress.org. We would ask you to contribute the translations back when you have them, but being independent also allows you to translate like premium plugins, which could not be hosted on WordPress.org or doing something like that we call like hyper-local translation. So, for example, I speak Austrian German natively, but even inside Austria, we&#8217;ve got different dialects or like special words that we use. And if I wanted to create a website that&#8217;s targeted at the Viennese market, for example, I might want to use those specific terms. And this is something I would have to argue for those translations to be accepted on WordPress.org because it&#8217;s a, it&#8217;s like a very targeted market. But if I have a local GlotPress, I can do those translations there.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:13:11]</strong></p>



<p>That seems awfully beneficial, especially as dialects. I&#8217;ve been having these conversations. I have, in my extended family, many children, and they are all learning languages and one of them has been having kind of thoughts about, like, dialects and how dialects are almost another language. And if so, like how do you know what everybody&#8217;s saying when you&#8217;re speaking all the same thing, but it&#8217;s kind of a little bit it sounds a little bit different.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:13:37]</strong></p>



<p>That&#8217;s certainly a thing in the US, the distinct dialects across our country. And so I imagine that that&#8217;s gonna be a really beneficial sort of implementation for countries that have a lot of different regional variations and certainly smaller countries that have technically the same language as somebody else, but a lot of regional differences, regional specific things.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:14:01]</strong></p>



<p>Is that the same or different as the live translations, Translate Live, that we talked about at the WordCamp Europe a couple weeks back?</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:14:12]</strong></p>



<p>Right. So, Translate Live is kind of the next step after local GlotPress. It&#8217;s like this happy marriage between the WordPress Playground and local GlotPress. So the WordPress Playground is also something that has come up a lot. It&#8217;s basically a way for you to run WordPress inside a browser window, so in JavaScript. And at first, it seems like mildly interesting, I would say. But when you combine it with other things like local GlotPress, it can lead to really interesting opportunities. So with inline translation, for example, on WordPress.org, you would typically find for every plugin, the UI would look the same. You would have a table of strings, and all that makes you realize you&#8217;re translating this certain plugin is that in the header of the page, it says this name of the plugin, but other than that, it can look really all the same.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:15:07]</strong></p>



<p>And now, with WordPress Playground, you can put up a WordPress and run this plugin inside that Playground. And now, if you add local GlotPress to the picture, you can also do the inline translation of that plugin inside the WordPress Playground. So you&#8217;ve got inline translation. We add the glossary so they do make sure that you translate things the same way that they&#8217;re expected, and you don&#8217;t have to install the plugin.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:15:33]</strong></p>



<p>And still, you can see what the translations will look like. You can see the strings next to each other, and what I think is most important, you will start with the strings that you see first, which are the most important ones. When you&#8217;re in the table view, those strings might be somewhere buried in the middle, and yeah, it&#8217;s really hard to see progress if you start with kind of obscure error messages, for example, versus just starting with the things that you see first.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:16:02]</strong></p>



<p>Yeah. So, moving translations away from table-based translations where you kind of have to know what you&#8217;re looking for. So the Translate Live, along with local GlotPress, along with WP Playground, is going to make it so that it&#8217;s easier to see visually what needs to be translated, where, what&#8217;s most valuable to translate for your mid users and your end users, basically.</p>



<p>Yeah?</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:16:30]</strong></p>



<p>That, and also like for plug-in authors, it can be really good to see, you know, you can switch the languages in the Playground to another language, and you can quickly see like what&#8217;s the state of the translation in this language or in that language. And even things like, you know, Arabic as an RTL language rights to left language. The sidebar will change to the right, and you can also just switch language and see like, what&#8217;s my plugin like in this environment. I mean, this is not technically something that&#8217;s related to local GlotPress, but in this translation live ui, it&#8217;s very easy to change languages and see your plugin in another language.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:17:06]</strong></p>



<p>I mean, it&#8217;s not specifically related to, to Translations Live, but also, I think that if we&#8217;re saying that WordPress not necessarily is going to lead the way with translations and native multilingual support in our CMS because, of course, it&#8217;s still a little bit far out on our roadmap. We certainly have an opportunity to have the best implementation of that.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:17:27]</strong></p>



<p>And even if like that specific use case that you&#8217;re talking about isn&#8217;t related directly to what it is that you are working on for Polyglots and inside GlotPress and all of that, I do see that having more streamlined, more easy to see and access opportunities to like test the way that our software looks across varying environments, especially those that change it substantially from what we typically work in day-to-day for any individual developer or any individual WordPress site implementer.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:18:00</strong>]</p>



<p>Like, I think that that is a big step forward for all of us and certainly for anyone who is having to use WordPress as not a native English speaker. And so you say it&#8217;s not related, but it still is a big, a big benefit for WordPress overall, I think, to have this kind of work happening so that we can have those benefits to the folks who are using our software.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:18:22]</strong></p>



<p>So there were a couple of different things that you mentioned over the course of our conversation. We&#8217;re gonna put some links to the show notes for all of those. But one thing that you mentioned that just kind of went by, and we never really had an opportunity to talk about it. You talked about the, I think it was GTEs, Global Translation Editors, the folks that are like approved as final approvers of translations. If there is someone who&#8217;s listening to this podcast who wants to become a GTE someday, where would they go to do that?</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:18:54]</strong></p>



<p>So the path to GTE is a PTE.&nbsp;<em>( laughs )</em></p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:18:59]</strong></p>



<p>So, we&#8217;ve got different levels of translation editors. Basically, you start, you could say you start off as a translator, and this is how you can kind of show that you can do good translations or that you&#8217;re very firm in your language. And this might make you be noticed in the community.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:19:16]</strong></p>



<p>So we&#8217;re always looking for people who like to help with translations. And you might be then promoted to be a Project Translation Editor. Basically, it means that for a single language in a project, you&#8217;ll be able to approve translations. So, you&#8217;ll be the one who says, like, this translation is a good one and this conforms to the to the rules that we have stated as a translation community.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:19:42]</strong></p>



<p>And further down the path then is the GTE, where you basically are allowed to approve translations across any project on translate.WordPress.org in your language. And that&#8217;s, usually you&#8217;ll be in, in that position with other GTEs.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:20:04]</strong></p>



<p>So there is, like, in each community, there is like, we&#8217;re people based. We talk about what might be a good translation. We talk to each other, try to find rules that maybe prevent common mistranslations, or set the standards for how we want the software to be translated. And this is something where you get a voice as a translator, but as a GTE, you get into a position where you can actually make the changes or find consensus on how the software should be translated in your language.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:20:35]</strong></p>



<p>And if folks are not familiar where the Polyglots team works and meets, where would they find you all?</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:20:41]</strong></p>



<p>At make.WordPress.org/polyglots.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:20:45]</strong></p>



<p>Perfect. Alex, this has been such a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today.</p>



<p><strong>[Alex Kirk&nbsp; 00:20:50]</strong></p>



<p>Thank you very much.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>( Intermission music )</em></p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:20:59]</strong></p>



<p>So that brings us now to our small list of big things. First, WP Campus 2023 is taking place July 12th through the 14th. That&#8217;s a nonprofit three-day conference with topics that focus on the growth of higher education, accessibility, WordPress, and anyone who works in higher education.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:21:17]</strong></p>



<p>It&#8217;s a hybrid event. There is an in-person component on the beautiful campus of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. I&#8217;ll add information about that in our show notes for anyone who would like to join in person or online.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:21:32]</strong></p>



<p>The second thing is that the mentorship program pilot that I have been talking about a little bit over the last few months has been formally launched.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:21:39]</strong></p>



<p>If you are interested in contributing more to the project but not sure where to begin, take a look at this comprehensive onboarding experience. It&#8217;s cohort-based. It has some personalized one-to-one mentorship. There are guided courses, live workshops, all of that. So read more about it in our show notes and sign up for one-on-one team mentorship.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:21:59]</strong></p>



<p>And then, finally, Matt mentioned at WordCamp Europe an idea that he had been thinking of for some time a Make team dashboard that would sort of help define team metrics and help identify for individual contributors what should indicate team health and where they can find the most impactful projects to work on.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:22:20]</strong></p>



<p>A post has since been published on make.WordPress.org/meta calling for additional feedback on that idea, so that we have an understanding of what this could be, how the dashboard can kind of come to be. And so stop by and add your thoughts there in the comments.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:22:38]</strong></p>



<p>And that, my friends, is your small list of big things.</p>



<p><strong>[Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; 00:22:42]</strong></p>



<p>Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks.</p>



<p><em>( Outro music )</em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 03 Jul 2023 13:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Brett McSherry";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:25;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:49:"Do The Woo Community: Opportunities on Do the Woo";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75409";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://dothewoo.io/opportunities-on-do-the-woo/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:360:"<p>There are many ways to be a guest or host on the podcast. Or maybe you have an idea you would like to pitch.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/opportunities-on-do-the-woo/">Opportunities on Do the Woo</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 03 Jul 2023 08:10:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:104:"Gutenberg Times: Extending Gutenberg and the block editor, testing WordPress 6.3 – Weekend Edition 259";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=24561";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:110:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/extending-gutenberg-and-the-block-editor-testing-wordpress-6-3-weekend-edition-259/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14380:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>I am sending this while traveling back from WordCamp Leipzig, where I had great conversations with people from the German WordPress community. I published a few photos on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/bph/status/1675157669479366657">here</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/bph/status/1675123509117288448">here</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/bph/status/1675106732823965696">here</a>, and on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7080834770032586754/">LinkedIN</a>. Language switching is as difficult as context switching. </p>



<p>WordPress 6.3 Beta 1 is released, as well as Gutenberg 16.1.  More below. </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>






<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-word-press-6-3">WordPress 6.3 </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-gutenberg-16-1">Gutenberg 16.1 </a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#4-theme-development-for-full-site-editing-and-blocks">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </a></li></ul></div>
</div></div>




<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><strong>If you haven&#8217;t yet, it&#8217;s time to reseaver your seat! for <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7516851799317/WN_AFgYtmyaRviAY3b2oGP2pg">next  week&#8217;s Gutenberg Live Q &amp; A on July 6th, 2023, at 17:00 UTC</a> </strong></p>



<p class="has-accent-color has-text-color has-large-font-size"><strong>Leveraging Gutenberg&#8217;s architecture to take plugin development to new levels.</strong></p>



<p>Learn how Gutenberg components and scripts can be used outside the block editor to revamp a plugin&#8217;s code base in this Case Study of GiveWP 3.0 with Jason Adams, Director of Development, Jon Waldstein, Lead Developer of GiveWP and co-host Lena Morita, JavaScript Developer on the Components team. </p>



<a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7516851799317/WN_AFgYtmyaRviAY3b2oGP2pg"><img /></a>
</div></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="1-word-press-6-3">WordPress 6.3 </h3>



<p>On Tuesday, <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/">WordPress 6.3 Beta 2</a> was released, after Beta 1 wasn&#8217;t quite finished the day before. The release team is also preparing a Walk-through for later this month, to introduced many of the new features coming to a WordPress instance near you on August 8, 2023. </p>



<p>Please, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/">help test WordPress 6.3</a>, and report issue you encounter. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-gutenberg-16-1">Gutenberg 16.1 </h3>



<p>Gutenberg 16.1 was released led by Isabel Brison and Ramon Dodd. In their release post, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/whats-new-in-gutenberg-16-1-29-june/">What’s new in Gutenberg 16.1? (29 June)</a>, they highlight the following functionality: </p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/whats-new-in-gutenberg-16-1-29-june/#your-templates-and-patterns-your-library">Your templates and patterns, your library</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/whats-new-in-gutenberg-16-1-29-june/#create-your-site-without-distraction">Create your site without distraction</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/whats-new-in-gutenberg-16-1-29-june/#text-blocks-now-with-footnotes">Text blocks: now with footnotes</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/whats-new-in-gutenberg-16-1-29-june/#achieve-more-with-the-site-editor-sidebar">Achieve more with the Site editor sidebar</a></li>
</ul>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>It was great fun to catch up with Tammie Lister as my guest on the Gutenberg Changelog.  I hope you also have fun listening to us discussing the milelong Changelog for this Gutenberg release. <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-85-gutenberg-16-1-wordpress-6-3/">The episode and the show notes are already available</a>. The transcript is still in the works.</p>



<img />To book cases, two developers having fun and a podcast episode 



<div class="wp-block-group is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p class="is-style-no-vertical-margin"><strong>🎙️ </strong> New episode:  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-85-gutenberg-16-1-wordpress-6-3/">Gutenberg Changelog #85 – Gutenberg 16.1, WordPress 6.3</a> with special guest, Tammie Lister and host Birgit Pauli-Haack</p>
</div></div>



<p><strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> also reported on the Gutenberg 16.1 in her article: <strong><a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-16-1-introduces-pattern-creation-and-library-adds-distraction-free-mode-to-site-editor">Gutenberg 16.1 Introduces Pattern Creation and Library, Adds Distraction Free&nbsp;Mode to Site Editor</a>, </strong>highlighting additional functionality found in this mamooth release.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>In his latest video, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1L28GuA-y0"><strong>Unlocking the Power of Navigation in WORDPRESS 6.3: What YOU Need to Know</strong></a>, <strong>Dave Smith</strong>, JavaScript developer at Automattic and core contributor, walked us through the updates to the Navigation handling in the Site Editor. It helped me wrap my head around all the different aspects of creating mulitple menus, style them and add them to templates and template parts in the site editor. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>Anne McCarthy and Emily Clark will co-host a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/hallway-hangout-performance-improvements-for-wordpress-6-3/"><strong>Hallway Hangout to discussion WordPress 6.3 performance improvement</strong></a> on July 27, 2023 at 15:00 UTC to discuss WordPress 6.3 performance improvements led by performance reps Emily Clark and Felix Arnzt and also look ahead to WordPress 6.4. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



<p><strong>Mike McAlister</strong> advocates for <a href="https://olliewp.com/dont-call-it-gutenberg-anymore/"><strong>Don’t call it Gutenberg anymore (unless you actually mean to)</strong></a>. &#8220;<strong>it’s time to drop the Gutenberg vocabulary</strong>&nbsp;from our day to day usage, unless we’re&nbsp;<em>actually</em>&nbsp;talking about the Gutenberg project or development plugin.&#8221; he wrote. In the post he gives a quick overview of the history of Gutenberg development and how the block editor made it into the WordPress. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Rich Tabor </strong>published a new Pattern in the directory on WordPress.org: <a href="https://wordpress.org/patterns/pattern/two-column-matted-gallery-images/"><strong>Two Column, Matted Gallery Images</strong></a>. &#8220;I really want to keep pushing whats possible with all this new design tooling in WordPress.&#8221; Tabor <a href="https://twitter.com/richard_tabor/status/1674877679084994561">tweeted.</a> With WordPress 6.3 you will have a way to create patterns for your site via the site editor. It used the same interface that allows you to create reusable blocks, now called &#8220;synched patterns&#8221;. </p>



<img />



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="4-theme-development-for-full-site-editing-and-blocks">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



<p>In his, <strong>Benjamín Pérez Sout</strong> at Yotako,vannounces the new plugin release that allows users to <a href="https://blog.yotako.io/new-release-figma-adobexd-editon-as-gutenberg-blocks/"><strong> Edit your Figma &amp; Adobe XD designs as WordPress Gutenberg blocks</strong></a>. The toolset of Yotaku provides some amazing synergies between AI and various design tools to Gutenberg Blocks. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Ryan Welcher continued his series <em>Creating a block theme for developers</em> with <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1846930916">Part 4</a> and <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1858860550">Part 5 </a></strong>on Twitch. If you want to catch up on Parts 1 through 3, they are available on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/ryanwelchercodes"><strong>Welcher&#8217;s YouTube Channel</strong></a></p>




<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2022&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. Updated by yours truly.  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/"><em>The index 2020 is here</em></a></p>




<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>



<p>The recording of this week&#8217;s <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/06/30/developer-hours-exploring-editor-extensibility/"><strong>Developer Hours: Exploring Editor Extensibility</strong></a> is now online with <strong>Michael Burridge</strong>, <strong>Nick Diego</strong>, and <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> giving demos on various ways developer can already extend blocks and the editor experience. They also shared lots of resources and examples. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Igor Benic</strong> explained in his blog post <a href="https://www.ibenic.com/how-to-programmatically-add-a-block-in-the-wordpress-block-editor/"><strong>How to Programmatically add a block in the WordPress Block Editor</strong></a>. &#8220;When working with custom blocks or custom solutions to enhance the WordPress Block Editor, you might need to have a way to add blocks programmatically to the editor.&#8221; he wrote and showed how to use &#8211; <code>wp.blocks.createBlock</code> &#8211;<code> wp.data.dispatch('core/block-editor').insertBlocks</code> to accomplish the task. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>Working with Blocks also means getting data via the Rest API. The team of <em>Learn WordPress </em>just published the new course on <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/developing-with-the-wordpress-rest-api/"><strong>Introduction to developing with the WordPress REST API</strong></a>. &#8220;This course presents a developer-oriented introduction to using and developing with the WP REST API. If you want to learn to use the WP REST API to power your next site build, plugin, or theme, or you just want to understand how it works, then this course is for you.&#8221; they wrote. </p>




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>. </p>



<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />




<p>Featured Image: Train Station at Leipzig, Germany. Photo by Birgit Pauli-Haack</p>



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<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>



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";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:74:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #85 – Gutenberg 16.1, WordPress 6.3";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=24618";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:87:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-85-gutenberg-16-1-wordpress-6-3/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:63883:"<p>Tammie Lister and Birgit Pauli-Haack discuss Gutenberg 16.1 and WordPress 6.3 and what’s coming to 6.3<br /></p>



<p>Add a summary/excerpt here</p>



<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-85-gutenberg-16-1-wordpress-6-3/#shownotes">Show Notes</a> / <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-85-gutenberg-16-1-wordpress-6-3/#transcript">Transcript</a></p>



<ul>
<li>Music:&nbsp;<a href="https://soundcloud.com/xirclebox">Homer Gaines</a></li>



<li>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/">Sandy Reed</a></li>



<li>Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://markuraine.com/">Mark Uraine</a></li>



<li>Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://icodeforapurpose.com">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li>
</ul>



<p class="has-larger-font-size" id="shownotes"><strong>Show Notes</strong></p>



<p><a href="https://www.hostinger.com/blog/tammie-lister-podcast">Podcast With Tammie Lister: How Gutenberg Evolves and the Future of WordPress</a> with Emma Young at Hostinger</p>



<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Op-q_8s6M">Creating Gutenberg &#8211; Live Q &amp; A w/ leads Tammie Lister, Joen Asmussen and Matias Ventura</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Upcoming Live Q &amp; As</h2>



<p>July 6th, 2023 &#8211; 17:00 UTC  <strong><a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/9616879430415/WN_AFgYtmyaRviAY3b2oGP2pg">Leveraging Gutenberg&#8217;s architecture to take plugin development to new levels</a></strong></p>



<p>July 21, 2023-17:00 UTC <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7516879458017/WN_lqwBBSkSR1Wcdf8BUr5udQ"><strong>Live Q &amp; A with designers and developers for WordPress VIP. </strong></a>They created a bridge between Figma Design themes and the theme.json file for classic and block themes</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.3</h2>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/">WordPress 6.3 Beta 2</a></p>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/">Help Test WordPress 6.3</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 16.1</h2>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/whats-new-in-gutenberg-16-1-29-june/">What’s new in Gutenberg 16.1? (29 June)</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-16-1-introduces-pattern-creation-and-library-adds-distraction-free-mode-to-site-editor">Gutenberg 16.1 Introduces Pattern Creation and Library, Adds Distraction Free&nbsp;Mode to Site Editor</a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Interactivity API</h2>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/30/proposal-the-interactivity-api-a-better-developer-experience-in-building-interactive-blocks/">Proposal: The Interactivity API – A better developer experience in building interactive blocks</a></p>



<p>WordPress.TV: <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/04/18/developer-hours-introduction-to-the-interactivity-api/">Developer Hours: Introduction to the Interactivity API</a></p>



<p class="has-large-font-size">Stay in Touch</p>



<div class="wp-block-group is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
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<li>Did you like this episode? <a href="https://lovethepodcast.com/gutenbergchangelog"><strong>Please write us a review </strong></a></li>



<li>Ping us on Twitter or send DMs with questions. <a href="https://twitter.com/gutenbergtimes">@gutenbergtimes </a>and <a href="https://twitter.com/bph">@bph</a>.</li>



<li><em>If you have questions or suggestions, or news you want us to include, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. </em></li>



<li><em>Please write us a review on iTunes! <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/itunes/">(Click here to learn how)</a></em></li>
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<p class="has-large-font-size" id="transcript"><strong>Transcript</strong></p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So hello and welcome to our 85th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about Gutenberg 6.1, WordPress 6.3 and that&#8217;s pretty much it. We have a full program alone with that. I&#8217;m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and full-time core contributor for WordPress open source project sponsored by Automattic. And I&#8217;m so happy that Tammie Lister joins me today. She&#8217;s one of the Gutenberg design leads of phase one and design lead of WordPress 6.3 release squad and will be the editor tech co-lead on the all underrepresented gender squad for 6.4. In her day job Tammie works at the global agency Inpsyde from Germany as a developer. Good afternoon, Tammie. So happy to see you again. Thank you so much for making the time to be on the show. How are you?</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: I am great. Thank you so much for having me.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, it&#8217;s so wonderful. And for our longtime listeners, you are no stranger. You&#8217;ve been on the Gutenberg Live Q&amp;A few years ago, and you were part of the last year&#8217;s developer hours, and it&#8217;s actually the first time that you&#8217;re on the podcast. How did that happen? For those of you listening for the first time, tell me a little bit about your WordPress work and what you&#8217;re doing now.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: So my WordPress journey has been a long one and an awesome one. Like a lot of people, I started out by blogging and poking around themes and then I worked for a long time on the problems with themes, went via core through BuddyPress and then for a long time I worked as creating themes and working through that. And that&#8217;s where I started really my contribution journey through the theme review team and a little bit in core. And then Gutenberg, I guess it was my adventure by Gutenberg. The seed of Gutenberg is rooted in a lot of people from the theming background. It&#8217;s one of those not so hidden facts about Gutenberg, that a lot of people who worked on it had that background as well. And I&#8217;ve been really lucky since I worked on that project, to have quite an adventure working in various roles from design.</p>



<p>And at the moment, I&#8217;m really lucky to be balancing back my developer skills. I&#8217;ve always done both, but at the moment I&#8217;m really focusing on how can I raise back up those skills, and I&#8217;m really lucky to be doing that in an agency role. So I am now getting to work with this amazing thing that we&#8217;ve created in the editor and getting to implement it within the agency at a development level so that I&#8217;m having all sorts of fun now.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, I can imagine that. That&#8217;s awesome. Well, thank you so much and yes, so you will have opinions about the extensibility of Gutenberg, which is one of the top…</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Only a few.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That will come or that has been in the background or in the other current of all the new features, where&#8217;s the extensibility or how can we extend this?&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Announcements</strong></h3>



<p>So before we dive into the recent releases, I want to tell you dear listeners all about the two live Q&amp;As that are coming up in July. So next week, we have on July 6, 2023 at 17:00 UTC and I&#8217;m not going to convert this to any other time right now. Time zones are the bane of my existence at the moment. So we have the topic, leveraging Gutenberg&#8217;s architecture to take plugin development to new levels, and we learn about how Gutenberg components and scripts can be used outside the block editor to revamp a plugins code base.</p>



<p>So this is a case study of GiveWP 3.0, how that&#8217;s come about and we will have a guest, Jason Adams, who&#8217;s the director of development and Jon Waldstein, who&#8217;s the lead developer on the show. And my co-host will be Lena Morita who is a JavaScript developer on the components team. So she has some really geeky questions for the two and she&#8217;s quite excited about it, and I&#8217;m really looking forward to it because I find it fascinating when developers discover all the ways to use existing components and script to build on top of Gutenberg. And it saves so much development time and it opens up new synergies between the core and the added functionality in a plugin.</p>



<p>So if you&#8217;re interested to dive in, the next one, two weeks later on July 21st, also at 17:00 UTC, we will hold the next live Q&amp;A with designers and developers of WordPress VIP, and they created a bridge plugin between Figma design themes and the theme JSON file for the classic and block themes. And it&#8217;s a fascinating way to keep faithful to the existing design systems and start spinning up new sites that mirror that design system without a whole lot of friction in between us. My co-host will be Joni Halabe from the web team at Georgetown University, also a very interesting live Q&amp;A. I&#8217;m really happy that we&#8217;re putting it together.</p>



<p>The last one, you have to just subscribe to the newsletter so you get early access to it, newsletter at the Gutenberg Times and should you listen to this episode, I know a lot of people binge listen to it. If you listen to this episode after July 22nd, check out the Gutenberg Times YouTube channel for the recordings of that. We always record them, we have them transcribed, we have a post on the Gutenberg Times with the resources shared and all that. So even if you miss it, but the live Q&amp;A is really interesting because all of a sudden from the demos that are there, there comes these very quick questions from the audience and I really like having that a live show. So that&#8217;s that.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>What’s Released &#8211; WordPress 6.3</strong></h3>



<p>We are coming to the what&#8217;s released section and we come to what happened last night. So today, we are recording it on Thursday, June 28th and this morning in I think 1:30, WordPress 6.3 beta two was released. And were you up at that time?</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: No, I got up as far as about just hitting 11:00 UK time at night and I could see it wasn&#8217;t going to be the 11:00, so I left the amazing people that were doing and I&#8217;d kept going that far, and I bowed out and got some sleep because it was the second night running.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, there was a second shift coming in from Australia.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Which is amazing. That&#8217;s part of the global project. We all get to open doors and close doors after each other, leave post-it notes virtually up for each other. There was a lot of that going on for the past two days and I think that&#8217;s the important thing. It&#8217;s been two days we&#8217;ve been working to get this out.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, the make blog has one was the delay for one day and then also the explanation why it&#8217;s now called beta two instead of beta one.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Systems are hard.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Systems are hard, releases are hard. I have switched my role for this release from doing for three releases, dev notes wrangling to actually be editor triage, co-lead with four other people. And this has been quite an interesting experience because all of a sudden, I&#8217;m looking behind the scenes and how timely a lot of PRs are to getting into the beta. And then it&#8217;s not only that there&#8217;s in the plugin, but you also need to sync the core data, the PHP code with the Gutenberg code and that is another big adventure for the tech leads. And you get to do this, when is it? In September before beta 6.4.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Yeah. And I think you never know the unknowns until you know them and then you document, and then you try and that&#8217;s the important part of this amazing journey that is these big projects. You can predict most things but it&#8217;s always going to be the thing that you don&#8217;t predict. Honestly, we are doing incredible. Everyone is doing incredible. We just have to remember humans’ need to sleep sometimes and I think that is the beauty we learn. One of the amazing things we do now, which we didn&#8217;t do before is we have the use of the time zones. We use that. We have multiple leads. I think back even a few years ago, we didn&#8217;t have that for these roles and by having that, we can take advantage of time zones and lives and different people, but just documenting and writing, I think there&#8217;s going to be some like, &#8220;Okay, so that could happen.&#8221; Okay, now we document this, now we learn this and that&#8217;s great.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s stuff I now want to learn about. My curious brain is like, &#8220;Okay, well this went wrong. Okay, so how do we learn?&#8221; And that&#8217;s great because our documentation gets better. That&#8217;s generally what happens in between releases where people debrief and then take everything that happened in a release and then the next release gets better each time. We rise on the past release each time.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right, yeah. As you know, this big project, nobody really knows everything. So the collaborative effort is…</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: And if they claim to, I really think they need to go for a little walk in the countryside and think about themselves because nobody does and that&#8217;s amazing. You&#8217;ve just got to be very humble and just go, &#8220;Okay, on we go.&#8221; I just wanted to say shout out to everyone that was working so hard the past 48 hours and then some. You saw some beautiful handovers of patches, people just teleporting in on their phones and doing things and just some amazing open source hearts. You saw a lot of that going on.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And I saw a lot of also the humbleness stuff. I don&#8217;t know, does somebody else is able to help me?</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: I don&#8217;t know, but I might know someone who does in their mental Rolodex going through a list of people, and that&#8217;s amazing to do. It&#8217;s not like I might know, I&#8217;m going to struggle with it for a while and then I&#8217;m not going to come up with a good solution. That does not help anybody.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: No, no, no. At that moment, you need somebody who knows. But it&#8217;s also…</p>



<p>Tammie Lister: It would help otherwise you make it worse. It&#8217;s like the I will fix this and make it worse. Nobody needs that at 10:00 at night.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Not on a software that&#8217;s used by millions of people.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: But a beta is a beta. And I think that&#8217;s the amazing thing we all have to&#8230; Now, let&#8217;s test it now let&#8217;s poke it and do things and nothing is ever going to be bug free. We always want that, but we do our best every time. I am so excited about how big this changelog is.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, we&#8217;re getting to that. But I just wanted to do a shout-out for Brian Alexander who&#8217;s heading the test team. He has put together some amazing instructions on how you can make really impactful contributions to this open source project and we will share the link in the show notes. So when you go to the test <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/">make.webpress.org/test</a>, that&#8217;s the first post that will come up is help test WordPress 6.3. There are quite a few features coming in and they all need testing and they all need hitting the real life scenarios. Have plugins that use some of that, themes, just poke it from all the ends and it&#8217;s really necessary. And like every beta, it&#8217;s beta, but the bugs that we find now in the beta two, three and four, we don&#8217;t have to fix later when the release is done. So yes.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Gutenberg 16.1</strong></h3>



<p>What also was released was Gutenberg 16.1 and that&#8217;s when 255 PRs merged with this release by 69 contributors and it&#8217;s just amazing what all went in there. It&#8217;s also understandable because if it went for the last minute, nothing really gets done in life, I found. And everybody wanted to get their work merged, so it will be in the next WordPress release and with the beta this week, it&#8217;s the last plugin release for enhancements and new features to come in. After that, it&#8217;s all bug fixing. So that made it for a mile long changelog. And Tammie and I will do our best to pick the stars amongst the 255, the bright shining stars and the highlights for you and talk them through. So do you want to hit us off with the first thing or do you have any other comments to add?</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Wow, the amount. I guess the first one would be the navigation menu sidebar, the renaming, duplication, and deleting of navigation menus from browse mode sidebar. Navigation menu sidebar, the maturity of that in general, it feels such a long adventure the navigation menu has come on and I think that&#8217;s also maybe this point is why there was so much as well. It&#8217;s not the final-final release, it&#8217;s like Photoshop when you name a final-final 01 file or something, but it&#8217;s a closure and I think having a navigation block, having things changed, all these things, it&#8217;s a closure for a lot of these features. So I think navigation, it feels like quite a closure on some of these things as well.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And it now made real sense. I think it really needed to gruel it and often and throw out concepts and get new ones there. So there&#8217;s navigation and then there is the sidebar menu in the site editor that also has a navigation piece to it.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: But bringing that functionality means that you then&#8230; There&#8217;s this weird separation, but it allows that to feel more cohesive and native. That&#8217;s the best words I can think of it. I think navigation&#8217;s going to take a little while to get a lot of people using because navigation&#8217;s over here and all these kinds of things. It&#8217;s that maturity of that feature and the dependability of that feature and the work there. I&#8217;ve definitely started feeling that it feels more robust to use with these changes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: It&#8217;s pretty exciting.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And I finally feel the same way. I was always a little hesitant to touch the navigation because I knew it wasn&#8217;t finished. So I didn&#8217;t want…</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: You sneeze near it, it&#8217;ll fall over, bless it. And I say that having worked on it myself, but it&#8217;s just a really hard problem. Turns out navigation&#8230; Linking alone is a hard problem, but navigation is linking plus plus plus. It&#8217;s a really difficult problem. If you just write code, it felt easier. But if soon as you add any interface, it&#8217;s really difficult.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And it&#8217;s also such a prominent piece of a website that you build, that it really needs to…</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: And people are very bonded to a particular way of using navigation in WordPress as well. So we&#8217;ve got to retrain that mindset.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, that definitely is true. And so we have the navigation and the sidebar and the site editor as a navigation menu where you can do certain things and from that menu, from that sidebar, you already can rename, duplicate menus, or delete them. You cannot create them. That&#8217;s what you do when you create, you add a navigation block to a template part to the header or to the footer and then on the right hand sidebar on the white sidebar, that&#8217;s where you assemble your menu or the many menus.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: I like that consciousness of creating them somewhere else. There there&#8217;s so many opinions on separation and workflows. I feel like&#8230; This is a complete personal opinion, but making navigation too easy, I think that you end up with too many navigation everywhere. That&#8217;s always been one of our problems, that you end up with people drowning in menus. So I think that there&#8217;s a balance that there&#8217;s a maturity of navigation. I think that&#8217;s where the overlap of this.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, definitely. And I like that in the site editor left side navigation, you just touch on the overall website, but you always go into the canvas to actually make changes.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: The best words I can use is assembly there. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s a good word, but it feels like assembly there, functionality doing here. And then that&#8217;s what it feels like. The different mental models that I&#8217;m moving in between when I&#8217;m doing things and I&#8217;m for that, different areas having very distinct different mental models when I&#8217;m doing it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And I like that too because I can&#8217;t have two different thoughts in my head at the same time and be productive.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Life&#8217;s too short.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So that&#8217;s why I like the next item, that the footnotes block is now coming to text blocks and that&#8217;s really something that we have all been waiting for a long time. And I know that Ella van Durpe has also tried multiple ways to get this done and I think she has such great ideas that she all pursued them all. And in the GitHub, you can have the history of all the footnotes, but I think this version is really hitting it out of the park. It works well. You put the cursor where you need the footnote, you get it from the menu from the inside menu bar menu dropdown on the block toolbar, and then you say footnote, and then it gets you right into the place where the content of the footnote, you can add that and it does the numbering itself.</p>



<p>So if you say, &#8220;Oh, I put a footnote in the middle of a paragraph, but also I need another one on top of it,&#8221; it recounts them so automatically. So that&#8217;s a really good feature. And it has color controls, but it also follows whatever your paragraph or your link color is. I just see that when you change the background of a paragraph, you get what you always get with links is if you change the text, you also need to change the link color. But that is something that&#8217;s the nature of the beast and there is no automation for that. But I&#8217;m really happy that this block comes and it will be in 6.3.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Footnotes has an adventure for many years. I think footnotes is one of those, to me, it&#8217;s a sign of maturity for an editor. Quite a few see it as extra functionality or features. But it really is something that if you are in a particular field or you are particularly using, that you will not use an editor unless it has the footnotes functionality. It&#8217;s whether you choose to use or not. There&#8217;s no doubt whether you would want, you wouldn&#8217;t even have a plugin. It would be base functionality. So I think I am very glad to see it. Also, it&#8217;s a really strong indicator of things like collaboration. It sets that. It may not feel like it, but it is. It sets those using that canvas in a little bit of a different way as well. So I&#8217;m really pleased to see it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: And that experimenting outside to then bring in, I think is a real good way forward to start seeing the interface as well.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And then you could actually move the footnotes block where all the footnotes are to the end of things or put them a little bit further. So it&#8217;s also quite versatile.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: That&#8217;s really important depending on what article you&#8217;re writing as well. I do not claim to know any different medical whatever articles, but I&#8217;m sure that there are certain rules and regulations around where things go and depending on articles and what order things go. So having that functionality that you can determine yourself is better for everybody.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: The next big one.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yep, go ahead.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: I feel like there&#8217;s a whole episode here on patterns and I guess the big one here is the naming and language to me is&#8230; Again, we talk about maturity, well renaming reusable blocks, rename to my patterns and add option to also add a non-synced pattern. This is big, it&#8217;s a small big thing I guess because it&#8217;s a big thing, but it&#8217;s not a massive feature, is it? But it also is a massive feature. Reusable blocks are quite limited but really quite bonded for some people. So I think that we got to respect that. But patterns to me are what everyone always wanted with reasonable blocks. When everyone describes what they want from a reusable block, it&#8217;s a mature functional pattern that has all the things that patterns are getting like syncing, all these things. And that&#8217;s what patterns are getting now.</p>



<p>So I don&#8217;t know what you feel, but that to me it&#8217;s just maturity of patterns, you have blocks, patterns, template parts, templates. It makes sense.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh yeah, yeah. They&#8217;re pretty much cut from the same cloth and all had different names and also different models. So you had to get here for template parts, you need to go there for a reusable block and you had a pattern here, but they all had different updates kind of thing. So if you update a reusable block, it updates on all instances. A pattern doesn&#8217;t have any updates, so every time you put them into a canvas, they are all disintegrating. They don&#8217;t know about itself anymore. But what I like is that you now can create your own patterns and that is something that a lot of people were missing, that you were dependent on the pattern directory or you were dependent on the theme to provide your patterns or some third-party directory where you can copy paste it over, but you are not able to say, &#8220;Oh, this is a marvelous pattern. Can I store that on my site?&#8221; And now you can.</p>



<p>And it&#8217;s the same interface or same workflow that you are accustomed to when you create a reusable block and there&#8217;s only one change there&#8230; Well, one attribute, it&#8217;s called sync this over all the instances, yes or no, it&#8217;s a toggle switch. So if you switch it on, you get a reusable block that if you change it, it changes all the instances. And if you switch it not on, it&#8217;s a pattern which does not update. But this is also, and you say, &#8220;Okay, but I want, when I change the style of my pattern, I want it to be replicated over all the instances.&#8221; It&#8217;s coming. This is the first step. This is the first step to unify the wording, unify the interface. And then also, you don&#8217;t have this duplicate mental model anymore. You find them and you can edit them at the same spaces. It&#8217;s called my custom patterns. That&#8217;s how you find them in the pattern list. And then in the block when you highlight them, there is manage your patterns. So it&#8217;s a great step and it&#8217;s one that we have been really all waiting for.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: And putting my agency hat on, really trying to explain all this language. People, they work in design systems, they work in simple language and been able to sell this easier by simpler language that it behaves more like a design system as they expect. This all is that. You don&#8217;t have to then build a system on top because then the system will be easily done within, you don&#8217;t then have to bring the system. So I am very excited about this. It is the start. It is something that I would&#8217;ve liked a couple of years ago, but we had so much to do. We&#8217;ll get there. And I think that is the thing of there&#8217;s so much changing to do. Patterns are really getting strong. When they first came out, it felt like, &#8220;Oh, you can do patterns.&#8221; But they are so powerful. People get patterns way more than blocks as well. If you explain a block, people are like, &#8220;You don&#8217;t need to make blocks.&#8221; And I think we&#8217;re going to see less blocks people making and more patterns with this because patterns are just more useful then.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That&#8217;s what I have been seeing as well is also that people say, &#8220;Okay, I don&#8217;t have to create a custom block just because I want a group of blocks in my site.&#8221;</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: As much as I love block variations, I love all these things that you can do because blocks were amazing. I&#8217;d like to see less because then it means that patterns are doing what they&#8217;re meant to do because that&#8217;s what humans see. The interface that we&#8217;re having for pattern browsing and all that, we&#8217;re getting onto the management stuff that&#8217;s also part of this, that is just better as a human. Those human interfaces, once humans are using that, that&#8217;s way better than the tiny little pickers that we have for blocks.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. But I wanted to go back to what you said, while I would love to have it two years ago, but I think sometimes waiting helps you really to see the big picture, the whole picture. So two years ago, we didn&#8217;t have template parts, yeah?</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Yes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Or we didn&#8217;t know yet how they&#8217;re going to fit in into the block themes and in pattern, we&#8217;re just at the beginning, but we didn&#8217;t know how to lock them. How to lock certain pieces of it.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: When I say that, that&#8217;s just eagerness and that&#8217;s also…</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes, impatience. I see it, I want it.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Way too many people in the agency just want it tomorrow because honestly, those are the people who are trying to solve it with design systems who are trying to work around the problem today. Absolutely, these toys are amazing. And that then means these bigger systems can start using. They don&#8217;t have to build on top or around. They can build a lot more natively and the more native you can build, the easier upgrades, the easier components, everything. And it&#8217;s just a better experience for everybody.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right, right. Or you see the power now and you say, &#8220;Oh, wouldn&#8217;t it be great? And then you have to wait.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: If no one ever has to go through a load of patterns and I&#8217;ve actually had to do this, go through someone makes a change in patterns, but this was quite a while ago. If you use patterns and then you had to make a change in patterns at scale, that was hard to do before. Not having to do that, that&#8217;s going to be amazing. So getting all the amazing benefits of all these things, but having the amazing benefits of things like reusable blocks, but with these visual benefits that humans have. Yeah, it&#8217;s amazing. We have all the toys.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And there&#8217;s one more toy coming, which is now you can get a preview of block themes in your site. We all remember the customizer where you install a theme on your website and then you use the customizer and you were able to preview your site with the theme. And that hasn&#8217;t happened yet, but now it&#8217;s here for block themes as well. You see where you have all your themes, you see a live preview button and that gets you into a similar interface as the site editor. And then you can navigate your site with the theme that is installed but not activated yet. So you can see how your blocks behave, you see how your posts behave, and in advance you don&#8217;t have this what Helen Hou-Sandí always calls the save and pray feature there.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: What you see might maybe what you get, but possibly not.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Probably different, yes. And it&#8217;s amazing to see this in block themes. You also see all the style variations and how they would change your website and it&#8217;s really amazing. And it&#8217;s in 16.1 and it will come to 6.3 soon.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister:</em> And moving on to the site editor, the distraction free. We&#8217;ve had distraction free, so it&#8217;s like ta-da. But having that with the site editor, been able to create and just go get away. I remember&#8230; Age, that Dreamweaver full screen mode. And you now got that. The day where you could suddenly do visual in Dreamweaver, we&#8217;ve now got that in WordPress. Wow. It&#8217;s incredible to think that we can do that and you&#8217;ve got that without some of the ickiness. Bless it. Without tables. But we&#8217;ve now got that and that means that you can really focus on what you&#8217;re creating. And sometimes like if you&#8217;re doing some of these three-column query or whatever when you&#8217;re trying to do, you do not need those side panels and everything in the way. So distraction free is really, really nice to be able to do that and create.</p>



<p>We talked earlier about modes when you&#8217;re doing things that really helps you with that creation mode, there&#8217;s a reason why when you are writing, you have those zen modes and that really works for people. Or you have that get away from my desktop all the apps. I don&#8217;t know what you feel, but I think this is just a small improvement to life.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Absolutely.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Quality of life improvement.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Absolutely. And it&#8217;s a good one, when you can do an almost one-to-one preview of your site for that particular page, it opens up so much or it takes away so much worry. It&#8217;s really a better life there.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Know what you&#8217;re getting rather than guessing what you&#8217;re getting.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And test this, please test this so much.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Yeah. And again, that&#8217;s the part of this. A lot of these things, they&#8217;re going in and they&#8217;ve been tested by the people that are creating them and they&#8217;re amazing humans, but they are not the people that are going to be poking it. It&#8217;s now up to people that are listening to this, the people that are going to be testing, who are the people that should be poking it and using it. And I think that is exactly what this is about.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Absolutely, absolutely. And what is now coming back to the site editor is editing templates as well as content. At the beginning of when the site editor was introduced, it was already there, but people got confused. Am I editing a page? Or they were not confused. They didn&#8217;t have that concept of a template part like this is just the template that drives all the pages and they made changes, and then were surprised that the changes were duplicated on all the pages. So it was taken out of the editor, and now it comes back with some guidance for the content creator of, &#8220;Okay, you can edit that now and when you&#8217;re in the template, you get all this whole title kind of thing.&#8221; It names the things that are in there. And when you&#8217;re on a page, it gives you the page title exactly how you put it in and then you can edit it. But when you go into the places where the template is, it tells you this is a template piece, do you want to edit now? And then gets you out of the editing mode into a template editing mode.</p>



<p>And I think that the guardrails there really help with the mental image as well. This is a template, I don&#8217;t want to screw that up. I just want this on my page. I want that content done. And you can do it in the site editor. Do you have to go back to the WP admin? Once in a while when you create pages, yes, yeah. But sometimes you want to edit things and you want to see it with&#8230; that&#8217;s the good part in this section now when you have the edit the page content as well as the template, is you see the page and it&#8217;s all in its context. How will it show up on the site? There is no, &#8220;Oh, okay. There is something on the sidebar that&#8217;s interfering with my page.&#8221; And it&#8217;s the same thing that we talked about before where as long as you see the full context of your page, all the worry goes away.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister:</em> I love what you said as well about having something in and then taking it away. I think that&#8217;s really, really important because sometimes when something&#8217;s completely new, it doesn&#8217;t work because it&#8217;s new, it&#8217;s not because it&#8217;s a bad idea and this is showing, it just needed to be delivered in a certain way. And I think not everything, but quite a few things that have been added a little bit recently are that. They are re-adding a slightly different variation once we&#8217;ve got things together. So sometimes you&#8217;ve got to find the combination of the puzzle to put these pieces in or the order to put them in. And this is exactly one of those, it needed to come in a certain order.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And I had some interesting conversations at WordCamp Europe. I had a lot of conversations at WordCamp Europe, but some of them were really interesting because I think if you&#8217;re not a developer, it&#8217;s really hard to understand that you have a vision for what people want to do. But unless you start programming and putting it in, you don&#8217;t know yet how it&#8217;s going, how it&#8217;s going to work. So let&#8217;s put it with the features in and then see what other people think about it and then reiterate on it.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: It&#8217;s part of the freedom of creating in the open and part of what we&#8217;ve learned with this whole project is by creating in a plugin, we get to experiment. I want to use the word play because experiment sometimes feels a little bit harsh, it feels serious, but we get to play and see if this goes here, what did someone feel about it? This goes here. Testing things was really, really hard to do in core and it has been really, really hard. But by having it in this and been able to backtrack quicker, and that has been something that has happened time and time again of, &#8220;Oops, nope, let&#8217;s try this.&#8221; Or, &#8220;Okay, well this idea didn&#8217;t work this time.&#8221; We&#8217;ve still got it in the code base. It&#8217;s just back now. We haven&#8217;t completely lost it.</p>



<p>In core, ideas go and get lost because it&#8217;s a big space, sadly. So having that flexibility, I think we are doing it a lot more as a project and having that healthier macro experimentation. But it&#8217;s seeing those mature ideas come. I love seeing things that was talked about, like you said footnotes, but things that were said years and years ago and it&#8217;s like, &#8220;Yay, they finally shipped.&#8221;</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And it&#8217;s not because they couldn&#8217;t ship it earlier. It&#8217;s also you didn&#8217;t know yet how other pieces that needed to fit.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: It&#8217;s like baking a cake. It needs to be the right time and the right ingredients need to be available, and the right people to taste the cake. I don&#8217;t know, that metaphor went really weird, but right?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, only chocolate lovers love chocolate cake, right?</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Yeah. And sometimes you are not delivering chocolate cake, you are delivering a Victorian sponge and to the wrong crowd. I don&#8217;t know.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Those metaphors are really…</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: It&#8217;s not working. Backtrack, what&#8217;s the next thing?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Let&#8217;s try it again. We all have experiences, but it&#8217;s not in WordPress. So creating something really, really new in WordPress with a lot of backwards compatibility promises, it&#8217;s really hard.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: I always describe it as the difference between moving a little rowing boat to moving an ocean liner. One of them big Disney cruises or these giant things and then moving a little rowing boat. It is really easy, right?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: It&#8217;s not the same.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, yeah. But this editing piece, I think it&#8217;s really so much better now and I think it meets the vision now. So what&#8217;s also in the site editor bar is some template details. You might have already seen that, but now it also respects the settings and there is some language going on as well. Some language changes. You see the home template details, but that only tells you, okay, how many blog posts are on it? So it&#8217;s the blog home and not only just the homepage. So if you switch it to a static page, you will see that in the pages and not in the template pages. But it&#8217;s really good to have those template details in the site editor on the sidebar, it gives you a little bit more context.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: With components, I guess one of them to call out is the button has a size prop, which is a small little thing, but it&#8217;s maturity of the burn block, how many sites have burned every one of them? And having something like that is really big. It&#8217;s going back to one of my favorite topics of design systems. If we are building off core as a basis, you need to have these foundational things as part of it. So I&#8217;m really excited to see. Anytime I see that or any of the blocks getting different attributes, I am giddy with excitement about all those things. Basically because it means I can then use them.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: You can use them, you can create styles with them. You can have different variations on the buttons and you don&#8217;t have to create a new block for the buttons.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister:</em> Yes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Another block that got some nice features, an additional feature in there is the list block. It now has a different numbering type for the ordered list. So you could have alphabetical numbering or numbered numbering or Roman lit numbering and then capitals and then small cases. So now you have quite some options in there. I really like that. It&#8217;s catching up with other documentation or writing tools where you have that. But yeah, it&#8217;s good to have it in there.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: And image block has as aspect ratio control. For some reason, I wanted to say radio control. That was exciting. I think that&#8217;s a whole different thing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Multimedia, an image has radio.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Which again is maturity, right? You mentioned parity with tools. It is, right? We need to have the best of these tools so that people use them natively. So that&#8217;s really what a lot of this is maturity of these tools, I think.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And that was particularly important because you want your patterns when you switch out the images, you have them in a certain aspect ratio and when you switch them out and somebody puts in another image, you want it in the same aspect ratio and not blow up the whole pattern.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Could ruin a party, that really can.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I&#8217;m scrolling past it, but there is just stop to say that the interactivity API will not be in 6.3. It has been merged for the Gutenberg plugin, but it will only be available&#8230; they&#8217;re aiming for 6.4, which is not so far away, actually. September is the next beta. So it&#8217;s really going forward. There were some questions in the community about the interactivity API. A lot of people are very excited about it.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: We&#8217;re going to have some really nice toys for Christmas.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And November 8th is I think the release of 6.4. So let&#8217;s get those toys wrapped up for Christmas.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: That&#8217;s actually going to be some really interesting testing, I think. Some difference in testing because yes, we&#8217;ve done, but how you test some of that stuff is going to be a little bit different, I think.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And we need a lot more examples.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: That&#8217;s where I&#8217;m going. How do you push some of that stuff?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And definitely there&#8217;s some documentation. I think they started with the documentation now. There were quite a few insights already in the make blog on core. I think two of them, and I can certainly add them to the show notes. So people who are all interested in that and want to help with the rollout, definitely can get a headstart on it, but not in 6.3.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: The next one, I&#8217;m going past so much, this is such a long list. It&#8217;s amazing. It is in the design tool section and that&#8217;s a sticky position. That&#8217;s not a phrase. Try re-enabling non-root sticky position. So actually, I think any improvements to things like this is really nice. The fact that we have this shows maturity of design tools. So I think that&#8217;s part of calling this out. Design tools as a whole are a concept that is still relatively new to us, but design tools means again, that people are going to build using it. And so I&#8217;m really excited anytime that any of our refinement happens to any of our design tools.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And I think in 6.2, the sticky position was already introduced for the header and the footer, but it was not for the sidebar because somehow it was really, really hard.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Sticky is hard. Sticky is hard to stick.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: You never get it to stick. And it needed to be a root wrapper or root block to make it sticky. You couldn&#8217;t do it in a column block where you have a sidebar and make that sticky.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Because CSS.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Because of CSS, yes. Yeah. So there is another attempt to make this work and needs definitely testing.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister:</em> Yes, I was about to say that if anything needs testing, any time you see something listed in design tools, I would point anyone who is building themes or building anything to please test around those things because these are what really you will be building with. Having native sticky positions is much better than having to call on libraries or add things. And again, it means that people who want to build and create in the editor themselves have that capability to create some incredible, powerful, beautiful designs without having lack of access to them. It all sets us up to what amazing things could be done with the default themes, and that&#8217;s super exciting, what Christmas is going to bring there with all these tools.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So the next one is actually for media and we need to set this up a bit. So when you copy paste something from Google or from another website and there&#8217;s images in there, when you paste them into your canvas, the image will always go back to the original. So when the original site goes away, especially when you migrate from one domain to the other, the image goes away. And now there was a little button on every image where you could say and if it was allowed from the source site, that you could add that image to your library with a button. But of course when you have 15 images, it&#8217;s a little harder to do that. So now in the pre-publish screen, there is a section that suggests that you upload the external images and gives you a button and you can do it all at once. You also can click on the images and see how they show up in the post or in the page. So I think that&#8217;s a great addition to…</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Just what people expect. Again, and I do not belittle it by saying that. It&#8217;s more just, it just raises it up. It&#8217;s what people expect, it&#8217;s what people want. So it&#8217;s amazing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It really raises the quality of the tools that you use, that it actually helps you also with the little things. Images are important.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Quality of life. Really, the release is quality of life and completion, which is a beautiful summer thing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And refinement.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Yeah. So I think we&#8217;re going to talk maybe a little bit later about the command section, but we&#8217;re into commands.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: We&#8217;re good?</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Going down the list, there&#8217;s two things about the commands and that is add commands to templates, template parts and styles, and to related commands as well. I don&#8217;t know if you want to talk about commands right now or later?</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: We could. So we have a name now for it.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: We do.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: In the development, it was always called the command center, but now it&#8217;s command palette and it tries to convey that&#8217;s the tool when you hit control K in the site editor, it gives you quick access to various commands, context-sensitive. And so you can say go to library or go to templates or go to template parts or delete template parts. All this you can do, and it&#8217;s also extensible. So you can create commands for your plugins, you can create commands for your themes as well. But the API is very, very new. So there are commands and with this release, there are commands with template, template parts, styles, how to manage the custom patterns, which custom patterns are the former reusable blocks. Sync patterns. So now you can say to your command palette, manage patterns or you also get UI commands for your post editor. So where you can say, add new post or something like that. So it&#8217;s not the center of it because it&#8217;s not a mission control palette or something like that. Or dashboard, it&#8217;s just you have a thought that you wanted…</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: It&#8217;s your friendly helper there and there. And I think what these are doing is giving you examples. As you said, this is the start and it&#8217;s new. So by having these there, and this is just to start again, I think it&#8217;s worth of saying these are an example that someone could look at and be like, &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s how you write one,&#8221; as well. So I am super curious to do that myself and be like, &#8220;Oh, okay, that&#8217;s how you write one. Okay.&#8221; And I am really excited to see what people create with this. Now we have decided the name, I was going to call it Bob, but it didn&#8217;t catch on.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I always call him Fred.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: I call everyone Bob. No idea. Everyone picks a name that they call things repetitively, I think. And now that it has a name, which is amazing. And I think one of the good things is its translatable. And I think that was key in all of it. Personally, as long as it&#8217;s translatable, as long as we agree to something, we get it in, things can change. But let&#8217;s get it in and iterate. So these are great examples to then copy, rehash, and learn from. So I think 6.4, we&#8217;ll probably see more. And then I imagine there&#8217;s going to be a flowy of plugins, some nice little iterations and people exploring what it means to have these things as well. So it&#8217;s going to be very exciting to see what people create.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, I&#8217;m really happy about that. I would&#8217;ve never thought that my website tool would have these quick commands that I can just call up and then do stuff.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: So the way that I think of it is a combination of&#8230; Because initially, I was Alfred was where my mind went because it&#8217;s searchy, I think of it now like Alfred. And if this, then that, and those two things combined is where I go because it is that, but it&#8217;s also workflow. So it&#8217;s that but in WordPress for me, and I am very excited about extending that and then where people take it, because people always take it in a way that you would never expect it to go. So I think the next year or so, we&#8217;re going to see some really exciting things come from that.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, I totally agree with that.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: New toys.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: New toys for everybody when the biggest toy is probably creating those commands and find, &#8220;Yeah, oh I can do this. It&#8217;s not that hard.&#8221;</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: And then even vigilant spaces to be able to create those commands ourselves. That becoming easier and easier I think is something that will happen over time as well.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, I totally get it. I want to get into programming so much and lock myself away for two weeks and do all this.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: You don&#8217;t have to lock yourself away for it, but that&#8217;s all right.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So I&#8217;m scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. I don&#8217;t see anything anymore.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: So much. And I think that&#8217;s the thing. If we are going through the bug fixes and the enhancements and there&#8217;s just so much, I like the repetitive word flaky because when I see the fix flaky, that means that all the things which flaky is a bug report for, it kind of works and it kind of didn&#8217;t. I love that we&#8217;re down to that end of polishing, is my reflection on that. So I think that is really, really exciting that there&#8217;s so much polishing here.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, and I think that was actually the outlook for 6.3, that most of the features get in and then we&#8217;re almost already…</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: This is a giant section of those, which I love.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Are we done? I think we&#8217;re done. Oh yeah.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: There are a lot of documentation fixes. Code quality fixes, code quality in block library, code quality in site editor. No, this is cool. Yes. Tooling. Yeah, the whole testing thing was kind of, whoa.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister:</em> Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That&#8217;s what you were talking about.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: And I think that&#8217;s the thing that&#8217;s there. It&#8217;s probably testing coming in for command as well, but it&#8217;s all maturity of that. As I&#8217;m scrolling down, I&#8217;m seeing improving, improving, improving, improving.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. No, I think we made it. Yay.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Yay.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>WordPress 6.3 Beta</strong></h3>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So we want to bring it back to the WordPress 6.3 beta and talk a little bit about what this means plus tickets for 6.3.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: I think one of the big things to think about is yes, there are things in now, but things that are in are going to have to respond to feedback. So whilst you might think, &#8220;Oh, that burden is perfectly placed,&#8221; I am really paraphrasing here, &#8220;That burden might not be perfectly placed.&#8221; So during beaters, you might see that burden moves because that burden needs to be in a better place. And there are a couple of tickets out there at the moment, which one of them particularly has things could be done in a better way. That&#8217;s where I&#8217;m going with this. So we are going to see that. We are going to see, &#8220;Oh dear, this breaks this under this circumstance when we actually tested it under this load or we tested it under this situation.&#8221; Because you can test under all the situations you think, but you don&#8217;t have that until you are real world testing or you&#8217;re testing. And as the betas get towards the higher numbers, we&#8217;re on two now. So we&#8217;re probably going to go at least four I would say, I don&#8217;t know.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> I agree, I agree.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: I want to be optimistic. But realism kicks in here a little bit. You&#8217;re going to see fixes. So people need to bug report. People need to test or poke it, prod it, and use it. If you find something, see something, report something is the biggest thing because if you see something at release candidate, it&#8217;s a little bit late. It&#8217;s like shouting after the sheep have left the field. But if you say something now, it can be fixed. So if something doesn&#8217;t work with the plugin that is the only reason your client&#8217;s site works, now&#8217;s the reason to say basically.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, definitely. And there will be. So I also wanted to caution some of the more eager WordPress news people or that want to grab screenshots and that kind of thing. There might be changes there.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Going back to my button moving.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: For instance, one change is from 6.0 to beta or to 16.2, so plugin releases 6.0 to 6.2, which will probably have some of the things that will get into 6.3 WordPress. But there was one menu item in the site editor on the bottom that was called library. And that has been renamed to patterns because that&#8217;s what&#8217;s in there. It&#8217;s the reusable block that are patterns now, template parts that are patterns now, and your custom patterns that are patterns now. And one was thinking about the library part for a long time because also there will be a fonts library, something like that. But then there were quite a few smart people who said, &#8220;Well, if I&#8217;m looking for fonts, I won&#8217;t go to library. I go to my styles and that&#8217;s a separate place.&#8221;</p>



<p>So while we were using it, it was rethought what would make it a better idea or better metaphor for that. And pattern is something that&#8217;s WordPress branded and that a lot of people are really responding to. So library was not, it removes cognitive load when you have to think about, &#8220;I need to think of library.&#8221; When you see patterns, that&#8217;s where you want to go. So that&#8217;s just one example. There might be others. So when you do a screenshot for your video, make sure you have the latest beta or the latest…</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Really, screenshots is release candidate as much as it feels late, it&#8217;s not. There&#8217;s several weeks and that&#8217;s when you&#8217;ll find a lot of documentation takes it as well. I&#8217;ll working on the about page and we&#8217;re going to be doing the graphics around there as much as possible. But honestly, the final-final 01 PSD graphics&#8230; I don&#8217;t have to deal with PSDs, that&#8217;s when you take them because things rightly about translation.</p>



<p>This language though, I think so many of these language refinements happening, whether you agree with it or not, because language is so subjective and everyone has feelings about Bob or Fred, what things should be called, is a sign of maturity of the product, is that we&#8217;re working our own language system and we&#8217;re saying these things are called this because it makes sense in our ecosystem. So I welcome that we&#8217;re finally clarifying some language and not just confusing everybody because it&#8217;s always been very confusing. We&#8217;re finally settling on some terms and we are then documenting what they are called because one of the problems we&#8217;ve always done is called something and then not written it down. So actually doing that is really helpful.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Release candidate is scheduled for the 27th of July, so it&#8217;s another four weeks to go. So caution.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: So you got to let the dust settle, you got to let stuff go. If everything is amazing and unicorns walk and everything, then nothing will change, but something&#8217;s going to change because humans in software.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s going to change. And computers, right? Computers are involved, all bets are off, right?</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: Yeah. And that&#8217;s okay, right?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: That&#8217;s totally okay. Just if you&#8217;re going on holiday, maybe have a friend do your screenshot for your blog post.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right. So before we all come to an end, just a reminder, the two live Q&amp;As on July 6th and July 21st. Hit the registration button so we can all see you also on the live show and with some great demos. Before we end this show, do you have anything that you want to&#8230; How can people get in touch with you, Tammie?</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: I&#8217;m karma Toast on all the things and I&#8217;m still around core, I&#8217;m around everywhere and I would love to speak to people. I will be at WordCamp U.S. as well if someone else is going. So I&#8217;d love to say hi, but reaching out, I&#8217;m always welcome.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show. And as always, dear listeners, the show notes will be published on gutenbergtimes.com/podcast. This is episode 85, and if you have questions or suggestions or news you want us to cover, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. That&#8217;s <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. So thank you so much Tammie. It has been a great pleasure geeking out with you over Gutenberg.</p>



<p><em>Tammie Lister</em>: It&#8217;s been a pleasure. It&#8217;s always great talking to you. Thank you so much for having me.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Thank you so much, and you all have a good weekend and a good week and I&#8217;ll see you all or hear you all in the next two weeks. Take care, bye-bye.</p>



<p> </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 01 Jul 2023 20:43:33 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19:"Gutenberg Changelog";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"WPTavern: WordPress Plugin Review Team Adds 6 New Sponsored Volunteers, Opens Applications ";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146444";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-plugin-review-team-adds-6-new-sponsored-volunteers-opens-applications";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2286:"<p>A new era has begun for WordPress.org&#8217;s Plugin Review Team. Mika Epstein, who has served for the past decade, is stepping down, but not before<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2023/06/29/plugin-review-team-update-the-next-phase-begins/"> launching a new crew of volunteers</a>.</p>



<p>The team is responsible for approving newly submitted plugins, maintaining the Plugin Reviewer Handbook, as well as investigating any reported security issues and guideline violations.</p>



<p>Historically, the Plugin Review team has had very little turnover, but a new crop of six sponsored volunteers will be contributing an estimated 50+ hours per week. The new members include <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidperez/">David Pérez</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/eherman24/">Evan Herman</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/frantorres/">Francisco Torres</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/lukecarbis/">Luke Carbis</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/martatorre/">Marta Torre</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/pacomarchante/">Paco Marchante</a>. Their efforts are already in demand as they work to tackle a large backlog of plugins. </p>



<p>&#8220;Given the nature of the work the team does, joining this team is a little different than some of the others: each new member will go through a vetting process by current team members before being selected,&#8221; Epstein said. &#8220;Some of the things the team is looking for are: a solid track record as a plugin developer; the ability to communicate clearly, kindly and constructively – both with other developers and users; interest in improving tools and processes; and excellent collaborative and conflict-management skills.&#8221; </p>



<p>Epstein is encouraging more volunteers to apply, if they have at least five hours per week to devote to the team, as they could still use more help. Prospective team members can <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/handbook/apply/">submit an application</a>, which will be evaluated by current team members. Applicants will be required to send examples of plugins they have coded to demonstrate their experience, provide references, and detail some of their contributions to the project.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 01 Jul 2023 02:52:15 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:29;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:105:"Post Status: WordPress 6.3 Beta 2 • Help Test • WPDiversity • Plugin Team Next Phase • Mentorship";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://poststatus.com/?p=149753";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"https://poststatus.com/wordpress-6-3-beta-2-help-test-wpdiversity-plugin-team-next-phase-mentorship/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21961:"<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-this-week-at-wordpress-org-april-3-2023">This Week at WordPress.org (June 26, 2023)</h2>


<div class="has-background has-theme-palette-8-background-color wp-block-post-excerpt"><p class="wp-block-post-excerpt__excerpt">Release season is upon us as we approach WordPress 6.3&#8217;s August 8th release. Your help is needed testing the latest changes. <br /><br />Do you run or attend WordPress events and notice only one type of person is attending? What can you do to be a good ally to foster, promote, and support diversity and an inclusive space? Sign up now for the July 20th WPDiversity workshop. <br /><br />Stop by the Plugin team to wish Mika a happy retirement as she hands over the work to the 6 new Plugin Review teammembers. <br /><br />Applications to be mentored as a contributor in the inaugural Mentorship Program have now closed. The team is selecting both mentors and mentees at this time and will kick off the first cohort on July 12. <br /> </p></div>


<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<div class="wp-block-kadence-infobox kt-info-box_94d1bd-77"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-link-wrap kt-blocks-info-box-media-align-left kt-info-halign-left"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media-container"><div class="kt-blocks-info-box-media kt-info-media-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-container kt-info-icon-animate-none"><div class="kadence-info-box-icon-inner-container"><span class="kb-svg-icon-wrap kb-svg-icon-fas_rocket kt-info-svg-icon"></span></div></div></div></div><div class="kt-infobox-textcontent"><h2 class="kt-blocks-info-box-title">WP6.3b2 • Test • WPDiversity • Mentorship • Plugin Team Next Steps</h2><p class="kt-blocks-info-box-text">β <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/">WordPress 6.3 Beta 2</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f9d1-1f3fd-200d-1f4bb.png" alt="🧑🏽‍💻" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/">Help Test WordPress 6.3</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f9d5-1f3ff.png" alt="🧕🏿" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/06/22/attention-wordpress-event-organizers-this-important-workshop-on-july-20-2023-is-for-you/">Attention WordPress event organizers: This important workshop on July 20, 2023 is for you!</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f50c.png" alt="🔌" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2023/06/29/plugin-review-team-update-the-next-phase-begins/">Plugin Review Team Update: The next phase begins</a><br /><br /><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f9d1-1f3fb-200d-1f3eb.png" alt="🧑🏻‍🏫" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/06/23/launch-your-wordpress-contributor-journey-through-the-mentorship-program-pilot/">Launch your WordPress Contributor Journey through the Mentorship Program Pilot</a><br /><br /></p></div></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_b57166-6e"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-news"><a href="https://wordpress.org/news">News</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/people-of-wordpress-allison-dye/">People of WordPress: Allison Dye</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/">WordPress 6.3 Beta 2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/">Help Test WordPress 6.3</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/episode-58-a-new-wave-for-wordpress-events/">WP Briefing: Episode 58: A New Wave for WordPress Events</a></li>
</ul>



<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_8f6276-eb"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-5">
<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow">
<div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-3">
<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow">
<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.3</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/30/6-3-release-parties-schedule-and-hosts/">6.3 Release Parties Schedule and hosts</a></li>



<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/">WordPress 6.3 Beta 2</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/05/25/wordpress-6-3-design-kickoff/">WordPress 6.3 design kickoff</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/25/bug-scrub-schedule-for-6-3/">Bug Scrub Schedule for WordPress 6.3</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/18/wordpress-6-3-planning-roundup/">WordPress 6.3 Planning Roundup</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/18/roadmap-to-6-3/">Roadmap to 6.3</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.4</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/05/wordpress-6-4-development-cycle/">WordPress 6.4 Development Cycle</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility">Accessibility</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/2023/06/16/accessibility-team-meeting-notes-june-16-2023/">Accessibility Team Meeting Notes: June 16, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-community"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community">Community</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/06/29/recap-of-the-diverse-speaker-training-group-wpdiversity-amer-emea-on-june-28-2023/">Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) AMER/EMEA on June 28, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/06/22/attention-wordpress-event-organizers-this-important-workshop-on-july-20-2023-is-for-you/">Attention WordPress event organizers: This important workshop on July 20, 2023 is for you!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/06/21/meetup-organizer-newsletter-june-2023/">Meetup Organizer Newsletter: June 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/06/21/wceu-2023-community-table-recap/">WCEU 2023 Community Table Recap</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/06/19/next-generation-of-wordpress-events-updates/">Next Generation of WordPress Events: Updates</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-core"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core">Core</a> </h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/hallway-hangout-performance-improvements-for-wordpress-6-3/">Hallway Hangout: Performance Improvements for WordPress 6.3</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/whats-new-in-gutenberg-16-1-29-june/">What’s new in Gutenberg 16.1? (29 June)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/27/a-week-in-core-june-26-2023/">A Week in Core – June 26, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-developer-blog"><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/">Developer Blog</a></h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/06/the-style-book-a-one-stop-shop-for-styling-block-themes/">The Style Book: a one-stop shop for styling block themes</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/06/navigating-the-block-editor-handbook/">Navigating the Block Editor Handbook</a></li>



<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/06/upgrading-the-site-editing-experience-with-custom-template-part-areas/">Upgrading the site-editing experience with custom template part areas</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-meetings">Meetings</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/27/dev-chat-summary-june-21-2023/">Dev Chat Summary: June 21, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/26/editor-chat-agenda-june-28th-2023/">Editor Chat Agenda: June 28th, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Design</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/05/25/wordpress-6-3-design-kickoff/">WordPress 6.3 design kickoff</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/06/06/design-share-may-22-jun-2/">Design Share: May 22–Jun 2</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs">Docs</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/06/23/online-monthly-docs-team-contributor-day-june-27-2023/">Online monthly Docs Team Contributor Day June 27, 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2023/06/23/summary-for-docs-team-meeting-june-20-2023/">Summary for Docs Team meeting, June 20, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-hosting"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting">Hosting</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2023/06/28/hosting-team-meeting-agenda-2023-06-28/">Hosting Team meeting agenda 2023-06-28</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2023/05/15/is-wordpress-compatible-with-php-8/">Is WordPress compatible with PHP 8?</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta">Meta</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/06/20/make-team-dashboards/">Make Team Dashboards</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/06/15/triaging-open-issues-on-trac-for-make-teams/">Triaging open issues on Trac for Make Teams</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/06/13/new-filter-controls-discover-commercial-and-community-in-the-theme-and-plugin-directory/">New Filter Controls: Discover “Commercial” and “Community” in the Theme and Plugin Directory</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/06/11/linking-to-supporting-orgs/">Linking to Supporting Orgs</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/06/09/new-curation-filter-in-pattern-directory/">New curation filter in Pattern Directory</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-mobile"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile">Mobile</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2023/04/11/contribute-to-the-future-of-the-wordpress-app/">Contribute to the Future of the WordPress App</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-openverse"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse">Openverse</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/06/30/catalog-performance-testing-results/">Catalog Performance Testing Results</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/06/27/community-meeting-recap-2023-06-27/">Community Meeting Recap (2023-06-27)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2023/06/26/last-week-openverse-2023-06-19-2023-06-26/">A week in Openverse: 2023-06-19 – 2023-06-26</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-performance"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/performance/">Performance</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/27/performance-chat-summary-27-june-2023/">Performance Chat Summary: 27 June 2023</a></li>
</ul>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow">
<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-plugins"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins">Plugins</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2023/06/29/plugin-review-team-update-the-next-phase-begins/">Plugin Review Team Update: The next phase begins</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-polyglots"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots">Polyglots</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2023/06/28/agenda-weekly-polyglots-chat-june-28-2023-0700-utc/">Agenda: Weekly Polyglots Chat – June 28, 2023 (07:00 UTC)</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-project">Project</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/06/23/launch-your-wordpress-contributor-journey-through-the-mentorship-program-pilot/">Launch your WordPress Contributor Journey through the Mentorship Program Pilot</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Support</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2023/06/wp-contributor-mentorship-program-support-team-edition/">WP Contributor Mentorship Program: Support team edition</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/sustainability">Sustainability</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/sustainability/2023/06/30/sustainability-chat-summary-june-30-2023/">Sustainability Chat Summary, June 30, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-test"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test">Test</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/">Help Test WordPress 6.3</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/07/fse-program-testing-call-24-momery-makeover/">FSE Program Testing Call #24: Momery Makeover</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-theme"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/theme">Theme</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/06/28/themes-team-meeting-notes-june-27-2023/">Themes Team Meeting Notes – June 27, 2023</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-training"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training">Training</a></h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/06/24/proposal-lets-actively-promote-the-learn-wordpress-platform-in-learn-wordpress-content/">Proposal: Let’s actively promote the Learn WordPress platform in Learn WordPress content</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/06/22/training-team-meeting-recap-20th-june-2023/">Training Team Meeting Recap – 20th June 2023</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/06/20/proposal-new-contributor-guide-program/">Proposal: New Contributor Guide Program</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2023/06/19/brainstorm-table-lead-wordcamp-us-2023-contributor-day/">Brainstorm &amp; Table Lead – WordCamp US 2023 Contributor Day</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tutorials"><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorials">Tutorials</a></h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/developing-for-multisite/">Developing for Multisite</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/how-to-start-using-wordpress-playground/">How to start using WordPress Playground</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/wpphotos-moderator-training/">WPPhotos Moderator Training</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/using-the-block-editor-tips-and-shortcuts-for-efficiency/">Using the block editor: Tips and shortcuts for efficiency</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/using-headings-for-accessibility-and-seo/">How to use headings for accessibility and&nbsp;SEO</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/advanced-multisite-management/">Advanced Multisite Management</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/fr-the-difference-between-reusable-blocks-block-patterns-templates-and-template-parts/">Différences entre blocs réutilisables, compositions de blocs, modèles et éléments de modèle</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-online-workshops">Online Workshops</h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=common-wordpress-apis-dashboard-widgets">Common WordPress APIs: Dashboard Widgets</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wp-dev-livestream-sendig-block-theme-8">WP dev livestream: Sendig block theme</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=introducing-domains-4">Introducing… Domains!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=introducing-domains-3">Introducing… Domains!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=tips-and-shortcuts-for-using-the-block-editor-streamlining-content-creation-apac">Tips and shortcuts for using the block editor &amp; streamlining content creation (APAC)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=tips-and-shortcuts-for-using-the-block-editor-streamlining-content-creation">Tips and shortcuts for using the block editor &amp; streamlining content creation</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=using-the-row-and-stack-blocks-apac">Using the row and stack blocks (APAC)</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=wp-dev-livestream-sendig-block-theme-7">WP dev livestream: Sendig block theme</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=custom-tables-in-wordpress">Custom tables in WordPress</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=developer-hours-exploring-editor-extensibility">Developer Hours: Exploring Editor Extensibility</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=hallway-hangout-lets-chat-about-wordpress-6-3-and-block-theming">Hallway Hangout: Let’s chat about WordPress 6.3 and block theming</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=the-wordpress-developer-quiz">The WordPress developer Quiz</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-can-chat-gpt-help-wordpress-developers-and-designers">How can Chat GPT help WordPress developers and designers?</a></li>



<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/?meeting=how-to-set-up-a-free-wordpress-test-website-and-explore-code-2">How to set up a free WordPress test website (and explore code!)</a></li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-courses"><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/courses">Courses</a></h3>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/creating-a-4-page-business-website/">Creating a 4-page business website</a></li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wptv">WPTV</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.tv/category/year/2022/">Latest WordPress TV videos</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-related-news">Related News:</h2>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://blog.jquery.com/2023/05/11/jquery-3-7-0-released-staying-in-order/">jQuery 3.7.0</a></li>



<li><a href="https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v20.2.0">Node v20.2.0 released</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-04-13-1"></a><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-05-11-1">PHP 8.2.6 Released!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.php.net/archive/2023.php#2023-05-11-2">PHP 8.1.19 Released!</a></li>



<li><a href="https://262.ecma-international.org/13.0/">TC39</a></li>



<li><a href="https://github.com/composer/composer/releases/tag/2.5.5">Composer 2.5.5</a></li>
</ul>



<p class="has-theme-palette-7-background-color has-background">Thanks for reading our WP dot .org roundup! Each week we are highlighting the news and discussions coming from the good folks making WordPress possible. If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, you need to be engaged with them and their work. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers. <br /><br /><strong>Are you interested in giving back and contributing your time and skills to WordPress.org?</strong> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/contributing-to-wordpress/">Start Here ›</a><br /><br /><strong>Get our weekly WordPress community news digest</strong> — Post Status&#8217; <a href="https://poststatus.com/news/week-in-review/">Week in Review</a> — covering the WP/Woo news plus significant writing and podcasts. It&#8217;s also available in <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter">our newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f48c.png" alt="💌" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



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<p class="has-text-align-left has-normal-font-size" id="h-get-ready-for-remote-work">You — and <a href="https://poststatus.com/#Agency">your whole team</a> can <a href="https://poststatus.com/#choose-membership">Join Post Status</a> too!</p>



<p class="has-text-align-left has-small-font-size"><strong>Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire.</strong> Read the <strong>Post Status</strong> <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter/">newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2709.png" alt="✉" class="wp-smiley" /> Listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcasts/">podcasts</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f399.png" alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" /> Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status/">@Post_Status</a> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/post-status-llc/">LinkedIn</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4bc.png" alt="💼" class="wp-smiley" /></p>
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<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>
<p>This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 01 Jul 2023 02:36:21 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Courtney Robertson";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:52:"WordPress.org blog: People of WordPress: Allison Dye";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=15287";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/people-of-wordpress-allison-dye/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12498:"<p><strong>A way to escape chronic pain and give a sense of independence, is what using WordPress means for Italian-American Allison Dye. Now as a project manager and social media content manager living in North Carolina, USA, she uses the software in her work and  in disability-advocacy.</strong></p>



<p><strong>The&nbsp;<em>People of WordPress</em>&nbsp;series shares inspiring stories of how people’s lives can change for the better through WordPress and its global community of contributors.</strong></p>



<img width="1024" height="537" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/06/fi-allison-dye.jpg?resize=1024%2C537&ssl=1" alt="Allison Dye" class="wp-image-15292" />



<p>Allison was first introduced to WordPress when she was 13 years old. Her parents gave her own WordPress website to use, play, test, and try whatever she wanted with it. Her health issues had started when she was eight years old, and being able to express who she was and learn new skills provided an escape she needed. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">My first encounter with WordPress</h2>



<p>Allison said: &#8220;While the technical aspects of my new WordPress website intrigued me, I was more interested in the space it made for me to write. All throughout my childhood I had struggled with chronic pain, fatigue, and other unexplained symptoms. Having a private world I could call my own, I was able to write my story.&#8221;</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>&#8220;There is something truly amazing about having a place to tell your story.&#8221;</p>
<cite>Allison Dye</cite></blockquote>



<p>Her family faced many doctors, nurse, specialists and hospital visits, but could not get an answer to the difficulties faced by Allison. She said: &#8220;I felt like my life and world were out of control. But logging onto my little website and typing away on the computer keys gave me a sense of control. I couldn’t always do things that other kids had the energy to do. But I could get lost in writing for hours. I couldn’t control my life story, but I could write about it.&#8221;</p>



<p>She felt it was like writing letters to her future self and would act as a reminder of how strong she had become. Even now when Allison writes on her website, she feels it is writing letters to her past self, expressing reassurance and pride. The practice of writing online continues to help her reflect on how she coped and made it through the difficulties.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress in the real world</h2>



<p>Allison hoped her early experiences with hospitals and being unwell was just part of being a child, and that in adulthood she would be healthy. She longed for this time.</p>



<p>Growing up did not bring her this dream of a healthier life and an end to chronic pain. In fact, her condition worsened as she went through her teens and at 18 she finally received a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis.</p>



<img width="768" height="1024" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/06/allison-2.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1" alt="Allison stood in front of trees" class="wp-image-15290" />Allison enjoying time with nature and trees



<p>This changed what had been conventional job choices, as she was not able to handle a 9 to 5 work schedule. She could not drive herself to work on some days and relied on her mother to help with transport. She knew that she would have to find another way to work and she was determined to find it.</p>



<p>She began writing music and book reviews online, and then moved onto writing blog posts. As they were published she started to receive payment and a sense of power over her life. She said: &#8220;WordPress felt familiar, typing on the computer keys felt comfortable, and sharing my words with the world felt surreal.&#8221;</p>



<p>Allison&#8217;s sense of ownership of the software became part of her strength. &#8220;I think I believed WordPress was mine somehow. I was learning that WordPress is something that belongs to everyone in some way. And I loved it.&#8221;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Finding work with WordPress</h2>



<p>The confidence using the platform gave Allison led her to find more about what it could do and meet other people who used it. She said: &#8220;The thing I love about WordPress is that it’s not just for developers or bloggers or SEO experts. I began to meet more people in the community and was delighted to find people like me, who didn’t know the technical stuff, but were a part of WordPress.&#8221;</p>



<p>This global community orbiting around the software gave her an opportunity to meet social media managers, designers, and people from many different areas. She found that &#8216;there was a place for everyone&#8217;. The guiding strength and fascination Allison found and still finds today is in that community. Allison said: &#8220;The community felt as important as the rest of everything that makes WordPress what it is. It felt like it was about people and relationships as well as codes and databases.&#8221;</p>



<p>In 2020, she was hired by a WordPress company. She said: &#8220;I like being a part of a WordPress company, and I love that I contribute to a team that helps people with their websites. I understand the importance of having a space that’s yours. Whether it’s a business or personal site, having a website gives you the power of telling your own story.&#8221;</p>



<p>WordPress gave Allison a freedom and an independence. She did not have to work a 9 to 5 job, rely on others to drive her on bad days with her MS, nor worry about days when she wanted to stay in her sweatshirts rather than go into an office to work. She said: &#8220;I have a 100% remote job which I can do despite the plot twists in my story, thanks to WordPress and the people in it.&#8221;</p>



<p>WordPress took Allison into the world of project management for a small agency, and this experience was to help guide her path, skills and confidence into the future. She went on to work in content management in WordPress, building pages for awareness campaigns for non profit organizations and small businesses as a contractor. She helps people update their websites, add and edit content, perform basic updates and help them to learn how to use their sites. </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>&#8220;I tell all my clients to use WordPress because there is really no other solution that can scale as easily for growing organizations and small businesses. I love how WordPress allows them to tell their stories, share their passion, and have a place to call their own on the internet.&#8221;</p>
<cite>Allison Dye</cite></blockquote>



<p>As a fluent English and Italian speaker, Allison is able to support clients in different countries from where she lives. &#8220;I love that with WordPress I&#8217;m able to support clients remotely. This is thanks to all of the many WordPress contributors, developers, project managers, content writers, and many, many volunteers that work tirelessly to enable people around the world to use WordPress.&#8221;</p>



<p>Allison also became a certified as an English As A Second Language (ESL) teacher. &#8220;My affinity for words and languages allows me to teach passionately and creatively. I’m Italian-American and am fluent in English and Italian. Teaching English allows me to share my passion for communication with others.&#8221;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Welcomed into the WordPress community</h2>



<img width="1024" height="562" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/06/WPCoffeeTalk-Allie-Dye.png?resize=1024%2C562&ssl=1" alt="Allie interviewed for a podcast on her use of WordPress" class="wp-image-15293" />Allie interviewed for a podcast on her use of WordPress



<p>Allison attributes mentors and supporters in the WordPress community for helping her appreciate she really is part of it. Allison recalled: &#8220;It felt unreal. I wasn’t a dev, I don’t know how to code, and yet I got to be a part of it all? I felt like I was a fake. But Kimberly continues to remind me that I’m real, I get to be here, I get to stay, I have a place.&#8221;</p>



<p>She was later encouraged to contribute by a WordPress community member to the Big Orange Heart, which aims to support and promote positive well-being and mental health within remote working communities. She said she felt &#8216;honored typing my words, pieces of my story, and sharing them with a community of people&#8217;.</p>



<p>She also joined the <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp US 2021</a> online organizing team. </p>



<p>Allison enjoys the fact that in the WordPress community, &#8216;everyone here is constantly working to be better and do better&#8217;.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Facing the future with strength from her friends and colleagues in WordPress</h2>



<img width="675" height="900" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/06/allison-1.jpg?resize=675%2C900&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-15289" />



<p>Allison was later diagnosed with two additional neurological conditions: Functional Neurological Disorder and Migraine. She said: &#8220;If it were not for WordPress I would really be unable to work. But WordPress and its community continue to be a part of my life and I am grateful to everyone who&#8217;s helped me along my way. I don&#8217;t know where I would even be without it.&#8221;</p>



<p>She strives to raise awareness of dynamic disabilities and invisible illnesses like her own through podcasts and social media. She feels that her WordPress friends have helped her both in her professional life and in her wish to be an advocate for others with disabilities too.<br /><br />Allison hopes reading of her experience will help others who are worried about not progressing in a WordPress career due to health concerns.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>&#8220;I hope that it will remind anyone reading this that WordPress is a space for everyone. Healthy or not, developer or not, blogger or not — WordPress belongs to you too.&#8221;</p>
<cite>Allison Dye</cite></blockquote>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Share the stories</h2>



<p>Help share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community.&nbsp;Meet more WordPressers in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/category/newsletter/interviews/">People of WordPress series</a>.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Contributors</h2>



<p>Thanks to Allie Dye (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/allisondye/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>allisondye</a>)&nbsp;for sharing about her adventures in WordPress.</p>



<p>Props to Abha Thakor (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/webcommsat/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>webcommsat</a>) and the late Surendra Thakor (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sthakor/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>sthakor</a>) for interviews and writing the feature, Meher Bala (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>meher</a>) for work on images, and to Meher, Maja Loncan (@mloncar) and Chloe Bringmann (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>cbringmann</a>) for reviews.</p>



<p>The&nbsp;<em>People of WordPress</em>&nbsp;series thanks Josepha Haden (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>chanthaboune</a>) and Topher DeRosia (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/topher1kenobe/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>topher1kenobe</a>) for their support.</p>



<div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile is-vertically-aligned-center"><img width="180" height="135" src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2020/03/heropress_logo_180.png?resize=180%2C135&ssl=1" alt="HeroPress logo" class="wp-image-8409 size-full" /><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on </em><a href="https://heropress.com/"><em>HeroPress.com</em></a><em>, 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. </em>#HeroPress </p>
</div></div>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 30 Jun 2023 21:23:11 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Abha Thakor";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:31;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"WPTavern: WP Feature Notifications Contributors Seek Feedback on Admin Notices with Community Survey";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146339";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:111:"https://wptavern.com/wp-feature-notifications-contributors-seek-feedback-on-admin-notices-with-community-survey";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2075:"<p>The WP Feature Notifications project has <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/feature-notifications/">launched a community survey</a> to get feedback on the current system of notices in the WordPress admin. The project aims to create a better way to manage and deliver notifications in the admin, and the survey is intended to further refine this work.</p>



<p>A few months ago, <a href="https://wptavern.com/wp-feature-notifications-project-progresses-towards-mvp-for-standardizing-admin-notifications">the project released version 0.2.0 of the feature plugin</a> in which contributors implemented a more robust JavaScript-based system for standardizing how notifications appear in the admin. This is a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wp-feature-notifications/releases/tag/0.2.0">proof of concept plugin</a> that uses demo data only. They are working towards an MVP for 0.3.0, which will remove the demo content and provide a functional notification system. Contributors have also put together <a href="https://www.figma.com/file/sC0QzxbY1Azm6wtc2X6bXV/WP-Notify-design-blueprints-i6-(by-Nick-Heurter)?type=design&node-id=158-105&mode=design">an updated design</a> based on the idea of <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wp-feature-notifications/issues/253">working within WordPress&#8217; existing design system</a>.</p>



<img />



<p>&#8220;The team has recently made some solid progress on things like database storage and REST API endpoints,&#8221; WordPress core contributor Joe Bailey-Roberts said. &#8220;However this is slightly paused for now so we can revise things if necessary, based on the survey results. We also have an updated design for the admin notices UI that we’ll shortly be showcasing, which came out of the WCEU Contributor Day.&#8221;</p>



<p>Anyone who uses WordPress is welcome to <a href="https://forms.gle/XBh1U53MYLni4hsHA">take the survey</a> &#8211; it&#8217;s for developers and users alike. It takes just a few minutes and may help shape the direction of the WP Feature Notifications project in the future.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 30 Jun 2023 21:18:51 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:108:"WordCamp Central: WordCamp Finland: back to Tampere with educational, insightful and thought-provoking talks";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=3166382";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:131:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2023/06/wordcamp-finland-back-to-tampere-with-educational-insightful-and-thought-provoking-talks/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3153:"<p>The first-ever Finnish WordCamp gathered a few hundred fellow WordPress enthusiasts to Tampere back in 2015. This September, on 14.-15., our community will return to the city where everything started.</p>



<p>Content has been planned with all skill levels, employment types and interests in mind. We do not discriminate, and WordPress users, developers, designers, people working in agencies or as a freelancer and other enthusiasts are all welcome, regardless of the experience level.</p>



<p>We are more than thrilled about the upcoming lineup of talks and speakers. The best and most exciting part is that many of the topics do come outside of the WordPress world! WordCamp Finland will truly have educational, insightful and thought-provoking talks for everyone.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Here’s a sneak peak of some of the topics:</p>



<ul>
<li>Analytics in GDPR era</li>



<li>Climate change and WordPress, things to consider</li>



<li>Optimizing e-commerce</li>



<li>Work fatigue, how to prevent it and cope from it</li>



<li>Open source and WordPress communities, how do those benefit you?</li>



<li>Web Platform API’s and Gutenberg, modern Javascript development with WordPress</li>



<li>Terminal and WP-CLI</li>



<li>Designing more accessible websites and accessibility testing</li>



<li>Achieving better and more inclusive web design, content and UX</li>



<li>Security and hacked websites</li>



<li>…and much more!</li>
</ul>



<p><a href="https://finland.wordcamp.org/2023/">WordCamp Finland 2023</a> sessions will take place in Tampere on Friday 15. September. Most of the sessions will be held in English, although there are a handful of sessions held in Finnish as well.</p>



<p>The day before, on Thursday 14. September, a contributing evening will take place starting at 16:00. The contributing evening will feature workshops where you can contribute and learn about various WordPress-related topics in a hands-on setting. No coding skills required!</p>



<p>During the whole event, there will also be ample time for networking and meeting other WordPress enthusiasts. Getting to meet and learn from other WordPress users face-to-face is one of the main reasons people attend WordCamps. In addition to learning from each other, attendees often make new friends and find employees/employers from the WordCamp crowd.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://finland.wordcamp.org/2023/tickets/">Secure your tickets</a> now and ensure you’ll get to experience all of the insightful talks and activities with a welcoming community!</p>



<p>The full list of speakers, session descriptions and schedule will be published in early August, so make sure to follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/wordcampfinland">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/WordCampFinland">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/wordcamp-finland">Linkedin</a> to get the latest updates. Naturally the WordPress Finland Slack has <a href="https://fi.wordpress.org/chat/">#events-wcfi</a> channel and discussion is ongoing on <a href="https://m.facebook.com/groups/597228300478293/">WPWoofi</a> Facebook group.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 30 Jun 2023 13:51:20 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Timi Wahalahti";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:108:"WPTavern: Gutenberg 16.1 Introduces Pattern Creation and Library, Adds Distraction Free Mode to Site Editor";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146374";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:117:"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-16-1-introduces-pattern-creation-and-library-adds-distraction-free-mode-to-site-editor";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3391:"<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/whats-new-in-gutenberg-16-1-29-june/">Gutenberg 16.1</a> was released this week, debuting of the Pattern Library, which coincides with <a href="https://wptavern.com/reusable-blocks-renamed-to-patterns-with-synced-and-non-synced-options">reusable blocks getting renamed to synced patterns</a>. Users can now create and manage their own patterns that will also show up in the block inserter. Custom patterns are saved to the new Library alongside custom template parts.</p>



<img />



<p>This release also adds a new Distraction Free mode to the Site Editor, which removes all controls and menus, functioning in a similar way to the mode added to the content editor in October 2022. The mode can be accessed under the more menu of the Site Editor.</p>



<p>Automattic-sponsored engineer Andrei Draganescu <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51173">submitted the PR</a> for the feature and cited three reasons why the Site Editor could benefit from a Distraction Free mode:</p>



<ul>
<li>Because distraction free work is a good environment to cultivate</li>



<li>Because the command center makes full chrome UI useless for power users</li>



<li>Because it enables a really 1:1 preview &#8211; while maintaining everything editable</li>
</ul>



<p>Draganescu published a video of the Distraction Free mode working in concert with the new Command Palette:</p>







<p>Another new feature in this release is automated footnotes.<a id="d213a119-9478-49c0-b53c-1ceba4b8b5a0-link" href="https://wptavern.com/feed#d213a119-9478-49c0-b53c-1ceba4b8b5a0" class="fn">*</a> Users can add them by highlighting the text and selecting Footnote from the formatting menu. This will automatically insert the note and create a Footnote block at the bottom of the content. (This block can be moved.)</p>


<ol class="wp-block-footnotes"><li id="d213a119-9478-49c0-b53c-1ceba4b8b5a0">This is an example of a footnote. <a href="https://wptavern.com/feed#d213a119-9478-49c0-b53c-1ceba4b8b5a0-link"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/21a9.png" alt="↩" class="wp-smiley" />︎</a></li></ol>


<p>Footnotes can be added inside paragraph, heading, and list blocks, and are saved as post meta. The Footnote block doesn&#8217;t seem to be accessible in the block inserter. It is automatically created and inserted with the first footnote. </p>



<img />



<p>A few other notable features in this release include the following:</p>



<p></p>



<ul>
<li>Live block theme previewing in the Site Editor moved out of experimental stage, available for block themes under <em>Appearance > Themes</em></li>



<li>Site Editor sidebar now displays template and settings configuration details for the home and index templates</li>



<li>Aspect ratio controls added to Image block</li>
</ul>



<p>Gutenberg 16.1 is included in the upcoming WordPress 6.3 release, but if you want to take advantage of these features before August, you will need to be using the plugin or <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-beta-2-released-ready-for-testing">test 6.3 Beta 2</a>. Check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/whats-new-in-gutenberg-16-1-29-june/">release post</a> for the full changelog that includes all the latest enhancements, bug fixes, and performance and accessibility improvements.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 30 Jun 2023 03:04:33 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:108:"WPTavern: Hackers Actively Exploiting Unpatched Privilege Escalation Vulnerability in Ultimate Member Plugin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146380";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:119:"https://wptavern.com/hackers-actively-exploiting-unpatched-privilege-escalation-vulnerability-in-ultimate-member-plugin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2446:"<p>WPScan is reporting a hacking campaign <a href="https://blog.wpscan.com/hacking-campaign-actively-exploiting-ultimate-member-plugin/">actively exploiting an unpatched vulnerability in the Ultimate Member plugin</a>, which allows unauthenticated attackers to create new user accounts with administrative privileges and take over the site. The vulnerability has been assigned a CVSSv3.1 (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) score of 9.8 (Critical).</p>



<p>Automattic&#8217;s <a href="https://wp.cloud/">WP.cloud</a> and <a href="https://pressable.com/">Pressable.com</a> hosting platforms picked up on a trend in compromised sites where each had rogue new administrators popping up. After further investigation they found a discussion on the WordPress.org support forums about a potential <a href="http://wordpress.org/support/topic/possible-priv-esc-vulnerability/">Privilege Escalation vulnerability</a> in the plugin, as well as indications that it was already being <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/topic/register-role-ignored-and-user-became-an-admin/">actively exploited</a>.</p>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/ultimate-member/">Ultimate Member</a>, which is active on more than 200,000 WordPress sites, patched the plugin, but WPScan reports that it wasn&#8217;t sufficient.</p>



<p>&#8220;In response to the vulnerability report, the creators of the plugin promptly released a new version, 2.6.4, intending to fix the problem,&#8221; WPScan security researcher Marc Montpas said. &#8220;However, upon investigating this update, we found numerous methods to circumvent the proposed patch, implying the issue is still fully exploitable.</p>



<p>&#8220;Adding to the urgency of the situation, a look at our monitoring systems also confirmed attacks using this vulnerability were indeed happening in the wild.&#8221;</p>



<p>WPScan has identified more than a dozen IP addresses from which exploits are originating, common usernames for malicious accounts, and other indicators of compromise, such as malicious plugins, themes, and code. Check the <a href="https://blog.wpscan.com/hacking-campaign-actively-exploiting-ultimate-member-plugin/">security advisory</a> if you believe you have been compromised.</p>



<p>Version 2.6.6 is the latest release from the Ultimate Member plugin but it is still believed to be vulnerable. WPScan recommends users disable the plugin until it has been adequately patched.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 30 Jun 2023 01:35:52 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:91:"WordPress Foundation: 2023 Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship Recipient: Yumi Nishioka (mimi)";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:41:"https://wordpressfoundation.org/?p=569710";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:95:"https://wordpressfoundation.org/news/2023/2023-kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship-recipient-mimi/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1692:"<p><a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2023/announcing-the-2023-kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship-winner-yumi-nishioka/">This year’s Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship recipient</a> is <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mimitips/">Yumi Nishioka (mimi)</a>. mimi is a passionate WordPress contributor who embodies the values that Kim would have appreciated.</p>



<p>mimi is a Web/UI Designer and Developer based in Tokyo, and has been a WordPress contributor since 2018. She was lead organizer of WordCamp Tokyo 2019. That year she also began hosting a personal study group on the Gutenberg Project, which meets twice a month. Then in 2021, she started co-organizing monthly&nbsp;small study sessions&nbsp;about Design and WordPress.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p><em>While there have been numerous contributions I’m proud of, one that stands out is my commitment to the core code. Although it was a small code change, the experience of being actively involved in the open-source software that I use daily was incredibly rewarding.</em></p>
<cite>&#8211; mimi</cite></blockquote>



<p>The WordPress Foundation created this memorial scholarship in 2015, to honor the memory of longtime WordPress contributor Kim Parsell and ensure that Kim’s values would continue to be infused into the WordPress community.</p>



<p>This scholarship provides travel to WordCamp US for a woman who contributes to the WordPress open source project, and who would not otherwise be able to attend WordCamp US.&nbsp;<a href="http://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship/">More information on the scholarship, including past recipients, is available here</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 29 Jun 2023 15:43:46 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Julia Golomb";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:61:"Do The Woo Community: Reflecting Back on WordCamp Europe 2023";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=75373";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:55:"https://dothewoo.io/reflection-on-wordcamp-europe-2023/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:368:"<p>In this episode, nothing goes untouched. A lot of great reflection on WordCamp EU 2023 in Athens.</p>
<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io/reflection-on-wordcamp-europe-2023/">Reflecting Back on WordCamp Europe 2023</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce Builder Community</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 29 Jun 2023 12:28:43 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"WPTavern: WordPress 6.3 Beta 2 Released, Ready for Testing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146291";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:68:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-beta-2-released-ready-for-testing";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4422:"<p>WordPress 6.3 hit a major milestone today with the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/">release of Beta 2</a>. The release leads opted to skip Beta 1, which was delayed yesterday after some technical issues with packaging the release, and have moved straight on to Beta 2. </p>



<p>As WordPress 6.3 is set to be the last major release of the Gutenberg project&#8217;s Phase 2 focus on customization, it ties up many loose ends related to the Site Editor and usability in general. It rolls in the ten most recent releases of the Gutenberg plugin &#8211; versions 15.2 through 16.1. </p>



<p>Major interface enhancements in this release, as outlined by the comprehensive <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/">6.3 testing guide</a>, include the following: </p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/#command-palette">Command Palette</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/#improved-page-management">Improved Page Management</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/#content-editing-in-site-editor">Content Editing in Site Editor</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/#distraction-free-mode-in-site-editor">Distraction Free Mode in Site Editor</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/#block-theme-preview">Block Theme Preview</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/#using-the-style-book-in-the-styles-site-view">Using the Style Book in the Styles’ Site View</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/#styles-revisions">Styles Revisions</a></li>



<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/#top-toolbar-improvements">Top Toolbar Improvements</a></li>
</ul>



<p>Patterns are also getting a big boost in this release, as reusable blocks have been <a href="https://wptavern.com/reusable-blocks-renamed-to-patterns-with-synced-and-non-synced-options">renamed to &#8220;synced patterns.&#8221;</a> Pattern creation is now available to users and a new pattern library will be located inside the editor for saving and managing both synced and unsynced patterns. Theme authors now have the capability to register custom patterns to templates, so they appear in the start modal to speed up page building.</p>



<p>WordPress 6.3 will introduce three new blocks, including <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/#details-block-experimental">details</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/13/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-3-13-march/#new-time-to-read-block">time-to-read</a>, and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/49797">footnotes</a>, along with many improvements to existing blocks.</p>



<p>This release comes with significant performance updates, most notably the addition of <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12009">defer and async support to the WP Scripts API</a> and <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58235">fetchpriority support for images</a>. Support for PHP versions 8.0+ has been improved, along with block template resolution, image lazy loading, and the emoji loader. </p>



<p>In the rare event that the manual update of a theme or plugin fails, <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/51857">auto-rollback</a> is available as of WordPress 6.3.</p>



<p>Beta 2 testers are encouraged to <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">file bug reports on WordPress Trac</a>. During beta testing until the last RC, the WordPress project will also be <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/security/2023/06/28/doubling-the-bounties-for-wordpress-6-3-beta/">doubling its monetary reward</a> for any new, unreleased security issues that are uncovered. The vulnerabilities must be found in new code in order to qualify for the doubled reward.</p>



<p>Check out the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/">Beta 2 release post</a> for more information on new features, accessibility improvements, and instructions on how to test. WordPress 6.3 is scheduled for release on August 8, 2023.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 29 Jun 2023 03:28:24 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:62:"WPTavern: WordCamp Asia 2024 Scheduled for March 7-9 in Taipei";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146336";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"https://wptavern.com/wordcamp-asia-2024-scheduled-for-march-7-9-in-taipei";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1883:"<p>WordCamp Asia has announced its dates for 2024. The flagship event is now officially scheduled for March 7-9, in Taipei, Taiwan. Organizers have secured the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ticc.com.tw/wSite/mp?mp=2" target="_blank">Taipei International Convention Center (TICC)</a> venue to host the event, which is located in the business district not far from Taipei 101, formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Center, a skyscraper that is the city&#8217;s most visible landmark. TICC has a capacity of more than 3,000 people.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div>



<p>&#8220;The local community is massive and I’ve been told that WordCamp Taiwan (this October) alone would boast of at least 500 attendees,&#8221; organizer John Ang said after visiting Taipei with his team to sign the venue. &#8220;While we were on the same trip, we were lucky to be able to celebrate  the 20th Anniversary of WordPress with the Taiwanese community.</p>



<p>&#8220;There’s also active work bringing in government support and other open source communities across the region (e.g. Hong Kong) to WordCamp Asia next year.&#8221; </p>



<img />photo credit: <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/preparations-has-started-for-wordcamp-asia-2024/">Preparations have started for WordCamp Asia 2024</a>



<p>WordCamp Asia attendees can expect 3-5 tracks of sessions featuring diverse presentations across a range of topics for beginners and seasoned WordPress professionals alike. The venue also offers ample common areas for networking.</p>



<p>More details on the event and calls for speakers and sponsors should be coming soon. Those who are hopeful to attend can subscribe to updates on <a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/">the event&#8217;s website</a> or follow <a href="https://twitter.com/WordCampAsia">@WordCampAsia</a> on Twitter.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:31:19 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:39;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:40:"WordPress.org blog: WordPress 6.3 Beta 2";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=15193";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://wordpress.org/news/2023/06/wordpress-6-3-beta-2/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15161:"<p>WordPress 6.3 Beta 2 is ready for download and testing. This is the first release of the 6.3 cycle, as there was no Beta 1 due to technical issues with packaging the release. Rather than further delaying a beta release, the release squad has decided to package and ship Beta 2.</p>



<p><strong>This version of the WordPress software is under development.</strong> <strong>Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites.</strong> Instead, the release squad recommends you evaluate Beta 2 on a test server and site.</p>



<p>WordPress 6.3 demonstrates incredible progress toward achieving the goals outlined in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/roadmap/">WordPress roadmap</a> and is the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/04/phase-2-finale/">final major release of Phase 2</a>. Phase 2 has focused mainly on the Site Editor, enabling site creators to build websites, design compelling layouts, and manage content without toggling between multiple configuration areas or editing code.</p>



<p>Learn more about Gutenberg updates debuting since WordPress 6.2 by reviewing prior editions of <em>What’s New in Gutenberg</em> posts for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/24/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-2-22-february/">15.2</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/13/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-3-13-march/">15.3</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/22/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-4-22-march/">15.4</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/05/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-5-05-april/">15.5</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/">15.6</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-7-03-may/">15.7</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/20/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-8-may-17/">15.8</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/31/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-9-31-may/">15.9</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/14/whats-new-in-gutenberg-16-0-14-june/">16.0</a>, and <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/29/whats-new-in-gutenberg-16-1-29-june/">16.1</a>.</p>



<p>WordPress is the result of contributions by users, developers, and extenders across the globe. As this community seeks new features, the platform will continue to evolve, including the site editing features and beyond. Get an overview of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-3/">6.3 release cycle</a>, and check the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress Core blog</a> for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/6-3/">6.3-related posts</a> in the coming weeks for further details.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A first look at 6.3</h2>



<p>This latest WordPress release includes many updates spanning all platform areas, emphasizing the editing experience and polishing usability.&nbsp;This release contains more than 500 new features and enhancements and 400+ bug fixes.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Performance</h3>



<p>Following the incredible <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/05/wordpress-6-2-performance-improvements-for-all-themes/">performance improvements introduced in 6.2</a>, the release includes more than 170 performance-related updates, including adding <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12009">defer and async support to the WP Scripts API</a> and <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58235">fetchpriority support for images</a>. Optimizations were made to <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/4097">block template resolution</a>, <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58211">image lazy-loading</a>, and the <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/58472">emoji loader</a>, all of which benefit LCP performance. Support for PHP versions <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&status=reviewing&keywords=~php8+-php81+-php82&milestone=6.3&order=priority">8.0</a>, <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&status=reviewing&keywords=~php81&milestone=6.3&order=priority">8.1</a>, and <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=accepted&status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&status=reviewing&keywords=~php82&milestone=6.3&order=priority">8.2</a> has been improved.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Site Editor</h3>



<p>The Site Editor expands to include navigating and editing <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/20/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-8-may-17/#add-the-pages-menu-to-the-site-editor-50463">pages</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/#style-variations-in-browse-mode">styles</a>, <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/50418#top">templates</a>, and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/44461">content</a>. The unified site editing experience will include a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/49175">distraction-free mode</a>, enhanced <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/02/24/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-2-22-february/#enhancements-to-navigation-in-the-site-editor">navigation</a>, and an <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/35503">improved loading experience</a>. Additionally, you can use the Site Editor to <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/20/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-8-may-17/#add-theme-previews-for-block-themes-50030">preview a block theme</a> and adjust your site before activating the new theme. This release includes <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/50089">style revisions</a> so you can toggle between and preview different saved styles. Rounding out the changes, 6.3 ushers in a new <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/31/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-9-31-may/#command-tool">Command Palette</a>, enabling users to context switch and perform actions quickly across different sections of the site editing experience.</p>



Prototype of the Command Palette in action



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Blocks</h3>



<p>New blocks for <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/#details-block-experimental">details</a> and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51201">footnotes</a> debut in this release, along with updates for better handling of <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/51138">image aspect ratios</a> and improved fallback states. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-6-19-april/#spacer-block-gets-spacing-presets">Spacer blocks</a> now include presets, and the cover block gets updates for managing <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/22/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-4-22-march/#color-and-layout-support-for-cover-block">text colors and layout support</a>.</p>



<img src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/06/Spacing-Presets.png?ssl=1" alt="" />The new height control for the Spacer block



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Patterns and Design</h3>



<p>Reusable blocks have been renamed to <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51144"><em>synced patterns</em></a>. This change reflects the unification of reusable blocks and traditional block patterns (unsynced patterns) within the Editor. A <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/05/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-5-05-april/#patterns-as-template-starters">new option</a> allows you to assign patterns to templates, adding the ability to have starter patterns to speed up the creation process. Site creators can now easily create, save, and manage custom synced and unsynced patterns, as well as browse a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/06/09/new-curation-filter-in-pattern-directory/">directory of curated patterns</a>. Additionally, the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/13/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-3-13-march/#leveling-up-duotone">duotone filter</a> and <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/04/05/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-5-05-april/#style-captions-via-the-styles-interface">captions</a> can now be edited in the Styles interface.</p>



<img src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/06/Styling-Captions.png?ssl=1" alt="" />Style your captions in the new Styles interface



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Usability<strong> </strong></h3>



<p>Some key usability highlights include <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/40450">toolbar updates</a>, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/03/22/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-4-22-march/#updated-template-descriptions">updated template descriptions</a>, enhanced <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/05/31/whats-new-in-gutenberg-15-9-31-may/#enhancements-site-editor">list view drag-and-drop</a>, improved <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/49264#top">padding and margin controls</a>, and a new area for <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/50397#top">managing patterns</a> (including reusable blocks, now called <em>synced patterns</em>.) <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/50891">Link control</a> receives some updates, rounding out high-level usability enhancements in 6.3.</p>



<img src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2023/06/Add-and-modify-descriptions-for-templates.png?ssl=1" alt="" />Add and modify descriptions for templates



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Accessibility</h3>



<p>WordPress remains steadfast in making the site-building experience accessible to everyone. 6.3 incorporates over 50 accessibility improvements across the platform. Improved labeling, optimized tab and arrow-key navigation, revised heading hierarchy, and <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/50523">new controls in the admin image editor</a> allow those using screen readers, keyboard navigation, and other assistive technology to navigate more easily. The <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/32510">login form</a>, <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/40470">installation steps</a>, and list tables (for <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/32170">sorting</a> and <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21516">selection</a>) have all been updated. Additional accessibility tickets are viewable in <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?status=closed&focuses=~accessibility&milestone=6.3&col=id&col=summary&col=status&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=priority">the WordPress Trac</a>.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Other notes</h3>



<p>This release includes <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/51857">auto-rollback</a> for failed manual updates of themes and plugins.</p>



<p><em>Please note that the features in this list may change before the final release.</em></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Testing makes WordPress stronger!</h2>



<p>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.&nbsp;</p>



<p>While testing the upgrade process is essential, testing new features is too. Review the many new features listed above and focus your testing efforts on those areas in particular.</p>



<p>If you encounter an issue, please report it to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/forum/alphabeta/">Alpha/Beta area</a> in the support forums. If you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, you can <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/newticket">file one on WordPress Trac</a>. You can also check your issue against a list of <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/tickets/major">known bugs</a>.</p>



<p>New to testing? This <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/27/help-test-wordpress-6-3/">detailed guide</a> is a great place to start if you&#8217;ve never tested a beta release.</p>



<p>Want to know more about testing releases in general? Follow along with the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/">testing initiatives in Make Core</a> and join the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/core-test/">#core-test channel</a> on the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/">Making WordPress Slack</a>.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta 2</h3>



<p>Between the Beta 2 release and the final release candidate (RC) for each new WordPress version, the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/security/2023/06/28/doubling-the-bounties-for-wordpress-6-3-beta/">monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities is doubled</a>. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the <a href="https://hackerone.com/wordpress">HackerOne page</a> and in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/security/">security white paper</a>.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Get WordPress 6.3 Beta 2</h3>



<p>You can test WordPress 6.3 Beta 2 in three ways:</p>



<p><strong>Option 1:</strong> Install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin (select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).</p>



<p><strong>Option 2: </strong>Direct download the <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-6.3-beta2.zip">Beta 2 version (zip)</a>.</p>



<p><strong>Option 3:</strong> Use the following WP-CLI command:</p>



<p><code>wp core update --version=6.3-beta2</code></p>



<p>The current target for the final release is <strong>August 8, 2023</strong>, which is about six weeks away. Your help testing this version ensures everything in this release is the best.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The first haiku for 6.3</h3>



<p>A chapter closes<br />Excitement yet much newness<br />Phase 2 finale</p>



<p><em>Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post:</em> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dansoschin/"><em>@DanSoschin</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/"><em>@Meher</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jpantani/"><em>@JPantani</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/"><em>@CBringmann</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/audrasjb/"><em>@AudrasJB</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/annezazu/"><em>@annezazu</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/ndiego/"><em>@ndiego</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/davidbaumwald/"><em>@davidbaumwald</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/desrosj/"><em>@desrosj</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/priethor/"><em>@priethor</em></a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/flixos90/"><em>@flixos90</em></a>,<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/wildworks"> @wildworks</a>, <em>and </em><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jpantani/"><em>@JPantani</em></a><em> for authoring the haiku</em>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 28 Jun 2023 23:30:50 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Dan Soschin";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:40;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"WPTavern: #81 – James Dominy on Why AI Is to Be Embraced, Not Feared";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=146283";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/81-james-dominy-on-why-ai-is-to-be-embraced-not-feared";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:52362:"Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast, which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case how AI and WordPress can work together.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for. WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice. Or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you. And hopefully get you or your idea featured on the show. Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today, we have James Dominy. James is a computer scientist with a master&#8217;s degree in bioinformatics. He lives in Ireland working at the WP engine Limerick office.</p>



<p>This is the second podcast recorded at WordCamp Europe, 2023 in Athens. James gave a talk at the event about the influence of AI on the WordPress community and how it&#8217;s going to disrupt so many of the roles which WordPressers currently occupy.</p>



<p>We talk about the recent rise of ChatGPT, and the fact that it&#8217;s made AI available to almost anyone. In less than 12 months, many of us have gone from never touching AI technologies to using them on a daily basis to speed up some aspect of our work.</p>



<p>The discussion moves on to the rate at which AI systems might evolve, and whether or not they&#8217;re truly intelligent or just a suite of technologies which masquerade is intelligent. Are they merely good at predicting the next word or phrase in any given sentence? Is there a scenario in which we can expect our machines to stop simply regurgitating texts and images based upon what they&#8217;ve consumed; a future in which they can set their own agendas and learn based upon their own goals?</p>



<p>This gets into the subject of whether or not AI is in any meaningful way innately intelligent, or just good at making us think that it is, and whether or not the famous Turing test is a worthwhile measure of the abilities of an AI.</p>



<p>James&#8217; his background in biochemistry comes in handy as we turn our attention to whether or not there&#8217;s something unique about the brains that we all possess. Or if intelligence is merely a matter of the amount of compute power that an AI can consume. It&#8217;s more or less certain that given time machines will be more capable than they are now. So when if ever does the intelligence Rubicon get crossed?</p>



<p>The current AI systems can be broadly classified as Large Language Models or LLMs for short, and James explains what these are and how they work. How can they create a sentence word by word if they don&#8217;t have an understanding of where each sentence is going to end up?</p>



<p>James explains that LLMs are a little more complex than just handling one word at a time, always moving backwards and forwards within their predictions to ensure that they&#8217;re creating content which makes sense, even if it&#8217;s not always factually accurate.</p>



<p>We then move on from the conceptual understanding of AI to more concrete ways it can be implemented. What ways can WordPress users implement AI right now? And what innovations might we reasonably expect to be available in the future? Will we be able to get AI to make intelligent decisions about our websites SEO or design, and therefore be able to focus our time on other more pressing matters?</p>



<p>It&#8217;s a fascinating conversation, whether or not you&#8217;ve used AI tools in the past.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all the links in the show notes by heading to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast. Where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you James Dominy.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by James Dominy. How are you doing James?</p>



<p>[00:04:51] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> I&#8217;m well, thanks. Hi Nathan. How are you doing?</p>



<p>[00:04:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, good, thanks. We&#8217;re at WordCamp Europe. We&#8217;re upstairs somewhere. I&#8217;m not entirely sure where we are in all honesty. The principle idea of today&#8217;s conversation with James is he&#8217;s done a presentation at WordCamp Europe all about AI. Now, I literally can&#8217;t think of a topic which is getting more interest at the moment. It seems the general press is talking about AI all the time.</p>



<p>[00:05:17] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:05:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s consuming absolutely everything. So it&#8217;s the perfect time to have this conversation. What was your talk about today? What did you actually talk about in front of those people?</p>



<p>[00:05:24] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Right. So my talk was about the influence of AI on the WordPress community. The WordPress community involving, in my mind, roughly three groups. You&#8217;ve got your freelancer, single content generator, blogger. You have someone who does the same job but in a business as in an agency or a marketing or a brand context. And then on the other side, you&#8217;ve got software developers who are developing plugins or working on the actual WordPress Core.</p>



<p>And AI is going to be changing the way all of those people work. Mostly I focused on the first and the third groups. I don&#8217;t know enough about the business aspects to really talk about the agency and the marketing side of things.</p>



<p>I personally, I&#8217;m a software developer, so I suppose I really skewed towards that in the end. But, my wife has been a WordPresser for 15, 20 years, which is how I ended up doing this. And a lot of the things that she&#8217;s been using ChatGPT quite actively recently.</p>



<p>And she&#8217;s been chatting to me after work going, you know, I was trying to use ChatGPT to do X Y Z. And I thought, well, you know, that&#8217;s interesting. I know some bit about machine learning and the way these things work. I&#8217;ve read some stuff on the internals and I have opinions.</p>



<p>[00:06:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Perfect.</p>



<p>[00:06:34] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> So that&#8217;s how I got here.</p>



<p>[00:06:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. Well, that&#8217;s perfect. Thank you. It seems like at the moment the word ChatGPT could be easily interchanged with AI . Everybody is using that as the pseudonym for AI and it&#8217;s not really, is it? It really is a much bigger subject. But that is, it feels at the moment, the most useful implementation in the WordPress space. You know, you lock it into the block editor in some way shape and you create some content in that way.</p>



<p>[00:07:00] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> And I mean, I am absolutely guilty of that. I think the number of times I&#8217;ve said ChatGPT, I mean AI generative systems, or something during my workshop this morning is well beyond count.</p>



<p>it is likely to fall victim of a trademark thing at some point. Like Google desperately tries to claim that Google is a trademark and shouldn&#8217;t be used as a generic term for search. I expect the same thing will happen with ChatGPT at some point.</p>



<p>[00:07:25] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> This is going to sound a little bit, well, maybe snarky is the wrong word, but I hope you don&#8217;t take it this way, but it feels to me that the pace of change in AI is so remarkably rapid. I mean, like nothing I can think of. So, is there a way that we can even know what AI could look like in a year&#8217;s time, two years&#8217; time, five years&#8217; time? So in other words, if we speculate on what it could be to WordPress, is that a serious enterprise? Is it serious endeavor? Or are we just hoping that we get the right guess? Because I don&#8217;t know what it&#8217;s going to be like.</p>



<p>[00:07:59] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> I think if we rephrase the question a bit, we might get a better answer. So AIs are human design systems. And there is a thing called the alignment problem where there is an element of design to AIs, and we give it a direction, but it doesn&#8217;t always go the direction we want and I think that is the unanswerable part of this question.</p>



<p>Yes, there are going to be emergent surprises from the capabilities of AIs. But for the most part, AIs are developed with a specific goal in mind. Large language models were developed, okay I&#8217;m taking a wild educated guess here perhaps, but they were developed with the idea of producing text that sounded like a human. And I mean, we&#8217;ve had the Turing test for nearly a hundred years, more than a hundred years? 21, yeah, more than a hundred years now.</p>



<p>So I mean, that&#8217;s been a goal for a hundred years. Everyone says that AI has advanced rapidly and it has, but the core mathematical principles that are involved, those haven&#8217;t advanced. I don&#8217;t want to take away from the people who&#8217;ve done the work here. There has been work that&#8217;s been put into it, but I think what&#8217;s really given us the quantum leap here is the amount of computational power that we can throw at the problem.</p>



<p>And as long as that is increasing exponentially, I think we can expect that the models themselves will get exponentially better at roughly the same rate as the amount of hardware we throw at it.</p>



<p>[00:09:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So we can stare into the future and imagine that it&#8217;s going to get exponentially, logarithmically it&#8217;s going to, it&#8217;s just going to get better and better and better. But we can&#8217;t predict the ways that it might output that betterness. Who knows what kind of interface there&#8217;ll be, or.</p>



<p>[00:09:41] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Yeah. I think better&#8217;s a very evasive term perhaps, on my part. I think there are specific ways that it is going to get better. For example, we are going to see less confused AIs, because they are able to process more tokens. They have deeper models. Deeper statistical trees for outputs. They&#8217;re able to take more context in and apply it to whatever comes out. So in that sense we&#8217;re going to see a better output from an AI. Is it going to ever be able to innovate? Ooh, that&#8217;s a deep philosophical question, and I mean we can get into that, but I don&#8217;t know that we have time.</p>



<p>[00:10:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think I would like to get into that.</p>



<p>[00:10:22] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Okay.</p>



<p>[00:10:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Because when we begin talking about AI, I think the word which sticks is intelligence. The artificial bit gets quickly forgotten and we imagine that there is some kind of intelligence behind this, because we ask it a fairly straightforward, or even indeed quite complicated question.</p>



<p>And we get something which appears to pass the Turing test. Just for those people who are listening, the Turing test is a fairly blunt measure of whether you are talking to something which is a human or not human, masquerading as a human. And if something is deemed to have passed the Turing test, it&#8217;s indistinguishable from a human.</p>



<p>And so, I have an intuition that really what we&#8217;re getting back, it&#8217;s not intelligent in any meaningful sense of the word. It&#8217;s kind of like a regurgitation machine. It&#8217;s sucking in information and then it&#8217;s just giving us a best approximation of what it thinks we want to hear. But it&#8217;s not truly intelligent. If you asked it something utterly tangential, that it had no capacity, it had no data storage on, it would be unable to cope with that, right?</p>



<p>[00:11:22] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> I think yes. If you can clearly delineate the idea of, we have no data on this, which is very difficult considering the amounts of information that, you know, give something access to Wikipedia and that AI generative system might well be able to produce an opinion on practically anything these days.</p>



<p>But if it hasn&#8217;t read the latest paper on advanced quantum mechanic theory, it&#8217;s not going to know it. That text isn&#8217;t going to be there. Could it reproduce that paper? That&#8217;s a subtely different question, because then it comes down to, well, when a human produces that paper, what are they really doing?</p>



<p>They&#8217;re synthesizing their knowledge from a bunch of different things that they&#8217;ve learned, and they&#8217;re producing text in a language, in a grammar, that they have learned in a very similar way, that statistically speaking this sentence follows this grammatical form. Because I have learned that as a child through hearing it several thousand times from the people around me and my parents. What&#8217;s different?</p>



<p>A more practical example here, I was having this discussion earlier today, and someone said yes, but they&#8217;re not truly intelligent. But if you consider it, even now, we can ask Chat GPT something, and I&#8217;m going to be abstract cause I don&#8217;t have a concrete example here, I&#8217;m sorry. But we can say to ChatGPT, I want you to produce a poem in the style of Shakespeare, a sonnet or something. But I want you to use a plot from Goethe.</p>



<p>Okay, fine. Now it can do that. It can give you a response. I&#8217;m not sure that it&#8217;ll be a good response. I haven&#8217;t tried that particular one. But in that context, if you are asking a human to do that, and we automatically make the assumption of other human beings that they understand. And, sorry, I&#8217;m making air quotes here. That they understand, in quotes, who Goethe is. That that is a person and a character. That Goethe has a particular style and a proclivity for a certain pattern in his plots.</p>



<p>And that those are all, to use a computer science term, symbolic representations. Abstract concepts. So is ChatGPT actually understanding those abstract concepts? Does it understand that Goethe is a person? Educated guests here, probably not. But it does understand that Goethe refers to a certain, can draw a line in all the stuff that it has learned and know this is Goethe.</p>



<p>It has a concept of what it thinks Goethe is. Then from there it can say, and he has done work on the following things, and these are plots. And so it kind of understands. There&#8217;s another line there about what a plot is, which is a very abstract concept.</p>



<p>Does that mean it&#8217;s intelligent? Does that mean it understands? I don&#8217;t know. That&#8217;s my answer because I did biochemistry at university, and there&#8217;s also the question there, and it&#8217;s exactly the same question. It&#8217;s at what point do the biological machines, the biochemical machines, your actual proteins and things that are obviously on their own, unintelligent, and yet when they act in concerts, they produce a cell, and a living being.</p>



<p>Where does that boundary exist? Is it gray? Is it a hard line? And the same for me is true of the intelligence question here. Intelligence is a, it&#8217;s an aglomeration of lots of small, well-defined things that when they start interacting, become more than the sum of their parts. Does it come down to the Turing test? I mean, the fact that people on support, little support popups on the web, have to ask, are you a human every now and then. It immediately says, we have AIs that have passed the Turing test long ago.</p>



<p>But here in this case, like the extended Turing test is the thing actually intelligent? I don&#8217;t know. I genuinely don&#8217;t know the answer there. In some sense, yes, because it&#8217;s doing almost the same thing as we are, just in a different, with different delineations and different abstractions, but the process is probably the same.</p>



<p>[00:15:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Given that you&#8217;ve got a background in, forgive me, did you say biochemistry?</p>



<p>[00:15:37] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Yeah, biochemistry and computer science, bioinfomatics.</p>



<p>[00:15:39] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, do you have an intuition as to whether the substrate of the brain has some unique capacity that can lock intelligence into it? In other words, is there a point at which a computer cannot leap the hurdle? There&#8217;s something special about the brain, the way the brain is created? This piece of wetwear in our head.</p>



<p>[00:16:00] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Unpopular opinion, I think it comes down to brute force count. We&#8217;ve got trillions of cells. Large language models, I don&#8217;t know what the numbers are for GPT4, but we&#8217;re not at trillions yet. Maybe when we get there, I don&#8217;t know where the tipping point is, you know. Maybe when we get to tens of billions, or whatever number it happens to be, is the point where this thing actually becomes intelligent.</p>



<p>And we would be unable to distinguish them from a human, other than the fact that we&#8217;re looking at a screen that, that we know it&#8217;s running on the chip in front of us. But if it&#8217;s over the internet and it&#8217;s on a machine running, or whether we&#8217;re talking to a person in the support center. Or we are at the McDonald&#8217;s kiosk of 2050 and being asked whether we want fries with that. If we can&#8217;t see the person who&#8217;s asking the question, if we&#8217;re at the drive-through, we can&#8217;t see the person. Do we care?</p>



<p>[00:16:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Interesting. You mentioned a couple of times large language models, often abbreviated just to LLM. My understanding at least, forgive me I&#8217;m, I really genuinely am no expert about this. This is the underpinning of how it works. I&#8217;m going to explain it in crude terms, and then I&#8217;m hoping you&#8217;ll step in and pad it out and make it more accurate.</p>



<p>[00:17:12] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> I should caveat anything that I say here with I also am not an expert on these, but I will do what I can.</p>



<p>[00:17:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So a large language model, my understanding is that things like ChatGPT are built on top of this, and essentially it is vacuuming up the internet. Text, images, whatever data you can throw at it. And it&#8217;s consuming that, storing that. And then at the point where you ask it something, so write a sonnet in the style of Goethe, written by Shakespeare. It&#8217;s then making a best approximation, and it&#8217;s going through a process of, okay, what should the first word be? Right, we&#8217;ve decided on that. Now, let&#8217;s figure out the second word, and the third word and the fourth word. Until finally it ends in a full stop and it&#8217;s done.</p>



<p>And that&#8217;s the process it&#8217;s going through. Which seems highly unintelligent. But then again, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m doing now. I&#8217;m probably selecting in some way what the next word is and what the next word is. But yeah, explain to us how these large language models work.</p>



<p>[00:18:03] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> I think that&#8217;s a pretty fair summation. I think the important bit that needs to be filled in there is that what we perceive and use as customers of AI systems in general is a layer of several different models. There is a lot of pre-processing that goes into our prompts and post-processing in terms of what comes out.</p>



<p>But fundamentally the large language model is, yes, it&#8217;s strings of text generally. There are different systems that the AI images, image systems, are a different form of maths. Most of them, at least the ones that I know of, are mostly based on something called Stable Diffusion.</p>



<p>We can chat about that separately, but large language models tend to be trained on a large pile of text where they develop statistical inferences for the likelihood of some sequence of words following some other sequence of words. So as you say, like, if I know that a pile of words were written by Goethe, then I can sub select that aspect of my trained data.</p>



<p>And I&#8217;m personifying an AI here already. The AI can circumscribe, isolate a portion of its training set, and say, okay I will use this subset of my training, and use the statistical values for what words follow what other words that Goethe wrote. And then you will get something in the style of Goethe out.</p>



<p>[00:19:29] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s kind of astonishing that that works at all. That one word follows another in something which comes out as a sentence because, I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve ever tried that experiment on your phone where you begin the predictive text. On my phone there&#8217;s there&#8217;s usually three words above the little typewriter, and it tries to say what the next word is based upon the previous word.</p>



<p>[00:19:49] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> It&#8217;s not called auto corrupt for nothing.</p>



<p>[00:19:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, so you just click them at the end of that process, you have fantastic gibberish. It&#8217;s usually quite entertaining, and yet this system is able to, in some way just hijack that whole process and make it so that by the end the whole thing makes sense in isolation.</p>



<p>It is Goethe. It looks like Shakespeare, sounds like Shakespeare, could easily be Shakespeare. How is it predicting into the future such that by the end, the whole thing makes sense? Is there more processing going on than, okay, just the next word. Is it reading backwards?</p>



<p>[00:20:22] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Yes absolutely. Again, not an expert on LLMs, but there is this thing called a Markov Model. Which is a much more linear chain. It&#8217;s used often for bioinformatics, for genome and predicting the most likely next amino acid or nucleic acid in a genomic or a proteomic sequence.</p>



<p>And so Markov Models are very simple. They have a depth and that is how much history they remember of what they&#8217;ve seen. So you point a Markov Model at the beginning of the sequence of letters of nucleic, the ACGT&#8217;s. And then you want to say, okay, I&#8217;ve managed to sequence this off my organism. I&#8217;ve got a hundred bases and I want to know what the most likely one after that is, because that&#8217;s where it got cut off.</p>



<p>You give it a hundred, maybe you have a buffer of 10. So it remembers the last ten. It sort of slides this window of visibility over the whole sequence and mathematically starts working out, you know, what comes after an A? Okay, 30% of the time it&#8217;s a C. 50% of the time it&#8217;s a G. And by the end of it, it can with reasonable accuracy to some value of how much information you&#8217;ve given it, predict okay, in this particular portion of 10 that I&#8217;ve seen, the next one should be T.</p>



<p>And they get better as you give them more and more information. As you give them a bigger and bigger window. As you let them consume more and more memory whilst they&#8217;re doing their job, their accuracy increases.</p>



<p>I imagine the same is true of large language models, because they do. They don&#8217;t just predict the next word, they operate on phrases, on whole sentences. At some point, maybe they already do, but I imagine they operate on whole paragraphs. And again, it depends on what you&#8217;re trying to produce. Like if you&#8217;re trying to produce a legal contract that&#8217;s got a fairly prescribed grammar and form to it. And you know, then like statistically you&#8217;re going to produce the same paragraph over and over again because you want the same effect out of contracts you do all the time.</p>



<p>[00:22:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You described this slider. That really got to the nub of it. I genuinely didn&#8217;t realize that it wasn&#8217;t doing any more than just predicting the next word. And because that&#8217;s the way I thought about it, I thought it was literally astonishing that it could throw together a sentence based upon just the next word, if it didn&#8217;t know what two words previously it had written.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s back to my predictive text, which produces pure gobbledygook. But it still, occasionally, it goes down a blind alley, doesn&#8217;t it? Because although that is, presumably 99 times out of a hundred that will lead to a cogent sentence, which is readable. Occasionally it does this thing, which I think has got the name hallucinate, where it just gets slightly derailed and goes off in a different direction. And so produces something which is, I don&#8217;t know, inaccurate, just nonsense.</p>



<p>[00:23:06] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Yes. Well known for being confidently wrong for sure. I&#8217;ve experienced something similar, and I find that it is especially the case where you switch contexts. Like when you are asking it to do more than one thing at a time, and you make a change to the first thing that you expect to carry over into the context of the second task, and it just doesn&#8217;t. It gets confused.</p>



<p>And then the two things, this is especially true in coding, where you ask it to produce one piece of code and a function here, and another piece of code and a function on the other side. And you expect them, those two functions to interoperate correctly. Which means that you have to get the convention, the interface between those two things, the same on both sides.</p>



<p>But if you say, actually, I want this to be called Bob, that doesn&#8217;t necessarily translate. Again, I suppose this is my intuition. There are a lot of ways that that failure can happen. The most obvious one is that you&#8217;re doing too much and it&#8217;s run out of tokens.</p>



<p>Tokens are sort of an abstraction. Sorry I used that word a lot. Computer scientist. Tokens are, they&#8217;re not strictly speaking individual words, but they are a rough approximation of a unit of knowledge, context. I don&#8217;t know what the right word here. They chose token, right? So, if you use the API for ChatGPT, one of the things that you pass is how many tokens is the call allowed to use?</p>



<p>Because you are charged by tokens. And if you say only 30 tokens, you get worse answers than if you give it an allowance of a hundred tokens. Meaning that you might have given it a problem that exceeds the window that I was describing earlier. That sort of backtrack of context that it&#8217;s allowed to use.</p>



<p>Or you give it to two contexts and together they just go over and then it&#8217;s confused because it doesn&#8217;t know which, again, I say this as a semi-educated guess. We as humans don&#8217;t have a good definition of what context means in this conversation. How do we expect a computer system to?</p>



<p>[00:25:05] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Just as you&#8217;ve been talking, in my head, I&#8217;ve come up with this analogy of what I now think AI represents to me, and it represents essentially a very, very clever baby. There&#8217;s this child crawling around on the ground, I really do mean an infant who you fully forgive for knocking everything over and, tipping things over, damaging things and what have you. And yet this child can speak. So on the one hand, it can talk to you, but it&#8217;s just making utterly horrific mistakes because it&#8217;s a baby and you forgive it for that. So I don&#8217;t know how that sits, but that&#8217;s what&#8217;s it landed in my head.</p>



<p>[00:25:40] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> I wouldn&#8217;t say that AI is in its infancy anymore, but it&#8217;s probably in its toddler year, and maybe we need to watch out when it turns two.</p>



<p>[00:25:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So we&#8217;ve, done the sort of high level what is AI and all of that. That&#8217;s fascinating. But given that this is a WordPress event and it&#8217;s a WordPress podcast, let&#8217;s bind some of this stuff to the product itself. So WordPress largely is a content creation platform. You open it up, you make a post, you make a page, and typically into that goes text, sometimes images, sometimes video, possibly some other file formats. But let&#8217;s stick with the model of text and images. Why do we want, or how could we put AI into WordPress? What are the things that might be desirable in a WordPress site that AI could assist us with?</p>



<p>[00:26:21] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> I am totally going to be stealing some ideas from the AI content creation things that have happened this morning. I mean, there&#8217;s the obvious answer. I need to generate a thousand words for my editor by 4:00 PM today. Hey, ChatGPT, can you generate a thousand words on topic, blah?</p>



<p>I think there are a lot of other places. I&#8217;d be super surprised if this hasn&#8217;t actually happened already. But, hey ChatGPT, write me an article that gets me to the top five Google ranking.</p>



<p>The other obvious place for me as a software developer is using it to develop code. Humans are inventive. We&#8217;re going to see a lot of uses for AI that we never thought of. That&#8217;s not a bad thing at all. The more ways that we can use AI, I think the better.</p>



<p>Yes, there are questions about the dangers, and I&#8217;m sure that&#8217;s a question coming up later on, so I won&#8217;t dive into them now, but in the WordPress community, there&#8217;s content creation, but there&#8217;s also content moderation, where AI can probably help a lot. Analyze this piece of text to me and tell me is it spam? Does it contain harmful or hateful content?</p>



<p>Again, it&#8217;s a case of you get what you give. There&#8217;s that story about Microsoft, I think it was Microsoft, and the chatbot that turned into a horrible Nazi racist within about two hours, having been trained on Twitter data. We need to be careful about that, certainly. I&#8217;m struggling to think of things beyond the obvious.</p>



<p>[00:27:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, I think probably it is going to be the obvious, isn&#8217;t it? Largely, people are popping in text and so having something which will allow you within the interface, whether you are in a page builder or whether you&#8217;re using the Gutenberg editor, the ability to interrupt that flow and say, okay, I&#8217;ve written enough now, ChatGPT, take over. Give me the next 300 words please. Or just read what I&#8217;ve written and can you just finish this? I&#8217;m almost there.</p>



<p>[00:28:11] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Yeah, we are doing it already, even if it&#8217;s a sort of fairly primitive flow now where we write some stuff in our block editor, copy it up, pop it in ChatGPT or Bard or whatever, and say, hey, this is too formal. Or this is not formal enough. And it&#8217;s really great at that. Make this sound more businessy. And it understands the word businessy. The tool integration, it&#8217;s obvious in a lot of ways, but I think there are going to be a lot of non-obvious integrations. Like, oh wow, I wish I thought of that, and, you know, made my millions off that product. I mean, Jetpack is doing it already, you know. I am able to actively engage with ChatGPT whilst I&#8217;m editing my blog post. Fantastic.</p>



<p>Another thing that I&#8217;ve just thought of is oh, I run a WooCommerce site and I want to use, not necessarily ChatGPT, but some other AI system to analyze product sales and use that to promote, to change the listing on my product site, so that I can sell more product. That&#8217;s going to happen.</p>



<p>[00:29:09] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, given that it&#8217;s incredibly good at consuming data.</p>



<p>[00:29:13] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Yeah, or even generating it on the fly. Generate 300 different descriptions of this product and randomize them. Put them out there and see which one sells best. We are doing that manually already. It&#8217;s AB testing at a larger scale.</p>



<p>[00:29:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. You can imagine a situation where the AI runs the split test, but it&#8217;s divided over 300 variations. And it decides for itself which is the winner.</p>



<p>[00:29:39] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> On a day-to-day basis.</p>



<p>[00:29:40] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> On an hourly basis. Implements the winner and then begins the whole process over and over again. I also wonder if in WordPress there is going to be AI to help lay out things. So at the moment we have the block editor. It enables you to create fairly complex layouts. We also have page builders, which allow us to do the same thing. So it alludes to what I was speaking about a moment ago.</p>



<p>Talking, so literally talking, as well as typing in. I would like a homepage. I would like that homepage to show off my plumbing business, and here&#8217;s my telephone number. I&#8217;d like to have a picture of me, or somebody doing some plumbing, some additional content down there. You get the picture?</p>



<p>[00:30:17] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Yeah, absolutely.</p>



<p>[00:30:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> A few little prompts, and rather than spitting out text or an image, whole layouts come out. And we can pick from 300 different layouts. I&#8217;ll go for that one, but now make the buttons red. The AI takes over the design process in a way.</p>



<p>[00:30:32] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Yeah. I&#8217;m going to confess here that I&#8217;m absolutely stealing this opinion from the AI panel earlier. I think the danger for WordPress specifically there, is that that level of automation for us with human engagement and, you know, developing something through conversation with an AI, might actually skip WordPress entirely. Why must the AI choose WordPress to do this?</p>



<p>Maybe if we as a WordPress community invest in making WordPress AI integrated, then yeah, absolutely. Then hopefully we&#8217;re first to market with that in a way. And then it will generate stuff in WordPress. But there&#8217;s no, there&#8217;s no reason for it to maybe choose a Wix page as a better solution for you as a plumber, who doesn&#8217;t update things very often. You just want a static, you know.</p>



<p>Chances are it&#8217;ll just say, here is some HTML it does the job for you, it&#8217;s pretty. I made some images for you as well. And, all you need to do is run the sequence of commands to, SSH it up to provider of your choice. Or I have selected this provider because I know how much they all charge and this is the cheapest. Or you&#8217;ve asked for the fastest, whatever.</p>



<p>[00:31:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, interesting, okay. So it&#8217;s not just bound inside the WordPress interface. Literally, put this in the cheapest place as of today. And then if it changes in the next 24 hours, just move it over there and change the DNS for me and.</p>



<p>[00:31:53] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> One day. For sure. Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:31:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. So that very nicely ties into the harms.</p>



<p>[00:31:58] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> There it is.</p>



<p>[00:31:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What we&#8217;ve just laid out is potentially quite harmful to a lot of the jobs that people do inside of WordPress. We&#8217;ve just described a workflow in which many of the things that we would charge clients for, which we could potentially get AI to do. Whether that&#8217;s a voice interface or a visual interface or a type, we&#8217;re typing in.</p>



<p>So that is concerning, if we are giving AI the option to put us out of work. And I know at the moment, this is the hot topic. I&#8217;m pretty sure that there&#8217;s some fairly large organizations who have begun this process already. They&#8217;ve taken some staff who are doing jobs which can be swapped out for AI, and they&#8217;ve shed those staff.</p>



<p>And whilst we&#8217;re in the beginning phase of that, it seems like we can swallow so much of people getting laid off. The problem, potentially is, if we keep laying people off over and over and over again and we give everything over to the AI, we suddenly are in a position where, well, there&#8217;s no humans in this whole process anymore. Does any of that give you pause for thought?</p>



<p>[00:32:53] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Yeah, it certainly does. I think we should temper our expectations of the capabilities of AI. So there&#8217;s a technical term called a terminal goal. The delineation between specific artificial intelligences and machine learning, in that world, and the concept of the general artificial intelligences, which is what everyone thinks of when they think of the I in artificial intelligence, is an AI that is capable of forming its own terminal goals.</p>



<p>Its own, don&#8217;t get me wrong, like we have AIs that are capable of forming what are called intermediate nodes. If you tell an AI of a particular type to go and do a particular thing, then it is capable of forming intermediate steps. In order to do the thing you&#8217;ve told me, I need to first do this, which requires me to do that. And, you know, it forms a chain of goals, but none of those goals are emergent from the AI. They are towards a goal we have given the AI externally.</p>



<p>That ability to form a goal internally is the concept of a terminal goal. And we don&#8217;t have, large language models don&#8217;t have terminal goals. Large language models, stable diffusion, all of the different algorithms that are hot topics today, are all couched within the idea of solving a problem given to them as an input.</p>



<p>Which means there&#8217;s always going to need to be a human. At least with what we&#8217;ve got now. No matter how good these models get, how much brain power we give them. And this maybe is going against what I said earlier of like, I think it&#8217;s probably a quantity thing.</p>



<p>Maybe there&#8217;s a tipping point. Maybe there&#8217;s a tipping point where the intermediate goal that it forms is indistinguishable from a terminal goal in a human brain. But for the moment, I think there always needs to be a human there to give the AI the task to solve. Open AI isn&#8217;t just running servers randomly just doing stuff. It spends its computational time answering users prompts and questions.</p>



<p>[00:34:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So if we pursue artificial intelligence research, and the end goal is to create an AGI, then presumably at some point we&#8217;ve got something which is indistinguishable from a human because it can set its own goals.</p>



<p>[00:35:02] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> The cyberpunk dystopia, right?</p>



<p>[00:35:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But we&#8217;re not there yet. This is a ways off, my understanding at least anyway. But in the more short term, let&#8217;s bind it to the loss of jobs.</p>



<p>[00:35:11] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> In my workshop this morning, I think the primary point that I wanted to get across is, if you are currently in the WordPress community, employed and or making an income out of WordPress. ChatGPT, Bard, generative AI, large language models are a tool that you should be learning to use. They&#8217;re not going to replace you.</p>



<p>Maybe that&#8217;s less true on the content generation side, because large language models are particularly good at that. But there&#8217;s a flip side to that because on the software development side, programming languages have very strict grammars, which means the statistical model is particularly good at producing output for programming languages.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s not good at handling the large amounts of complexity that can exist in large pieces of code. But equally so, I mean, if you ask it to give you a hundred items of things to do in Athens, whilst I&#8217;m totally, totally, working hard at a conference, uh, then you are probably going to get repeats. You might run into the confusion problem, the hallucination issue at some point there, where just a hundred is too much.</p>



<p>Nobody has ever written an article of a hundred things to do in Athens in a day. I don&#8217;t know, I haven&#8217;t tried that. I&#8217;m guessing that there are going to be limitations. So some jobs are more in threat than others, but I think that if you&#8217;re already in the industry, or in the community and working with it, go with it and, absorb the tools into your day-to-day flow.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s going to make you better at what you do. Faster at what you do. Hopefully able to make more money. Hopefully able to communicate with more people, translations et cetera. Make your blog multilingual. There are a lot of things that you can use it for that aren&#8217;t immediately coming after your job.</p>



<p>The problem for me, and this again is the point that I was trying to get across in the workshop, the problem is the next generation. The people who are getting into WordPress today and tomorrow, and in six months time. Who are coming into a world where AI is already in such usage that it&#8217;s solving the simple problems. And the same as true, my editor wants 200 words or whatever on fun things to do in Athens overnight.</p>



<p>Okay, great. ChatGPT can do that for the editor. Why does he need a junior content writer anymore? But the problem is, I mean, we&#8217;ve already said, sometimes it&#8217;s spectacularly wrong. Does that editor always have the time to actually vet the output? Probably not. And so the job of that junior is going to transform into, they need to be a subeditor. They need to be a content moderator almost, rather than a content generator.</p>



<p>But that&#8217;s a skill that only comes from having written the content yourself. We learn by making mistakes, and if we are not making those mistakes because AI is generating the stuff, and either not making mistakes or making mistakes that we haven&#8217;t made before ourselves, and thus don&#8217;t recognize his mistakes. So my fear of the job losses aspect of AI is not that it&#8217;s going to wipe out people who are working already. It&#8217;s going to make that barrier to entry for the next generation, it&#8217;s knocking the bottom rung out of the ladder.</p>



<p>And unless we change the ways that we teach people as they are entering the community, the WordPress community, the industry, and all the industries which AI is going to affect, the basics, and we focus on it. You know, it&#8217;s a catch 22. We have to teach people to do stuff without AI, so they can learn the basics. But at the same time, they also have to learn how to use AI so they can do the basics in the modern world.</p>



<p>And I mean, we get back to that old debate like, why am I learning trigonometry in school? Because maybe someday it actually helps you do your job. Admittedly, so far, not so much. But I will say this. History, I did history in school. That has surprisingly turned out to be one of the most useful subjects I ever did, just because it taught me how to write. Which I didn&#8217;t learn in English class. Go figure.</p>



<p>[00:39:17] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It sounds like you are quite sanguine for now. If you are in the space and listening to this podcast now, everything is fine right now.</p>



<p>[00:39:26] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:39:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Maybe less sanguine for the future. Given that, do you think that AI more broadly needs to be corralled. There need to be guardrails put in place. There needs to be legislation. I don&#8217;t know how any of that works, but manufacturers of AI being put under the auspices of, well it would have to be governments, I guess. But some kind of system of checks and balances to make sure that it&#8217;s not, I don&#8217;t know, deliberately producing fakes. Or that the fakes are getting, the hallucinations are getting minimized. That it&#8217;s not doing things that aren&#8217;t in humanity&#8217;s best interests.</p>



<p>[00:39:59] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Absolutely. Yes. Although I&#8217;m not sure how we could do a good job of it, to be fair. The whole concept of, we want AIs to operate in humanity&#8217;s best interests. Who decides? The alignment problem crops up here where, it&#8217;s well known that we can train an AI to do something we think that it&#8217;s going to do, and it seems to be doing that thing until suddenly it doesn&#8217;t.</p>



<p>And we just get some weird output. And then when we go digging, we realize actually it was trying to solve an entirely different problem to what we thought we were training it on, that just happened to have a huge amount of overlap with the thing that we did. But when we get to those edge cases, it goes off in what we think is a wildly wrong direction. But it is solving the problem that it was trained to solve. We just didn&#8217;t know we were training it to solve that problem.</p>



<p>As far as regulation goes. Yes, I think regulation, it&#8217;s coming. I really want to say nobody could be stupid enough to put weapons in the hands of an AI. The human race has proved me wrong several thousand times already in history. Yeesh, I personally think that that&#8217;s an incredibly stupid idea. But then the problem becomes what&#8217;s a weapon?</p>



<p>Because a weapon these days can be something as subtle as enough ability to control trading, high frequency trading. Accidentally crash a stock market. It&#8217;s already happened. Accidentally, and again, I&#8217;m air quoting the accidentally here, accidentally crash your competitor&#8217;s stock, or another nation&#8217;s stock market. AI is there, is being used as a validly useful tool to participate in the economy, but the economy can be used as a weapon.</p>



<p>Putting AI in control of the water infrastructure in arid countries. Optimization, it can do those jobs a lot better. It can see almost instantaneously when there&#8217;s a pressure drop. So there&#8217;s a leak in this section of the pipe. Somebody needs to go fix it. And also it can just shut off the water to an entire section of the city because, I don&#8217;t know, it feels like it. Because for some reason it is optimizing for a different goal than we actually think we gave it.</p>



<p>The trick is we can say, we can input into ChatGPT, I want you to provide water to the entire city in a fair and equitable way. That doesn&#8217;t mean that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s going to do. We just think that that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s going to do. We hope.</p>



<p>[00:42:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think we kind of come back to where we started. If we had a crystal ball, and we could stare five, two years, three years, 10 years into the future. That feels like it would be a really great thing to have at the moment. There&#8217;s obviously going to be benefits. It&#8217;s going to make work certainly more productive. It&#8217;s going to make us be able to produce more things. But as you&#8217;ve just talked over the last 20 minutes or so, there&#8217;s also points of concern and things to be ironed out in the near term.</p>



<p>[00:42:52] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Absolutely, yeah.</p>



<p>[00:42:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> We&#8217;re fast running out of time, so I think we&#8217;ll wrap it up if that&#8217;s all right? A quick one James, if somebody is interested, you&#8217;ve planted the seed of interest about AI and they want to get in touch with you and natter about this some more, where would they do that?</p>



<p>[00:43:06] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> The best way is probably email. I am not a social person in the social media sense. I don&#8217;t have Twitter. I don&#8217;t do any of that. So I&#8217;m probably terrible for this when I think about it. My email is, J for Juliet, G for golf, my surname D O M for mother, I, N for November, Y for yankee at gmail.com. Please don&#8217;t spam. Please don&#8217;t get AI to spam me.</p>



<p>[00:43:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, yeah. James Dominy, thank you so much for joining us today.</p>



<p>[00:43:34] <strong>James Dominy:</strong> Thank you for the opportunity. It&#8217;s been great fun, and I&#8217;ve really enjoyed being able to kind of deep dive into a lot of the stuff I just had to gloss over in the workshop. Thank you.</p>
</div>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesdominy/?originalSubdomain=ie">James Dominy</a>.</p>



<p>James is a computer scientist with a masters degree in bioinformatics. He lives in Ireland, working at the WPEngine Limerick office.</p>



<p>This is the second podcast recorded at WordCamp Europe 2023 in Athens. James gave a talk at the event about the influence of AI on the WordPress community, and how it’s going to disrupt so many of the roles which WordPressers currently occupy.</p>



<p>We talk about the recent rise of ChatGPT and the fact that it’s made AI available to almost anyone. In less than twelve months many of us have gone from never touching AI technologies to using them on a daily basis to speed up some aspect of our work.</p>



<p>The discussion moves on to the rate at which AI systems might evolve, and whether or not they’re truly intelligent, or just a suite of technologies which masquerade as intelligent. Are they merely good at predicting the next word or phrase in any given sentence? Is there a scenario in which we can expect our machines to stop simply regurgitating text and images based upon what they’ve consumed; a future in which they can set their own agendas and learn based upon their own goals?</p>



<p>This gets into the subject of whether or not AI is in any meaningful way innately intelligent, or just good at making us think that it is, and whether or not the famous Turing test is a worthwhile measure of the abilities of an AI.</p>



<p>James’ background in biochemistry comes in handy as we turn our attention to whether or not there’s something unique about the brains we all possess, or if intelligence is merely a matter of the amount of compute power that an AI can consume. It’s more or less certain that given time, machines will be more capable than they are now, so when, if ever, does the intelligence Rubicon get crossed?</p>



<p>The current AI systems can be broadly classified as Large Language Models, or LLMs for short, and James explains what these are and how they work. How can they create a sentence word by word if they don’t have an understanding of where each sentence is going to end up? James explains that LLMs are a little more complex than just handling one word at a time, always moving backwards and forwards within their predictions to ensure that they’re creating content which makes sense, even if it’s not always factually accurate.</p>



<p>We then move on from the conceptual understanding of AI to more concrete ways it can be implemented. What ways can WordPress users implement AI right now, and what innovations might we reasonably expect to be available in the future? Will we be able to get AI to make intelligent decisions about our website’s SEO or design, and therefore be able to focus our time on other, more pressing, matters?</p>



<p>It’s a fascinating conversation whether or not you’ve used AI tools in the past.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links.</h2>



<p><a href="https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt">ChatGPT</a></p>



<p><a href="https://stablediffusionweb.com/">Stable Diffusion</a></p>



<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_model">Markov Model</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 28 Jun 2023 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:41;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:54:"Akismet: How to Add CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA to WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:27:"http://akismet.com/?p=70973";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:43:"https://akismet.com/blog/wordpress-captcha/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:25456:"<p>Implementing a CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA system is a highly effective way to protect your WordPress website or ecommerce business from spam and bots, which is crucial for ensuring online security.</p>



<p>All that sounds great, but the effort involved in solving a CAPTCHA often results in reduced conversions. According to <a href="https://moz.com/blog/having-a-captcha-is-killing-your-conversion-rate">Moz</a>, including a CAPTCHA could result in a loss of 3.2% of conversions. Yikes!</p>



<p>That&#8217;s why today, we&#8217;ll explain the problem with the traditional CAPTCHA setup, offer a stand-out alternative, and provide steps to add CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA to your WordPress site, if that&#8217;s still the route you feel most comfortable with.</p>



<p>After following this guide, your website will be safer and more secure for your visitors.</p>



<p>Let&#8217;s get started!</p>



<span id="more-70973"></span>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The problem with traditional CAPTCHA solutions</h2>



<p>While <a href="https://support.google.com/a/answer/1217728?hl=en#:~:text=CAPTCHA%20(Completely%20Automated%20Public%20Turing,known%20as%20challenge%2Dresponse%20authentication.">CAPTCHA</a> systems have been widely adopted for their ability to prevent spam and bot activity, they do come with a number of drawbacks. Make sure you’re aware of these downsides before you use a WordPress CAPTCHA plugin.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. They’re challenging for those with visual impairments</h3>



<p>Traditional CAPTCHA systems often rely on distorted images of text, making it difficult for users with visual impairments to solve them. This can lead to accessibility issues and discourage visitors from interacting with your site.</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image12.png" alt="example of a CAPTCHA asking the user to select squares with red spheres" class="wp-image-70975" width="385" height="463" />



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. They create a frustrating experience&nbsp;</h3>



<p>CAPTCHAs can be frustrating and time-consuming to solve, particularly when the distorted text is difficult to read. This annoyance can cause people to leave your site without completing their intended action, such as submitting a form or making a purchase. Sometimes, visitors may even have to solve multiple CAPTCHAs —&nbsp;a real test of endurance.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. They can generate false positives</h3>



<p>CAPTCHA systems can sometimes incorrectly identify real human users as bots, preventing them from accessing your site or submitting forms. This can lead to a loss of leads, customers, or subscribers.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">4. They’re easily bypassed by sophisticated bots</h3>



<p>As bots become more advanced, they’re increasingly able to bypass traditional CAPTCHA systems, rendering them less effective at preventing spam and malicious activity on your site.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">5. They can create a negative user experience</h3>



<p>Implementing CAPTCHA systems can negatively impact your site&#8217;s user experience, particularly when the CAPTCHAs are overly complex or difficult to solve. This can lead to lower visitor satisfaction and, ultimately, decreased engagement and conversions.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">6. They can lead to lower conversion rates</h3>



<p>As mentioned above, the frustrating experience of solving CAPTCHAs can lead to users abandoning your site before completing their intended actions. This can result in lower conversion rates for your business.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">7. They can cause higher page load times</h3>



<p>Implementing CAPTCHA systems can also contribute to slower page load times, as they often require additional resources and scripts to load. This can negatively impact your site&#8217;s performance and search engine rankings.</p>



<p>Given these challenges, it&#8217;s important to find a solution that’s both effective at preventing spam and bots, while also providing a positive user experience. That&#8217;s where Akismet comes in to save the day.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How does Akismet address these issues?</h2>



<p>Akismet addresses the shortcomings of traditional CAPTCHA systems by employing advanced algorithms and a continuously-updated database of spam signatures. It can effectively identify and block spam and malicious activity without any user input and without annoying barriers for site visitors.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>The result is enhanced accessibility, a superior user experience, and fewer false positives.&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Even the most sophisticated bots can be identified and blocked by Akismet due to its advanced spam detection technology and constantly-updated database. By staying ahead of emerging threats, Akismet ensures your online presence remains secure and your valuable content and data are safeguarded.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The benefits of using Akismet over CAPTCHA</h2>



<p>Given the challenges associated with traditional CAPTCHA solutions, Akismet presents several benefits that make it a compelling and superior alternative for WordPress site owners.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. Greater user-friendliness</h3>



<p>Akismet doesn&#8217;t require users to solve puzzles or enter codes, ensuring a more pleasant and frustration-free browsing experience. It operates seamlessly in the background, allowing visitors to focus on your content and offerings without any distractions or interruptions.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. Improved accessibility for all users</h3>



<p>Akismet can be used by people with vision impairments because it doesn’t use visual puzzles to block spam and bots. This approach makes sure that your website is user-friendly and welcoming to a diverse audience, creating a positive online environment for everyone.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. Greater accuracy in spam detection</h3>



<p>Akismet uses advanced algorithms and a vast database of spam signatures to minimize false positives. This means that genuine users can access and interact with your site without being mistakenly identified as bots. This accurate spam detection helps build a trustworthy online presence and improve user experiences.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">4. Robust effectiveness against malicious activity</h3>



<p>Akismet is highly effective at identifying and blocking spam and malicious activity, including sophisticated bots that can bypass traditional CAPTCHA systems. Its constantly-updated database and advanced spam detection technology ensure your website remains secure and protected from emerging threats.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">5. Optimized performance and load times</h3>



<p>Akismet runs in the background and won&#8217;t slow down your website by using extra data or running unnecessary scripts. This means your website will stay fast and responsive for your visitors, which can help improve your search engine rankings and create a great browsing experience.</p>



<p>If this sounds like a solid prospect, you&#8217;ll be delighted to hear that we&#8217;re discussing how to install and set up Akismet on WordPress next.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How to add Akismet to WordPress</h2>



<p>Incorporating <a href="https://akismet.com/">Akismet</a> into WordPress comment and contact forms is a breeze, and you can accomplish it in just a few steps. However, the procedure might differ slightly depending on the contact form or plugin you&#8217;re using. Let&#8217;s explore how it&#8217;s done!</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Step 1: Install the Akismet plugin</h3>



<p>Akismet can be used for free to get rid of spam <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/wordpress-pros-and-cons-of-enabling-comments/">comments</a> and harmful form submissions on your non-commercial site. Websites run for commercial purposes can choose from several affordable premium options.</p>



<p>First, install and activate the plugin.</p>



<p>To do this, log in to your WordPress dashboard, go to the <strong>Plugins</strong> tab, click <strong>Add New</strong>, and search for it. The plugin is usually included in the top &#8220;<strong>Featured</strong>&#8221; list.</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image6.png" alt="finding Akismet in the WordPress repository" class="wp-image-70976" width="450" height="197" />



<p>To install the plugin, click on<strong> Install Now</strong> and then <strong>Activate</strong>. After activation, go to <strong>Settings</strong> and select <strong>Akismet Anti-Spam</strong>. Under <strong>Settings</strong>, locate the <strong>API key</strong> field.</p>



<p>You can get the key by going to the Akismet website and creating an account.&nbsp;</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image7.png" alt="Aksimet homepage with the text, " />



<p>Once you finish the signup process on the website, log in to your new account then locate <strong>My Account</strong> and choose <strong>Add Subscription</strong>.</p>



<p>You can select your desired plan next. The <strong>Personal</strong> plan is free for individual website use if your site is considered &#8220;non-commercial.&#8221;</p>



<p>After registering, you’ll receive an API key in the My Account section. Copy this key and then navigate to the WordPress dashboard&#8217;s <strong>Settings → Akismet Anti-Spam</strong> screen. Next, paste the key into the <strong>API Key</strong> field.</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image1.png" alt="Akismet settings in WordPress" class="wp-image-70979" width="450" height="267" />



<p>Click on <strong>Save Changes</strong> to finish.</p>



<p>Akismet will automatically filter comment spam and put it in a queue for review on the dashboard. But if you want it to work on your contact form(s), you&#8217;ll need to complete another step.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Step 2: Add Akismet to your contact form</h3>



<p>By default, WordPress does not have a contact form feature. Therefore, you’ll need to use plugins to include contact forms on their sites. The method to add these forms will vary based on the plugin being used.</p>



<p>Some popular contact form plugins, including <a href="https://jetpack.com/features/discussion/contact-forms/">Jetpack</a>, already have Akismet support built-in.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Other plugins necessitate setting up Akismet add-ons to incorporate spam protection into their forms. <a href="https://www.gravityforms.com/">Gravity Forms</a> is the most popular example of this.</p>



<p>Still other WordPress plugins like <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/">Contact Form 7</a> require a code snippet to add Akismet support.</p>



<p>Thankfully, it&#8217;s easy to configure Akismet on your contact forms, no matter which method you choose.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Step 3: Set up the anti-spam settings in Akismet</h3>



<p>Akismet is very much a set-it-and-forget-it type of tool. Just install, activate, and you&#8217;re basically done. But it also allows you to control how to handle contact form spam a bit more precisely.</p>



<p>The plugin is configured, by default, to send flagged comments to a holding queue located in the <strong>Comments</strong> section of the WordPress dashboard so that you can review them later. You can also set up Akismet to delete spam entirely.</p>



<p>If this sounds appealing, just go to<strong> Settings → Akismet Anti-Spam</strong> and locate the <strong>Settings</strong>.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Scroll down to the section called <strong>Strictness</strong>.</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image10.png" alt="Strictness settings for Akismet" class="wp-image-70980" width="450" height="170" />



<p>Akismet is good at identifying which messages are spam and which ones are legitimate, which means you can delete the spam messages from your contact form without worry. However, if you want to keep all messages, you can select the option to <strong>Always put spam in the Spam folder for review</strong>.</p>



<p>Remember that Akismet stores spam comments for 15 days before they&#8217;re deleted. So, if you go for this option, review your queue regularly.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Still want to use CAPTCHA?</h2>



<p>Although we suggest using Akismet due to its ease-of-use and success in blocking spam and bots, we realize that certain users may still want to learn how to add CAPTCHA to WordPress. This section will provide clear instructions on how to integrate both CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA into a WordPress contact form.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. How to add CAPTCHA to a WordPress contact form</h3>



<p>Although most well-known contact form plugins include CAPTCHA functionality, you can also manually incorporate CAPTCHA into any form element on WordPress that&#8217;s being misused. This not only includes contact forms, but also comment forms, <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/how-to-enable-or-disable-user-registration-in-wordpress/">user registration pages</a>, login pages, and opt-in forms.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Step 1: Install and activate the Friendly CAPTCHA for WordPress plugin</h4>



<p>For the purposes of this tutorial, we&#8217;re using the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/friendly-captcha/">Friendly CAPTCHA for WordPress</a> plugins, though there are other options available.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Go to your WordPress dashboard then to <strong>Plugins → Add New</strong> and search for the plugin by name.</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image8-1.png" alt="Friendly Captcha for WordPress plugin" class="wp-image-70982" width="225" height="188" />



<p>Once you locate it, click <strong>Install → Activate</strong>.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Step 2: Add the site key and secret key</h4>



<p>To input your<strong> </strong>Site key and Secret key, locate<strong> Friendly Captcha</strong> in the dashboard, then click <strong>Settings</strong>.</p>



<p>Then go to the <a href="https://friendlycaptcha.com">Friendly Captcha</a> website and create an account. Pick a plan, then copy your site key.&nbsp;</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image5.png" alt="creating a Friendly Captcha account" class="wp-image-70983" width="450" height="199" />



<p>Go back to your WordPress installation and paste in the<strong> Site key</strong> in the appropriate field. Then go back to your account on the website and generate an API key by typing in a name for it then clicking <strong>Create API Key.</strong>&nbsp;</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image13.png" alt="creating an API key" class="wp-image-70984" width="450" height="195" />



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Step 3: Finish configuring settings</h4>



<p>For this tutorial, please select the comment form box to enable forms and keep all other settings at their default values to configure the remaining options based on your preferences.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Step 4: Save and view</h4>



<p>Once you&#8217;re done making changes, click <strong>Save Changes,</strong> then visit a live blog post to verify the comment form is working as intended.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. How to add reCAPTCHA to a WordPress contact form</h3>



<p>Google reCAPTCHA adds an extra layer of protection to your contact forms, using a two-step verification process. This tool can help stop bots and spammers, as they&#8217;ll need to pass the reCAPTCHA test. You can use a WordPress CAPTCHA plugin to get the job done. Here&#8217;s how you can incorporate it into your WordPress contact form:</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Step 1: Install and activate a WordPress reCAPTCHA plugin</h4>



<p>First, install and activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-google-recaptcha/">Simple Google reCAPTCHA plugin</a>. Just search for it by name under <strong>Plugins → Add New</strong>. Then click <strong>Install → Activate</strong>.</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image11.png" alt="the Simple Google reCAPTCHA plugin" class="wp-image-70985" width="450" height="251" />



<p>After activation, navigate to<strong> Settings → Google reCAPTCHA</strong> to configure the plugin settings.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Step 2: Configure the plugin settings</h4>



<p>The plugin will prompt you to enter Google reCAPTCHA keys. You can obtain these keys for free from the official reCAPTCHA website by clicking the <strong>register your domain</strong> link at the top of the page.</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image2.png" alt="warning to register your domain " class="wp-image-70986" width="450" height="65" />



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Step 3: Obtain reCAPTCHA API keys by registering your website</h4>



<p>The <strong>register your domain</strong> link directs you to the Google reCAPTCHA website, where you can register your site to work with reCAPTCHA.</p>



<p>Sign in with your Google account, and you&#8217;ll see the <strong>Register a new site</strong> page. Enter the necessary basic information to register your site.</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image14.png" alt="registering a site with Google" class="wp-image-70987" width="450" height="190" />



<p>In the <strong>Label</strong> field, input your website name or any name of your choice to help you identify your site later.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Step 4: Add a new site</h4>



<p>Next, choose the <strong>reCAPTCHA V2</strong> radio button to reveal two new options.</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image9-1.png" alt="options for reCAPTCHA type" class="wp-image-70988" width="450" height="129" />



<p>To add the reCAPTCHA checkbox to your site, select the first option,<strong> I&#8217;m not a robot </strong>checkbox.</p>



<p>In the <strong>Domains</strong> text box, add the domain name of your website.</p>



<p>You can also add multiple domains or subdomains by clicking the plus <strong>+</strong> icon, enabling you to use the same API keys across different websites.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Step 5: Add domain and email to your reCAPTCHA site</h4>



<p>Google will automatically add your email address under <strong>Owners</strong>. You can also add another email if desired. Then accept the terms of service.</p>



<p>Select the <strong>Send alerts to owners</strong> checkbox to allow Google to send emails if they detect any misconfigurations or suspicious activity.</p>



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">Step 6: Submit and register your WordPress site</h4>



<p>After completing the form, click <strong>Submit</strong> to register your site.</p>



<p>Google reCAPTCHA will display a success message, along with the site key and secret key.</p>



<p>Use these API Keys in your website&#8217;s plugin settings.</p>



<p>Navigate to <strong>Settings → Google reCAPTCHA</strong> from your WordPress dashboard.</p>



<p>On the <strong>Settings</strong> page, paste the site key and secret key.</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image4.png" alt="creating Google reCAPTCHA keys" class="wp-image-70989" width="450" height="105" />



<p>The plugin will incorporate reCAPTCHA verification into the WordPress comment form, registration form, reset password form, new password form, and login form.</p>



<p>You can disable reCAPTCHA on the login form by selecting the appropriate checkbox.</p>



<p>Remember to click <strong>Save Changes</strong> to store the API keys and activate reCAPTCHA.</p>



<p>You have now successfully added reCAPTCHA to your WordPress comment form. Check the comment section of your blog posts to ensure it&#8217;s working correctly.</p>



<p>So now you know how to add CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA to your WordPress contact forms. Although these options can reduce spam and bot activity, we suggest using Akismet instead because it is easy to use, more accessible, and effective against advanced bots.</p>



<p>Regardless of the solution you choose, however, keeping your WordPress site secure from spam and malicious activity is crucial for maintaining a positive user experience, safeguarding your online presence, and protecting your reputation.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Frequently asked questions about CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA</h2>



<p>Still curious about CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, and how to safeguard the contact forms on your website? Let&#8217;s take a look at some answers to the most commonly asked questions on the subject.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What is CAPTCHA?</h3>



<p>CAPTCHA, which stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”, is a security measure used on websites to prevent automated bots from submitting forms, leaving comments, or performing other actions that should only be done by human users. CAPTCHAs typically require users to solve visual puzzles — such as identifying distorted text or selecting specific images — to prove that they’re not bots.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What is reCAPTCHA?</h3>



<p>reCAPTCHA is a more advanced version of CAPTCHA developed by Google. It improves upon traditional CAPTCHA systems by incorporating machine learning and advanced risk analysis techniques to better differentiate between human users and bots. reCAPTCHA is designed to be more user-friendly, with some versions requiring people only to click a checkbox.</p>



<img src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/image3.png" alt="I'm not a robot checkbox" class="wp-image-70990" width="315" height="86" />



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What is Akismet?</h3>



<p>Akismet is a powerful anti-spam solution for WordPress websites, developed by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. It uses advanced algorithms and a continuously-updated database of spam signatures to identify and block spam comments and form submissions, without requiring user input or creating accessibility barriers. Akismet operates in the background (kind of like an invisible CAPTCHA, in a sense), providing a seamless and user-friendly browsing experience.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Is Akismet better than CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA?</h3>



<p>While each solution has its own advantages, Akismet is generally considered more user-friendly and accessible compared to CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA. It doesn&#8217;t require users to solve puzzles or enter codes, making it easier for those with visual impairments and providing a smoother browsing experience overall. Akismet is also highly effective at blocking spam and bots, even as they evolve and become more sophisticated.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Does Akismet integrate with contact form plugins like Contact Form 7?</h3>



<p>Yes, Akismet integrates with many popular WordPress contact form plugins, including Contact Form 7. By connecting Akismet to your contact form plugin, you can effectively protect your forms from spam submissions without the need for CAPTCHA or reCAPTCHA.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What are real-world examples of sites using Akismet?</h3>



<p>Akismet is trusted by over 100 million websites worldwide, including well-known enterprise brands such as <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/">Microsoft</a>, <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/convertkit-customerstory/">ConvertKit</a>, and <a href="https://www.bluehost.com/">Bluehost</a>. Its widespread adoption and use by major companies serve as strong social proof for its effectiveness in preventing spam and ensuring a secure, user-friendly online experience.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Should you choose Akismet for your contact and registration forms, you&#8217;ll be in good company, joining millions of other websites that have successfully protected their online presence from spam and malicious activity.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Akismet: Non-intrusive spam protection for WordPress&nbsp;</h2>



<p>To keep your WordPress site free from <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/spambots-theyre-not-just-like-us-introducing-akismets-newest-spam-fighting-feature/">spam and bots</a> while ensuring a good user experience and accessibility, you should use Akismet. It offers an effective way to combat spam that doesn&#8217;t disrupt your site visitors&#8217; browsing experience.</p>



<p>If you add Akismet to your WordPress site, it will use complex calculations and a big collection of spam markers to keep your site safe from unwanted content. In addition, it integrates smoothly with well-known tools for contact forms, making sure that everyone can use your website securely and without hassle.</p>



<p>While CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA may still be preferred by some, Akismet stands out as a user-friendly, effective, and accessible alternative for securing your WordPress contact forms against spam and bots. And by choosing Akismet, you&#8217;re investing in the success of your online presence and ensuring a pleasant experience for your visitors, which is definitely worth prioritizing.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 28 Jun 2023 13:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Jen Swisher";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:42;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"WPTavern: WordPress 6.3 Will Introduce A Command Palette";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146321";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-6-3-will-introduce-a-command-palette";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3341:"<p>Last week Gutenberg contributors were engaged in a spirited debate regarding <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-contributors-discuss-renaming-command-center-tool">a proposal to rename the new Command Center to Wayfinder</a>. The feature, designed to be an extensible quick search and command execution tool, will land in WordPress 6.3.</p>



<p>The majority of participants in the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/50925">discussion</a> were strongly against calling it Wayfinder, as the term doesn&#8217;t translate well, nor does it make the feature&#8217;s benefits easy to understand.  Wayfinder was proposed as a unique name that &#8220;has the potential to evoke a sense of curiosity, exploration, and discovery.&#8221; There were several attempts to wrap up the discussion with notes on alternatives even when it was apparent that the general consensus was unequivocally not in favor of the term Wayfinder.</p>



<p>Automattic-sponsored Gutenberg contributor Anne McCarthy <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/50925#issuecomment-1610044400">commented</a> on the issue with the decision, which she said was reached after consulting project leadership and reading through the comments:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p><em><strong>Let’s move forward with Command Palette.</strong></em></p>



<p>Reasoning: easier to translate, consistent across other tooling outside of WordPress, matches current functionality, eases discoverability/understanding of value, and leans generic which matches the concerns raised here. </p>



<p>Ultimately, we can always discuss renaming if the feature reaches a point of evolution outside of this initial name. As raised above, that would be more worth risking a unique name for than something that exists in other products and that ultimately we want people to quickly understand/find value in. Plus if we hold off on that name for the future, it can create a nice marketing push for something truly unique when/if the time comes. If folks have additional specific concerns around this naming, please speak up sooner rather than later.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>McCarthy also requested other contributors ensure the re-naming is updated throughout the interface for the upcoming release.</p>



<p>This was an important decision that needed to be made ahead of WordPress 6.3 Beta 1, which was supposed to be released today but was <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/06/27/wordpress-6-3-beta-1-postponed/">delayed</a> to Wednesday, June 28, due to an unrelated issue. The Command Palette will likely be introduced in blog posts, the 6.3 About page, and countless third-party resources so the proposal urgently needed a conclusion.</p>



<p>It’s also to the team’s credit that they didn’t force a fancy marketing name and instead landed on the side of the majority of contributors who were in favor of using clear language. The API for the Command Palette <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51169">is now public</a> and ready for developers to create their own custom commands. Using a term that is easy to understand and translate will engender more global community buy-in, as <a href="https://wordpress.org/about/stats/">52% of WordPress users</a> run the software in a language other than English.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 28 Jun 2023 01:46:35 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:43;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:51:"WPTavern: WordCamp Europe 2024 Calls for Organizers";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146294";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:62:"https://wptavern.com/wordcamp-europe-2024-calls-for-organizers";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3609:"<p>WordCamp Europe 2023 in Athens attracted more than 2,500 attendees from 94 countries, made possible by 112 organizers and 250 volunteers. The event is now looking forward to 2024, which will be hosted by the Italian WordPress community in Torino, Italy, June 13-15. This modern city is located at the foot of the Alps in northwestern Italy and has more than 2,000 years of history to explore.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div>



<p>WCEU 2024 is <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/call-for-organisers/">calling for organizers</a> who will serve on one of a dozen teams that have been operating for the past few years, including attendee services, budget, design, sales and sponsors, communications, and more.</p>



<p>Those selected to organize will begin planning WCEU in September 2023 and will work with a distributed team on a weekly basis until June 2024. </p>



<p>During the 2023 event&#8217;s speaker announcements, the WCEU organizing team was <a href="https://wptavern.com/wceu-2023-publishes-schedule-reaffirms-commitment-to-diversity">criticized for the second year in a row regarding its commitment to diversity</a>. The previous year organizers were called out for the <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2022/diversity-at-wceu/">lack of diversity on the organizing team</a> and this year the complaint was a lack of diversity in the speaker selection.</p>



<p>WCEU 2023 organizers published a <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2023/transparent-selection-processes/">transparent account of the various selection processes</a> used for organizers, speakers, media partners, and others involved in the event. The article states that organizers are shortlisted based on their skills, with an effort &#8220;to keep gender parity high whilst also selecting people from all available European WordPress communities.&#8221; It also states that applicants&#8217; experience and enthusiasm are chief among selection factors but organizers also reach out to encourage underrepresented groups to apply:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>During the selection process we don’t have anything that resembles a “positive discrimination” policy, whereby we choose people based on their race, color, background, gender, sexual identity, or any other attribute; we solely chose people based on their stated experience and enthusiasm to be part of the team&#8230;</p>



<p>Acknowledging that diversity within the Organizing team is important, we reach out to community groups and members before and during the application process, encouraging people to apply where we have historically seen underrepresentation.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>The article concludes with a statement of willingness to modify this selection process if the organization is not able to achieve a diverse lineup:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>WordCamp Europe is an iterative event; each year learns from the last and 2024 will be no different. We cannot take for granted that achieving diversity one year guarantees it the next. As a flagship WordCamp event we may need to positively discriminate to achieve gender parity, or fair representation of communities. </p>
</blockquote>



<p>The <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/call-for-organisers/">call for 2024 organizers</a> does not identify any changes that have been made to the selection process. Prospective organizers will need to <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2024/call-for-organisers/application-form/">fill out the application form</a> highlighting their skills, experience, and desired role.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 27 Jun 2023 21:40:06 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:44;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"WPTavern: Reusable Blocks Renamed to Patterns with Synced and Non-Synced Options";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146252";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:91:"https://wptavern.com/reusable-blocks-renamed-to-patterns-with-synced-and-non-synced-options";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:7029:"<p>There has always been some confusion and overlap between reusable blocks and patterns. The difference was that reusable blocks can be created and edited in the block editor and then reused in other places &#8211; inserted into posts or pages. Block patterns, once inserted, can be edited and are not synced. They give users the ability to apply the same layout to different posts and pages. </p>



<p>Reusable blocks have now been <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51144">renamed to patterns</a>, with the option to be synced, which offers the same functionality as the former reusable blocks where all instances can be updated at once. Non-synced patterns are just regular patterns &#8211; those that can be edited independently of other other instances that have been inserted. These updates are coming in Gutenberg 16.1 and will be included in the upcoming WordPress 6.3 release.</p>



<p>WordPress contributor Aki Hamano posted a diagram to Twitter regarding the renaming, which was confirmed as an accurate representation of the changes.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I am trying to understand about the new naming of "Pattern" in WordPress. I currently understand it as this figure represents, is this correct? <a href="https://t.co/WxKFRotB0V">pic.twitter.com/WxKFRotB0V</a></p>&mdash; Aki Hamano / 浜野 哲明 (@tetsuaki_hamano) <a href="https://twitter.com/tetsuaki_hamano/status/1672984350680567809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2023</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>&#8220;Clients already find the pattern and reusable block concept very difficult to grasp,&#8221; WordPress developer Mark Howells-Mead commented on the pull request for the renaming. &#8220;This change will make things much harder for regular users to comprehend.&#8221; </p>



<p>Gutenberg contributor Paal Joachim Romdahl commented that it would be helpful to have more time to test this in a few versions of the Gutenberg plugin, as WordPress 6.3 beta 1 is expected this week. Learning materials and documentation will need to be updated with very little notice.</p>



<p>Gutenberg contributor Daniel Richards encouraged contributors to see the change as part of &#8220;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/41717">the great unification</a>,&#8221; an effort towards consolidating the many different block types into a single concept and streamlining the content and site editors.</p>



<p>&#8220;In the future it might also be possible for template parts to be considered &#8216;synced patterns&#8217;, and at that point things become much more streamlined and there are far fewer concepts for users to grasp,&#8221; Gutenberg contributor Daniel Richards said. </p>



<p>&#8220;So the hope is that this is a first step on the path to making things easier for users, rather than more difficult. But I do realize that for existing users it&#8217;s quite a shift.&#8221;</p>



<p>As part of this effort, WordPress 6.3 will also introduce pattern creation in the block editor using the same interface that it previously used for reusable blocks. Pattern creation necessitates having a place for users to view and manage their patterns. WordPress 6.3 will also include a first pass at <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51078">a Pattern Library inside the Site Editor</a>, which will include both patterns and template parts. Gutenberg designers shared <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/06/19/design-share-jun-5-jun-16/?mc_cid=4941c0b11f&mc_eid=68ffa9a210">a preview</a> of what this would look like a couple weeks ago:</p>



<a href="https://i0.wp.com/make.wordpress.org/design/files/2023/06/patterns.gif?ssl=1"><img src="https://i0.wp.com/make.wordpress.org/design/files/2023/06/patterns.gif?resize=776%2C540&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-11211" /></a>image credit: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/06/19/design-share-jun-5-jun-16/?mc_cid=4941c0b11f&mc_eid=68ffa9a210">WordPress Design Share June 5-16</a>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The Potential of Partially Synced Patterns</h3>



<p>In May, contributors began a discussion about the concept of <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/discussions/50456">partially synced patterns</a>, which Daniel Richards summarized:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Today, when you insert a pattern, the blocks from that pattern are completely decoupled and standalone. There&#8217;s no way to tell that those blocks originated from a pattern, especially since they can be edited to no longer resemble the source pattern.</p>



<p>Partially synced mode is different. When a pattern that&#8217;s partially synced is inserted, it retains a reference to the source pattern. The blocks within the pattern are locked so that they cannot be removed or reordered and new blocks cannot be inserted (this is called&nbsp;<code>contentOnly</code>&nbsp;locking). Only specific parts of the pattern considered &#8216;content&#8217; can be edited (denoted by adding&nbsp;<code>__experimentalRole: 'content'</code>&nbsp;to a block&#8217;s definition).</p>



<p>When the source pattern is updated, all instances of blocks that reference the source pattern are updated too (much like a reusable block), but the&nbsp;<code>content</code>&nbsp;values the user entered are retained. The best way to think of this is that the user can update the design of a pattern, but doesn&#8217;t lose content that exists in templates and posts.</p>
</blockquote>



<p>This concept will not make it into the upcoming version of WordPress, as contributors are still discussing one of many complex implementations, but it offers a glimpse of what might be more granular control coming to patterns in the future. Partially synced patterns would bring distinct benefits to many CMS and content design use cases where clients may be editing content. </p>



<p>&#8220;I am a site developer for an agency, and am actively making sites for clients using Gutenberg every day,&#8221; Eric Michel said. &#8220;Probably our biggest pain point right now is that the editor does not handle types of content that are mostly standardized with small content customizations per post &#8211; things like contact directories, majors at a university, products in a catalog.</p>



<p>&#8220;For us, the absolute dream scenario is what you are proposing, except with the inclusion of the ability to alter the primary template and have all of the pages that use that template automatically change as well.&#8221; </p>



<p>The <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/discussions/50456">discussion</a> on making partially synced patterns possible continues in search of an implementation that will ensure users don&#8217;t modify the patterns in ways that destroy the ability to display the retained content. WordPress 6.3 will ship with synced and non-synced pattern options, and partially synced patterns may land further down the road in a future release.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 27 Jun 2023 02:11:22 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:45;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:128:"Gutenberg Times: Reusable Blocks are Patterns too, Style Book, Block Handbook Navigator and Command Center—Weekend Edition 258";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=24511";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:135:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/reusable-blocks-are-patterns-too-style-book-block-handbook-navigator-and-command-center-weekend-edition-258/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15495:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>It&#8217;s been a more quiet week. Many people have been working hard to get the latest features into the next Gutenberg release, so they can also be merged with WordPress 6.3. If you want to start testing, the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/releases/tag/untagged-c35f7346f2e514d1fedb">Gutenberg 16.1 RC is available here</a>. The changelog is massive. Next week, Tammie Lister will be going over this with me when we record the next Gutenberg Changelog. </p>



<p>On Friday, I&#8217;ll hope on a train to Leipzig and give a presentation to the attendees of the <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-confirms-8-pilot-events-to-launch-the-next-generation-of-wordcamps-in-2023">back-to-the-roots, no frills WordCamp</a>. Added thrill for me: it&#8217;s my first time presenting in German about technology. Oy. </p>



<p>Next week is also WordPress 6.3 Beta 1 release. Get ready for testing and filing bug reports! The best way to learn what will be in 6.3 is by using the beta version and heed the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2023/06/07/fse-program-testing-call-24-momery-makeover/">Testing Call #24: Momery Makeover</a>. Testing a new version pre-release, is an open-source contribution with the highest impact. If you are keen to learn how to do it, please let me know and I do a short tutorial zoom with you. </p>



<p>This weekend edition seems rather short, too </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>





<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p class="has-drop-cap"><strong>Join us </strong>for the <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7516851799317/WN_AFgYtmyaRviAY3b2oGP2pg">next Gutenberg Live Q &amp; A July 6th, 2023, at 17:00 UTC</a> </p>



<p><strong>Leveraging Gutenberg&#8217;s architecture to take plugin development to new levels.</strong></p>



<p>Learn how Gutenberg components and scripts can be used outside the block editor to revamp a plugin&#8217;s code base in this Case Study of GiveWP 3.0 with Jason Adams, Director of Development, Jon Waldstein, Lead Developer of GiveWP and co-host Lena Morita, JavaScript Developer on the Components team. </p>



<a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7516851799317/WN_AFgYtmyaRviAY3b2oGP2pg"><img /></a>
</div></div>




<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#reusable">Reusable blocks are now called Patterns</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor</a></li></ul></div>
</div></div>




<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>



<div class="wp-block-group is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p class="is-style-no-vertical-margin"><strong>🎙️ </strong> New episode:  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-85-gutenberg-16-1-wordpress-6-3/">Gutenberg Changelog #85 – Gutenberg 16.1, WordPress 6.3</a> with special guest, Tammie Lister and host Birgit Pauli-Haack</p>
</div></div>



<p>In his latest <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2023/06/19/design-share-jun-5-jun-16/"><strong>Design Share: Jun 5–Jun 16</strong></a>, <strong>Joen Assmussen</strong> shares the work of the WordPress Design team on the </p>



<ul>
<li>flow of creating patterns via the Site Editor, </li>



<li>Top Toolbar refinements, </li>



<li>ideas on how to customize the Drop Caps, </li>



<li>more customization tools for the list blocks, </li>



<li>Home template details panel </li>



<li>Site editor publishing, and</li>



<li>Interesting mock-ups for a redesign of the Learn.WordPress pages. </li>
</ul>



<img />



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>



<p><strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> shared in his latest video,<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmIZ5w7MFng"><strong> WordPress Block Theme Secret Hacks You Didn&#8217;t Know Existed</strong></a>, five secret features of Block Themes, you might not know about. Marsland also offers a Block Theme course: <em><a href="https://www.pootlepress.com/wordpress-full-site-editing-course/">Mastering Site Editing and WordPress Block Themes</a>, so you can get a head start</em>. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Wes Theron</strong> also shares his secrets, too in the tutorial <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/tutorial/using-the-block-editor-tips-and-shortcuts-for-efficiency/"><strong>Using the block editor: Tips and shortcuts for efficiency</strong></a> on <em>Learn WordPress</em>. He has eight tips and shortcuts for you to work faster and more efficiently in the block editor. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>In this video on WordPress TV, <strong>Kathryn Presner</strong> and <strong>Sarah Snow</strong> showed their students how to <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2023/06/22/create-a-four-page-wordpress-website-explore-plugins-contact-forms/"><strong>Create a four-page WordPress website: Explore Plugins + Contact&nbsp;Forms</strong></a>. Watch this workshop to learn about plugins–how to find them, how to vet them, what can go wrong–in WordPress in 2023.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>Another new feature is coming to WordPress 6.3, the Command Center. Be aware that&#8217;s only the working title and contributors discuss renaming it. <strong>Sarah Gooding</strong> reports on the discussion <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-contributors-discuss-renaming-command-center-tool"><strong>WordPress Contributors Discuss Renaming Command Center Tool</strong></a>. </p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="reusable">Reusable blocks are now called Patterns</h3>



<p>Creating patterns using the block editor has been one of the most requested features since Patterns have been available and since the release of the Pattern directory on WordPress.org in Summer of 2021.  It&#8217;s now coming to the editor in WordPress 6.3 version. It uses the same workflow as creating reusable blocks. To remind you: create a collection of blocks, group them, and use the 3-dot menu &#8220;Create reusable Block&#8221; except it now says &#8220;Create custom pattern&#8221;. </p>



<p>Turns out Patterns and Reusable blocks are cut almost from the same cloth. The only difference is that the change to a reusable block synchs over all the instances the block has been used, hence the new name &#8220;synched pattern&#8221;.  There is now a toggle switch to &#8220;Keep all pattern instances in sync&#8221; or not. This is the first iteration: the name change and the creation workflow. </p>



<p>To re-use the pattern, you find them in different places, though. Synched patterns are listed in the list of Blocks in the Inserter and available via slash &#8220;/&#8221; command. Unsynched patterns are in a new Pattern category = Custom Patterns in the Patterns Tab in the big blue button inserter.</p>



<p>There are many users, and I might be one of them, who find patterns, should also be at least partially sync-able. That feature is planned to come to the block editor after WordPress 6.3 is released. It will take a few more thoughts on how to separate the various pieces. You might want to synch the design but not the words, or styles but not the images. The headings but not the links. And immediately you see that this can be quite complicated. So, it might take some more time. You can read up on the genesis of this new feature in the PR <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/51144">Reusable blocks: Rename to &#8216;Patterns&#8217; and add option to also add a non-synced Pattern. (51144)</a></p>



<img />



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>



<p><strong>Ganesh Dahal</strong>, also <a href="https://css-tricks.com/author/ganeshdahal/">writer at CSS-Tricks</a>, published his first article on the WordPress Developer Blog about <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/06/the-style-book-a-one-stop-shop-for-styling-block-themes/"><strong>The Style Book: a one-stop shop for styling block themes</strong></a>. The Style Book is the new one-stop Global Style feature of the Site Editor that allows you to add all global or per-block design elements with a live preview window. This also lets users create a new set of variations that they can modify with a single click.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>Wrestling with a huge theme.json might deter people from creating block themes. <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/walb0">Petter Walbø Johnsgård</a> </strong>developed the npm package <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@theme-json/create"><strong>@theme-json/create</strong></a>  that helps you with that.  It allows you to create a logical directory structures to separate out various parts of the theme.json. It makes it easier to maintain and quickly navigate to the necessary area you wish to modify.  This way you can standardize variables and reference them in our theme.json, and makes it them much more maintainable when designers decide to make changes. (<em>Thank you to <a href="https://twitter.com/ClorithMJ">Marius Jensen</a> for the tip</em>).</p>




<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2022&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. Updated by yours truly.  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/"><em>The index 2020 is here</em></a></p>




<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p>In his post for the Torque Magazine,  <a href="https://torquemag.io/2023/06/wordpress-widget-areas/"><strong>How to Add Widget Areas to WordPress (Block &amp; Classic Themes)</strong></a>, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/nschaeferhoff">Nick Schäfferhoff</a> </strong> took a look at different ways to add widgets to your WordPress theme. You learn how to use widgetized areas and create new ones in classic themes, as well as how to make widgets show up in your block themes.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor</h2>



<p>It might be the post you have been waiting for. In his post on<strong><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/06/navigating-the-block-editor-handbook/"> How to Navigate the Block Editor Handbook</a></strong>, <strong>Michael Burridge</strong> leads the way with Compass and Maps so to speak. &#8220;The Block Editor Handbook is intimidating even for seasoned developers. If you are new to block development, you’re likely to feel completely overwhelmed. This guide will help you find your way around the Block Editor Handbook. It suggests a learning path that will help you become an expert in no time.&#8221; he wrote in the excerpt</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Brian Coords</strong> published a tutorial about <a href="https://www.briancoords.com/custom-lists-in-wordpress-with-register-block-style/"><strong>Custom Lists in WordPress with Register Block Style</strong></a>. He explains how to work with Block styles without a build process. It&#8217;s a great way to learn to customize the blocks without any JavaScript and very little php. </p>



<p>Earlier this year, Justin Tadlock wrote about <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2023/02/creating-custom-block-styles-in-wordpress-themes/"><strong>Creating custom block styles in WordPress themes</strong></a>, that could be another great tutorial for you.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>. </p>



<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />




<p>Featured Image: Skyline of Athens, view of the Acropolis from the roof of the Museum for contemporary art by Birgit Pauli-Haack</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />



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<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button type="submit" class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button><p class="ngl-form-text">We hate spam, too and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 24 Jun 2023 06:07:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:46;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:68:"WPTavern: Really Simple SSL Plugin Adds Free Vulnerability Detection";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146129";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:79:"https://wptavern.com/really-simple-ssl-plugin-adds-free-vulnerability-detection";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2999:"<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/really-simple-ssl/">Really Simple SSL</a>, a popular plugin used on more than five million sites for installing SSL certificates, handling website migrations, mixed content, redirects, and security headers, has added a new feature in its most recent major update.</p>



<p>Version 7.0.0 introduces vulnerability detection as part of a partnership with WP Vulnerability, an open source, free API created by <a href="https://www.wpsysadmin.com/">Javier Casares</a> with contributions from other open source, freely available databases. Once enabled, it notifies users if a vulnerability is found and suggests actions.</p>



<p>&#8220;Really Simple SSL mirrors the free database with its own instance to secure stability and deliverability, but of course provides the origin database with an API to enrich, or improve its current data,&#8221; Really Simple Plugins developer Aert Hulsebos said.</p>



<p>The new vulnerability detection feature is not enabled by default, so users will need to <a href="https://really-simple-ssl.com/instructions/about-vulnerabilities/">enable it in the settings</a>. A modal will pop up where users can configure their notifications and run the first scan.</p>



<img />



<p>When emailed about a vulnerability users can manually respond with an action or set the plugin to automatically force an update (when available) after 24 hours of no response. There are other automated actions the plugin can take based on how users configure the Measures section of the settings.</p>



<img />



<p>For the past several years Really Simple SSL has been providing SSL certificate configuration and installation via Let&#8217;s Encrypt as a first pass at securing WordPress sites. To finance this for the free users, the plugin also has a Pro version that handles Security Headers, such as Content Security Policies, which are highly complex for most and not easily configured.</p>



<p>&#8220;We figured that with our reach we could impact security on the web as a whole, by adding features in order of impact on security,&#8221; Hulsebos said. &#8220;So vulnerabilities, after hardening features specific to WordPress, was next. </p>



<p>&#8220;The nature of our partnership with Javier and WP Vulnerability is sponsoring the efforts of WP Vulnerability and appointing a security consultant ourselves to this open-source effort to improve, and moderate the open-source database daily. WP Vulnerability does not compensate us, nor does it have a stake in Really Simple SSL. Vulnerability detection is available for everyone and always will be.&#8221;</p>



<p>Because Really Simple SSL started as a lightweight SSL plugin, Hulsebos said they have taken a modular approach to minimize impact on users who only want or need certain features. Following the launch of the new vulnerability detection feature, the plugin&#8217;s authors plan to add login security with 2FA to better secure authentication on WordPress sites.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 23 Jun 2023 21:34:02 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:47;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:51:"BuddyPress: BuddyPress community &amp; contribution";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://buddypress.org/?p=330214";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"https://buddypress.org/2023/06/buddypress-community-contribution/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15099:"<p>Last but not least! This is the final episode of our post series about the new direction we plan to take regarding the BuddyPress project. If you’re just discovering this series, we advise you to read about the 4 first episodes of it.</p>



<span id="more-330214"></span>



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<div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow">
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<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://buddypress.org/2023/04/buddypress-has-a-new-purpose/">BuddyPress has a new purpose</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://buddypress.org/2023/05/lets-better-organize-the-buddypress-plugin/">Let’s better organize the BuddyPress plugin</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://buddypress.org/2023/05/what-new-features-will-be-coming-to-buddypress/">What new features will be coming to BuddyPress?</a></blockquote>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://buddypress.org/2023/06/how-should-back-end-front-end-buddypress-interfaces-evolve/">How should back-end &amp; front-end BuddyPress Interfaces evolve?</a></blockquote>
</div>
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<p>This post is finally focusing on the feedback you shared with us <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://buddypress.org/support/topic/what-is-the-most-important-thing-buddypress-is-missing/" target="_blank">here</a> &amp; <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wptavern.com/buddypress-plugin-usage-declining-remaining-contributors-discuss-path-forward" target="_blank">there</a> about the BuddyPress community &amp; BuddyPress contribution.</p>



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Key feedbacks about BuddyPress community</h2>



<ul>
<li>« <strong>A better website</strong> would help. No amount of new features will help if they can’t be discovered »</li>



<li>« <strong>Lack of documentation</strong> for developers and code examples. Codex must be improved. »</li>



<li>« BuddyPress still remains the best in the plugin industry but it <strong>needs more love</strong> from the community. »</li>



<li>« BuddyPress has been suffering from a <strong>low number of contributors</strong> in recent years. »</li>



<li>« ideology and maybe personal politics superseded the pushing of features that users wanted »</li>



<li>« there was way <strong>too much push back</strong> on fixes and new features »</li>



<li>« <strong>Key features never materialize</strong> »</li>
</ul>



<p>A new theme for this community website is a must-have, I agree. Although our current theme does a good job, it has remained unchanged for years. We had begun to work on this but in a way that wasn’t in line with my conviction on this topic. That’s absolutely fine with me as long as we ship! It didn’t happen unfortunately, we didn’t manage to attract enough contributor energy. So I’m back with my conviction: we should build the Block Theme I told you about in episodes <a href="https://buddypress.org/2023/05/what-new-features-will-be-coming-to-buddypress/">3</a> &amp; <a href="https://buddypress.org/2023/06/how-should-back-end-front-end-buddypress-interfaces-evolve/">4</a> with the secondary goal of using it for BuddyPress’ network sites! In my opinion, we’d kill two birds with one stone <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f94c.png" alt="🥌" class="wp-smiley" />.</p>



<p>Ideally, all BuddyPress code should be available on our <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/" target="_blank">Trac environment</a>. It’s fine to use GitHub as it’s using Git which is more intuitive than SVN, but at some point (eg: when the feature is stable), the code should be mirrored on <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/" target="_blank">Trac</a>. We need a central place where people can open tickets, contribute to any parts of our project <strong>and be sure to be rewarded with our lovely contributors badge</strong>. Although I believe optional components (or any new Add-ons) should live in their own repository on the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/" target="_blank">WordPress.org plugins directory</a>, I also think they should primarily live into our <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/" target="_blank">Trac</a> when it’s about contributing to their code. This way it will be easier for us to maintain all Add-ons making sure they behave nicely with each other when they are all activated. The confusions about where to contribute to the BP REST API experience convinced me that maintaining it on Trac once a stable version has been released (or included into Core for this API) is the right move to make (<em>not to mention the fact I need to explore many different places to credit all contributors to a major BuddyPress release</em>).</p>



<p>Contributors shouldn’t be confused about where to contribute to BuddyPress, there’s only one <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/261d.png" alt="☝" class="wp-smiley" />URL to know: <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/" target="_blank">https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/</a>.</p>



<p>Documentation is very important and, let’s face it, we’re not good at it <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f4d5.png" alt="📕" class="wp-smiley" />. The <a href="https://codex.buddypress.org/">codex</a> is not updated as frequently as it used to be, the « wiki » model where everyone can contribute to docs is no more efficient.</p>



<p>The first 4 to 5 months of 2022, we’ve tried to organize <a href="https://buddypress.org/2022/04/march-documentation-contributor-meetings-summary/">contributors meetings</a> to update the codex. The results were not at the level of our expectations:</p>



<ul>
<li>No new contributors showed up, code contributors &#8211; including me -(many thanks to <a target="_blank" href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dcavins/" rel="noreferrer noopener">David</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/vapvarun/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Varun</a>) did their best but we missed some new energy to ship something concrete.</li>



<li>As coders, we naturally put our efforts on the tools putting up this <a target="_blank" href="https://imath-buddypress-codex.pf11.wpserveur.net/" rel="noreferrer noopener">staging site</a>, and retrospectively, I think these efforts should have been directed on content.</li>



<li>We couldn’t work on any plugin major release during this period.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<p id="documentation">I believe we need a <strong>Documentation leader</strong> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f468-200d-1f3eb.png" alt="👨‍🏫" class="wp-smiley" /> to organize this part, lead a documentation team and carry on the work we started on splitting resources between two targets (end-users and developers) :</p>



<ul>
<li><strong>use</strong>.buddypress.org: would replace the <a href="https://codex.buddypress.org/">codex</a> and contain resources about using BuddyPress</li>



<li><a href="https://developer.buddypress.org/">developer.buddypress.org</a>: it was built during <a href="https://buddypress.org/2019/09/buddypress-5-0-0-le-gusto/">BuddyPress 5.0</a> development cycle to provide our REST API endpoints reference. We need to complete it with <s>a Plugin</s> an Add-on handbook, a Theme handbook and BuddyPress code reference.</li>
</ul>



<p>We <a href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/8897#comment:3">have recently decided</a> to include a docs subdirectory to our main BuddyPress repository. This is where <strong>documentation (and its history) will primarily live from now on! </strong>This move reflects the fact we acknowledge documentation is as important as code.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<a href="https://buddypress.org/wp-content/uploads/1/2023/06/contributor-badges.png"><img width="583" height="386" src="https://buddypress.org/wp-content/uploads/1/2023/06/contributor-badges.png" alt="" class="wp-image-330220" /></a></div>


<p>And we’ll reward documentation contributors just like code contributors with props &amp; a BuddyPress contributor badge on their WordPress.org profile (as shown above).</p>



<p>Our <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/support/" rel="noreferrer noopener">support forums</a> is another strategic area <strong>we absolutely need to be better on</strong>. Some figures about it are very impressive, eg: there are 127,716 posts inside the <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/support/forum/how-to/" rel="noreferrer noopener"><u>How-to &amp; Troubleshooting</u></a> category. Do we still need all these posts? I’m sure we don’t: some posts are probably about very old versions of BuddyPress and can be misleading nowadays. We should archive what’s no more up to date, have a specific tag for resolved questions, get rid of duplicates, etc. There again, I believe we need a <strong>Support leader</strong> to tackle all manner of improvements and manage a team of support contributors.</p>



<p><strong>Last but not least</strong>: how do we collaborate about plugin features or fixes?</p>



<p>I believe it’s what’s at the root of the 3 last key feedbacks. I can understand some frustrations you shared because I’m feeling the same <strong>regularly </strong>when it comes to contributing to WordPress code. As a contributor it’s difficult to be pushed back for reasons we do not agree on or that we don’t understand, to see a ticket postponed indefinitely or even worst to be ignored. I personally try to always write a few words in my ticket replies to say « hi, thanks for your feedback » or explain why I’m not sure we should do what you’re suggesting because <strong>I value your contribution &amp; I know it’s important for you</strong>. We can agree or disagree, we can change our minds, we can take bad decisions, the most important is to <strong>act at some point with BuddyPress community interests in mind</strong>. We can always act again to revert some mistaken changes. We all learn from our mistakes and <strong>I’d rather </strong><strong>make</strong><strong> a lot of mistakes than stay still</strong>. Here’s my advice if you strongly believe we should fix an issue or add a new feature: have it built and share it with us as <a target="_blank" href="https://codex.buddypress.org/participate-and-contribute/contribute-with-code/" rel="noreferrer noopener">patches</a> or <a target="_blank" href="https://bpdevel.wordpress.com/2022/03/06/using-pr-to-share-your-patches-on-buddypress-trac/" rel="noreferrer noopener">pull requests</a>. Most of the time <strong>doing is half deciding</strong>!</p>



<p>Yes we currently have a « low number of contributors » and yes I believe BuddyPress deserves more love <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/2764.png" alt="❤" class="wp-smiley" />. Again you are all welcome to express yourselves on code, documentation, support, events, etc. Don’t hesitate to contribute even if you just started BuddyPressing, we’ll always help you and believe my experience, you’ll learn a lot. I had no ideas about PHP Object Oriented programming, PHPUnit, Continuous Integration, React, SASS etc.. <strong>I’ve learnt all this contributing to BuddyPress</strong>.</p>



<p>Oh, <strong>one more thing</strong>: let’s meet during a BuddyCamp, a BuddyPress online meeting or at least do talk about BuddyPress during as much as possible contributor days or WordCamps! If you need help with your contribution table or with your slides, don’t be shy or afraid: ask us about it <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wordpress.slack.com/messages/buddypress" target="_blank">here</a>!</p>



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Props <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f917.png" alt="🤗" class="wp-smiley" /> !</h2>



<p>First: many thanks to <a href="https://buddypress.org/members/dcavins/">@dcavins</a> for his review <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/14.0.0/72x72/1f60d.png" alt="😍" class="wp-smiley" />.</p>



<p>Many thanks for your feedbacks, it’s a great first step, what about contributing to your ideas with us as a next step?</p>



<p>David McCan, Derin Tolu, basicD, Tom Watts, Sander van Dragt, Mr David Hoy, Tara, Jann, Vicent Nemeyimana, Bryant, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/muhittinsahilli/" rel="noreferrer noopener">muhittinsahilli</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/johnjamesjacoby/" rel="noreferrer noopener">johnjamesjacoby</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/ok2net/" rel="noreferrer noopener">ok2net</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/espellcaste/" rel="noreferrer noopener">espellcaste</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/riversdale1844/" rel="noreferrer noopener">riversdale1844</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/djpaul/" rel="noreferrer noopener">djpaul</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/dimensionmedia/" rel="noreferrer noopener">dimensionmedia</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/sunsetcowboy/" rel="noreferrer noopener">sunsetcowboy</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/egyptimhotep/" rel="noreferrer noopener">egyptimhotep</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/staion/" rel="noreferrer noopener">staion</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/shahriar83/" rel="noreferrer noopener">shahriar83</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/unsalkorkmaz/" rel="noreferrer noopener">unsalkorkmaz</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/osmor1/" rel="noreferrer noopener">osmor1</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/giannis4/" rel="noreferrer noopener">giannis4</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/gomle/" rel="noreferrer noopener">gomle</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/fanvid/" rel="noreferrer noopener">fanvid</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/fawp/" rel="noreferrer noopener">fawp</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/coolhunt/" rel="noreferrer noopener">coolhunt</a> &amp; <a target="_blank" href="https://buddypress.org/members/imath/" rel="noreferrer noopener">imath</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 23 Jun 2023 19:33:39 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Mathieu Viet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:48;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"WPTavern: WordPress Pattern Directory Updated to Show Curated Patterns by Default";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146143";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-pattern-directory-updated-to-show-curated-patterns-by-default";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3905:"<p>If you haven&#8217;t visited the <a href="https://wordpress.org/patterns/">WordPress Pattern Directory</a> lately, it may look very different from when it <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-wordpress-org-block-pattern-directory-now-live">launched two years ago</a>. At first there was an emphasis on getting the community to contribute to the resource but the directory has now passed more than 1,500 patterns. </p>



<p>Contributors are making changes to provide a more curated experience ahead of the inclusion of <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/44611">a new Pattern Directory Explorer</a> that is still in progress. A recent <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2023/06/09/new-curation-filter-in-pattern-directory/">update</a> to the Pattern Directory alters the homepage and category pages to show curated patterns by default, a change that has been a bit confusing for some when returning to the directory. </p>



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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Anyone know where all the block patterns have gone on <a href="https://t.co/LpzR9lR7uc">https://t.co/LpzR9lR7uc</a> ? <a href="https://t.co/Dt9EK7Ssik">https://t.co/Dt9EK7Ssik</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/gutenberg?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#gutenberg</a></p>&mdash; Jamie Pootlepress &#8211; YouTuber and WP Plugin builder (@pootlepress) <a href="https://twitter.com/pootlepress/status/1671881903593623556?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 22, 2023</a></blockquote>
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<p>The curated patterns are those by WordPress.org &#8211; the core bundled patterns. Community-contributed patterns are available as a filter in the dropdown of the directory&#8217;s menu.</p>



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<p>There are only 46 core patterns, so some category pages tend to look a little sparse and far less colorful than when community patterns are selected. At the moment, having curated patterns display by default does not offer the best experience for users coming to browse, as Pootlepress founder Jamie Marsland pointed out on Twitter. Automattic-sponsored contributor Rich Tabor responded that there is still more work to be done on providing a better curated experience in the Pattern Directory. </p>



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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The top ones are the best. Still lots to do though.</p>&mdash; Rich Tabor (@richard_tabor) <a href="https://twitter.com/richard_tabor/status/1672196325201575936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 23, 2023</a></blockquote>
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<p>&#8220;This change also prepares to support the Pattern Explorer in the editor,&#8221; Automattic-sponsored contributor Kelly Choyce-Dwan said in the announcement. &#8220;It’s still in progress, but it will be possible to search through community-submitted patterns directly from the editor.&#8221;</p>



<p>Choyce-Dwan referenced an effort that is currently underway to <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/44611">bring a new flyout to the patterns tab of the inserter</a> inside WordPress, making the modal a place where users can more easily explore and access patterns from the directory. </p>



<p>There are also related discussions on how <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues/573">themes could create pattern bundles</a>, enabling the possibility of users filtering by theme. In this discussion, Automattic-sponsored contributor Anne McCarthy suggested these pattern bundles could be automatically submitted to the directory upon the theme&#8217;s approval, which would make it effortless for theme authors to contribute them.</p>



<p>Updates to the Pattern Directory&#8217;s filtering are part of the redesign work on WordPress.org and more discussions are happening on <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues/">the Pattern Directory GitHub</a> repository.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 23 Jun 2023 17:44:29 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:49;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"WPTavern: WordPress.com Makes Monetization Features Available for Free";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=146188";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-makes-monetization-features-available-for-free";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3111:"<p>WordPress.com has been known to <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-ends-recent-pricing-experiment-reverts-to-previous-model">experiment with its pricing</a> from time to time, and the platform announced another major change today. Users on the Free plan are now able to use monetization features without upgrading. </p>



<p>In the past, WordPress.com users who wanted to earn money on their websites by collecting donations, creating a newsletter, or selling items or subscriptions, had to be on one of the paid plans. These <a href="https://wordpress.com/support/monetize-your-site/">monetization features</a> are now available to all users on all tiers.</p>



<p>The fee structure varies, based on the user&#8217;s plan.  Transaction fees are the highest for Free users at 10%, but it gives creators the opportunity to see if they can make money without it costing anything upfront. Commerce plan users ($70/month or $45/month billed annually) don&#8217;t pay any transaction fees. Stripe also collects 2.9% + US$0.30 for each payment made to a Stripe account in the US.</p>



<p></p>



<table><tbody><tr><td><strong>WordPress.com Plan</strong></td><td><strong>Payment Fees</strong></td></tr><tr><td>WordPress.com Commerce</td><td>0%</td></tr><tr><td>WordPress.com Business</td><td>2%</td></tr><tr><td>WordPress.com Premium</td><td>4%</td></tr><tr><td>WordPress.com Personal</td><td>8%</td></tr><tr><td>WordPress.com Free</td><td>10%</td></tr></tbody></table>



<p>Self-hosted WordPress users already have many free plugin options to monetize theirs sites but with that comes the requirement of knowing how to maintain and update their own sites. WordPress.com&#8217;s offering is targeted at creators who just want to get started making money online. The company is inching closer to being a one-stop shop for websites, especially as it <a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2023/06/21/how-to-transfer-your-domain-to-wordpresscom/">makes a play for former Google Domains customers</a> who are looking for somewhere to host domains after theirs were sold to Squarespace.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s important to note that creating a full-featured online store is still restricted to Business and Commerce plans. Using <a href="https://wordpress.com/support/pay-with-paypal/">Pay with PayPal</a> to accept credit and debit card payments via PayPal is also only available via an upgraded plan.</p>



<p>WordPress.com&#8217;s <a href="https://wordpress.com/pricing/">pricing</a> page has not yet been updated to reflect monetization features as being free &#8211; i.e. the Personal plan still lists paid subscribers and premium content gating as an upgrade. It&#8217;s possible the team hasn&#8217;t edited that page yet or this may be another pricing experiment. </p>



<p>Expanding the availability of monetization features is likely to be received as a positive change, since users are not losing any features that were previously free. Instead, they have the opportunity to see if they can monetize and then adjust their plans based on their comfort level with the transaction fees extracted.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 22 Jun 2023 22:58:38 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}s:4:"type";i:128;s:7:"headers";O:48:"WpOrg\Requests\Utility\CaseInsensitiveDictionary":1:{s:7:"*data";a:8:{s:6:"server";s:5:"nginx";s:4:"date";s:29:"Wed, 12 Jul 2023 04:33:43 GMT";s:12:"content-type";s:8:"text/xml";s:13:"last-modified";s:29:"Wed, 12 Jul 2023 04:15:30 GMT";s:4:"vary";s:15:"Accept-Encoding";s:15:"x-frame-options";s:10:"SAMEORIGIN";s:16:"content-encoding";s:2:"br";s:4:"x-nc";s:9:"HIT ord 1";}}s:5:"build";s:14:"20230503220958";}