WordPress.org

My question to you is how you see the future (or even the present) of integrating software with WordPress and when you should make the distinction of going the integration vs. native approach.

In other words, with the vast ecosystem of WordPress plugins out there, how can a website owner discern which responsibilities WordPress the software should handle and whether that functionality is actually better to plug another software or service into instead?

Alex

There was a time when I would have said build all the things in WordPress. I was younger then, a bit more naive. I was optimistic about using WordPress as a framework to build anything. There is a part of me that still leans in this direction. Mostly, this is because I want to see what developers in the WordPress ecosystem can achieve. I applaud anyone who pushes the platform beyond its current limits.

Few people would have guessed that WordPress would become an eCommerce powerhouse. However, WooCommerce has proven it can be done. I still remember when nearly every WordPress theme and plugin author was selling their commercial products via E-junkie. Now, Easy Digital Downloads is the go-to solution, and AffiliateWP handles the affiliate side of things.

Some of the best products from the WordPress plugin market arose from issues with third-party app integration. Their creators bucked the system and brought useful tools directly into WordPress. Many of these are now multi-million dollar products and companies that employ dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people. They have their own ecosystems that allow even more third-party developers to make a living. And this is all done on top of WordPress.

I will always root for the home team, for the developers in our community to build native solutions.

However, the reality is that WordPress is not the best solution for everything. Depending on the application, the development team has likely put years of work into it, creating a specialized system that caters to that application’s users. The experience can often be far better than something available for WordPress.

I cannot imagine using WordPress as the backbone of a social video site like YouTube, even if it was a small site. The hosting costs would be astronomical. It is far easier and cheaper to rely on integration with YouTube rather than trying to rebuild it.

In Alex’s original correspondence, he also brought up a specific case about integrating with a third-party forum. This is a far more realistic quandary than an average user trying to build the next YouTube. It is also a question that does not have a single answer.

For users who are creating forums on their site for the first time, my advice would be to go with bbPress. It is a plugin that brings native forums to WordPress. While it is not nearly as powerful as some third-party forum applications, its best feature is that it works directly with the built-in user, role, and capability systems in WordPress. These are some of the more complex APIs in WordPress, and trying to sync user accounts between applications can often be a headache. It is also a complex technical topic that goes beyond the scope of this post. If starting from scratch, I would recommend bbPress or another WordPress forum plugin.

On the other hand, if a user already has an existing forum with a large amount of content, I would lean toward integrating it and WordPress, particularly if the site owner plans to keep user registrations strictly within the forum software. Much of that will come down to what the end-user feels comfortable with. If they have a strong history with their existing application, making a change may simply not be the best route. There are other items to consider, such as whether sharing a single theme across both platforms is necessary. bbPress can also import content from many existing forum applications.

The answer to the question is that it depends. Each use case is different.

Should a popular seller on Etsy move everything to WooCommerce? Probably not. That user might want to install the Etsy Shop integration plugin. Eventually, they might expand their brand enough to no longer rely on the Etsy platform. At that point, WooCommerce could be the answer.

It comes down to time, cost, research, and testing. Even when a plugin brings a native solution to WordPress that is ideal for most people, it might not be the best answer for an individual. Specifics matter, and I am always happy to talk those over.

This is the second post in the Ask the Bartender series. Have a question of your own? Shoot it over.

WordPress enthusiasts around the world tuned into Matt Mullenweg’s annual State of the Word address this week, delivered virtually for the first time. Mullenweg recognized the community’s efforts in working together during a global pandemic, without the benefit of periodic in-person events that have traditionally re-energized collaboration on the project.

During a most unusual year that has warped the passage of time and slowed it to the speed of molasses, WordPress’ release schedule kept a steady, reassuring pace in contrast. The first part of the State of the Word highlighted the three major releases shipped in 2020, which introduced improvements to the block editor, a new default theme, application passwords for the REST API, and new, game-changing features like block patterns, to name just a few.

WordPress continues to grow its dominant market share and is currently sitting at 39.3% of the Alexa top 10 million sites. Mullenweg attributed that growth to three major contributing factors: the lockdown, e-commerce, and economic uncertainty. The lockdowns put in place to mitigate the virus’ spread had the effect of giving people the space and time to connect online. It also drove an uptick in entrepreneurship and e-commerce. Mullenweg reported that WooCommerce facilitated more than $20 billion in sales.

Site Editor Beta Demo Shows Progress on Full Site Editing Project

Gutenberg design contributor Joen Asmussen joined by video to unveil a sneak peek of the progress on the Full Site Editing (FSE) project with a demo of the Site Editor beta. The Site Editor allows users to edit a theme’s template outside of the post’s content. It introduces new blocks for things like the query loop, navigation, site title, tagline, and other aspects of editing templates.

The block list view shows all the different areas of the page, such as the header, footer, columns, and site title, so the user can jump to the section for quick access. Block patterns can also be used within template designs to speed up page layout or match a demo design. Given the current complexity of creating a template design from a blank canvas, block patterns have the potential to become even more indispensable when WordPress users finally get the reins for editing theme templates.

“This is the culmination of several ongoing projects to expand upon and improve the customization possibilities in WordPress,” Asmussen said. The demo offers a quick overview of how the FSE project is coming together. The reality of “everything becoming a block” is finally materializing. Gutenberg will soon be capable of providing a consistent editing experience across all aspects of site customization.

“By creating this common framework that every theme and plugin can build on, we’re reducing the balkanization within WordPress from people who are solving these problems lots of different ways, and providing what I believe is the basis for the next decade of WordPress’ growth,” Mullenweg said.

WordPress’ Global Community Reiterates the Demand for Multilingual Capabilities

The number of questions during the Q&A related to multilingual capabilities underscores the fact that WordPress is undeniably a global community. More than 50% of WordPress sites are not using English. Better multilingual support could be key to the next era of WordPress’ growth. Nevertheless, multilingual features are at the tail end of the four-phase roadmap for the project’s immediate future.

Mullenweg said WordPress is about “two years into a 10-year project,” with good chunks of phase 1 and phase 2 done. Phase 1 includes editing inside the post/page content, creating the fundamental building blocks and also bringing them to the mobile apps. Phase 2 is centered around editing outside the content, using blocks to create the site’s templates.

Phase 3 will introduce new collaboration features and workflow for real-time co-editing. Phase 4, which Mullenweg said is “just in the imagination stage right now,” covers multilingual features. He said he expects this phase to likely “be taken underway pretty vigorously in 2022.”

Matías Ventura answered a question about a phase 4 roadmap, confirming that there is no specific plan for its multilingual implementation right now. He said there have been some initial conversations regarding the implications of localization, specifically around patterns and block themes, and how those can be built. Nothing substantial has emerged yet but the team will be creating a more detailed overview of what is needed. Fallback languages is one feature that several community members brought up in the Q&A time.

When asked whether some existing multilingual solutions could be reused for core, Mullenweg was hesitant to prescribe a specific approach at this time. He said he is anxious to get better multilingual support in Gutenberg and offered what I believe is the most candid explanation thus far for why multilingual capabilities fall further down the the list of priorities:

Whether we do it as part of core or as part of an official plugin is to be decided. Part of the reason we made it phase 4 is that we can only do so many things well at a time. It is supremely important that we execute super well on these first phases of Gutenberg blocks. If we don’t get phase 1 and phase 2 to be the best experiences in the world for editing bar none, of any open source or proprietary competitors or builders, phase 3 and 4 just won’t matter because WordPress won’t be relevant a decade from now. I do believe that is the most important problem we’re facing. I don’t want to dilute the core contributors’ focus away from the initial phases of Gutenberg because that’s how important I think they are.

Mullenweg said there is nothing stopping the community from investing more in multilingual plugins and exploring different approaches to see what will get core most of the way there. The next official step would be figuring out a framework that will work well with plugins and themes.

Depending on your interest and involvement in the community, there is a lot more to explore in the Q&A. Check out the whole presentation in the video below.

Contact Form 7 has patched a critical file upload vulnerability in version 5.3.2, released today by plugin author Takayuki Miyoshi. The plugin is installed on more than five million WordPress sites.

“An unrestricted file upload vulnerability has been found in Contact Form 7 5.3.1 and older versions,” Miyoshi said. “Utilizing this vulnerability, a form submitter can bypass Contact Form 7’s filename sanitization, and upload a file which can be executed as a script file on the host server.”

The vulnerability was discovered by Jinson Varghese Behanan from Astra Security on December 16, 2020, and Miyoshi released a fix less than 24 hours later. Behanan highlighted a few ways this vulnerability might be exploited:

1. Possible to upload a web shell and inject malicious scripts
2. Complete takeover of the website and server if there is no containerization between websites on the same server
3. Defacing the website

Astra Security plans to publish more details on the vulnerability in two weeks after the plugin’s user base has had more time to update to the patched version.

Version 5.3.2 removes control, separator, and other types of special characters from the filename to fix the unrestricted file upload vulnerability. At the time of publishing, more than a million Contact Form 7 updates have been downloaded today. Approximately 20% of the plugin’s user base is protected from the vulnerability. Now that it has been patched and published, Contact Form 7 users who do not update will be more at risk of having the vulnerability exploited.

All hands on deck. 2021 will be the year of the Site Editor.

Anne McCarthy announced the official start of the Full-Site Editing (FSE) Outreach Program last Friday on the Make Core blog. The program is primarily geared toward end-users. With few channels for average users to communicate with the development team, this offers an opportunity for them to provide direct feedback.

This announcement comes on the heels of Matias Ventura’s full overview of the FSE project. In the post, he laid out where specific FSE features currently stand and what needs to happen to bring the project to fruition.

The FSE Outreach Program was expected to begin earlier in the year. Josepha Haden announced it on May 1. However, there was no movement for most of 2020. An early version of FSE was also expected to land in WordPress 5.6, but that was too lofty of a goal for a feature that will essentially change everything about front-end development on the platform.

The official launch of the program should coincide with the release of Gutenberg 9.6, which is expected to ship within the next week. The program will focus on specific features and flows related to full-site editing. According to the program FAQs, participants could be asked to volunteer for up to three hours per week. However, it will also be flexible enough for anyone to participate, regardless of their available hours.

The program is also starting small, limiting feedback to more common user experiences. It is still experimental at this stage. Easing participants into such a testing program seems like a smart approach.

Right now, the Site Editor can sometimes be a painful user experience. While it is already possible to put together some interesting layouts, at least as a labor of love, there are many missing pieces. Workflows are odd. Expected features for a design tool are nowhere to be found. Someone might look at it today and think there is no way it could be a viable core feature next year, but the development team continues to polish the experience with each Gutenberg update. The Site Editor is not production-ready yet, but it is time to get serious about testing and feedback.

Those interested in volunteering for the program should have a WordPress Slack account and join the #fse-outreach-experiment channel. McCarthy said she will also post an update on the Make Test blog with further details for participants once Gutenberg 9.6 is released.

The First Focus Area

The first feature up for discussion is a new template editing mode inside the post editor. It adds a new “Template” option in the post-editing sidebar that will allow users to jump between editing their post and editing the template that outputs that post. It is a marriage of the post and site editors. Underneath, both are run by the block system, so there is little difference in the experiences.

Potential template editing option in the post editor.

Long-term, it makes sense that users should be able to switch seamlessly between both editors. I worry that we may be jumping the gun a bit on this feature since the Site Editor is still at a rough beta stage. However, it does not hurt to get some early feedback on what the workflow should look like.

“Please keep in mind that this is the program’s first iteration,” wrote McCarthy in the post. “We’re starting with this first item and expecting the outcome to be a comprehensive list of issues that the Gutenberg team can work on as capacity allows.”

Mapbox GL JS, formerly an open source JavaScript library for interactive, customizable vector maps, has adopted a proprietary license in its recent version 2 update:

• mapbox-gl-js is no longer under the 3-Clause BSD license. By upgrading to this release, you are agreeing to Mapbox terms of service. Refer to LICENSE.txt for the new licensing terms and details. For questions, contact our team at https://support.mapbox.com.
• Beginning with v2.0.0, a billable map load occurs whenever a Map object is initialized. Before updating an existing implementation from v1.x.x to v2.x.x, please review the pricing documentation to estimate expected costs.

Versions 1.x remain under the 3-Clause BSD license, but Mapbox will only be investing in developing new features for the proprietary licensed version 2.0+. This news came as a surprise to many engineers who have built products on top of this previously open source library.

“This move has produced shockwaves in the geospatial industry,” Javier de la Torre wrote on the CARTO blog. “Many organizations are using Mapbox GL JS directly or fork from it. This library is responsible for the visualization of the so-called basemap, the cartography layer that underpins most maps. Previously Open Source, MapboxGL is a great solution, and could be used with many different data sources, so it became the de facto way to render basemaps.”

Mapbox powers all sorts of maps for high profile websites like CNN, The New York Times, Ancestry, Strava, Shopify, Facebook, and more. It is also used by WordPress.com and Jetpack for the Map block. The library is used in many plugins on WordPress.org, some with tens of thousands of users. Developers using versions 1.x will want to be aware of the future of the Mapbox GL JS library.

“Mapbox’s decision this week to release a brand new version of Mapbox GL JS and keep it proprietary stunned me,” Azavea product specialist Joe Morrison wrote on his personal blog. “Not only was v1 already a wildly popular open source library, but Mapbox’s reputation as a prolific creator of open source software is a cornerstone of their whole identity. Describing what makes Mapbox special without mentioning ‘open source’ is like trying to describe chocolate milk to an alien without using the word ‘liquid.'”

Mapbox hasn’t formally clarified why it went proprietary with the library so speculation abounds. Morrison theorizes that cloud providers are killing the open core business model of software companies. Crunchy Data Geospatial Engineer Paul Ramsey responded to Morrison’s article, contending that Mapbox is not an “open core” company and that the business of selling location based services may not be panning out for them:

But like Google, the value proposition Mapbox sells isn’t in the software, so much as the data and the platform underneath. Mapbox has built a unique, scalable platform for handling the huge problem of turning raw OSM data into usable services, and raw location streams into usable services. They sell access to that platform.

Mapbox has never been a software company, they’ve always been a data and services company.

Mapbox employee Saman Bemel Benrud said the company is finally moving to make its products sustainable:

This change has the potential to negatively impact the developers and companies that built products on top of Mapbox GL JS, thinking its open source licensing was set in stone.

“The change says nothing about ‘open source’ in the large as a model, and everything about ‘single vendor projects’ and whether you should, strategically, believe their licensing,” Ramsey said.

“I (and others) took the licensing (incorrectly) of Mapbox GL JS to be a promise, not only for now but the future, and made decisions based on that (incorrect) interpretation. I integrated GL JS into an open source project and now I have to revisit that decision.”

Some community members have already forked Mapbox GL JS to maintain the 1.x version, but the vast majority of contributors to the original library were sponsored by Mapbox. The immediate future of the MapLibre GL fork may not include many new features, as the initial roadmap’s stated goal is “consistency and backwards-compatibility with previous releases and continued bug-fixes and maintenance going forward.”

A lengthy discussion on Hacker News drew a response from former Mapbox engineer Tom MacWright, who wrote the company’s open source policy as a founding member of the team.

“I won’t get into all the context, but I think we should consider whether a community without contributors is a community,” MacWright said. “GL JS never had major active contributors outside of the company, and there are no self-funded webgl experts with lots of time who are ready to maintain a fork.

“OSS, we hoped, was about enabling people and unlocking people’s ability to collaborate. It turns out that in 2020, it’s mostly helping companies and getting nothing in return. That’s not a dynamic you can build a sustainable business on.”

The MapLibre GL fork may gain some momentum and emerge as a viable alternative to Mapbox’s closed source library, but it will take time to see how well it is maintained. In the meantime, the existing version 1.x can meet most users’ needs. Mapbox has burned through a lot of good will with this controversial licensing update, which some perceive as a “bait and switch” offense. Rebuilding community trust, after removing the freedoms granted by the previous license, will be an uphill battle.

Block-based themes are not complicated. Their structure is almost simple enough that developers are unlikely to need a tool to generate a blank theme. However, for those unfamiliar with how themes are built for the upcoming full-site editing (FSE) feature, a boilerplate is a good place to start.

The Theme Experiments repository now has a new Empty Theme. Alongside it is a command-line tool to generate a copy of that theme with a custom name, author, and URI.

The idea is not new. There are tons of such tools for generating a theme in the wild. However, it is time for new tools that focus on block-based theming.

For theme authors who want to generate a new block-based theme, they must clone a copy of the Theme Experiments repository. Then navigate to that folder via their command-line tool and type the following command:

php new-empty-theme.php

From that point, it is a simple matter of answering a few questions and letting the tool do the work of creating a new theme folder.

Digging Into the Generated Theme

The generated theme is not much to look at. However, it is a theme that works within the new full-site editing system. After activation, theme authors can begin tinkering with the theme via the Site Editor screen (requires the Gutenberg plugin).

Generated theme in the Site Editor.

There is one exception to it being a working theme. Loading the header template part is currently broken. Of course, I opened a ticket for that issue, which should be easy for the development team to resolve.

The file and folder structure is slim in comparison to traditional themes. It contains the bare-bones to get a theme up and running in the Site Editor. The following files and folders are included:

• /assets
  – alignments-front.css
• /block-template-parts
  – header.html
• /block-templates
  – index.html
  – singular.html
• experimental-theme.json
• functions.php
• index.php
• readme.md
• style.css

Even those are likely to be trimmed down in the future. The experimental-theme.json file will eventually be renamed to theme.json.

The current alignments-front.css is nearly 80 lines of boilerplate code for handling the various block alignments. There is no need for every theme author to recreate all of this code, which should not change much between themes. That is why there is an open ticket for Gutenberg to provide alignment styles on the front end. Theme authors will be able to overwrite this. However, the fewer files and lines of code theme authors need to contend with, the better.

The standard index.php template is empty. It will no longer be useful for building themes now that block-based templates are stored in the /block-templates and /block-template-parts folders. style.css just houses the theme information. FSE themes will mostly use theme.json to configure default styles.

In the coming months and years, theme authors will be working primarily in the theme.json file and block template folders. The jury is still out on whether the theming ecosystem will readily accept this change. At the same time, it feels refreshing to see the untangling of theme development. Traditional theming today has created behemoth codebases in an attempt to keep up with features that users want. A shift in how developers build themes was inevitable and necessary.

My one nit-pick with the generated theme is the inclusion of the pluggable theme setup function in the functions.php file, which has somehow become a mainstay of core-developed themes over the years. There are APIs for enabling or disabling everything in such setup functions, and there is no reason for child themes to overwrite them wholesale.

If things go according to plan, even the standard theme setup function may be on the chopping block. These functions are generally a list of calls to add_theme_support(). The long-term plan is for the current theme-supported features to either be enabled by default for block-based themes or configurable via the theme.json file.

When I was asked to write an essay for HeroPress, I humbly accepted due to my desire to help others. HeroPress needs a post and perhaps something I say could have a positive impact on another person. Little did I realize that having to write as a “marginalized” individual would cause me to want to retreat.

The word “marginalized” stirs up a lot of emotion in me and thoughts such as “am I marginalized enough”, “what if I offend someone”, and “will I be attacked” tend to come to mind. Interestingly, I worry that I’ll be attacked by more women than men. I could easily write the story of my woes because I’ve had plenty but I like solutions, perseverance and resilience better. Some of these solutions may help you realize why I could be seen as “marginalized” but perhaps we’ll find a new label such as human and worthy of kindness, trust, inclusion, and a seat at the decision table.

The Beginning

I have been in the WordPress space since 2005 and tech since 2003. My team realized early on that WordPress was actually a CMS. We ranked #2 in google for web design back when SEO was easy. I was answering phones, marketing, and doing billing at that time. I would ask about budgets when potential clients would call and I had to turn away a lot of business because they couldn’t afford us. The worst part was that I didn’t have a trusted company that I could refer them to at the time. While focusing on web design I couldn’t understand why it took so long to create a website and why we couldn’t create our own less expensive solution to offer them.

Long story short, a prototype was made, then refined and rebranded as Pagely, and the term “Managed WordPress Hosting” was created. It was about 2 years later that our next competitor arrived and another 2 years for the behemoths to create their own managed WordPress solutions. Sounds grand right? Being the first and the originator of a multi-billion dollar industry had its challenges and these are problems that our competitors didn’t have to face. Now, let’s add being a female.

I feel that I need to preface these next parts of my life story mainly because I’m a female and it’s what I’ve been trained to do even subconsciously. I’m joking, sort of.

Usually if I use a word that doesn’t resonate with certain males, I’ll get mansplained to instead of searching for clarity. Their initial jump to assume that “I don’t know” instead of “they don’t understand” astounds me. That’s not to say I am infallible, didn’t say something ridiculous, or am unwilling to learn/self-reflect. It’s unnerving when Captain Obvious brings forth the basics.

That being said, first, I understand that my labels include female, white, American, founder, wife, mother, wealthy, privileged and more depending on who I’m talking with. It took years of therapy to take my own traumas seriously because I didn’t have it as bad as others. It caused me to repress my own experiences and put others before myself even when they didn’t deserve space in my kind mind. Now, I’m more resilient and realize that I can’t be everything to everybody but I can include everyone with exception of the unhinged.

Second, this is my story. It may not be similar to your own, and I don’t have all the answers. I’m not competing with anyone’s troubles. We can both exist.

Third, I’m very grateful because I have been surrounded mostly by successful women and men willing to help Josh and I accomplish our shared goals. Josh is my husband and co-founder of Pagely.

First Impressions

When Pagely first started, hate mail ensued along with many people signing up. I went to a WordCamp and a prominent figure in the WordPress community asked me where the person was that came up with Pagely because they really liked it. They were alluding to my husband Josh. This happened even when Josh said repeatedly that I had come up with the idea. It was at that moment that I realized that most people would not associate me with the idea or company I co-founded.

I had to make the conscious choice to decide if I wanted to be right or be successful. I chose to focus on success and also I didn’t get here alone. Many wonderful men and women helped. I had to laser focus on my goal which was to provide the best hosting experience regardless of minor annoyances along the way.

Many times I was not invited to join various non-Pagely meetings. Josh tried to include me even when men told him to uninvite me. Luckily, when I wasn’t allowed in the room, Josh shared the agenda with me and many times was my voice to get things done. Now, if I’m not included, I find a table that will have me, find allies, or I create my own group. I shouldn’t have made getting in that room a big priority. My solution was to remove obstacles, find the win/win to achieve my goal, and not take or make it personal.

This type of scenario happened often and what’s interesting is that the people that were saying these “sexist” remarks were good people. The problem was so prevalent and complex that I had a hard time communicating what I was experiencing.

Reaching Out

I asked other women how they handled sexism. I asked a brilliant and well respected female entrepreneur in Phoenix how she handled what I was experiencing. She told me that she saw it all the time and just treated men like her children and gave accolades. She was included because she could stroke their egos. Another friend said that she would wear short skirts so she wouldn’t have to explain and defend why her ideas deserved merit. Another friend would wear business attire daily while her male cohorts wore hoodies. Her brain didn’t change but their outlook did. There were also some that claimed that they didn’t experience it but when the #metoo movement arrived, they were the most vocal. Of course, this is an extremely small subset of people I asked but this was the reality of the time.

What’s striking is that my experience in other fields was worse. At least in tech we’re open to talk about and acknowledge the issue. It’s a start, it’s getting better, and tech attracts early adopters. When I was in healthcare, I graduated college with summa cum laude honors. I had the highest board scores in the state for my field, yet one employer told me I was only hired because I was pretty, another place said that they prefer to hire Mexicans because they work harder, and another place claimed that they like to hire females that didn’t plan on having children.

So many check marks to obtain which can cause females to compete with each other because of a feeling of lack of abundance and no defined rules.

These learnings from the places I worked happened over a period of time and some of my friends experienced sexism and abuse weekly. They were used to being treated poorly and considered less than. They accepted the situation and were grateful for the opportunity to work. Some were afraid to have or share their brilliant ideas because their paycheck was more important than their voice. Also, some were content and had other areas of their life that fulfilled them or they were ultra-resistant. The vast differences we have with one another are amazing, beautiful, and inspiring.

Representation or Tokenization?

I still have mixed feelings about being the token female. I was asked to speak on a SXSW panel a couple of times because I was the only tech female the person knew. I’m trying to get comfortable using my gender to get through the guarded gates but I can’t tell if I’m fostering inspiration, adding to the separation, or devaluing my accomplishments. Therefore I tend to stay private and stay focused on creating my ideal work environment that waterfalls over into giving the best hosting experience for our clients. Also, when I ask other women to speak at Pressnomics or work with me at Pagely, I don’t want it to be because I’m trying to hit a quota.

I choose to work with women because they are qualified. Our engineering team is 50% female and our largest teams are run by women because they were the most qualified candidates. Period. (pun intended). What makes this even more gratifying for me is that the entire team participates in the hiring process and it feels like we have an environment for equality that is natural due to the character of the people we hire.

However, we have hired men and learned that they are triggered by assertive females. My solutions in these instances include making sure they realize the issue, what’s at stake if they don’t change, and I leave my door open to conversation. They are still good people. They chose to have a female employer. My general causation theory is the stigma around therapy especially for men, lack of resources to provide a public mental health safety net, repressed feeling of childhood powerlessness from a female, and myriad other possibilities.

The flip side to this is aggressive females which also afflicts me at certain times. My progression to aggression looks something like the following. I start with casual understanding, then I ask questions for full understanding. Then I assert, re-evaluate, assert or accept. If I don’t accept, I assert again. If my assertions don’t work, aggression can happen followed by reflection. This may lead to a desire to remove the obstacle and find another solution or evaluate the origin of my aggression. This doesn’t happen often. I’ve learned that I’m triggered by feeling unseen or unreciprocated respect when I have a strong desire for an outcome that seems heavily challenged.  I accept these feelings and understand that I’m not always right. The awareness allows me to seek clarity, speak up with vulnerability, heal, and choose a healthier approach that humanizes the relationship.

My ideal solution is to remind myself that everyone has a story, listen to their story, find clarity, and let them know they are safe and don’t need to carry the trauma anymore. Open communication with mutual respect is key. You get what you give. Also, burning bridges serves no one and neither does passively laying on train tracks.

Observation

Another one of my theories is that women are considered safe. During our Pressnomics conference, Josh will receive more praise and while I do get praise, I tend to get more (or all) of the criticism. This is not about getting praise; although appreciated, it’s not the point. It’s about why people feel more comfortable expressing negative emotions to females. I believe the reason why is because women seem safer and they are more likely to ask about experiences.

Unfortunately, this can open a floodgate from people with varying levels of passion which can cause female entrepreneurs to retreat from taking more active roles. I crave feedback for Pagely because it’s something we want to give to the world. However, Pressnomics is an invitation into my proverbial house and if they don’t like it, there’s a lot of other conferences they can attend or make their own. I’ll gladly attend their conference, especially if it’s run by another “marginalized” human and aligns with my goal. I will listen to people who “get” what Pressnomics is (it’s more of a feeling) but nitpicking my font and color choice for the website is where I draw the line.

I had to get to this place because people were not going to decide my worth or determine if my creations were good enough. When I create, I come from love and a deep desire to help with the golden rule in mind. I’ve been to other conferences, where Josh leaves my side and men have said “I’m creating a Pagely killer”, “We’re going to destroy you”, and competitors that are actively trying to debate with me while my only intention was to be kind.

My goal with Pressnomics is to inspire great minds to work together, share information, and energize the WordPress ecosystem in a safe and caring atmosphere for all who attend.

My ideal solution when dealing with negative people is to not take it personally. Their truth does not need to be my truth and words from jerks no longer have an affect on me. Sadly, most jerks delve out disdain regardless of the recipient which means they might be miserable and lack empathy.

Wrapping It All Up

What does WordPress mean to me? It’s a business foundation that allows ALL people the initial building blocks for success. The barrier to entry is low and inclusion is high. Also, the majority of people in the community look past stereotypes and generalizations and want to share and lift all tides. I am very grateful to the community, our supporters, the dreamers, and to the outstanding core contributors.

What do all of us “marginalized” people have in common? We showed up and worked around obstacles. If there’s not room for you at a table, figure out something else. Perhaps, kindly discuss the observation, or create your own table. Life’s too short to be unhappy in someone else’s world. Create your own and invite others. WordPress is a great place to do that.

Last, being underestimated is a gift. They’ll never see you coming until they can’t help but notice. If you’re with the right people while that’s happening, there’s no better feeling.

The post Marginalized appeared first on HeroPress.

WordPress.org has officially launched its new “Learn WordPress” platform, a free educational resource that includes courses, workshops, quizzes, lesson plans, and discussion groups. The material spans the spectrum of WordPress experience from beginners to advanced, and and allows users to learn asynchronously at their own pace. After a successful beta launch in August, the platform is now ready for the public.

Traditionally, most WordPress learning opportunities have been in-person at WordCamps and local meetups. Since large gatherings have been put on pause this year due to the pandemic, the Learn WordPress platform offers a new way for users to stay connected. The discussion groups are a new event format similar to a virtual event that brings learners together at the same time to discuss a topic. Discussion groups are scheduled through Meetup.com and most of them center around workshop material.

“In addition to the wealth of valuable content available on Learn WordPress, the platform provides an opportunity for individuals to learn alongside other community members and become connected with a global network of WordPress users, developers, and contributors,” WordPress community manager Hugh Lashbrooke said.

A New Way to Contribute to WordPress: Create Learning Resources and Facilitate Discussions

Learn WordPress is launching with two courses: “Publishing with WordPress” and “Unleashing the Power of WordPress,” which covers basic customization topics. The project is open to contributions and anyone can submit an idea for a workshop.

The platform also includes more than 85 lesson plans that the Training team has been working on for the past few years. They are available as resources for people who want to run their own workshops.

Learn WordPress has several lesson plans and workshops on the topic of creating new blocks, such as Intro to Gutenberg Block Development. Many WordPress developers have yet to get on board with creating for the block editor and topics like this seems ripe for launching a discussion group with a series facilitated by an experienced block developer.

“The work on Learn WordPress has been a strong cross-team collaboration between the Community and Training teams, with the Marketing and TV teams also being really involved in making things happen,” WordPress community manager Hugh Lashbrooke said. “It’s been super encouraging to see such excellent work across so many teams to make this ambitious project a reality.”

Anyone can contribute to lesson plans and workshops, as well as facilitate discussions. If you want to get more involved in expanding and promoting the platform, you can join WordPress’ Training team for meetings on Fridays at 11:00 UTC and Tuesdays at 17:00 UTC in the #training channel on Slack.

Two weeks ago, Ashan Jay released LifePress to the WordPress plugin directory. It is an interactive, front-end calendar for tracking past events — a journal of sorts. For a version 1.0 launch, it has enough features with just the right touch of simplicity to show promise.

This is not Jay’s first rodeo when it comes to calendar-based plugins. He is also the creator of EventON, a virtual event calendar for WordPress.

The goal of the plugin is simple. As its description reads, “LifePress is a calendar based journal recorder that will allow you to track back progress and review past events to learn from the past and make positive progress in the future.”

Watch an introduction video to the plugin:

Digging Into the Plugin

Call me a fan. The ease of use of this plugin is spot-on. LifePress creates a page called “LifePress Dashboard” upon activation, which allows individual users of the site to see and manage life events on the front end on a per-user basis. It feels much like Google Calendar, except in WordPress.

And that is the plugin’s main selling point — it allows end-users to store all of their data in their own database instead of on a third-party server.

On the front end, users are presented with a weekly calendar view by default. However, there is a button for switching between weekly and monthly views.

Monthly calendar view.

A simple “+” button lets users create new calendar entries. After clicking it, an overlay appears for adding a date, title, optional description, and tag. Most users should pick up the system quickly and without documentation.

Creating a new calendar entry.

The tag system allows users to group different types of entries with custom colored backgrounds. Colored dots for each tag adorn the left sidebar, allowing users to toggle specific entry types on and off, which is one of my favorite features of the plugin. It is a simple thing, but it adds to the overall user experience.

The design is, for the most part, great. The interface is uncluttered and simple to use. However, the plugin is not without some flaws, which is to be expected with a version 1.0. The plugin’s various overlays, such as from the new-entry popup, butt against the top of the page. Some spacing at the top would help with the layout.

Backend management could use a little work. There is no way to edit a tag’s color after it has been created. This feature also does not appear to be available on the front end.

The monthly-calendar view was consistently off by one day of the week when I first installed LifePress in my testing environment. For example, today is Tuesday, December 15, 2020. However, the plugin had the 15th listed under Monday. I managed to track this issue down to the “week starts on” setting in WordPress. The plugin will only work if this option is set to Sunday (the WordPress default sets this to Monday). Every other day of the week pushes the calendar back another day.

This is a non-issue with the default, weekly calendar view. However, it should be addressed by the plugin author for the monthly layout.

Features Requests

While LifePress is geared toward being a journal and tracking calendar, it would be nice if it could pull double-duty and behave like a simple event calendar too. The plugin already allows end-users to add items to future dates, so the core of scheduling events is already in place. To extend this already-existing feature, the plugin could have a notification system. Users should be able to at least get custom emails as a reminder for upcoming events on the schedule. This could make it worthwhile enough for some users to ditch Google Calendar, depending on their use case.

If the plugin wants to continue focusing on being a great journal and tracking calendar, it should have a progress-tracking mechanism built in. It is great to see that I put in my daily 30-minute jog on the calendar, for example. However, it would be even better if I could see that I am hitting my exercise goals on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.

That sort of application is not just relevant to personal exercise regimens. It can be applied to other facets of life or used in business environments.

Overall, it is a good first outing for the plugin. However, there is a lot of potential for more features in the future.

Learn WordPress is a learning resource providing workshops, quizzes, courses, lesson plans, and discussion groups so that anyone, from beginners to advanced users, can learn to do more with WordPress. Learning how to use, build for, and contribute to WordPress is essential for anyone wanting to dive deeper into the software and its community. 

This cross-team initiative is part of the WordPress.org network and features content from contributors from the global community. It will be updated weekly and will help connect new and existing WordPress users with the broader community while they learn.

What can you learn about WordPress?

On Learn WordPress you can find a range of material and opportunities to use at the time which works for you.

Workshops are practical, skills-based videos that show viewers how to do new things with WordPress, whether you publish, manage, develop with, or contribute to WordPress. Most workshops include quizzes for you to test your newly gained knowledge.

Discussion groups provide an opportunity for further collaborative learning with participants meeting together to discuss the workshop content – they take place online, either in video calls or Slack and accommodate all time zones.

Lesson plans are guides for facilitators to use while presenting at events or within educational environments. Facilitators will find learning objectives (telling people what they are going to learn), any prerequisite skills, assets such as screenshots and slide decks, and learning assessments. 

Courses are a series of interconnected lesson plans to be presented by a facilitator that will strategically focus on defined learning outcomes. Participants can go through these courses individually or as part of a group. After completing the learning, attendees should be able to apply their skills in the real world.

In addition to the wealth of valuable content available on Learn WordPress, the platform provides an opportunity for individuals to learn alongside other community members and become connected with a global network of WordPress users, developers, and contributors.

Why you should use Learn WordPress – videos from our community.

How can you get involved?

Learn WordPress is an open-source platform available for anyone to contribute content in any areas mentioned above. Find out more about how you can get involved with this initiative.

Take part in our fun promotion campaigns on social and with your local community.

Hundreds of people spanning a number of years have contributed to the development of learning materials. Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make Learn WordPress a reality. 

Particular thanks to:

Training: @courane01, @azhiyadev, @geheren, @webtechpooja, @jessecowens, @onealtr, @rastaban, @evarlese, @manzwebdesigns
Meta: @coreymckrill, @dufresnesteven, @jonoaldersonwp
Community: @hlashbrooke, @camikaos, @harishanker, @angelasjin, @nao, @courtneypk, @andreamiddleton, @rmarks, @sippis
Marketing: @webcommsat,  @oglekler, @lmurillom, @yvettesonneveld, @meher, @nalininonstopnewsuk, @megphillips91, @marks99, @marybaum, @antialiasfactory, @herculespekkas, @chaion07
Design: @melchoyce 

For a fuller list of the contributors who have been involved in training and Learn WordPress, visit the initial beta launch post. Thanks to everyone who has been involved to date and will be in the future. 

#LearnWordPress #LearnWP

Fast, a startup backed by Stripe, has just added WooCommerce support to its new Fast Checkout experience. The company was co-founded in March 2019, by Domm Holland and Allison Barr Allen, with investment from Stripe, Index Ventures, Susa Ventures, and Global Founders Capital. It has received $22.5M in funding to reduce the friction that remains deeply embedded in login and checkout experiences.

Online shopping almost always involves a lengthy checkout form where customers have to enter passwords, addresses, and payment information nearly every time. This tedious experience is magnified when gift-giving holidays roll around. Fast’s founders have set out to solve this problem with products aimed at modernizing the checkout experience to enable one-click purchasing.

Fast Checkout launched in September 2020, so if you haven’t seen it around yet it’s because it is relatively new and was previously limited to a handful of platforms. Expanding support to WooCommerce was a strategic move, as WordPress accounts for 39.3% of the Alexa top 10 million websites. WooCommerce is running on 18% of the WordPress sites W3techs can detect. Fast CEO Domm Holland said the product’s availability to WooCommerce increases the company’s addressable market by over 2,500%.

“We’ve received inquiries from thousands of sellers asking to add Fast on a variety of e-commerce platforms, including WooCommerce sellers,” Fast CCO Jason Alderman said. “We prioritized WooCommerce as it automatically gives millions of new sellers access to Fast.”

The company has seen a strong uptick in Fast Login adoption since launch, and Fast Checkout has had a promising debut.

“For Fast Checkout, the value of merchandise purchased on the platform has more than tripled each month since launching in September,” Alderman said. “Although not WooCommerce sellers, Fast merchants such as Gerard and Hardwood Lumber are seeing up to 30% (and rising) adoption rates since deploying Fast Checkout and up to a 10% increase in order volume within just 30 days of implementation.”

In order to gain all the benefits of Fast login and checkout, users have to sign up with a new service, which seems like it would be hurdle. Fast has embedded this process within the normal checkout flow so that it doesn’t feel like the consumer has to sign up for something new. The first time a shopper makes a purchase on a site using Fast Checkout, they enter their contact information. and payment details as they normally would.

After that purchase, their details are stored and every subsequent checkout experience on any website using Fast Checkout will only require one click. It works regardless of the device or browser used and does not require a password, the same as the Fast Login product.

Although Fast Checkout and Login are free to use for buyers, getting store owners on board is going to be the primary challenge for Fast. It charges US sellers 2.9% + 30c per transaction. Fast’s fees are not quite as steep as the 5% per shipment that Instagram will be charging for the new Shopping Checkout feature that WooCommerce is testing. However, it may still be prohibitive for stores with narrow profit margins. Fast also has competition from the multiple one-click checkout extensions available for WooCommerce that do not charge transaction fees.

Fast claims that the one-click checkout button “increases conversion, boosts sales, and delights customers” If the checkout experience can deliver on those claims, then some store owners may be willing to part with the 2.9% fee in order to capture a larger percentage of the potential customers that are already arriving at their stores, instead of risking cart abandonment with a frustratingly long checkout process. Store owners are looking for any edge in an increasingly competitive landscape where the online retail giants continue to dominate.

The pandemic has caused radical shifts in the retail industry, creating unprecedented opportunities for independent stores. Many WooCommerce developers and store owners have sought help for optimizing their stores after the pandemic caused business to increase exponentially overnight. A product like Fast Checkout is landing at the right time, as consumer spending habits have become forever altered by the rapid acceleration of the essential role of e-commerce for homebound people across the globe.

“E-commerce giants have heightened consumers’ expectations for online shopping,” Alderman said. “And with the COVID-19 pandemic this year, more people than ever opted to shop online, but many independent businesses were not prepared to prioritize the online experience. By adding Fast Checkout to their stores, businesses of all sizes can access one-click checkout that offers the seamless experience consumers expect (and eliminates shopping cart abandonment that happens to up to 80% of potential purchases).”

Fast is planning to expand its Checkout support to multiple new platforms in the coming months but did not have any details to share at this time. In addition to providing one-click checkout, Fast centralizes purchases across stores so that users can manage transactions, track shipments, and handle returns through a unified dashboard. Long term, the company is working on launching a universal subscription manager, which Alderman said is currently in development.

Update some of the things.

That was the goal that Jon Quach, a Principal Designer at Automattic, laid out in the roadmap for integrating the G2 Components project into Gutenberg and, eventually, core WordPress. The project is a reimagining of the pieces that make the block editor, a “from-scratch” overhaul of the component system. Updating all of the things or even many of the things at once runs the risk of breaking everything.

“Ideally, what should happen is you should update just some of the things in a very controlled and intentional manner,” wrote Quach in the post. He likened it transitioning a city, section by section, to solar power until the traditional power factory could be shut down. You convert one piece, test, find problems, and correct them before moving to the next section.

That is the plan for integrating G2 Components into Gutenberg.

“G2 Components is a project that embodies the idea of making user interfaces and user experiences better for others,” said Quach. “At the moment, it’s materialized as a Component System designed to work within the context and environments of Gutenberg and WordPress.”

The goal is to provide the resources to improve the Gutenberg project’s UI. Components should make it easier to create newer UIs without hacking together code. Quach said the consistency and experiences of the Component System should scale and have a ripple effect throughout the WordPress platform. This will also extend to third-party block developers.

“The code components are just the starting point,” he said. “My ultimate goal is for this to transcend code and influence and elevate design as well — creating a unified Design System that enables and empowers folks to craft cohesive and feature-rich UI experiences within the world of WordPress.”

Quach believes that platforms have benefited from having similar approaches. He mentioned Material Design by Google as having elevated the Android platform and bringing cohesion across the company’s products.

The Gutenberg team has already started integrating the G2 Components into the project. This integration replaces WordPress components (@wordpress/components) in a controlled manner that should not break existing implementations within the core editor or third-party projects. New components will be swapped in as they become ready. “Like flipping on a switch,” said Quach.

The following video is an hour-long walkthrough of G2 Components that Quach posted on YouTube:

He routinely posts updates on the G2 Components blog. Alongside those are deeper dives into his design thinking on the project. He also talks about the project on his Twitch stream almost daily.

What Are Components?

Screenshot of a component in the G2 Components Storybook.

Components are everything from buttons to toggles to checkboxes. They are standardized pieces that make up the UI of the block editor. They are available for both core and third-party developers to create what end-users see and interact with. However, there was a problem with how the original component system was built.

“The current components aren’t built with a system in mind, but rather, to fulfill an immediate need,” said Quach. “This particular design detail is crucial. A systems-first approach more easily supports the addition of new features, and more importantly, customization!”

The new approach is about building a native design system for WordPress. Such a system would allow anyone to build on top of it and create native experiences.

Quach said one of the easiest ways to look at this is from a backend theming perspective — the Component System also has a theming sub-system. “Instead of the traditional method of writing CSS as a ‘skin’ to layer on top, UI aesthetics can be adjusted through configuration values — similar to how WordPress can be configured with definitions in the wp-config.php file,” he said. “This distinction is important as these values tap directly into the Style system, allowing the styles to load correctly at the right place and at the right time. All without affecting the current environment’s styles, and more importantly, not being affected by the current environment’s styles.”

He was responding to my question on why the component system should be rebuilt from scratch. The idea is to have components that “just work” in an environment such as the WordPress admin, such as making sure the existence of a WordPress theme’s stylesheet does not break components simply by being loaded.

“Why rethink, rebuild, and enhance Inputs, Buttons, Modals, Dropdowns, and others?” countered Quach in response. “So that you the developer don’t have to.”

What Does This Mean For Developers?

Respecting backward-compatibility is something Quach said he took incredibly seriously when designing the architecture of the G2 Components project. He also said it was a part of the integration strategy he proposed.

“I had mentioned that this project ’embodies the idea of making user interfaces and user experiences better for others,'” he said. “Accounting for backward compatibility and supporting third-party migration absolutely falls under the category of user experience.”

As the Gutenberg team continues integrating new components, it should not change what developers have already been doing. However, it could open up some new possibilities.

“The new Component System will definitely help in the UI department,” said Quach. “One area I’m particularly excited about is the rapid-development/prototyping space. Because these Components are self-contained units, they can be brought into platforms like CodeSandbox and they…just…work. You can hit the ground running and rapidly construct and share prototypes (ranging from tiny-yet-mighty to large and in-charge).”

He said he has had success in testing component designs and demonstrating ideas for quick feedback. He has also worked from the opposite direction, building complex components in CodeSandbox and bringing them back into the Component System.

“As a designer and front-end developer, I cannot stress how efficient, effective, and creatively liberating this ‘micro building’ workflow is,” he said. “It’s something I’m excited for others to experience as well.”

BuddyPress 7.0.0 “Filippi” was released this week, following WordPress 5.6 to ensure compatibility. This version was named for Filippi’s Pizza Grotto in California. It requires WordPress 4.9+, but sites that are not using the block editor will miss out on many of the new features that make BuddyPress websites easier to customize.

The first set of community blocks was introduced earlier this year, allowing site owners to insert a specific Member or Group into any post or page. Version 7.0.0 adds three new blocks that make it easy to feature a list of members, a list of groups, or embed a public activity post.

Blocks make customizations easier for non-technical community managers. Years ago, you would have to write a custom query to display members, groups, or activities anywhere on a page or post. The other option was to install a plugin to do it and use a widget or shortcode to place it somewhere in the content.

The Groups block, for example, lets you select any number of groups using auto-complete, to create a custom list. The block’s toolbar has an option for displaying the groups in a list or a grid. In the block settings, users can show or hide group names, select full or thumbnail versions for avatars, and include extra information about the group.

New Administration Screens for Member and Group Type Management

BuddyPress’ member types and group types are a feature similar to WordPress’ custom post types. They now have their own management screens in the admin, making them more accessible to community managers who would not be comfortable creating and modifying types without a UI. Member and group types can now be added, edited, and deleted directly in the admin.

Source: BuddyPress.org 7.0.0 release announcement

New Default Profile Image for Network Sites

Version 7.0.0 introduces the capability to add a default profile image for sites in a multisite network as part of the Site Tracking component. This can improve the appearance for the sites directory or the activity stream, when networked sites have not added a custom profile image.

A few other notable improvements in 7.0.0 include the BP Nouveau template pack updated to be compatible with the new Twenty Twenty-One default theme, improvements to the BP REST API, and BuddyPress CLI commands expanded to cover more aspects of community management. Check out the release notes for a full list of changes.

On Tuesday of this week, Munir Kamal released version 2.4 of his EditorPlus plugin. Aside from a few bugs and making sure the plugin was compatible with WordPress 5.6, he added an icon selector for the Button block and SVG shape overlays for the Image block. This is on top of a new “Extend Core Blocks” system he added in the previous version.

I last dove into the plugin in early November. In Kamal’s world, that may as well have been a lifetime ago. At an almost dizzying pace of development, he has since released three major updates to the plugin with several new features. I continue wondering where he not only finds the time to dedicate to the project for free but also where he keeps getting new ideas. Surely, some of them are coming from his growing user base. The plugin is still relatively young, and it has now passed 2,000 active installs.

The Extend Core Blocks System

When Kamal first built EditorPlus, the idea was to create additional styling options for the WordPress core blocks. Essentially, the plugin allowed end-users to set custom values for CSS properties from an interface in the editor. This can get the average user pretty deep into customization. However, it is still somewhat limiting. There are things that web developers can do with code that go beyond what such a basic interface can do. The question then becomes: how do you provide those advanced methods to users?

At the heart of the Extend Core Blocks system, which can be disabled from the plugin’s settings screen, the plugin author wanted to push the limits of what is possible with WordPress’s existing blocks.

“There are different extensions in EditorPlus that offer different features that you can toggle on or off,” said Kamal. “Like the styling, animations, custom CSS, etc., and now this new one. This extension will offer additional functionalities/features for the core Gutenberg blocks. For example, the ‘list block’ extended with the option to include icons, split into columns, and more. Similarly, the plan is to extend other core blocks with additional missing features as well.”

Creating a two-column team list with icons.

In version 2.3, he created the first set of options with the new system. Starting with the List block, he added columns, options, icons, and several other options. Users can pick and choose from a range of icons from the Font Awesome and Icon Moon libraries.

Adding a “blob” style to the Image block.

My favorite new feature is the custom “blob” styles Kamal has added to the Image block. “I’ve simply added 10 SVG shape masks as block styles for the core Image block,” he said while also sharing a demo video.

While I am unsure if I have any immediate uses for blob-shaped images, I am excited about the possibility of other SVG shape masks landing in the future. I am sure there are many potential applications in design where they would be useful. If nothing else, they are fun to tinker around with.

Customizing icons for the Button block.

Perhaps a bit more practical, Kamal added new icon options for the Button block. Like the List block, users can choose from both the Font Awesome and Icon Moon libraries. They can also select left or right alignment, change the background and foreground colors, round out the background with a border-radius option, and control the spacing.

There are a couple of other block-related plugins with similar icon options. However, having them baked into EditorPlus was a good decision. Most of the plugin’s users will likely find themselves ditching other block plugins with so much available through one.

Kamal remained tight-lipped about any specific upcoming features in 2.5 and beyond. However, he did say that he would be continuing to build upon the Extend Core Blocks system. If his work thus far is any indication, it will be interesting to see what new options he brings to the other WordPress blocks.

Background Options

Adding an SVG background image to the Cover block.

While the new Extend Core Blocks system has been the focus of the last couple of releases, Kamal has added several other features. One of the biggest that he has pushed out is a set of new background options for every core block, which includes the following:

• Insert image via URL.
• Background attachment option.
• Background placement option.

At this point, with EditorPlus, users can nearly do anything they need to do with backgrounds. The biggest boost of customizability comes with the image URL option, which means that users can even input a data URI for SVG patterns. Hero Patterns has a ton of options to choose from for anyone who wants to give it a spin.

GitHub Universe, the company’s annual marquee product and community event, took place this week, bringing users a flurry of new features. Dark mode is now in public beta and can be activated under the Settings menu or set to follow system preferences.

Discussions is a new feature that GitHub unveiled at its Satellite event in May to facilitate questions and open-ended conversations. The company has been testing it with open source communities like Gatsby and Laravel to iron out bugs ahead of the public launch. Discussions currently allows users to customize categories, transfer and pin discussions, and convert issues into discussion threads. Mobile support is coming soon.

Participants on Discussions can search or sort conversations by newest, top, answered, and unanswered. Threads can be upvoted for better exposure and a sidebar widget displays the “most helpful” users. Discussions are essentially a modernized forum, with a little bit of gamification sprinkled in. for good measure.

Project maintainers for WordPress plugins, themes, and tools hosted on GitHub may want to explore Discussions to see if it could benefit their communities. The format is more approachable for less technical participants who may not be familiar with GitHub issues.

Building on the existing dependency graph and security alerts features, GitHub is introducing dependency review as a way to help developers catch vulnerable code before it gets added to their projects. Dependency review displays the following information for each pull request:

• which dependencies were added, removed, or updated
• release dates
• how many projects use these components
• vulnerability information for each dependency

The beta for the dependency review feature is now open to all public repositories and will be gradually rolled out across GitHub in the next few weeks.

Other notable announcements include the ability to auto-merge pull requests when using protected branches, improvements to continuous delivery support, and GitHub Sponsors for companies, which allows organizations to use their existing billing to donate to open source developers and projects. Check out the full details in the announcement summary from the event.

WordCamp US 2020, previously scheduled for October, was cancelled due to pandemic stress and online event fatigue. Organizers did not opt for running it as an online event, but Matt Mullenweg’s annual State of the Word address will be delivered virtually this year. It will be streamed on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter on Thursday, Dec 17th, 2020  at 1600 UTC.

In previous years, the State of the Word has been one the most highly anticipated keynotes at WordCamp US. Attendees pack into the venue’s auditorium in anticipation of hearing about all of the highlights and milestones the WordPress community has achieved over the past year. Mullenweg often uses the time to recast his vision for the project and deliver important announcements.

This year has been unlike anything we have experienced before, but one thing has remained constant – WordPress’ phenomenal growth continues, as other major open source CMS’s are slowly declining. It is currently sitting at 39.3% of the Alexa top 10 million, 4.2% higher than November 2019, according to Joost de Valk’s biannual analysis of the CMS market share. de Valk attributes much of that growth to WooCommerce, which accounts for more than 18% of all the WordPress sites W3techs can detect.

Despite the global upheaval caused by the coronavirus, WordPress’ development has remained steady. More than 605 people contributed to the last major release (5.6) and there were 805 for the previous release (with 38% of them being new contributors.) In addition to reinventing WordCamps for the new virtual event frontier, the community team has also launched the Learn WordPress platform to make educational resources more globally available, placing a new emphasis on training. The platform is cracking open a world of WordPress knowledge that was previously relegated to more limited in-person audiences.

“Since we’ve collectively come to the realization that talks and training content can be delivered and consumed asynchronously, there will be less need to use the high-bandwidth time of physical events to passively watch a talk where we aren’t actively engaging with others,” WordPress community manager Hugh Lashbrooke said in a post with predictions on post-COVID community building. “The focus of these valuable meetings will rather be on interpersonal connection and mutual learning through active participation.”

Lashbrooke’s predictions recognize a friction that has always existed at WordCamps: the “hallway track” is more engaging and more popular than most of the talks given at events. It’s the interpersonal connection that people crave more than turning up for sessions that are usually being recorded anyway.

To those who have been homebound for the better part of this year, it may feel as though the world is standing still. But the WordPress community has put many meaningful changes in motion in response to the pandemic’s unique challenges. Despite all the uncertainty, WordPress is moving forward like a steady ship, with reliable improvements to the software and the community, thanks to the goodwill and cooperation of its unwavering base of contributors. This stability is worthy of commendation among this year’s milestones and is a testament to the maturity of the project.

Join the Virtual Q&A by Submitting a Pre-Recorded Video

Matt Mullenweg will be running the Q&A portion of his address virtually this year, with pre-recorded videos of questions from the audience. WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy outlined the instructions for participating:

To take part, record a video of you asking your question to Matt on your computer or phone (landscape format, please). Don’t forget to include your name and how you use WordPress! Try to keep your video to under a minute so Matt can answer as many questions as possible.

There are some positive aspects of this method but also a few drawbacks. It can create a more polished and efficient experience of Q&A where the audience is less likely to have to sit through long, rambling questions. It also allows equal opportunity for people living in all time zones to submit a question.

On the other hand, the questions will be screened and pre-selected, allowing more preparation time for the answers. A live Q&A offers the opportunity to catch the person off guard and get answers that might not be delivered the same way in a different format. Pre-recorded videos have a few trade-offs but they may be the best option we have for this event.

The deadline to submit video questions is Friday, December 11, 2020. Haden recommends participants upload their videos to YouTube as “unlisted” and send a link to ask-matt@wordcamp.org. 

Nina Simone
License: CC0 | Credit: Noord-Hollands Archief / Fotoburo de Boer

WordPress 5.6 “Simone,” named in honor of American performer and civil rights activist Nina Simone, was released today and is now available for download. The release was led by an all-women release squad, a first in WordPress history. The new version includes many enhancements for the block editor, accessibility improvements, application password support for the REST API, and a new default theme.

This release saw contributions from 605 volunteers who were involved with almost 350 Trac tickets and over 1,000 pull requests on GitHub.

The following women formed the release squad for the 5.6 release:

• Release Lead: Josepha Haden. Cohort: Chloé Bringmann and Angela Jin.
• Release Coordinator: Dee Teal. Cohort: Thelma Mutete and Laura Nelson.
• Triage Lead: Tonya Mork.
• Core Tech Lead: Helen Hou-Sandì. Cohort: Amy Kamala and Ebonie Butler.
• Editor Tech Lead: Isabel Brison. Cohort: Chandrika Guntur, Anchen le Roux, and Rebecca Hum.
• Design Leads: Ellen Bauer and Tammie Lister. Cohort: Anyssa Ferreira, Estela Rueda, Tracy Apps, and Sophia DeRosia.
• Design Tech Lead: Shital Marakana.
• Accessibility Lead: Sarah Ricker. Cohort: Hauwa Abashiya.
• Marketing and Communications Leads: Abha Thakor and Yvette Sonneveld. Cohort: Nalini Thakor, Meher Bala, Olga Gleckler, Larissa Murrillo, Michelle Frechette, Breann McDede, and Afshana Diya.
• Documentation Lead: Shawntelle Coker. Cohort: Daisy Olsen, Meher Bala, and Winstina Hughes.
• Documentation Review Lead: Michele Butcher-Jones. Cohort: Nidhi Jain and Laura Byrne Cristiano.
• Default Theme Design Lead: Mel Choyce-Dwan. Cohort: Ellen Bauer.
• Default Theme Development Lead: Carolina Nymark. Cohort: Kelly Choyce-Dwan and Jessica Lyschik.
• Default Theme Wrangler: Jessica Lyschik.
• Test Lead: Monika Rao. Cohort: Allie Nimmons.
• Support Lead: Bet Hannon.

At times, the 5.6 development cycle felt a bit rocky. Block-based widgets and nav menus, features expected to ship, were punted for a second time to a future release. These were hard decisions, but good leadership means making tough calls to hold off on features that are not ready for production.

“You know, I was really hopeful for it too, and that last-minute call was one I labored over,” said Josepha Haden after pushing block-based widgets back. “When I last looked, it did seem close to ready, but then more focused testing was done and there were some interactions that are a little rough for users. I’m grateful for that because the time to discover painful user experiences is before launch rather than after!”

Despite dropping what would have been major transitional features from the classic WordPress theming paradigm in preparation for WordPress 5.7’s expected site editor, the release still has a lot to offer.

Block Editor Enhancements

New dropdown for selecting block pattern category.

The Gutenberg plugin development team continues to make small but vital improvements to the block editor. They have also tacked on many new features in the past few months. Features from Gutenberg versions 8.6 – 9.2 are included in the update, along with bug fixes and performance improvements from 9.3 and 9.4.

Much of the work this development cycle has been focused on the upcoming site editor. There was some initial hope that a beta version of it would land in the 5.6 release. It was a part of the proposed scope. However, the feature is still months away from being ready. This is not a bad thing. It needs more time to mature, and there should be no rush in integrating a feature that affects so many pieces of the platform.

What end-users will see with this update is a more polished editor. Whether it is extra options for blocks or a dropdown select for block pattern categories, hundreds of minor changes have all led to a better overall experience.

WP Tavern has covered nearly every major Gutenberg plugin release this cycle — looks like we missed 8.8, sorry. Catch up with anything you missed about editor changes from the following posts:

• Gutenberg 8.6 Adds Cover Block Video Positioning and Updates Block Patterns
• Gutenberg 8.7 Adds Minor Changes, Updates Block Pattern Designs, and Continues Full-Site Editing Work
• Gutenberg 8.9 Brings Block-Based Widgets Out of the Experimental Stage
• Gutenberg 9.0 Brings Major Improvements to Navigation Screen and Query Block
• Gutenberg 9.1 Adds Patterns Category Dropdown and Reverts Block-Based Widgets in the Customizer
• Gutenberg 9.2 Adds Video Tracks, Improvements to Columns and Cover Blocks
• Gutenberg 9.3 Provides Indicator of Where Full-Site Editing Is Going, a Future Without Widgets and Customizer Screens
• Gutenberg 9.4 Introduces Button Width Selector and Typography Controls for List Block

Twenty Twenty-One Theme

Inserting a Twenty Twenty-One block pattern into a post.

Twenty Twenty-One, the new default theme for the upcoming year, takes full advantage of all the latest and greatest features of the block editor. While last year’s Twenty Twenty theme had a successful launch, the development team behind the new default has had more time to explore building themes in the block era.

The theme makes use of more visual artistry. It will not be for everyone. It offers a wide range of color schemes for end-users, but it lends itself best to bloggers and other creators who prefer a bit of flair with their website’s design.

The best thing is that it pushes the envelope with the block patterns feature, which was not available when Twenty Twenty landed a year ago. Older default themes will be getting the block-pattern treatment. However, Twenty Twenty-One will be the first default built with custom patterns in mind from the get-go.

For users who cannot wait for the site editor to land in WordPress, expected in some form in the 5.7 release, there is an alternate Twenty Twenty-One Blocks theme to tinker with.

Application Passwords for the REST API

Despite being a part of the core platform since 2015, the REST API has lacked support for application passwords. Such a feature is vital for third-party applications to communicate with WordPress. Previously, requests had to be run through cookie and nonce-based authentication. Else, they would need to use the legacy XML-RPC API. This limitation has also affected the mobile WordPress development teams, making it tough to support the block editor, which relies on the REST API.

The application passwords feature will make it easier for applications to make API requests as well as request and revoke credentials.

The REST API promised a future for all types of applications built upon and around WordPress. However, this vision has not panned out over the years on a broad scale. With a major limiting factor removed, perhaps there is still hope for robust applications in the coming years.

Automattic has acquired MailPoet, a popular email marketing solution for WordPress, to give WooCommerce store owners more integrated email management capabilities in the admin. The plugin is used by more than 300,000 websites for everything from building a mailing list to managing transaction and abandoned cart emails. The nine-year old company is now a team of 11 that will be joining Automattic.

MailPoet launched in 2011 under the name WYSIJA (“What you send is just awesome”), a branding misstep that founder and CEO Kim Gjerstad readily acknowledged as “a terrible idea.” The name was difficult to spell and remember. It was changed early on but the company was stuck with the “WYSIJA” slug in the WordPress plugins directory, a common issue for many plugins that have rebranded.

When MailPoet version 3 was released in 2017, the company was finally able to get the “mailpoet” slug in the plugin’s URL on WordPress.org. Version 2, which still has more than 100,000 users, has support for multisite and uses the old email designer, among other differences. MailPoet 2 has received security updates for the past three years and plans to continue these following the acquisition.

Gjerstad reported that nearly a quarter of MailPoet users are running WooCommerce stores. The plugin’s developers have been expanding its WooCommerce functionality over the past three years with features that help store owners catch customers’ emails at checkout, measure revenue per email, send automated emails using purchase data based on products purchased or product categories, customize store emails, and recover abandoned carts.

Earlier this year MailPoet introduced its own SMTP solution to ensure emails sent from the plugin land in recipients’ inboxes, instead of flagged as spam. This silent background feature includes store emails as well, bringing higher deliverability without users having to depend on separate SMTP plugins.

In WooCommerce’s acquisition announcement, CEO Paul Maiorana said adding MailPoet “helps accelerate our roadmap toward a fully-integrated commerce experience.” Last year Maiorana and Gjerstad met at WordCamp U.S. and exchanged ideas about a partnership.

“As our conversation progressed in the following months, we came to realize that we shared a common vision for stores; with store owners being able to access email right in their dashboard,” Gjerstad said.

Maiorana said Automattic’s initial focus of the acquisition is to work together on improving the experience for WooCommerce users, but the company plans to “evolve our collaboration in a way that can benefit the entire WordPress community.” MailPoet’s FAQ’s on the announcement reiterate that all WordPress users will continue to be able to use the plugin, even if they do not have a WooCommerce store. There are no immediate changes planned for the plugin’s features.

Meet Simone, our latest and greatest WordPress release. Named for the legendary performer Nina Simone, who is known for tunes like “Feeling Good”, “Young, Gifted and Black”, and “Four Women”. Fire up a playlist with her best work and read on to discover what we have in store for you.

WordPress 5.6 brings you countless ways to set your ideas free and bring them to life. With a brand-new default theme as your canvas, it supports an ever-growing collection of blocks as your brushes. Paint with words. Pictures. Sound. Or rich embedded media.

Greater layout flexibility

Bring your stories to life with more tools that let you edit your layout with or without code. Single column blocks, designs using mixed widths and columns, full-width headers, and gradients in your cover block—make small changes or big statements with equal ease!

More block patterns

In some themes, preconfigured block patterns make setting up standard pages on your site a breeze. Let the power of patterns streamline your workflow and save you clicks. Plus, share these features with clients, editors, and more.

Better video captioning

To help you add subtitles or captions to your videos, you can now upload them within your post or page. This makes it easier than ever to make your videos accessible for anyone who needs or prefers to use subtitles.

Twenty Twenty-One is here!

Twenty Twenty-One is a blank canvas for your ideas, and the block editor is the best brush. It is built for the block editor and packed with brand-new block patterns you can only get in the default themes. Try different layouts in a matter of seconds, and let the theme’s eye-catching, yet timeless design make your work shine. 

What’s more, this default theme puts accessibility at the heart of your website. It conforms to the WordPress accessibility-ready guidelines and addresses several more specialized standards from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AAA. It will help you meet the highest level of international accessibility standards when you create accessible content and choose plugins which are accessible too!

A rainbow of soft pastels

Perfect for a new year, Twenty Twenty-One gives you a range of pre-selected color palettes in pastel, all of which conform to AAA standards for contrast. You can also choose your own background color for the theme, and the theme chooses accessibility-conscious text colors for you — automatically!

Need more flexibility than that? You can also choose your own color palette from the color picker.

Improvements for everyone

Expanding auto-updates

For years, only developers have been able to update WordPress automatically. But now you have that option, right in your dashboard. If this is your first site, you have auto-updates ready to go, right now! Upgrading an existing site? No problem! Everything is the same as it was before.

Accessibility Statement 

Even if you’re not an expert, you can start letting others know about your site’s commitment to accessibility! The new feature plugin includes template copy for you to edit and publish, and it’s written to support different contexts and jurisdictions.  

Built-in Patterns

If you’ve not had the chance to play with block patterns yet, all default themes now feature a range of block patterns that let you master complex layouts with minimal effort. Customize the patterns to your liking with the copy, images, and colors that fit your story or brand. 

For developers

REST API authentication with Application Passwords

Thanks to the API’s new Application Passwords authorization feature, third-party apps can connect to your site seamlessly and securely. This new REST API feature lets you see what apps are connecting to your site and control what they do. 

More PHP 8 support

5.6 marks the first steps toward WordPress Core support for PHP 8. Now is a great time to start planning how your WordPress products, services, and sites can support the latest PHP version. For more information about what to expect next, read the PHP 8 developer note.

jQuery

Updates to jQuery in WordPress take place across three releases 5.5, 5.6, and 5.7. As we reach the mid-point of this process, run the update test plugin to check your sites for errors ahead of time.    

If you find issues with the way your site looks ( e.g. a slider doesn’t work, a button is stuck — that sort of thing), install the jQuery Migrate plugin.

Check out the Field Guide

Read about the latest version of WordPress in this guide. It highlights developer notes for each change in the release. 

The Squad

The WordPress 5.6 release comes to you from an all-women and non-binary identifying release squad:  

• Release Lead: Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune).  Cohort: Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann) and Angela Jin (@angelasjin).
• Release Coordinator: Dee Teal (@thewebprincess).  Cohort: Thelma Mutete (@thelmachido) and Laura Nelson (@laurora).
• Triage Lead: Tonya Mork (@hellofromtonya). 
• Core Tech Lead: Helen Hou-Sandì (@helen).  Cohort: Amy Kamala (@amykamala) and Ebonie Butler (@metalandcoffee).
• Editor Tech Lead: Isabel Brison (@isabel_brison).  Cohort: Chandrika Guntur (@cguntur), Anchen le Roux (@anchenlr), and Rebecca Hum (@rebasaurus).
• Design Leads: Ellen Bauer (@elmastudio) and Tammie Lister (@karmatosed).  Cohort: Anyssa Ferreira (@anyssa), Estela Rueda (@estelaris), Tracy Apps (@tray), and Sophia DeRosia (@eringoblog).
• Design Tech Lead: Shital Marakana (@shital-patel).
• Accessibility Lead: Sarah Ricker (@sarahricker). Cohort: Hauwa Abashiya (@azhiyadev).
• Marketing & Communications Leads: Abha Thakor (@webcommsat) and Yvette Sonneveld (@yvettesonneveld). Cohort: Nalini Thakor (@nalininonstopnewsuk), Meher Bala (@meher), Olga Gleckler (@ogleckler), Larissa Murrillo (@lmurillom), Michelle Frechette (@michelleames), Breann McDede (@bmcdede), and Afshana Diya (@afshanadiya).
• Documentation Lead: Shawntelle Coker (@sncoker). Cohort: Daisy Olsen (@DaisyO), Meher Bala (@meher), Winstina Hughes (@planningwrite).
• Documentation Review Lead: Michele Butcher-Jones (@m_butcher).  Cohort: Nidhi Jain (@jainnidhi), Laura Byrne Cristiano (@newyorkerlaura).
• Default Theme Design Lead: Mel Choyce-Dwan (@melchoyce).  Cohort: Ellen Bauer (@elmastudio).
• Default Theme Development Lead: Carolina Nymark (@poena).  Cohort: Kelly Choyce-Dwan (@ryelle) and Jessica Lyschik (@luminuu).
• Default Theme Wrangler: Jessica Lyschik (@luminuu).
• Test Lead: Monika Rao (@monikarao).  Cohort: Allie Nimmons (@alliennimmons).
• Support Lead: Bet Hannon (@bethannon1).

As always, this release reflects the hard work of 605 generous volunteer contributors. They collaborated on nearly 350 tickets on Trac and over 1,000 pull requests on GitHub.

Özgür KARALAR, 1naveengiri, A5hleyRich, Aaron D. Campbell, Aaron Jorbin, aaronrobertshaw, abderrahman, Abha Thakor, Abhijit Rakas, Abhishek Pokhriyal, acosmin, Adam Silverstein, Adam Zielinski, Addie, Adrián de Grafreak, Adrianti Rusli, Afshana Diya, Ahmed Chaion, Ahmed Elgameel, ajensen, Ajit Bohra, Akira Tachibana, aktasfatih, Albert Juhé Lluveras, albertomake, Alex Concha, Alex Kirk, Alex Kozack, Alex Lende, Alex Mills, Alex Standiford, Alex Stine, allancole, Allie Nimmons, ambienthack, Amit Dudhat, Amol Vhankalas, Amy Kamala, Anand Upadhyay, Anchen le Roux, Anders Norén, Andrea Fercia, Andrea Middleton, Andrei Baicus, Andrei Draganescu, Andrew Duthie, Andrew Nacin, Andrew Ozz, Andrey "Rarst" Savchenko, Andy Fragen, Andy Peatling, Andy Skelton, Andy Stitt, Angel Hess, Angela Jin, Ankit Gade, Ankit Panchal, Anne McCarthy, Anthony Burchell, Anthony Hortin, Anton Lukin, Antonis Lilis, anuj2, Anyssa Ferreira, apedog, Apermo, archduck, archon810, Ari Stathopoulos, arippberger, arjendejong, ArnaudBan, Arpit G Shah, Arslan Ahmed, Arslan Ahmed Kalwar, Asvin Balloo, Atharva Dhekne, Austin Passy, austin880625, avixansa, ayesh, Ayesh Karunaratne, BackuPs, Barry, Bart Czyz, bduclos, Beatriz Fialho, Ben Meredith, Bernhard Kau, Bernhard Reiter, Bet Hannon, Beth Soderberg, bgermann, Bhagvan Mangukiya, bhautikvirani, Billy S, Birgir Erlendsson (birgire), Birgit Pauli-Haack, bobbingwide, BoldGrid, Boone Gorges, Boy Witthaya, Brady Vercher, Brandon Kraft, Brandon Payton, Breann McDede, Brent Miller, Brent Swisher, Brian Henry, Brian Hogg, bridgetwillard, brijeshb42, Burhan Nasir, Caleb Burks, Calin Don, Cameron Voell, campusboy, Carike, Carolina Nymark, Caroline, ceyhun0, Chad Reitsma, Chandrika Guntur, Chetan Prajapati, chexwarrior, Chintan hingrajiya, Chip Snyder, Chloé Bringmann, Chouby, Chris Alexander, Chris Van Patten, chriscct7, Christian Martin, Christoph Herr, Christopher Churchill, chunkysteveo, Claudiu Lodromanean, Clayton Collie, Collins Agbonghama, Commeuneimage, Copons, Corey Salzano, cpapazoglou, cranewest, Csaba (LittleBigThings), ctmartin, Dávid Szabó, Daisy Olsen, Dan Farrow, Daniel Bachhuber, Daniel Richards, Daniele Scasciafratte, danieltj, dantahoua, Darin Kotter, Dave McHale, David Aguilera, David Anderson, David Baumwald, David Gwyer, David Herrera, David Shanske, David Smith, David Wolfpaw, david.binda, Davis Shaver, dd32, Dean, Debabrata Karfa, Dee Teal, Deepak Lalwani, dekervit, demetris (Demetris Kikizas), Denis de Bernardy, Derek Herman, Designer023, dfenton, Dharmesh Patel, Dharmin Shah, Dhruvin, Dhul Wells, dietpawel, Dilip Bheda, dingo-d, DjZoNe, dogwithblog, Dominik Schilling, donmhico, donsony, Dossy Shiobara, dpacks, Dr. Ronny Harbich, dratwas, Drew Jaynes, dsifford, dushakov, dushanthi, dyrer, Earle Davies, Ebonie Butler, Edi Amin, Ella van Durpe, Ellen Bauer, Enej Bajgorić, Enrique Sánchez, epiqueras, Erik Betshammar, erikjandelange, Erin 'Folletto' Casali, eringoblog, eroraghav, Estela Rueda, etoledom, EugeneBos, Evan Mullins, Fabian, Fabian Kägy, Fabian Todt, Felipe Elia, Felix Arntz, Ferenc Forgacs, Florian TIAR, flymike, Francesca Marano, Frank Klein, Frankie Jarrett, fullofcaffeine, Gan Eng Chin, Garrett Hyder, Gary Cao, Gary Jones, Gary Pendergast, gchtr, Gennady Kovshenin, George, George Stephanis, geriux, Glauber Mota, glendaviesnz, goldenapples, Greg Ziółkowski, guidooffermans, gumacahin, H-var, hakre, happiryu, Hareesh, Haris Zulfiqar, harrym, harshbarach, Hauwa Abashiya, Haz, Helen Hou-Sandí, Henry Wright, Herre Groen, HoaSi, Hong Nga Nguyen, Howdy_McGee, Hugh Lashbrooke, Ian Dunn, Igor Radovanov, Imran Sayed, ingereck, Ipstenu (Mika Epstein), iqbalbary, Irene Strikkers, Isabel Brison, jagirbaheshwp, Jake Spurlock, Jake Whiteley, James Collins, James Koster, James Nylen, James Rosado, jameslnewell, Jan Thiel, Janvo Aldred, Jared Cobb, Jason Caldwell, Jason LeMahieu (MadtownLems), javorszky, Jaydip Rami, Jean-Baptiste Audras, Jeff Matson, Jeff Ong, Jeff Paul, jeffikus, jellypixel, Jeremy Felt, Jeremy Scott, Jeremy Yip, Jeroen Rotty, jeryj, Jeslen Bucci, Jessica Lyschik, jfoulquier, jimyaghi, Jip Moors, Joe Dolson, Joe McGill, joelclimbsthings, joelyoder, Joen Asmussen, Johanna de Vos, John Blackbourn, John Godley, John James Jacoby, Jon Brown, Jonathan Bossenger, Jonathan Desrosiers, Jonathan Stegall, Jonny Harris, Jono Alderson, Joost de Valk, jordesign, Jorge Bernal, Jorge Costa, joseaneto, Josepha Haden, Josh Levinson, Josh Pollock, joshuatf, JOTAKI, Taisuke, Joy, jsnajdr, Juliette Reinders Folmer, Junaid Bhura, Justin Ahinon, justlevine, K. Adam White, Kai Hao, Kailey (trepmal), Kalpesh Akabari, Karthik Bhat, Kaspars, Kelly Dwan, Kelly Hoffman, Kelly R, kellybleck, kellylawrence, Kevin Hagerty, Kharis Sulistiyono, Kipperlenny, Kiril Zhelyazkov, Kirsty Burgoine, Kishan Jasani, Kite, KittMedia, kjbenk, Kjell Reigstad, Knut Sparhell, komagain, Konstantin Obenland, Krupa, Kyle B. Johnson, landau, Larissa Murillo, latifi, Laura Byrne, Laura Nelson, Laxman Prajapati, leogermani, Lester Chan, Leutrim Husaj, lim3ra, Lionel Pointet, llizard, Louis, Luca Grandicelli, Luigi Cavalieri, Luke Cavanagh, Lumne, mager19, Maggie Cabrera, Mahesh Waghmare, mailnew2ster, Mainul Hassan Main, malinajirka, manzwebdesigns, Marcus Kazmierczak, Marek Hrabe, Marie Comet, Marijn, Marin Atanasov, Marius Jensen, Mark Jaquith, Mark Parnell, Mark Robson, Mark Smallman, Mark Uraine, Marko Heijnen, markshep, Marty Helmick, Mary Baum, Mateus Machado Luna, Mathieu Viet, Matias Ventura, Matt Cromwell, Matt Gibson, Matt Keys, Matt Mullenweg, Matt Wiebe, mattchowning, Matthias Pfefferle, mattoperry, Mayank Majeji, Meagan Hanes, Meg Phillips, Meher Bala, Mel Choyce-Dwan, mgol, mgrenierfarmmedia, Michael Arestad, Michael Beckwith, Michele Butcher-Jones, Michelle Frechette, Miguel Fonseca, mihdan, Mike Schroder, mikelopez, Mikey Arce, Milan Dinić, Milana Cap, Mitchell Bennis, mmarco9, Mohammad Jangda, Monika Rao, mopsyd, Morgan Estes, Morgan Kay, Morteza Geransayeh, mqudsi, mreishus, mrgrt, mrjoeldean, Mukesh Panchal, munyagu, musicaljoeker, mweichert, n5hzr, Nabil Moqbel, Nalini Thakor, Naoki Ohashi, Naoko Takano, Nate Gay, Nathan Johnson, Navanath Bhosale, Naveen Kharwar, Neil James (lcyh78), nendeb, net, Netravnen, nicomollet, Nidhi Jain, Niels Lange, Nik Tsekouras, Nikola, Nikolay Bachiyski, njbrown, nlpro, Noah Allen, noahshrader, nourma, O André, oakesjosh, oguzkocer, Olga Gleckler, Omar Alshaker, Omar Reiss, oolleegg55, Optimizing Matters, Ov3rfly, ovann86, ovenall, oxyc, Paal Joachim Romdahl, pabloselin, Paddy, Pankaj Mohale, Pascal Birchler, Pascal Casier, Paul Bearne, Paul Biron, Paul Bunkham, Paul Schreiber, Paul Stonier, Paul Von Schrottky, Pedro Mendonça, pentatonicfunk, pepe, Peter Elmered, Peter Smits, Peter Wilson, Phil Johnston, Pierre Gordon, Pilar Mera, Pinar, Piotrek Boniu, pishmishy, pkvillanueva, prashanttholia, Pratik K. Yadav, Presskopp, presstoke, prionkor, psealock, Puneet Sahalot, Q, Rachel Baker, Rajan Vijayan, rajeshsingh520, Rami Yushuvaev, Ravi Vaghela, ravipatel, rebasaurus, redstar504, Regan Khadgi, Rene Hermenau, retlehs, retrofox, riaanlom, Riad Benguella, ribaricplusplus, Rich Tabor, Rnaby, Robert Anderson, Robert Chapin, Rodrigo Arias, rogerlos, roikles, Rolf Siebers, Ronak Ganatra, roo2, rtagliento, Ryan Fredlund, Ryan Kienstra, Ryan McCue, Ryan Welcher, Sören Wrede, Sabrina Zeidan, Saeed Fard, salvoaranzulla, Sam Fullalove, Sam Webster, Samuel Wood (Otto), Sanjeev Aryal, Saqib Ameen, Sarah Ricker, sarayourfriend, sawanoboly, scarolan, Scott Cariss, Scott Reilly, scribu, scruffian, seanpaulrasmussen, Sebastian Pisula, SeBsZ, Senning, Sergey Biryukov, Sergey Yakimov, SergioEstevao, shaunandrews, Shawntelle Coker, Shital Marakana, shramee, Simon Resok, sirreal, smerriman, snapfractalpop, sproutchris, Stéphane Treilhou, Stanko Metodiev, Stefano Garuti, Stephen Bernhardt, Steve Dufresne, Steven Stern (sterndata), stevenlinx, Stoyan Georgiev, sudoshreyansh, Syed Balkhi, szaqal21, Tammie Lister, TeBenachi, techboyg5, Tellyworth, thefarlilacfield, Thelma Mutete, thib3113, thijsvanloef, Thomas M, Thomas Patrick Levy, thomaslhotta, Tim Havinga, Tim Hengeveld, Timi Wahalahti, Timothy Jacobs, TimoTijhof, Tkama, tmdesigned, TobiasBg, tobifjellner (Tor-Bjorn Fjellner), Tonya Mork, Toro_Unit (Hiroshi Urabe), torres126, Torsten Landsiedel, Towhidul I Chowdhury, tracy apps, treibstoff, Trisha Cornelius, Tung Du, tzafrir, Udit Desai, Ulrich, uxkai, Valentin Bora, Varun Sharma, vcanales, vidhiaddweb, Vinayak Anivase, Vinita Tandulkar, Vinny, virgodesign, WebMan Design | Oliver Juhas, Webmigrates Technologies, Weston Ruter, William Earnhardt, williampatton, Winstina Hughes, wittich, worldweb, Y_Kolev, Yan Sern, Yoav Farhi, yscik, Yui, Yvette Sonneveld, and Zebulan Stanphill.

In addition, many thanks to all of the community volunteers who contribute in the support forums. They answer questions from people across the world, whether they are using WordPress for the first time, or they’ve been around since the first release all the way back in 2003. These releases are as successful as they are because of their efforts!

Finally, thanks to all the community translators who helped make WordPress 5.6. available in 38 languages at the time of release. Our community translators are hard at work ensuring more languages are on their way (70 are already at 90%). If contributing to WordPress appeals to you, it’s easy to learn more. Check out Make WordPress or the core development blog.

Easy WP SMTP has patched a vulnerability that allows attackers to capture the password reset link from the plugin’s debug log file and gain unauthorized access to the site. The plugin is used by more than 500,000 WordPress sites to configure and send all outgoing emails via a SMTP server so they are less likely to end up in recipients’ junk/spam folders.

WPScan categorized the vulnerability as a “sensitive data disclosure:”

The plugin has an optional debug log file generated with a random name, located in the plugin folder and which contains all email messages sent. However, this folder does not have any index page, allowing access to log file on servers with the directory listing enabled or misconfigured. This could allow attackers to gain unauthorised access to the blog by reseting the admin password by getting the reset link from the log.

Easy WP SMTP version 1.4.3 contains the fix, adding an empty “index.html” file to the plugin’s folder to prevent anyone from browsing the files (even if the Option -Indexes is missing on that server). Users are advised to update immediately, as the vulnerability has already been exploited in the wild. Several users took to the plugin’s support forums to report attempts on their sites.

Jerome Bruandet, a security researcher from NinTechNet, reported the vulnerability and published a post explaining how an attacker might access the debug log where the plugin writes all the email messages sent by the site. Using author archive scans, the hacker can find a username and then send a password reset email that gets intercepted via the Easy WP SMTP debug log file:

At the time of publishing, approximately 51.8% of users are on 1.4.x versions of the plugin. Without a more specific breakdown, it’s not clear how many users have updated to the patched 1.4.3 version. Approximately 59,000 sites have downloaded the plugin today, leaving many installations still vulnerable.

This is another case where automatic background updates on plugins can quietly save the day. Users who have auto-updates enabled for plugins have already received the fix. Administrators for older installations of WordPress or sites where auto-updates have been disabled will need to update manually as soon as possible.

State of the Word is an annual keynote address delivered by the project co-founder, Matt Mullenweg. Catch this year’s keynote in the video below!

New to State of the Word?

If this is your first time hearing of this talk, you’re in luck! Check out previous recordings below.

• State of the Word 2019 – WordCamp US, St. Louis
• State of the Word 2018 – WordCamp US, Nashville
• All recordings

The State of CSS 2020 survey results have just been published, with a summary of the tools, methodologies, frameworks, and libraries that are currently favored by CSS professionals. It includes data from 11,492 respondents in 102 countries, after the questions were translated for the first time into a dozen different languages.

In the layout category, CSS Grid logged a 34% increase over the prior year in respondents who report having used it to position elements on the screen. It won an award for “Most Adopted Feature,” which is assigned to the feature with the largest year-over-year ”have used” progression. Only 6% of respondents said they have used Subgrid, which is included in Level 2 of the CSS Grid Layout specification.

CSS Flexible Box Layout has been used by 97.5% of respondents, a ~3% increase over the previous year. Multi-column Layout saw a moderate increase in usage and a small decrease in awareness. CSS Grid experienced the most growth by far in this category.

The technologies section is one of the most interesting parts of the survey, as the CSS ecosystem is constantly changing. The results include a scatter plot graph showing the relationship between each technology’s satisfaction ratio and its user count. Technologies in the “avoid” and “analyze” groupings are likely to decline in usage soon (or have already fallen out of favor).

Tailwind CSS is once again the front-runner among CSS frameworks, followed by Bulma, which seems to be slowly waning in popularity. Tailwind CSS won the award for “Most Adopted Technology,” given to the technology with the largest year-over-year “would use again” progression, with a +17.8% progression over 2019. PureCSS, Ant Design, and Materialize CSS also recorded gains in their rankings from the previous year.

A larger trend emerging is utility-first CSS frameworks and tools gaining momentum among professionals. The utility-first approach, which eschews traditional semantic class naming in favor of more functional class names, has its ardent critics. It is somewhat of an eyesore reminiscent of inline styles, and essentially drops the “cascading” aspect of CSS. Nevertheless, its proponents appreciate being able to look at the HTML and see at a glance which styles are applied, as well as the enforced consistency it offers.

If you are interested in some of the finer details on which properties and positioning features professionals are using, shapes, graphics, and interactions, check out the full report. Each section has recommended resources for learning more about popular and emerging technologies and techniques, including industry podcasts and blogs that professionals are currently enjoying.

The State of JavaScript survey is also now open, which offers a similar treasure trove of data on the JavaScript ecosystem once the results are published.

Although the promise of effective COVID-19 vaccines is shining a light at the end of a long tunnel, the world remains firmly in the virus’ grip until distribution can ramp up to cover at-risk groups as well as the general populace.

As pandemic-weary communities muster the discipline to ride out the next few months under continued restrictions, a new discussion popped up on WordPress.org regarding the return to in-person events. WordPress has canceled all in-person events through the end of the year and 2021 flagship events have already been designated as online-only. Community organizer Angela Jin cited recent successful vaccine trials as a prompt for discussing how WordPress can safely resume in-person events:

There has been promising news around some successful trials for vaccines recently! As such, it seems worthwhile to discuss how the WordPress community can return to hosting safe, in-person events. 

Any in-person event would certainly be subject to local laws and any restrictions on gatherings, as they’ve always been. Beyond what local health authorities require, the Global Community Team may need to to help organizers identify what additional precautions are necessary to ensure in-person events are safe for participants. 

Jin offered several examples of “additional precautions” to ensure events are safe, such as mandatory masks, social distancing, outdoor events, limits on the number of attendees, and no food or drink service.

Although countries like Australia, Taiwan, and New Zealand, seem to have adequately contained the virus, the U.S., Europe, India, and Russia have cases spiraling out of control. The discussion seems oddly timed, as this week the U.S., which is leading the world in deaths, has seen daily deaths climb to 2,804, surpassing the previous record of 2,607 reported on April 15, during the first wave of the pandemic.

Several of those commenting mentioned that the discussion opener neglects a critical detail about whether or not in-person events would resume before vaccines are widely distributed.

“I’m surprised I don’t see mention of the vaccine being a requirement,” Mika Epstein said. “I could assume so, but the risk of COVID is human life.

“That means that unless WordPress (or any public event) has a way to ensure that no one will contract (and die) of COVID, then they have no business having any event, indoor or outdoor.

“Not every country is handling things equally well, and just in the US alone, there are many places where the law says ‘do not have events’ but the local authorities refuse to intercede, which resulted in 80% of the people attending an outdoor party not too far from me all testing positive.”

WordPress is a global community and reliance on local laws may still put event attendees at risk in communities that have been subject to a failure of leadership in protecting citizens.

Cami Kaos, an eight-year WordPress community organizer, echoed these thoughts, saying, “The one thing we need to have in place in order to make a safe re-entry into in person events is to have wide spread access to an effective vaccine.” She commented on the difficulties of trying to ensure attendees don’t inadvertently put each other at risk:

It’s all well and good for us to say you can only organize within the recommendations of your local community, but we have no way of knowing how responsible individuals are being. Of knowing if they have come in from out of town for the event. If a member of their household is a frontline worker who might be exposed daily, if someone in their family is high risk and we could be endangering a life.

Without widely distributed vaccines, hosting in-person gatherings with the possibility of attendees traveling from hotspot locations would be unconscionable.

Kaos also commented on how difficult enforcement would be for WordPress community volunteers who would be tasked with making sure individuals wear masks properly, use hand sanitizer, maintain distance, and uphold any other requirements.

“All of this would be putting unpaid and uncompensated volunteers at risk unnecessarily,” Kaos said.

“If people would like to make the choice to see their friends and collaborators in person, that can be their choice. But I don’t feel morally comfortable legally and finically supporting in-person gatherings when I think we could prevent even one death by extending our pause on in-person events to wait for a vaccine to be readily available.”

Other commenters discussed how to manage the logistics of sponsoring masks and sanitizer for organizers by coordinating with local venues and figuring out a way around slow international shipments.

“This actually opens totally new ways to organize WordPress events!” WordCamp organizer Timi Wahalahti said. “Why not have a bicycle trip or something similar with your WordPress friends?”

Live event recordings are another consideration for hosting events in a way that is accessible to more vulnerable populations. According to WordPress community organizer Andrea Middleton, professional video recording has historically been cost prohibitive at scale.

“A year ago focusing on recordings may have sounded in some ways counterproductive to growing in-person events,” WordPress core contributor David Ryan said. “But I think today they provide a short-term fix to the head count crunch, can help bring/keep folx in-the-fold while making in-person attendance even safer, all while adding long-term value even when travel and gatherings normalize.”

The discussion on finding a safe path forward for restarting in-person events will be open until December 16, 2020. Organizers and community members can comment on the post for consideration. Angela Jin said the Community Team will continue to support online events in 2021 and beyond, regardless of any decisions resulting from the discussion.

Gutenberg 9.5 went live today. The development team is continuing forward with work that we will start seeing down the road in WordPress 5.7 and beyond. The big user-facing highlights for this release were the additions of a full-height alignment option for the Cover block, font-size support in the Code block, and improved previews for block patterns.

The majority of users will not see most of the work that went into the 9.5 release. The team addressed dozens of bugs and enhancements for the full-site editing feature. To test them, users must be using a block-based WordPress theme, such as Twenty Twenty-One Blocks, Q, or Block-Based Bosco.

We are a long way from seeing a production-ready site editor, but it is nice to see the improvements with each major Gutenberg release, such as the ability to set a post’s featured image if it doesn’t exist. The new description, status, and theme admin columns for templates and template parts add useful information. And, the developer side of me is happy to see a new wp_theme taxonomy for grouping templates under the hood rather than metadata.

The development team has made progress on the Query block. It is probably the most important piece of the full-site editing puzzle, and its current state is still holding back movement on block-based themes. The block now sports a new “grid view” option. There is also a Posts List variation that sets up a default of listing blog posts and excluding sticky posts. This block variation is a step toward pushing third-party plugin developers into creating custom variations for their post types in the future, building from the example set by WordPress.

Full-Screen Cover Block

Setting the Cover block to full height.

The Gutenberg team added a new Full Height Alignment toolbar option to the Cover block. This is an independent alignment option and does not interfere with the existing horizontal alignments.

When adding the Cover block to a post, users will see a new frame-like button in the toolbar. After clicking, it will automatically set the height setting in the block options to 100 vh, which is the full height of the browser viewport. This option is far more flexible than having users set a height with pixel units, which do not automatically adjust based on the visitor’s screen size.

By combining this new alignment with full-width alignment, users can create full-screen layouts with the Cover block.

The new toolbar control will likely land in other core blocks. The Media & Text block is another good use case. Plus, third-party plugin developers can integrate it into their blocks. As its use becomes more widespread in blocks, it will offer more robust design options for theme developers too.

Change Code Block Font Size

Setting the Code block’s font size.

The Code block now has the same font-size option as other text-based blocks, such as Paragraph and List. In general, users should probably shy away from adjusting this on a per-post basis and stick to the global default set by their theme or the Global Styles options when they eventually land in WordPress.

However, there are use cases where it makes sense to change the code font-size in particular layouts. I imagine some development-related site owners will want to highlight or showcase code in some way.

With that in mind, it would be interesting to see other design options brought to Code block. Currently, it does not offer much in the way of customization, but color and background options could allow users to spruce up their code examples a bit without relying on a third-party plugin for that extra bit of pizzazz.

November 2020 saw several updates to the WordPress 5.6 release. Read on to follow all the latest news from the WordPress world!

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WordPress 5.6 updates

The Core team released WordPress 5.6 Beta 3 on Nov. 2, Beta 4 on Nov. 12, release candidate 1 on Nov. 17, and release candidate 2 on Dec. 1. You can test the Beta versions and the release candidates by downloading them from WordPress.org or by using the WordPress Beta Tester plugin. Check out the WordPress 5.6 field guide to understand the features of WordPress 5.6 and learn how you can incorporate them into your websites. WordPress 5.6 will be out by Dec. 9, 2020.

But our work is never done: You can submit feature suggestions for WordPress 5.7 by Dec. 15. 

Want to contribute to upcoming WordPress releases? Join the WordPress Core dev chats on Wednesdays at 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. UTC in the #core channel on the Make WordPress Slack, and catch up with recaps on the Core team blog. If you would like to help with WordPress 5.6 outreach, contact the WordPress Marketing team on the #marketing channel.

Gutenberg 9.3 and 9.4 are out

Contributor teams released Gutenberg Version 9.3 on Nov. 4 and Version 9.4 on Nov. 18. Both versions include  several improvements to Full Site Editing (FSE) flows, in addition to bug fixes and feature upgrades. Version 9.3 is the first release that isn’t included entirely in WordPress 5.6; the version automatically enables FSE experiments when a block-based theme is active. Version 9.4 introduces some new features like percentage width for button blocks, block variation transformations, social icon support, and font size support for the list block. You can find out more about the Gutenberg roadmap in the What’s next in Gutenberg blog post.

Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the Core team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Learn WordPress updates

WordPress contributor teams are all set to launch Learn WordPress in December. Community members can now watch video workshops to learn about various WordPress topics, participate in discussion groups, and use lesson plans for organizing their own workshops. Contributor teams have launched quizzes and are also working on setting standards for workshops.

Want to contribute to Learn WordPress? You can now submit a workshop application (submissions in languages other than English are welcome!), apply to become a discussion group leader, organize discussions for your local WordPress meetup group, or help fix issues with existing lesson plans.

WordPress 5.6 Translations and Polyglots survey

WordPress 5.6 is ready to be translated and is now at hard string freeze. If you would like to contribute, check out these instructions and ensure that your locale is ready for an automated release. The Polyglots team has also kicked off its translator research survey. Please participate in the survey, share the survey link with members of your locale, and help amplify the Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn posts about it.

Want to help WordPress speak your language? Follow the Polyglots team blog and join the #polyglots channel in the Making WordPress Slack group. 

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Further Reading:

• PHP 8 is out, and WordPress 5.6 aims to be “beta-compatible” with the latest PHP version.
• Contributor teams have kicked off an ongoing discussion on starter content for WordPress themes. Starter content for the Twenty Twenty One, Twenty Twenty, and Twenty Seventeen themes are now available.
• The Accessibility team is testing a tool to generate the structure of an accessibility statement for WordPress websites based on W3C standards, and it is requesting feedback from the community.
• The WordPress Foundation has published a report on Open Source workshops that were held online in 2020, based on the Learn WordPress platform.
• The Docs team is actively following up on a proposal to restructure the Gutenberg developer documentation.
• The Community team is back with Tuesday Trainings. The team is also inviting suggestions on team goals for 2021 with a deadline of Dec. 14.
• The Support team is making changes to the forum page to improve discoverability. 
• Two online WordCamps took place in November: WordCamp Finland Online and WordCamp Mexico Online. You can find Livestream recaps of the events on their websites. Videos will soon be available on WordPress.tv as well.
• The Themes team made some changes to WordPress theme requirements. These include removing updated CSS guidelines and a proposed plan to make WordPress themes accessibility-ready. The team is also requesting feedback on the resolution process for issues found in live themes.
• WordPress 5.6 will feature a major jQuery change, with the bundled jQuery version being updated to Version 3.5.1 and jQuery Migrate being updated to Version 3.3.2.
• The Diversity speaker training group of the Community team is requesting feedback on reimagining their work. Please share your feedback as comments on the post by Dec. 18.

Have a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it here.

Multidots, a development agency and WordPress VIP Agency Partner, has released a plugin that brings content collaboration to the block editor. The Google-Doc Style Gutenberg Block Commenting plugin landed on WordPress.org in October and is just starting to gain traction.

It adds inline commenting to the editor where users can highlight text or select entire blocks and leave a comment. Other users can leave comments and/or mark the thread as resolved for a collaborative editing experience. Alternatively, the post author can use comments for making notes on sections that need to be improved or reviewed prior to publishing. The features support the following editorial workflow:

• Add comments on Gutenberg blocks
• Reply to comment
• Get feedback
• Resolve it
• Get email notification of resolved comments

Multidots has a live demo set up where you can test leaving comments, replies, and marking threads as resolved. The plugin is currently compatible with a range of text-based blocks that are part of a page or post. Commenting can be accessed by highlighting text and then clicking on the dropdown arrow in the toolbar. Inline comments can be displayed or hidden via the icon in the top toolbar.

The plugin restricts adding and editing comments to Super Administrators, Administrators, and Editors. These user roles can edit their own comments but cannot edit or delete those added by other users.

Google-Doc Style Gutenberg Block Commenting could be useful for organizations where multiple teams need to review content before publishing. Not having the ability to collaborate using the block editor may even be a deal breaker for some teams that are considering WordPress. When collaborating on posts in the past I have often used Google Docs just for the ability to give inline comments with notifications. This plugin cuts many time-consuming steps out of that process, such as obtaining collaborators’ Gmail addresses, pasting the most recent version of the post into a document, and ultimately having to paste it all back into the editor.

The plugin’s authors consider this a beta version and plan to add more features based on community feedback. After testing it, I found that resolved threads seem to disappear, but it might be helpful to have a lasting record of them. Users cannot comment on images or other types of non-text-based blocks, and this seems somewhat limiting. There are no notifications for comments – only resolved threads, which makes it difficult to know when content needs further review.

Multidots is planning for the next release to be a more optimized version with enhanced commenting features, including the ability to leave popup suggestions for adding/removing certain text at a specific location and asynchronous commenting. Anyone interested in following the progress or contributing can find the project on GitHub.

The second release candidate for WordPress 5.6 is here!

WordPress 5.6 is slated for release on December 8, 2020, and we need your help to get there—if you haven’t tried 5.6 yet, now is the time!

You can test WordPress 5.6 release candidate 2 in two ways:

• Try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (choose the “bleeding edge nightlies” option).
• Or download the release candidate here (zip).

Thank you to all of the contributors who tested the Beta releases and gave feedback. Testing for bugs is a critical part of polishing every release and a great way to contribute to WordPress.

Plugin and Theme Developers

Please test your plugins and themes against WordPress 5.6 and update the Tested up to version in the readme file to 5.6. If you find compatibility problems, please be sure to post to the support forums. That way, those can be figured out before the final release.

For a more detailed breakdown of the changes included in WordPress 5.6, check out the WordPress 5.6 beta 1 post. The WordPress 5.6 Field Guide is also out! It’s your source for details on all the major changes.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages!

Think you found a bug? Post it to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We would love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report you can file one on WordPress Trac. Don’t forget to check the list of known bugs!

Fränk Klein, a Principal Engineer at Human Made, is now the second theme developer to release a block-based theme to the WordPress theme directory. Block-Based Bosco is a recreation of his Bosco theme, which he released in 2014.

Block-based themes, also called FSE (full-site editing) themes, are currently experimental. They require the use of the Gutenberg plugin, which will automatically detect their structure and activate the beta version of the site editor. This system allows users to experience a WordPress install that is comprised entirely of blocks. Widgets, nav menus, and the customizer screens are out. Everything from posts to site headers to navigation is handled through HTML templates, which users can customize via the site editor. It is still a raw experience but continually improves with each update of the Gutenberg plugin.

Just over a month ago, Themes Team representative Ari Stathopoulos released the first block-based theme, named Q, to the official theme directory. It was both a milestone in WordPress theming history and an invitation for developers to follow his lead.

We have since seen the initial work toward a block-based version of the upcoming Twenty Twenty-One default theme. It is not yet in the directory, but the community should expect it soon.

Developers like Klein and Stathopoulos are paving the way for others. For those who do not have the time or the inclination to scour the Gutenberg plugin’s code or follow dozens of tickets, they can take the easy route. Study the code of people who have done the legwork.

Klein has also written a detailed post titled What I Learned Building a Full-Site Editing Theme in which he goes into detail about his experience. Despite his optimism for the future of theming, he does not shy away from the problems he stumbled upon. It is a must-read for any theme author who is preparing to take the plunge into block-based theme building.

One thing that some developers may find surprising or may even make them feel slightly uncomfortable is that Klein spent much of his development time working from the site editor rather than in a code editor. “It’s likely that this will be the future workflow for creating themes,” he wrote. “Because not only can you edit a theme visually, but it’s also much more practical than writing block markup by hand. Especially because the interface makes it easy to discover the different options offered by blocks, so that you can adjust them as needed for your desired theme design.”

About the Theme

Block-Based Bosco in the site editor.

Block-Based Bosco is relatively simple. It is a one-column, no-sidebar theme, which is what most block-based themes will look like at the moment.

“Full-site editing themes are still missing a lot of essential features,” wrote Klein. “Therefore it’s important to choose a theme design that fits with these constraints. Else you’re going to have a very frustrating experience.”

Unlike Q, which is a bare-bones theme primarily for testing theme-related features, Block-Based Bosco is based on a design that users might want to actually use on a site, at least someday. Currently, full-site editing is not yet ready for use with production sites. The theme design holds up well for a simple personal blog.

There are things the theme could do better in the short term. Offering support for wide and full alignments would be ideal, particularly for a one-column theme. The editor and front-end content width also do not match, so it is not a perfect what-you-see-is-what-you-get experience. These are not make-or-break features for these types of experimental themes at this point. We are simply in the testing ground stage.

Right now, end-users need to start tinkering with themes like Block-Based Bosco — please do so on a test install and not a live site — and offering feedback. They also allow other developers to get more comfortable with a new system before it suddenly feels like it comes crashing down in 2021.

Opening Up the Theme Directory

One thing is obvious at this point. The WordPress theme directory needs to allow theme authors to upload block-based themes without hacks or other workarounds. Block-Based Bosco and similar themes are currently being shipped with dummy files, such as header.php and footer.php, and unnecessary PHP code in functions.php to bypass the Theme Check system. With these extra files and code removed, block-based themes are minuscule in comparison to traditional WordPress themes.

There is an open ticket on the WordPress Meta Trac and a patch for the Theme Check plugin. Someone needs to pull the trigger and make it happen.

Six months ago, Admin 2020 captured the attention of WordPress users with its fresh approach to skinning the admin screens. Version 2 of the plugin has been completely rewritten to support a modular architecture so users can enable or disable features, or selectively enable them by user role or username. Some users prefer the default menu but want to be able to categorize their media into folders with the plugin’s CMS-friendly architecture for organizing media and posts. This update significantly improves performance for those who don’t require the analytics, admin bar, menu, or other features.

The plugin now has a new settings interface that is less cluttered than the previous version.

“Admin 2020 started off as a WordPress admin theme, and that was always at the core of the plugin,” developer Mark Ashton said. “As we grew, we added more and more features on top of that and it became very difficult in its current iteration to separate those feature sets, or disable some features and let others carry on.”

Version 2 also greatly improves compatibility with other plugins. Ashton was spending a lot of time adding support for other plugins, which slowed down development. The new approach to compatibility causes fewer styling conflicts and works without having to add custom stylesheets for other plugins. Prior to this version, Admin 2020 disabled 90% of WordPress admin styling and applied its own.

“While this gave us complete control over layouts and styling, it was one of the reasons we had to spend a lot of time adding support for other plugins,” Ashton said. “So for version 2, we kept the WP styling (most of it anyway) and applied a lightweight theme on top of it. The end result is a theme that is more refined, quicker, and the most compatible we have ever put out.
Usually the only plugins we have problems with these days are the ones that actively disable non standard WP scripts and styles, which obviously breaks admin 2020’s layout.”

In the interest of keeping Admin 2020 lightweight, the plugin now uses a custom build of the UIkit framework that is more tailored to its specific use case.

“Instead of having uikit as a base, and then layering on top of it, we just tailored it to suit the plugin needs and thanks to the wonders of scss it is an incredibly easy framework to modify,” Ashton said. “Doing this also allowed us to support RTL much easier which was a very common feature request.”

New Admin 2020 Lite Version Offers Basic Features, Coming to WordPress.org in 2021

Admin 2020 is now available on the plugin’s website in a Lite version for free. In recognition of WordPress.org’s undeniable force as a distribution channel, Ashton is considering changing his previous strategy of pursuing a fully commercial model to embrace the idea of marketing a free plugin with a paid upgrade.

“Admin 2020 has grown so much since we launched in May this year and it’s no longer just an admin theme,” Ashton said. “In fact, we see it as more of an admin extension now that also has a theme. Because of this, we felt there are now enough features to be able to offer the lite and pro versions.”

With the new modular system in version 2, the free and commercial versions are the same plugins, except the lite version has the paid modules removed.

“This means the development of the two versions is synched and updates, new features and bug fixes all rollout at the same time,” Ashton said. “For the time being we are going to stick to our own distribution channel just to keep everything streamlined, but releasing through wordpress.org is something we have planned for next year.”

Launching a new business during a pandemic is no easy feat but Ashton has grown Admin 2020’s user base to 3,642 active installations and is still looking to hire someone to assist in developing and maintaining the plugin.

“This has grown dramatically since the release of version 2 and will likely be around 5,000 or more in a week due to the sales from the Black Friday/Cyber Monday event,” he said.

Next up on the roadmap, Admin 2020 users can expect more customization options and deeper integration with WooCommerce. Ashton is currently working on the custom admin pages feature set that will allow users to create admin pages using the block editor and some of the more popular page builders.

“We are also working on expanding our WooCommerce integration with the idea of having a full suite of cards and data available on the overview page to help better visualize your business and sales,” Ashton said. “We are also going to be changing admin 2020’s name towards the end of the year but I won’t say what to just yet.”

Álvaro García wrote the first code for his Block Navigation plugin back in November 2018. It is one of those hidden gems that I wish I had known about two years ago as I began using the block editor. It has been available. I simply did not know about it until blindly stumbling upon it in a discussion in the WordPress Gutenberg Community group on Facebook.

The goal of the plugin is to provide an alternative to the editor’s current navigation. For the most part, it excels. WordPress has set the bar so low that any improvement seems like a godsend.

The plugin adds a new sidebar panel titled Block Navigation. That panel then lists each block with the added context needed to understand what block it is associated with in the content. For example, a Paragraph block in the navigation list will display its first few words. Other blocks do the same. Images and galleries in the list display their respective thumbnails. It handles nested blocks too.

All users must do is search for and click on the block they want to jump to in the content.

Navigating to specific paragraph in the document.

The plugin is packed with several other features. Users can shift blocks up and down from the navigation panel. They can also move blocks anywhere in the document with the click of a button or remove them altogether.

One of the more interesting features of the Block Navigation plugin is its ability to log a block’s data to the console. For developers, this could be a handy feature to quickly look up information for a block. While I doubt the average user would use it, there might be some potential applications for support requests, particularly with third-party block plugins.

Console log of a block’s data.

The downside of the plugin is that it does not provide a color scheme that simply matches the default WordPress color palette. However, it does provide a dozen color options for users to choose from. The Banana (light) scheme seemed the least out of place.

With the navigation being handled in the sidebar, it could interfere with some users’ workflows. For users who prefer to keep the block options sidebar available at all times, they will need to switch back and forth between sidebars. The plugin does provide a button for switching to each block’s setting via its submenu (vertical ellipsis icon) in the navigation list.

The thing that would make this plugin better would be putting it into the editor toolbar, replacing the current Outline dropdown.

It Should Be a Core WordPress Feature

The block editor’s Outline dropdown is lackluster at best. For short posts, it is unnecessary. For long posts, there is no context for any of the blocks in the list. The goal is to be able to jump to specific points in the document without scrolling. However, unless you know the exact location in the block you want to jump to, it can sometimes be impossible to use the feature.

Outline dropdown.

The Document Outline section of the Details dropdown provides some much-needed context. It displays the post’s headings. However, this outline does not allow users to click on an item and jump to its associated block.

Details dropdown.

Paal Joachim Romdahl proposed a fix for the Outline dropdown in October 2018. “What about just using the icon and then showing some of the text in the beginning of the paragraph?” he asked in a GitHub ticket that has seen no discussion for nearly a year.

There is currently an open pull request on GitHub to merge the Details and Outline dropdowns in the toolbar. The original proposal added a tabbed interface. However, an alternative patch without the tabs proposed in the same ticket would merge the best of both worlds by adding the more-detailed structural outline while linking to the blocks in the document.

The only question left now is whether I can still update my WordPress 5.7 wish list to include this feature.