The Social Web Foundation was officially launched on September 24, 2024, with a mission to foster a “growing, healthy, financially viable, and multi-polar Fediverse.” This non-profit organization is spearheaded by Evan Prodromou (Research Director), Mallory Knodel (Executive Director), and Tom Coates (Product Director) and is dedicated to uniting social networks through the open standard protocol, ActivityPub.

The Fediverse is a collection of interconnected, decentralized social media platforms that communicate using open protocols, with ActivityPub—developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)—as the primary standard. “Until now, no major organization has taken on advocacy for ActivityPub as its central goal. Many people have ideas about what the Fediverse needs to be bigger, safer, and easier to use. But the solutions they propose fall between the cracks of anyone implementer or service. We want the SWF to be the entity that takes on those jobs.”, said Evan Prodromou, often referred to as “The Father of the Fediverse.”

Tom Coates emphasized the foundation’s straightforward goal: “Fundamentally, its goal is pretty simple – it’s there to help the Fediverse grow in a sustainable and healthy way that benefits everyone.”

The Social Web Foundation is our best chance to establish the conditions in which the new social media operates with zero harm.

– Mallory Knodel

The foundation aims to address challenges within the ActivityPub ecosystem and support its growth, especially in the commercial sector. Key areas of focus include:

• People: Educating the public about the Fediverse and its benefits.
• Policy: Clarifying policy frameworks for international and federated networks.
• Protocol: Developing and maintaining open standards.
• Plumbing: Building the necessary infrastructure

Thirteen prominent companies, including Automattic, Mastodon, Meta, Ghost, and Medium, are backing the foundation.

Automattic & Fediverse

Automattic’s involvement with the Social Web Foundation comes as no surprise, given its long-standing contributions to the Fediverse. Back in 2021, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg expressed interest in bringing ActivityPub support to Tumblr. In 2023, Automattic acquired the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress from German developer Matthias Pfefferle and made the ActivityPub feature available across all WordPress.com plans.

“Automattic is excited about the launch of the Social Web Foundation and its mission. We’re eager to collaborate with the Foundation to expand platform diversity and enhance the support for various content types—especially long-form content—within the Fediverse, fostering greater interoperability across the ecosystem.”, said Matthias Pfefferle, Open Web Lead at Automattic.

To know more about Automattic and Fediverse, check the YouTube series, The Fediverse Files. 

While the controversy between Automattic and WP Engine was unfolding, social media discussions surged about whether Automattic employees not agreeing with Matt were offered an ultimatum to quit and exit with a generous payout. 

 In response, Matt Mullenweg addressed the situation in a blog post titled Automattic Alignment. He has clarified that: “It became clear a good chunk of my Automattic colleagues disagreed with me and our actions. So we decided to design the most generous buy-out package possible, we called it an Alignment Offer: if you resigned before 20:00 UTC on Thursday, October 3, 2024, you would receive $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher. But you’d lose access to Automattic that evening, and you wouldn’t be eligible to boomerang (what we call re-hires). HR added some extra details to sweeten the deal; we wanted to make it as enticing as possible.”

Matt revealed that 159 employees, representing 8.4% of the workforce, accepted the offer. Of these, 79.2% were part of Automattic’s Ecosystem businesses, while 18.2% came from Cosmos, working on apps like Pocket Casts, Day One, Tumblr, and Cloudup.

“It was an emotional roller coaster of a week. The day you hire someone you aren’t expecting them to resign or be fired, you’re hoping for a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Every resignation stings a bit.”, Matt added. 

Automattic referred to this move as “a strategic realignment to better pursue our core values and operational goals.” 

We remain deeply grateful to all our employees, past and present. For those who have chosen new paths, we sincerely wish them the best, and thank them for helping make Automattic what it is today. We emerge from this chapter with a renewed vigor and clarity in our mission.

– Automattic 

159 People Accepted the Offer 

In a surprising turn, the names of people leaving Automattic include Josepha Haden Chompsky, the Executive Director of the WordPress project. “While my next steps aren’t yet clear, I hope to never be too far from this community that taught me so much.”, she said.

Other notable departures include Naoka Takano (Open Source Project Manager), Daniel Walmsley (AI Engineer and Architect), Jeffrey Pearce (Team Lead) and Reyes Martínez (Communications Wrangler & WordPress Media Corps lead). Daniel Bachhuber (head of WordPress.com) also left but posted this in LinkedIn: “I believe in Matt. Leaving Automattic for other reasons. It’s a bummer, and I will miss everyone there.”

91.6% of Automatticians are Staying

Meanwhile, 91.6% of Automattic employees chose to stay, with many expressing support for Matt’s decisions on X. 

Community Response

As usual, the community remains divided, with some praising the offer’s generosity while others are worried.

As mentioned above, 79.2% of the people who left Automattic were working on WordPress.org projects. The Marketing Team again got the short end of the stick with WordPress Media Corps’s future in doubt due to Reyes Martínez’s resignation. The coming days will provide more clarity on the effects this development has on WordPress.

Ari Levy at CNBC has a great article covering the battle between WordPress and Silver Lake / WP Engine: Why WordPress [co-]founder Matt Mullenweg has gone ‘nuclear’ against tech investing giant Silver Lake.

Winston Churchill said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Since I last blogged here, WP Engine filed a meritless lawsuit and Automattic responded, and there’s been a hurricane of public activity and press. Inside of Automattic, there’s been a parallel debate and process.

Silver Lake and WP Engine’s attacks on me and Automattic, while spurious, have been effective. It became clear a good chunk of my Automattic colleagues disagreed with me and our actions.

So we decided to design the most generous buy-out package possible, we called it an Alignment Offer: if you resigned before 20:00 UTC on Thursday, October 3, 2024, you would receive $30,000 or six months of salary, whichever is higher. But you’d lose access to Automattic that evening, and you wouldn’t be eligible to boomerang (what we call re-hires). HR added some extra details to sweeten the deal; we wanted to make it as enticing as possible.

I’ve been asking people to vote with their wallet a lot recently, and this is another example!

159 people took the offer, 8.4% of the company, the other 91.6% gave up $126M of potential severance to stay! 63.5% were male. 53% were in the US. By division it impacted our Ecosystem / WordPress areas the most: 79.2% of the people who took it were in our Ecosystem businesses, compared to 18.2% from Cosmos (our apps like Pocket Casts, Day One, Tumblr, Cloudup). 18 people made over 200k/yr! 1 person started two days before the deadline. 4 people took it then changed their minds.

It was an emotional roller coaster of a week. The day you hire someone you aren’t expecting them to resign or be fired, you’re hoping for a long and mutually beneficial relationship. Every resignation stings a bit.

However now, I feel much lighter. I’m grateful and thankful for all the people who took the offer, and even more excited to work with those who turned down $126M to stay. As the kids say, LFG!

Security Review Lead Chris Christoff has announced two new changes for the WordPress Plugin Directory, effective from October 1, 2024. These changes aim to enhance plugin directory security and promote best practices among plugin developers.

Mandatory Two-Factor Authentication

As of October 1, 2024, all plugin owners and committers must enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) to submit new plugins to the WordPress Plugin Directory. This change was announced by Automattic-sponsored developer Dion Hulse last month.

Plugin owners are encouraged to enable 2FA, review committers’ access levels, and use additional security features like the SVN password option and Release Confirmation. Detailed guides on Configuring Two-Factor Authentication and Keeping Your Plugin Committer Accounts Secure are also available.

Plugin Check Tool

From now on, any new plugin submitted to the Plugin Directory will first go through a pre-submission check using the Plugin Check tool. If any errors are found, the submission will be blocked until they are fixed.

This new step aims to reduce the review queue by enabling plugin authors to catch common issues before submitting their plugins for manual review. Plugin Check helps by identifying frequent issues, such as mismatched versions between the plugin header and the readme.txt file, incorrect text domains, and erroneous “Tested To” values in the readme. Although Plugin Check adds a layer of automation, it will not replace the manual review of plugins.

David Perez from the Plugin Review Team recommended making Plugin Check a part of the development workflow as “In addition to things relevant for the review process, the tool flags violations or concerns around plugin development best practices, from basic requirements like correct usage of internationalization functions to accessibility, performance, and security best practices. It does so using both static checks using PHP_CodeSniffer and dynamic checks, where it actually activates your plugin to test it “live”.”

The Plugins Team is working to expand Plugin Check’s coverage to existing plugins. A roadmap detailing this broader application will be released in the coming months. Contributors can help improve the tool via its GitHub Repo.

The WordPress community has responded positively to these updates. Josepha Haden Chomphosy tweeted “This was years in the making and is a huge deal. Congratulations (and big thanks) to everyone who contributed!”

These two measures are expected to help the WordPress Plugin Team improve the security of the platform while reducing the backlog of plugins awaiting approval.

As the Automattic-WP Engine controversy continues, Automattic published the term sheet delivered to WP Engine on September 20, 2024. “In the interest of transparency, we’ve published the term sheet we offered to @LeeEWittlinger and @heatherjbrunner, it’s a simple one-pager.”, tweeted Matt Mullenweg.

The announcement post reveals that initial discussions between Automattic and WP Engine began in February 2023, led by Matt Mullenweg and continued by Toni Schneider during Mullenweg’s sabbatical.

The term sheet outlines five key points regarding a trademark license agreement. Under the terms, Automattic would grant WP Engine the rights to use WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks and branding, with WP Engine agreeing to follow all relevant guidelines. WP Engine was presented with three options for compensation:

• Pay Automattic a royalty fee of 8% of its gross revenue on a monthly basis, along with a detailed report of its gross revenue, granting Automattic full audit rights.
• Allocate 8% of its revenue to employee salaries for work on core WordPress features under the direction of WordPress.org, with both WordPress.org and Automattic retaining audit rights.
• Combination of the above two options. 

The term sheet also prevents WP Engine from modifying or forking any software from Automattic, WooCommerce, or its affiliates. The agreement is for seven years with automatic one-year renewals.

However, the announcement post has a critical update: “Given WP Engine’s behavior, deception, and incompetence since September 20th these terms are no longer sufficient.”

Matt also told The Repository, “That deal’s not on the table anymore. We’re seeking more, not 8%. I don’t want to speculate on what the deal might be… In July it was less than 8%, it was smaller. In September it was 8%. The deal they have to do next could be taking over the company, they have no leverage.” 

Public reactions to Mullenweg’s tweet sharing the term sheet have been mixed, with most replies critical of him, though some view the terms as reasonable.

The final results of a survey by Matt from The WP Minute:

During the ongoing discussions, co-founder & CEO of Cloudflare Matthew Prince offered to donate the capacity to power WordPress.org for the community. 

Meanwhile, the controversy seems to be spilling into Automattic, too. 

After a brief reprieve, WP Engine has been banned again from WordPress.org and the company took to X to share: “Thousands of WordPress community members have once again been blocked from accessing WordPress.org. WP Engine has commenced deployment of its solution for accessing updates and installations for plugins and themes across our customers’ sites. We expect deployment of the solution to all customers to be completed within the hour.”

The next tweet read: “We are pleased to report that our solution has been fully deployed and regular workflow practices have been restored to our customers around the globe. We thank all our customers for their patience and support over the past week. Like so many of you, we love WordPress, and are committed to the stability and longevity of the community.”

WP Engine Website Updates

WP Engine has made several changes to its website, including reducing the use of the word “WordPress” and adding a new footer clarifying its trademark usage.

The names of its pricing plans have been updated, omitting “WordPress” from the titles.

WP And Legal Stuff has covered more details on the website changes. 

WP Engine has not offered any explanation about the solution beyond what was shared on Twitter, though people have been asking for more details. 

WP Engine has been silent since the start of the incidents, while Matt has been going all-out speaking about the issues. Matt even issued an open invite to Lee Wittlinger, Managing Director of Silver Lake. “Lee, let’s debate this publicly. Propose a neutral venue and moderator,” he said in a post titled “Where is Lee Wittlinger?” “Why is WP Engine scared of talking to journalists live?”, he had asked earlier.

He also published his charitable contributions from 2011 to 2023, shared how WP Engine is violating WordPress’ trademarks, and gave interviews to Theo – t3․gg and WP Minute.

The community is deeply troubled by the proceedings but both sides do not show any signs of backing down.

On the podcast today we have Andy Fragen.

Andy is a dedicated member of the WordPress community as well as a trauma surgeon. Somehow he manages to balance the demands of his profession with his passion for the community and, as you will hear, to important work inside of WordPress Core. Even while in the operating room, waiting for patients to be prepped, Andy has been known to find moments to answer forum questions and provide support to others. It’s truly remarkable.

Andy talks about the important topic of automatic rollbacks in WordPress, a feature aimed at reverting to a previous version if an automatic plugin or theme update fails, ensuring the website remains functional for users. I’ve managed to encapsulate the idea into the previous sentence, but as you will hear, the execution of that idea was anything other than straightforward.

Andy discusses the origins of the rollback feature. The team working on this problem identified complexities and potential fatal errors during plugin updates and came up with a simple yet effective solution which worked, but as with so much in code, some edge cases meant that the road to a fully workable solution for all WordPress users was not quite in sight. Many times the drawing board had to be dusted off and the problem looked at once again.

While developing this feature, numerous challenges were encountered, from finding consistent test conditions to managing technical limitations. Andy shares insights into the critical role of testing and collaboration with hosting companies, meticulous attention to detail, and problem-solving skills developed to combat issues like file write delays and loopback test redirects.

Andy explains how the team managed to avoid fatal errors in active plugins with extensive testing and incremental improvements. They introduced functionalities like WP error checks, simulation features for testing error handling, and a new move directory function to enhance reliability.

Andy also discusses the broader impact of their rollback efforts. Many users might not notice this new feature, but in a sense that’s how it should be. The more unnoticeable to end-users update failures are, the better. It means that sites that would previously have been broken, are now working, and that’s a win for everyone.

If you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes development of a WordPress feature that quietly keeps your website running smoothly, and in hearing how a dedicated contributor balances his passion for WordPress with a demanding medical career, this episode is for you.

Useful links

Andy’s WordPress.org profile

core-rollback on GitHub

In this episode of Do the Woo, Michelle Frechette, guest hosting for the first time, joins fellow WordPress Accessibility Day organizers, Sarah Kornblum and Ryan Bracey, to discuss the upcoming 24-hour event on October 9th and 10th, 2024. Together, they chat about the importance of web accessibility, the challenges of organizing a global event, and the various ways accessibility improves the user experience for everyone.

Whether you’re a developer, designer, or content creator, this episode highlights why WordPress Accessibility Day is an essential resource for anyone in the WordPress community.

Takeaways

Web Accessibility Benefits Everyone: The hosts emphasize that web accessibility is not just about helping people with permanent disabilities but improves the experience for all users. Features like better contrast, structured navigation, and user-friendly designs make websites easier to use for everyone, including those with temporary or situational impairments.

Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference: Simple adjustments, both in physical spaces and on the web, like curb cuts or focus outlines, improve access for a wider audience. Accessibility features benefit all users, not just those with specific disabilities.

WordPress Accessibility Day is Global: The event has speakers from 12 different countries, showcasing diverse perspectives on accessibility from around the world. This international focus enhances the inclusivity of the event and the information shared.

It’s a Free Event with a Wide Range of Topics: WordPress Accessibility Day covers accessibility for all levels—from beginners to experts. There are sessions tailored for content creators, designers, developers, and team leaders, making it a valuable resource for anyone in the WordPress community.

Inclusivity Goes Beyond Design: Beyond aesthetics, accessibility is about creating websites and digital experiences that everyone can navigate and use. Good design doesn’t compromise accessibility—it enhances it.

Live and Accessible: All sessions at WPAccessibility Day will feature live human captioning, live ASL interpretation, and will be made available on YouTube afterward with translations in multiple languages, ensuring the event is accessible to as many people as possible.

Opportunities to Get Involved: Listeners can volunteer, help with translations, or donate to support the event. This community-driven approach helps make the event free and accessible to all while ensuring that speakers, interpreters, and captioners are compensated for their work.

Links to WordPress Accessibility Day

• WordPress Accessibility Day 2024
• WordPress Accessibility Day Registration
• WordPress Accessibility Day Schedule

Connect

• Meet Michelle
• Michelle on WordPress.org
• Michelle on LinkedIn
• Second Melody
• Ryan on WordPress.org
• Ryan on LinkedIn
• Two Dogs and a Laptop
• Sarah on LinkedIn

This is a pet peeve of mine. Being a visible player in the WooCommerce (and WordPress) space, I am inundated with requests to look at stuff, connect, offer advice, all of which I’m cool with. I also keep my eye on what’s happening out there. Often this all happens on social media. But regardless of the quality of the product, there is one thing that bugs me.

Who are you?

This has happened a lot of times to me. And it happened again, so it’s fresh in my mind. a month or so ago. I was on X, saw a Woo plugin that I have never heard of and I clicked through to the site. Typically, I do two things. I glance at what the extension does, then I find out who created it. I look for the about page.

But as so often happens, there is nothing about the person, team or business behind it. Now I understand that a lot of developers are introverts. And sometimes writing about themselves can be challenging, but yet…

Absolutely nothing.

Where is the online authenticity?

Guess what people? I am not going to use— or buy— your product out of the blue, even if I really need it. Unless you tell me who the heck you are.

In that last example, I did a bit more investigation and in a roundabout way figured out it was the person who had originally tweeted it. But he didn’t make it easy.

And it didn’t change my mind about using it. Sorry.

And not too long ago I saw a different tweet. There was no link for a handle to the plugin’s Twitter page. Lo and behold, in the description, I found who created it. Following through to the site I was kept in the dark there with little information.

I cannot say if other people are like me or not. But I can only wonder if there is some specific reason you don’t want to let me know you are behind this plugin? Do you really think I will snag it up without any proof of credibility? And I’m not talking an about page that says something like:

We are a dedicated team of WooCommerce developers who really understand your needs and wanted to give you a solution that would make your life easier.

And that is it. Well, blah, blah, blah.

About pages are important. Otherwise, in the whole scheme of things, you are just another speck of dust in the cosmic universe. So, please tell me, who are you . It will certainly help you and just may put a few more bucks in your pocket and build that needed trust.

WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 is ready for download and testing!

This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, set up a test environment or a local site to explore the new features.

How to Test WordPress 6.7 Beta 1

You can test Beta 1 in any of the following ways: 

The scheduled final release date for WordPress 6.7 is November 12, 2024. Your help testing Beta and RC versions over the next six weeks is vital to ensuring the final release is everything it should be: stable, powerful, and intuitive.

How important is your testing?

Testing for issues is a critical part of developing any software, and it’s a meaningful way for anyone to contribute—whether or not you have experience.

If you encounter an issue, please share it in the Alpha/Beta area of the support forums. If you are comfortable submitting a reproducible bug report, you can do so via WordPress Trac. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs.

Curious about testing releases in general and how to get started? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core and join the #core-test channel on Making WordPress Slack.

WordPress 6.7 will include many new features that were previously only available in the Gutenberg plugin. Learn more about Gutenberg updates since WordPress 6.7 in the What’s New in Gutenberg posts for versions 18.5, 18.6, 18.7, 18.8, 18.9, 19.0, 19.1, 19.2, and 19.3.

What’s New in WordPress 6.7 Beta 1

WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 contains over 500 enhancements and over 500 bug fixes for the editor, including more than 200 tickets for WordPress 6.7 Core. Here’s a glimpse of what’s coming:

Meet the Twenty Twenty-Five theme

Launching with WordPress 6.7, the new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Five, embodies ultimate flexibility and adaptability, showcasing how WordPress empowers you to tell your story with a rich selection of patterns and styles. Inspired by glimpses of natural beauty and ancestry heritage, it evokes ideas of impermanence, the passage of time, and continuous evolution–mirroring life’s journey. Experience effortless site creation with Twenty Twenty-Five and follow its progress or report issues on this GitHub repo.

Zoom Out to Compose with Patterns

The Zoom Out view simplifies your editing experience by allowing you to create and edit at the pattern level rather than focusing on individual blocks. Easily toggle this view from the toolbar to streamline your site-building process, making it faster and more intuitive to design pages using patterns.

Media improvements 

Now supporting HEIC image uploads–automatically converted to JPEG for maximum compatibility–you can add high-quality images without worrying about browser support. Plus, enjoy auto-sizing for lazy-loaded images and expanded background image options at both individual and global levels, giving you greater control over your site’s visuals and performance. 

Expanding Block Supports

Several blocks now come with expanded support options, enabling even more design possibilities. Notably, the long-requested shadow support for Group blocks has been added, a big win for designers and theme developers!

Preview Options API 

The latest WordPress release enhances the Preview Options in the block editor, empowering developers to customize content previews. A new API allows plugins and themes to add custom items to the preview dropdown menu, enabling users to see content in different formats or environments. This flexibility enriches the editing experience while maintaining the existing familiar Preview dropdown structure.

Refined Data Views

The Data Views introduced in 6.5 continue to be improved. This release is focused on refining the experience with a few new features aimed at making these views more flexible for customization and more functional to use. 

Manage Block Bindings Directly

Updates to this API in 6.7 polish and open most of the underlying APIs, improving the overall user experience, and add a user interface (UI) that allows you to connect attributes with custom fields to their binding sources. This new UI makes it possible to create bindings directly in a block instead of needing to use the Code Editor. By default admin and editor users can create and modify bindings, but this can be overridden with `block_editor_settings_all or map_meta_cap` filters.

Simplified and Smarter Query Loop Block

The Query Loop block is improved, as it now automatically inherits the query from the template by default, eliminating the need for manual configuration. This means your posts display immediately in both the editor and on the front end, streamlining the process so users can focus on content without extra configuration needed.

Edit and Control Font Size Presets

An enhanced Styles interface allows for greater flexibility when creating, editing, removing, and applying font size presets. You can now easily modify the presets provided by a theme or create your own custom options. A key feature is the ability to toggle fluid typography, which enables responsive font scaling with additional options for finer control over responsiveness.

View Meta Boxes in the iframed Post Editor

A new split view option has been introduced that allows you to access both the editor canvas and metaboxes while editing. This change will provide a consistent WYSIWYG experience between the editor and front end views.

Template Registration API

With this release, developers can now more easily register custom block templates without complex filters. Streamline your development process and create custom templates with ease. 

The features included in this first beta may change before the final release of WordPress 6.7, based on what testers like you find.

Get an overview of the 6.7 release cycle and check the Make WordPress Core blog for 6.7-related posts in the next few weeks for further details.

Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta & Release Candidate

The WordPress community sponsors a monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities. This reward doubles during the period between Beta 1 on October 1, 2024 and the final Release Candidate (RC) scheduled for November 5, 2024. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page and in the security white paper.

Just for you: a Beta 1 haiku

Lines of code arise, 
Testing shapes the future path,  
WordPress grows once more.

Props to @annezazu, @cbringmann, @colorful-tones, @courane01, @desrosj, @marybaum, and @priethor or reviewing and collaborating on this post!

InstaWP, known for its innovative one-click WordPress sandbox launcher, has launched AnyoneCanWP, the world’s first online hackathon dedicated to WordPress development. Registrations are open now, and participants can submit their projects until October 26.

The hackathon will officially begin on October 11, 2024, with a keynote address by Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast SEO and a pivotal figure in the WordPress ecosystem. This sets the stage for an engaging competition where developers and designers can showcase their skills.

Important Dates

• Hackathon Start Date: October 11, 2024
• Submission Deadline: October 26, 2024
• Public Voting Period: October 18 – October 28, 2024
• Final Presentations and Judging: November 10, 2024

To participate, individuals must first register with an email address to receive official details and an invitation. Participants can create their projects using InstaWP’s 1-click sandbox launcher. Projects must be completed within a 15-day timeframe using only free plugins and themes.

During the public voting phase, which runs from October 18 to October 28, participants can promote their projects and engage with the community to gather votes.

The hackathon jury includes WordPress celebrities, including Miriam Schwab (Head of WordPress Relations at Elementor and co-founder of Strattic), Jamie Marsland (Head of WordPress YouTube), Davinder Singh Kainth (curator of the WP Weekly newsletter), and Anne-Mieke Bovelett (Accessibility advocate and multilingual WordPress expert).

The winner will take home $3,000, with second and third places receiving $1,000 and $500, respectively. All top ten participants will also get InstaWP credits and additional partner credits to elevate their WordPress projects and services. Plus, the top winners will receive a complimentary one-year premium account with InstaWP, unlocking a suite of advanced features and tools.

The event is sponsored by Automattic, who also provided seed funding to InstaWP in 2022. For more information and to register for the hackathon, interested participants can visit the official website.

For the first time, we had a invite-only lunch during the recent WordCampUS 2024. We invited our sponsors, hosts and some DTW friends. Having it during the day, and on Showcase Day, gave more opportunity to for people to fit it into their schedule. But of course, some were not able to make it as there is so much going on with meetings and other get together. But we are so happy that we were able to do it.

What was absolutely amazing is that our sponsor Avalara stepped up to sponsor the lunch. Oliver St. George who lives in Seattle is very familiar with Portland as he has lived there as well. So he was able to find us a room at the Spirit of 77, across from the convention center.

Avalara is an exclusive sponsor of our Scaling Enterprise: WordPress & OSS and a shared sponsor of Woo DevChat.

So a huge thank you to Avalara!

And check out some photos from the lunch. (We will be adding more soon)

And if you would like to see more photos from BobWP from WordCampUS 2024, check the gallery out here.

In this episode, Birgit Pauli-Haack and JC Palmes, engineering manager at WebDev Studios, discuss Gutenberg 19.3, WordPress 6.7 – Block Themes for Agencies, and WordCamp Asia.

Add a summary/excerpt here

Show Notes / Transcript

• Editor: Sandy Reed
• Logo: Mark Uraine
• Production: Birgit Pauli-Haack

Show Notes

JC Palmes

• X
• GitHub
• WordPress
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

• Website
• Embracing the Future: How WebDevStudios Is Leading with WordPress Block Themes
• Powder Theme by Brian Gardner
• WDS-BT on GitHub
• Demo Site of WDS-BT Theme
• WordCamp Asia

Announcements

• How to build a multi-block plugin
• DataViews
  • Data Views Update #2 was published 
  • Introduction to Data Views Developer Hours (Developer Hours)
  • Part 1: Using Data Views to display and interact with data in plugins 
  • Part 2:Actions from Data Views: Adding images to the Media Library
• WordPress 6.7
  • WordPress 6.7 Beta 1
  • Roadmap to 6.7

What’s released:

• Create Block Theme plugin version 2.5
• What’s new in Gutenberg 19.3? (25 September)

Stay in Touch

Transcript

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Hello, and welcome to our 108 episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. In today’s episode, we will talk about Gutenberg’s 19.3, WordPress 6.7 briefly, block themes for agencies in WordCamp Asia. I’m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack curator at the Gutenberg Times, and a full-time core contributor for the WordPress Open Source project sponsored by Automattic. For the first time on the show, I have a great pleasure to introduce to you, dear listeners, JC Palmes. She’s one of the local leads of the WordCamp Asia 2025, and in her day job, JC works as the engineering manager at WebDev Studios. Welcome to the show, JC. How are you today? How’s the weather in the Philippines?

JC Palmes: Hi, Birgit. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a real pleasure to join you on the show. The Philippines is still very warm today. Well, warmer than usual. We are supposed to have a typhoon coming up.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, no. Oh, no. So the Philippines is in the tropics, right? So it’s similar to Bangkok from the weather in Florida.

JC Palmes: More or less. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. All right. So the Philippines, I don’t know a lot about the Philippines that will change when I come over for WordCamp Asia, but the Philippines comprises of about 7,000 islands. So where do you live?

JC Palmes: Yeah. It’s 7,641 islands to be exact. It changes on a decade to decade basis, I guess. But yeah, I am in the Panay Island in the city of Iloilo and it’s a small island, but it’s a vibrant hub for tech and innovation. Yeah. It’s not as traffic heavy as Manila, which you will experience next year. You’ll love the people here if we come to visit.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, I’m sure about it. Yeah. But when you say you’re active in the community, so you organized WordPress meetups in Iloilo, and you also organized or started the WordCamp Iloilo. When did this all happen?

JC Palmes: We organized WordPress Iloilo Meetup Group around August 2016, 2017.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: You almost at eight years.

JC Palmes: Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Over eight years.

JC Palmes: Started our first WordCamp in 2018.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, wow. Yeah. And then you had one 2019, right?

JC Palmes: Yeah. We did.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Did you also organize one after the pandemic?

JC Palmes: Yes, we did. We organized… Well, we had one last 2023 and opted not to do 2024 because WordCamp Asia is going to be in the Philippines and most of my local organizers here are also organizers in WordCamp Asia and volunteers as well. So it’s a lot to ask them to pay local WordCamp as well as the flagship one.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. No, I wouldn’t have thought that there would be a local one when there is a regional one, because that takes a lot of out of you as an organizer or especially a lead organizer, but also if you just going to have a team organizing role, it’s a lot of work and you don’t want to lose focus on that. Yeah. I totally get it. Yeah. So yeah, we had the last month we got together because I connected with you about two things, right? There was one was the webinar for WebDev Studios on the lunch-and-learn.

And then we also discussed, I read the article by Lisa Sabin-Wilson on the website, WebDev Studio that you started to have working with Block Themes. And then when I read through the article, I found that you had created a starter theme that your agency is going to use for projects. So today I want to talk to you a little bit about it because we get a lot of questions about how agencies work with Block Themes and all that. So I just wanted to, being with the source as the engineering manager, I think you had a major role in putting that together.

JC Palmes: Yeah. WDSBT was, well, it’s kind of a brainchild between Lisa, me, and Mitch, our director of engineering, and it’s a starter theme. We stands for, of course, WebDev Studios Block Theme. And the goal really was to create a flexible block-based foundation that fully embraces modern WordPress capabilities while also allowing for highly customizable websites. When we initially started this, we started with Brian Gardner’s Powder theme for inspiration. But because I spearheaded the project, and really when I started this, I was learning about Block Themes, and as I go along, I found that instead of changing, adding into the Powder theme, we needed to make it entirely our own ’cause we have a design system and we need to make sure that the theme that we are going to create aligns with that design system. So the original setup with the Powder theme didn’t really align with the vision, so it was mostly overhauled by me. So…

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Tell me a little bit about the design system, because a lot of people think about design system that is not in WordPress, but maybe in Figma or in some other design tool. How are you working with that? Is that something that you now built into the Block Theme or is it separate?

JC Palmes: It’s built into the Block Theme. So what we did was take that design system, so the design system was created with blocks in mind. We have sort of redesigned the core blocks in a way that it would be easier for us to create the components that we mostly use in our projects and would be easily extendable based on, of course, on a project-to-project basis because every project is different, but all of the elements in a component are going to be the same. And the core blocks as is with our design is pretty solid, but we needed more. Well, clients needed more, and that is what our design system allows us to do. And by integrating that with the theme, it just makes our work with whatever design our senior UX designer, Jennifer Cooley creates and just makes things easier and faster.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Mm-hmm. Excellent. Excellent. So when you put this together, how long did it take you to from learning about Block Themes in zero learning to, “Okay. We have a solid foundation for our projects.”

JC Palmes: It took me probably around two, three months. It would probably take a lot, well, it would probably be faster if I already knew the structure. And I’m saying that because I’m dyslexic, so I work with patterns and learning new things kind of takes me out of my comfort zone. But because of how Block Themes in general are structured, it’s structured enough for me to pick up the patterns right away. And it took two, three months before we are actively using it on projects. So we’ve used it on three successful projects so far, launched projects.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So what did you find coming from the classic theme in the agency? So what you found easy to do with or easier maybe in switching to Block Themes and what did you think was very hard?

JC Palmes: So what was relatively easy is the process of working with native WordPress blocks. That’s the mouthful. Again, my brain works with patterns, right? I’m not sure if it’s going to be the same for other engineers, but that was what’s easy for me. And because of that, it kind of provided us with a solid foundation and really allowed for quick implementation of reusable design elements, which is integrated in our design system. And what was hard, of course, was transitioning from our wd_s PHP-based framework to a block-based approach. Although before it was transitioned into Block Themes already. It was a hybrid theme, but we were mostly using it for PHP based framework still, but transitioning meant rethinking of the entire development process, and that takes a while for it to click, and we are getting there. Again, as I mentioned, we’ve successfully launched three projects. One of those is a really big site and well, the last project that we launched is the first TrueBP Build where we did not really use any shortcuts, I guess.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Good. Good. Good.

JC Palmes: And it’s also probably one of the most successful launches that we’ve had with regards to performance and page speed and all those fun stuff. It’s a site with 18,000 plus users and it got 100 performance scores on page speed and 93 on mobile, 100 on desktop, 93 on mobile, and 93 on mobile was big.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah.

JC Palmes: Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: That’s awesome. Congratulations. Yeah.

JC Palmes: Thank you.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So you have a team of developers that also had a different level of familiarity with Block Themes and blocks. How did the transition work for them? What were the blocks mostly?

JC Palmes: Yeah. So the team that I worked with at WebDevs teachers for this particular project are, well, all of the engineers that I have on WebDevs teachers are amazing developers. The theme that created this site already established in Block Themes, although didn’t have the actual experience of building one for clients. They built one personally as I did, and I worked with them closely to make sure that we learned together.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Excellent.

JC Palmes: That’s best, right?

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

JC Palmes: And there were a lot of gutters we had to pull in Ryan and Nick. 

Birgit Pauli-Haack: You mean Ryan Welcher and Nick Diego?

JC Palmes: Ryan Welcher. Yeah. Ryan Welcher helped us a lot and figuring things out, especially with Block Bindings, that unblocked a lot of stuff for us.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Block Bindings, so it’s amazing, especially because it works so much with the meta fields and you can have your own data sources. Yeah. So what I often heard from agencies is that they don’t use core blocks, but that seems to be different in yours, in your case, that you mostly base it all on native core blocks and only have variations and primary block styles that you extend them to or with. So I think that’s a great way to leverage all the work that the developers do in core to bring those forward and you can build your sites on it. 

The last question I have on that, and then I think we can move on unless you want to say something more, is so with the Block Themes, there is also your clients are now able to create their own templates or modify the templates. Is that all open to them or what’s the training about? What’s the implementation at the clients? What’s the process there to give them that freedom?

JC Palmes: It’s open to them, but we did add in some guard rails, particularly with what we’ve set in theme Jason, but then again, it’s WordPress, it’s open for clients this time around. We did not sort of think deeply, I guess? That’s the only word they can really think of right now. Features are with a website that is designed for clients, you’ll have to be very careful with telling them what to do, how to use this block, how to figure things out.

And with Block Themes, because they’re able to just create an entire template at an entirely new header and all those stuff, we made sure that we have all of the documentation ready for them. Documentation that is part of WordPress, we just give them the link to that because you don’t have to change it out. It’s all there for them to read. We fully document any custom block that we create. And also all of the custom blocks that we do are also just core blocks. We opted to always do core blocks first if it’s doable, and just go the other route if not. But so far we were able to do everything just using core blocks.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Core blocks. Yeah. Wonderful. Excellent.

JC Palmes: And clients showing them how to use the website and with Block Themes, we thought was going to be hard. It wasn’t it. They were very happy with just having that freedom and being that it’s intuitive enough for them to just go in and add in their content. It’s just amazing to see.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So when you have one of these large projects, how many block patterns do you… What’s the good number that you use there? Is it 25 or is it 50 or is it… Yeah. I heard other people have 58 patterns in there, or 58 new blocks.

JC Palmes: Oh wow. That’s a lot.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah.

JC Palmes: Because we are leveraging core blocks, we are actively using them for everything. We have variations. So BT, WSBT, we can add in variations with just a couple lines of code and eight variations that variations and block variations. You don’t really need to create that many patterns or blocks because then they’ll be able to just use it. But of course, if there’s a sub layout, we create a pattern for that, a template pattern so that they can just add that in a page and then just change things around. I’m not exactly sure how many patterns we did for this site. I know that it’s not 50 plus, it’s less than that.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Okay. All right. Okay. So if listeners are interested in learning from you, and I know developers like to look at code and theme developers even more, especially your theme JSON and how you set up all the assets. And so your theme is available on GitHub, that’s public record, right?

JC Palmes: Yes.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: It’s in a public record.

JC Palmes: It is public now. It was silently public for the past few months, and then we opened it up publicly release this post when we set out version 1.0, and it’s that to go up to 1.5 by this week with some modifications with the versioning cache buster, and then fix this particularly to the mobile menu because that needs a lot of love.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: It does. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Especially when you have things that are you want on a desktop, but you don’t want them on the mobile and you want to kind of stack things differently in a different order. It’s really hard to implement that. Yeah. Totally get it.

JC Palmes: Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So I will show in the show notes if that’s okay with you, the GitHub repo for the WDS-BT theme. Well, maybe you could come up with a cuter name.

JC Palmes: We just really call it BT.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, of course. Block Themes, I get it. Yeah. And it’s the acronym from your company, WebDev Studio.

JC Palmes: Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Totally get it. I will share that. And I also will share, again, the link to the article that Lisa Wilson put together in the show notes so you can kind of look through it to your listeners. But I find it very interesting to talk to you about that. So thank you for sharing all your insights on that.

JC Palmes: Thank you.

Announcements

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So dear listeners, we have a few announcements for you, and it’s mostly about what’s published. So there’s a data views update number two, has been published on the design make blog with new updates on cam-sounds like what are new features on the data views. There’s some great work being done there. You can catch up with that. So it was the primary filter visibility has been changed. Then you can reorder table columns and view options. So you can hide columns, a feature that was available in the WP admin, but not always all columns and not always all columns are in there, so you can get them in and out.

And then also have a featured image and the title field in the display for pages. And then you can pin columns and rows. And the advanced filtering is really great. You can have and and/or filtering categories in tag or is any out of particular list of tags. So when you’re looking at the 2,000 or 20,000 blog posts, you can narrow down the filtering quite a bit in the admin section there. So check it out, I share it in the show notes. Then there’s two more posts on the developer blog. So if you went to block development more on the beginner side, there’s an article on how to build a multi block plugin.

So with the create-block scaffolding tool, we had a similar article about two months ago, but this is a little bit of a different approach. So you get more variations on how you can approach that, and it’s really great because it gets you step by step through that tutorial. Troy Chaplin is a new writer on the developer blog, and he is from Ottawa, Canada and is writing on the second blog now… blog post. And the second blog post was actually the second part of a series on data views on how you as a plugin developer can use it for your plugin in the admin section. So the first part came out a month ago, like using data views to display and interact with data in plugins. And then the second one is called actions from data views. So how to add the image that you bring in from the data into a media library.

So it’s kind of an app pretty much that you can build there. It’s a React app and you get through in the tutorial from beginning to end. So it’s a really interesting series of blog posts. And with that, there was a data views developer hours where both JuanMa Garrido wrote the two articles that I just mentioned. But then there was also Nick Diego was in the developer hours, and Andre Manero who’s one of the developers who put this all together. And the recording I will also share in the show notes. And the last announcement… it’s not the last announcement, the second last announcement is you take it’s about WordCamp Asia.

WordCamp Asia

JC Palmes: Oh, yeah, right. Okay. WordCamp Asia. So the next batch of tickets for WordCamp Asia 2025 will be released on October 3 at 12:00 PM Philippine time. I’m not sure what that is in UTC. I’m really bad with time zones.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, it’s kind of earlier in the day. It’s in the morning. Yeah. So October 3rd in the morning is the ticket release. Yes. Yeah. Awesome.

JC Palmes: With those who don’t know WordCamp Asia 2025 will be held at the PICC in Manila Philippines from February 20 to 2022… No, 20 to 22, 2025. So yeah, be sure to mark your calendars and secure your tickets as soon as they’re available. Maybe we can talk, if you see me just say hi.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And I just saw on Twitter a series from Sushi about the photos of the walkthrough of the organizing team in Manila. So it was, if you follow him on Twitter, I can share some links that as well in the show notes. So you can see how grand this convention center is where the conference will be held. So I’m really looking forward to that.

JC Palmes: Yeah. They’re doing that today. I did fly out because, well, I need to fly again in the next couple of weeks. But then again, also I do have one more thing with WordCamp Asia 2025, you’re also still looking for sponsors.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Okay.

JC Palmes: Yeah. So if you or your company are interested in supporting the event, feel free to reach out. I’d love to discuss how you can get involved.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And I’ll link the call for sponsors page in the show notes so you can check it out what the options are for different levels and all that and what’s all included into the sponsor packages. I think that helps. No, that was really good. Thank you. Well, that’s a few months to go. So some people are really late in their decisions and it’s the next year, so their budget is not out yet. So I can understand that some people are a little bit hesitant to get this going. So the speaker is also, you got a lot of submissions I heard for speakers.

JC Palmes: A lot.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Was it more than last year?

JC Palmes: I haven’t checked yet. So I’m mentoring sponsors, operations and the technology team. Global leads are sponsoring other teams. And then one of the local leads as well, Andrew is he is mentoring venue, which takes a lot.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, yeah.

JC Palmes: So we all have our hands full. We are getting there. We have an amazing set of organizers as usual, and I can’t wait to see them.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I’m so grateful that everybody puts things together. And the two WordCamps Asia that I… ’23 and ’24 were just amazing. And I had a great time and it was great to talk to everybody there. And they were also open. And yeah, I’ve made a lot of new friends, so happy to also hopefully get there again next year.

JC Palmes: You should. It’s in my country.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And if I come, I’ll spend a few days. So my approach is always I come in early, maybe a week or four days early, get over the jet lag, get the lay of the land. So I don’t know. So when I want to meet people. I know where the restaurants are, I know where the venue is, but I also get to do some sightseeing in a place where I haven’t been. So if it’s the first time… Yeah. I’m really looking forward to exploring Manila the few days that I have beforehand. I haven’t booked the flight yet. I need to wait for the okay. Of course, I don’t see why not. We’ll see how that goes.

JC Palmes: That would be nice. Amazing. I mean, Manila is an amazing city to explore.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: I’m looking forward to that. 

What’s Released – WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 – Create Block Theme

So next week, WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 is going to come out in October. On Thursday, October 1st, no Tuesday, sorry, on Tuesday, October 1st. And if you want to refresh what’s on the docket, I’ll share the link to the roadmap from 6.7 that Anne McCarthy put out. But I’m also hoping that by then after that, she also publishes a little bit more updated, because I know there is some change in the Zoom out feature, which I really love and I know the best part that I love will get in.

What was a little bit harder was to figure out how the editing works when you edit what you zoom out on your site for design. And if you want to contribute and have some time and want to learn at the same time, keep an eye out for that. The Make test team is about to publish with the beta, the help to test WordPress 6.7 post. It’s going to be a long one, but you can pick the features that you want to learn about or you want to test about, and the more you test, the better the version becomes. So that’s a big appeal to help us testing the beta versions.

JC Palmes: Yeah. For sure. I do want to touch on ’cause you’ve already mentioned some of the big updates, right? I think it’s also worth mentioning some of the smaller fixes that don’t always get a lot of attention, but really make a big difference in day-to-day use. There are a few things that I really love personally and versus there’s the great Block theme plugin that now allows you to, no, they rename on assets when saving or exporting, and it’s a small but neat update, but that makes asset management easier for developers working with custom fonts. And we work with custom fonts a lot.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

JC Palmes: So fonts are now copied directly to the local theme folder, which is such a time saver when dealing with multiple customizations. One other update that I think is worth mentioning is removal of the categories hidden tag.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: I haven’t mentioned anything about the… So when we are talking about now about the create Block Theme plugin new version that was released a week ago, and are you using in your Block Theme building process, the grade Block Theme plugin? How do you use that?

JC Palmes: We are. So it’s integrated in WDEVS BT, we are able to create… Well, this scaffold new blocks using a template that we have set in BT and leveraging the create-block script. So we have that added in our package JSON, and when our developers create a new block, we just run the script and it will scaffold all the files they need as part of the theme and they can just start creating a new block right away. It works right away, right away, right away. Yeah. It works. Once you run the script, it takes the template that we’ve set and then scaffold is a block and you have a very simple block showing up right away.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, okay. So that’s the create-block script. And that’s where probably Ryan came in because he’s a specialist in the…

JC Palmes: Yeah. That one.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

JC Palmes: And also we are… So this is an internal thing that we do with the create blocks plugin where we use it for a versioning thing or when we are doing patterns, changing patterns, and editing patterns and grading patterns. And it’s still a work in progress of course, but we are actively using that plugin and also the script and amazing plugins.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So the create block theme, you create the patterns in the editor and then you…

JC Palmes: Yes.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Okay. So you export them through the create block theme plugin methods into the…

JC Palmes: Yes, part of. So the create-block theme plugin right now does not really take patterns, but we somehow are finding a way to override that.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Yeah. The newest version of the create block theme plugin had a few things, and you mentioned one that was the rename of the font assets, when the theme is saved when exported, there’s also an attempt to try to add the synced patterns to the theme on save. 

JC Palmes: That one I have not tested yet.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. It hasn’t been out long enough probably.

JC Palmes: Oh, okay. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: It just came out last week. Yeah. So that is definitely something to test for theme developers and that were really waiting for that to happen. And then the remove categories hidden, you wanted to mention that?

JC Palmes: Yeah. So removing categories hidden from the default pattern header, and it’s a very subtle fix, right? But it just cleans up the UI, making it easier to manage and organize patterns, especially when you have more than 50 plus patterns.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah.

JC Palmes: So if you want to keep things tidy, you have to organize.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Yeah. And then another new feature is that it wraps the main tag around the Query Loop instead of the post content. It’s necessary because, so the skip to content kind of goes to the Query Loop instead of the full page kind of thing. So that has solved quite a few accessibility items there. And then the last one I wanted to mention is, oh yeah, that the fonts are copied and you mentioned it as well in the local theme folder. When you use a different font for a style variation, it automatically is downloaded there and added to the theme as its folder. Yeah. Cool.

JC Palmes: Yeah. I actually have two more.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Go ahead.

JC Palmes: Yeah. So you’ve mentioned the main tag that’s also one of the things, and I think that just makes it, that’s an accessibility thing that we really need to improve on and that will help ensure better semantic HTML and accessibility. And also there’s some behind the scenes cleanups that I really like and it’s removing unused styles and unused style rules in data views, and it just makes for a leaner code base and better performance.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Excellent.

JC Palmes: Also, the swapping of the pre-published check buttons was another nice tweak because I’m visual when I’m coding, so if something changes, I notice right away because dyslexic. I work in patterns. So if one thing changes and I think that is a really good change, I check it out and see how and why that is like one of the… it’s one of my top, it just makes it leaner and easier for me to work.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: I’m glad. Yeah. No. I find it very helpful to have this plugin and in combination with the site editor and then you make some changes there and it gets better and better even goes a little bit further than core, especially with the sync patterns for themes. I think that’s a little bit of a step forward that is outside of core because core is not yet ready for that and to get it into hands of theme developers to test it out and see how does it work and how good does it fit in into the development process. Yeah. So that’s our create Block Theme plugin update, and now we come from the big one, that’s the Gutenberg 19.3 plugin release. 

Gutenberg 19.3

The release had about 165 PRs following 52 contributors, including 7 first-time contributors. Kai Hao was the release lead and he published a release post that I certainly will share with you in the show notes.

Enhancements                                                       

So there are a few enhancements that we’re going to talk about. There are also new API or one new API. I’m sorry that my voice is a little horsey. I come from a week of nasty cold and I’m glad that we can connect today. Yeah. So I’m happy that you also can take over some of the things JC with me. Okay. 

So the first enhancement is actually not an enhancement. It’s kind of an update on the minimum PHP requirement for the create block script, which is 7.2. You cannot be on an older PHP version anymore. And using that script to create blocks, sometimes they need to point out that thing. So in the restore, there’s a restore, the move to trash button disappeared in the document settings and people were looking for it. They found them in the three.menu, but they needed it more prominent. So it’s coming back.

JC Palmes: Yes.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah.

JC Palmes: Thank you.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So the inspector controls, so when the developer talks about inspector controls, they talk about the sidebar on the block editor and now they changed that when for custom blocks, they didn’t always have the block name in there to highlight that out. So that has changed. It was actually a bug I would think, because you want the name of the custom block name also in the inspector control. So that has been rectified and for patterns you can now change. It’s not for the patterns, it’s for when you go to add a page, your editor always comes out with a set of patterns that are available and you don’t want them. Now there is a user preference that you can switch on or toggle on and off in your preference sidebar or tool. So the modal, you can disable that modal and not have the selection in front of you. It took a while, but there was definitely something they listen to users to have that. Same with a move to trash button. The developers always, not always, but often listen to users when there is a strong emotion coming there away.

JC Palmes: Yeah. That’s amazing. I have strong emotions with that trash button as well. Having that not there is just, it’s making things off for me.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. It’s kind of disconcerting. I want to have just trash it. Where is it? Yeah. 

Components

So in the components, it’s not a public component yet, but the developers are working on a tabs block component or a tabs component, and that is actually used throughout the editor, but it’s not available yet for blocks. It’s not public yet, but you can definitely look at the PR and see how it works so you can prepare yourself and they just improve the animation and the related utilities to make it to prepare for coming out of experimentation.

JC Palmes: Tabs block would be amazing. We’ve had to grade our own custom tabs block just because it’s not available and having that as one of the core blocks would be really awesome.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Same with the accordion block, I think there’s someone working on that as well. I saw some prototypes how that works. But yeah, it’s not going to come. I don’t think it’s going to come for 6.7 because they’re still in experimentation and we have what? Four days to go. Three days to go for beta, so I don’t think it’s coming.

JC Palmes: Yeah. Just three days.

Block Library

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So what else? The block library had some changes, especially here now for the image block. I think there was…

JC Palmes: Oh, yeah. That one. Sorry. Yeah, with dropping multiple… not just multiple images, right? So you are now able to drop any kind of media and it’ll automatically translate to whatever that is. If it’s a video, it’ll be an actual video and images. It’s a time saver.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It automatically… So if it’s all images automatically creates a gallery block.

JC Palmes: Gallery. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I tested it quite a bit and you need to be a little bit… When you drag and drop, you need to be quite precise with your mouse.

JC Palmes: With that. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. To get it next to the image that’s already there to create a gallery out of two images, but it’s just a little practice that you need. And then it’s really saving so much time to upload and download and gallery block and oh, I changed my mind. I don’t want one image, I want two images. So now I need to remove the image and put a gallery block in and yeah.

JC Palmes: Yeah. It’s just a time saver really.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Absolutely. Especially when you’re someone who changed their mind often.

JC Palmes: Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: And what’s also there now is for the gallery list block to have now added a drop-down for the taxonomies so you can really select all the categories that you want to have in there. And then there were quite a few enhancements that are coming under the umbrella of a zoom out feature. 

Zoom Out

So the zoom out mode is officially out of experiment and it’s now available to all users. And this mode allows you to zoom out, to edit, or create at the pattern level over granular block editing. So you’ll see it when you want to add a pattern to a site, an existing site kind of zooms out so you see more of your page and then you get the insert outside of that, so where you can insert it without getting into other container blocks kind of thing. Yeah. So it’s actually really neat to see how a pattern would change the content of your page in relation to the other patterns or other page content that’s there. So it’s a really interesting way of helping you with the design of things. Have you experienced that on the Gutenberg plugin level yet? 

JC Palmes: Works not so much yet. Yeah. But that is one of the things that I want to play with this week. I just didn’t have the time to do that last week, but with all of this new things, so I just want to play around with it.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, when you say play, it’s testing, right?

JC Palmes: It’s testing.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: It’s testing.

JC Palmes: Well, in my brain it’s still playing love to code. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Mine too. Yeah. It’s kind of, “Oh, I’m going to play around with that.” But it’s more like, “Yeah. We need to test it.”

JC Palmes: Testing, creating, and all that fun stuff.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Thinking about use cases, thinking about how to break it because that’s-

JC Palmes: Exactly.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: … yeah. And last month ago, or maybe three weeks ago, I got a kudos from a co-worker who said, “Well, you always find creative ways to break things.” It was my superpower, you know?

JC Palmes: Super power.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah., the zoom out toggle that is in the header section of the editor, there is a zoom out toggle. So you can say, okay, give me 50% of the view or give me the 100% that’s next to the preview tab. It might not stay there, but if you just want to kind of test it a bit and you don’t know, and I don’t always know when I would trigger that there’s an automation when all of a sudden it zooms out. But if you want to be in control of it, there’s a little toggle switch in the editor header and then you drag and drop your patterns into the zoom out mode. And then you also see of course everything in the list view and have the top level section in the zoom out mode and the list view is open. You only see the top sections of your site.

Block Editor                                                       

It’s really interesting. So the block editor got a few things. So this release also had a few other drag and drops, not only the image or the pattern, but you also can drag and drop a mix of audio and image blocks into the canvas and it will automatically create those individual blocks. That’s what you mentioned earlier as well.

JC Palmes: Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. And then there is the link editing. That’s a small fix, but it’s something that was really missing was to create a link for the phone number. So if there’s a phone number or a recognizable phone number in your content, it will automatically create the link for it. So when you watch it on or look at it in mobile, you get the button-

JC Palmes: You’ll be able to click on it. Yeah.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: … call button. Yeah.

JC Palmes: Yes. ‘Cause adding that is going to be really awesome. It’s missing, and we’ve been adding that for some clients who needed that. So having that automatically added is just a nice small thing to have.

Post Editor

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. Absolutely. So there is a new preference modal in the new media section.

JC Palmes: That I didn’t know about.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I didn’t know about it either. Yeah. So this preference for the media section is to switch on client-side media processing. So it doesn’t all have to go to server sooner or later it will go to the server, but you can do it actually in the browser window. And then you have a lot more options open for dealing with media. And it’s the first part of the client-side media processing by Pascal Birchler. He had a featured plugin where he tested all that out and now this one comes into core. That’s really great. I’m really happy about that. So it’s definitely for mobile, also interesting for mobile users because they can’t wait till everything is done on the server because if you have a slow connection, you want it still to be processed without having to wait for all the back and forth there. So that’s really cool.

JC Palmes: I just let this pre-upload compression and having that as a toggle. And then, yeah, the approval step is sometimes when media is optimized, it just does not always look the way that we want it to look. So having that approval step is nice to have.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So in the page editor, you can now double-click on the template part. So when you edit a page and you click into the template parts, it’s going to sometimes tell you this is a template part, you can’t edit that or go to the edit template part kind of screen. And now with double-click, you can switch over to template part editing. So it’s much faster now to, and if you know what you’re doing, it’s definitely helpful to have that there. I was always trying to do that with a double-click. I don’t know why, but it was kind of really-

JC Palmes: Oh, same. I do that too. I like this.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So when you publish a post in the pre-publish section there, there is a warning in a notification that you might have pictures and other from a third place so that the images are not on your site and they’re linking out to either Google or some other place. And the feature offers you to upload all the images to your own media library so you can really have your… You’re not surprised when all of a sudden images go away from the third party.

JC Palmes: That is a very helpful fix. We’ve had issues with that where with patterns, when you copy a pattern, it will try to, it’ll look for images in your local, right? And you don’t always know that it’s referencing your local, because when you look at the site and it’s uploaded on an environment, you see that images are there and it’s only because it’s referencing local images and you are viewing the site in your computer. So you see that, but other people would not know. So having that would be a lifesaver.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: And it was in the section there, but very rarely did it pop up but now… and it was only working for gallery blocks and image blocks. But if you had an image from a third party in a media text block or in a cover block, it wouldn’t come over. It wouldn’t recognize it in that, and now it does. So it’s kind of expanding that feature to other block types. And I experienced that when I was working. I’m working on a tutorial on how to use Playground for a theme demo site so you don’t have to spin up your own site and you can get everybody their own link to Playground.

And I was trying to figure out how is the content or what do I have to do with the content? And I used a theme that had some patterns with the local assets, with the theme local assets, and I needed to get those into the media library. So when I import it to Playground, it knows, okay, I have those images because it wouldn’t go back to the theme assets for that. So it was really interesting to figure that out, and this was really helpful to at least get the marker, but it didn’t do it for the cover and the media text blocks. So seeing that here in the new release is really interesting.

JC Palmes: Yeah. It’s going to be very helpful that that is missing for those blocks. And we’ve been using those blocks quite extensively.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: They’re wonderful blocks to use. Yeah. They make a really great design all the time. So the next thing is also about the pre-publish screen, but it kind of switch the cancel the publish button so that the publish button is always under the mouse. So when you hit the publish first and then the next one, it had the cancel button there. So people sometimes cancel their publishing, although they wanted to publish, so now you can just keep your mouse there and have the second publish there as well. That’s a very good and nice quality of life kind of feature, but obviously somebody needed to think of it to do that. Yeah.

JC Palmes: That’s one of the things that I mentioned earlier and one of my favorite bits, so just swapping that is just, it just reduces unnecessary cursor movement and improves the user experience.

Block Bindings

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, yeah. So totally. Then is the block bindings, your new favorite feature has an update. So what the feature does not do yet is give you an interface to actually create the post meta data or metafields, but now it uses the label that you put in your registration for the block bindings and not the variable name, which is definitely an improvement for that, especially for users who are not developers who always kind of little put back when they’re not reading normal words, but words with underscores in it and all that.

JC Palmes: I just love block bindings and I’ll always be on the lookout for whatever is new that’s going to come into it. We’ve been using that and learning more about how it works and just again, playing around with it and trying to make it do things that it’s not doing yet with core.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Which part? What are those?

JC Palmes: Well, we’ve kind of packed it around to be able to.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: I love that when you say, “Oh, we hacked around it.”

JC Palmes: Just allowing to show meta that it’s not supposed to… Well, it’s not that it’s not supposed to show it’s always there, right? It’s just not ready yet. But it’s a play around between checking on the database and then checking things on. It’s a lot of experimentation in order to get what it natively does not do what we needed it to do for the project that we were working on before.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So you were ahead of your time with your needs.

JC Palmes: Well, we had to, right? The client work that would really… We can’t really wait for when a feature that we need is going to come out and WordPress the way it is. And with all the things ready for us to just change, I guess. No, not change, build on.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. I heard from a few extenders that’s plugin developers, theme developers, agency developers that they feel, oh, it’s time that more blocks are actually… Because you can only do block bindings for four blocks. One is the paragraph block, the image block, the button block, and the headings block, but all the other blocks, you cannot do a list block with things here and all that. So yeah, it definitely is time to expand the range of blocks that can hold bindings to metadata, definitely. And I know that the team knows that they’re definitely working on it. I’m scrolling through things.

Experiments                                                       

Yeah. There is one, speaking of block bindings under the experiments is now bringing the UI to the site editor to edit the values for the metadata or the block bindings. So you can do that in your… and they built the rest API endpoints for that so they can go back to the server and come back and have it all saved. So that’s a really good… It’s an experiment. You have to enable it through the experiments page. But yeah, test it out. Developers would love your feedback on it.

JC Palmes: Oh yeah, we’ve kind of done the same thing, but it’s not visible to users. It’s more in the code where we are able to change things around. But then again, it’s having that as a visual changeable thing. It’s just going to be a time saver.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Documentation

What I also want to point out, for those who are keen on learning more about the data views, the documentation has been updated, and especially the storybook has now better styles for the combined fields stories and also allows more layout for the combined fields storybook. So definitely an enhancement for those who want to look up the documentation for the data of use. And the stories for that storybook is kind of a component, is a documentation style to have each single component outside of the context of the block editor to what are the properties and how does it behave when you change settings just alone for that component.

And it’s a really great way to learn about all the WordPress components and not a whole lot of people know about it. But that will change because the design system that the design team is working on will be also based probably on storybook because for the admin, if you ever want the data views to be part of the WordPress WPAdmin, there is a whole lot of work to be done to cement the design system about every single screen and all that. So they’re working on that for the color scheme and the typography and all that to make it more seamless. And I think somebody did a test or an audit on all the color strings that are in the WP-Admin sections. And I think she found 68 different colors. So it’s all kind of different gray tones. It’s different. Yeah, blue tones, different dark blue tones. And I was really amazing. And they definitely is not increasing the standardization when you have so many colors and a thing too about the design system-

JC Palmes: So it could be a nice thing to have that revamped on and just be able to make it more visible to everyone ’cause it’s a very helpful way to when you’re creating components and creating blocks.

Code Quality

Birgit Pauli-Haack: So the next two items I think are more for the developers because they are code quality related. The editor uses hooks instead of higher order components in the block manager. So that’s interesting for contributors. And then the data view fields store is, and the actions are moving from the editor package into the fields package. So if you have already done some exploration on the data views and data view fields, you need to make a note of that, that the package has changed a bit. I think the Gutenberg developers are very good and do the warnings in the console. So you probably see that when you use them. All right. So that’s the Gutenberg Changelog for Gutenberg plugin 19.3 and my voice is a bit fading, so I’m really happy that you walked this through with me. JC, it was wonderful to have you. We are coming to the end of the site, so if people want to get in touch with you, what is a good place for them to reach you? WP Slack or is it more on the social webs? 

JC Palmes: I’m always in Slack and I’m always on Facebook and Instagram as well.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Okay. Yeah. So I will share the links in the show notes as well too. So you can get in touch with JC Palmes if you have questions about WordCamp Asia or the Block Theme that they’re working on. It was wonderful that you have been on the show. Thank you so much. And as always, dear listeners, the show notes will be published on gutenbergtimes.com/podcast. This is episode 108, and if you have questions and suggestions or news you want us to include, send them to [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. All right. Well, thank you everybody and thank you, JC.

JC Palmes: Thanks so much for having me, Birgit. It’s been a great conversation and I really enjoyed diving into all these updates with you. This is also my first podcast, by the way.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, right. Oh, we got you.

JC Palmes: Yeah, amazing. I love it.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So until the next time then if I may, I will ask you to come to the show again, maybe after WordCamp Asia and we talk about our adventure in Manila, how about that?

JC Palmes: I love that.

Birgit Pauli-Haack: All right. Well, thank you so much. And do you have a wonderful weekend or rest of the evening for you and see you all and hear you all, dear listeners, in two weeks. Thanks again. Bye-bye.

On Thursday, a prominent developer, YouTuber, Twitch streamer, and journalist posted a video titled This might be the end of WordPress. It was very harsh. In that video you’ll hear him say about me, “he’s a chronic hater” (7:55), “seems like he’s been a pretty petty bastard for a long time now” (10:22), “I hate this shit, I hate when people are assholes and they get away with it because I’m doing it for the greater good, the fake nice guy shit. I’ll take an asshole over a fake nice guy any day, people whose whole aesthetic is being nice, I hated it.” (11:25), “Honestly I’d rather the license just be explicit about it than this weird reality of ‘If you get popular enough you can still use it but the guy who made WordPress is going to be an asshole to you.’ That seems much worse than most open source models.” (14:39)… it goes on.

Ouch!

However, one of my colleagues Batuhan is a follower of Theo’s and suggested I engage with him. It turns out we were both in San Francisco, and he was game for a livestreamed, no-conditions interview at his studio. I believe discussion is the best way to resolve conflict, that’s why my door is open to Lee Wittlinger, Heather Brunner, Brian Gardner, or any WP Engine or Silver Lake representative who wants to talk to resolve things.

Saturday afternoon I went to Theo’s studio, we had a vigorous two hour debate and discussion with some real-time chat polling that also changed my mind on a few things, and his, too. I left feeling like I had a new friend. ️And met some awesome cats. Check out the video.

Here’s a suggested intro for your show notes:

In this episode of BobWP on Community, Bob shares news about the return of the Do The Woo blog and how it will further engage the WooCommerce community.

He chats about the future of the blog, opportunities for listeners to contribute guest posts, and the plans to bring on a new co-host for this show.

Whether you’re a longtime listener, guest, or simply a member of the community, Bob invites you to join in and become an even bigger part of the conversation.

More on the blog

• More info on being submitting a guest post.
• A Blog for the Community, by the Community
• The Soft Relaunch of the Do the Woo Blog

Lee controls the board of WP Engine. The board is why WP Engine hasn’t done a trademark deal for their use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks.

You hide behind lawyers and corporate PR when you’re wrong, not when you’re right.

I’m replying on Twitter, I’m commenting on Reddit and Hacker News, I’m dropping into livestreams with ThePrimeagen and WPMinute. I’m talking to journalists whenever they reach out, and I’m happy to go on any large credible podcast or show to discuss these issues.

Lee could do the same. Why isn’t he?

Lee is a managing director of a $102B private equity firm, he is probably richer than me. (Though I doubt he gives back as much.)

“Because their lawyers are telling him not to.” Why do you think their lawyers are telling them not to?

Open invite: Lee, let’s debate this publicly. Propose a neutral venue and moderator.

Anil Gupta has made an amazing commitment to the WordPress ecosystem. I applaud the way he runs his business.

Matt Mullenweg has announced that the restrictions on WP Engine will be temporarily lifted until October 1, 00:00 UTC, allowing them to access WordPress servers. WP Engine was banned on September 25 from utilizing any WordPress.org resources following legal actions related to trademark disputes, which left WP Engine customers unable to access the Plugin/Theme directory or update their websites

The temporary reprieve gives WP Engine time to “spin up their mirrors of all WordPress.org’s resources that they were using for free while not paying and making legal threats against us.”, according to the official statement.

The announcement post blamed WP Engine for the situation: “WP Engine was well aware that we could remove access when they chose to ignore our efforts to resolve our differences and enter into a commercial licensing agreement. Heather Brunner, Lee Wittlinger, and their Board chose to take this risk. WPE was also aware that they were placing this risk directly on WPE customers. You could assume that WPE has a workaround ready, or they were simply reckless in supporting their customers. Silver Lake and WP Engine put their customers at risk, not me.”

Matt tweeted, “We’ve removed all network blocks so anything they’ve having trouble with is a result of their own work.” In another tweet, he clarified, “Silver Lake is the only entity we have beef with.” During the WP Minute live stream, Matt reiterated that the WP Engine situation was uniquely bad and that he doesn’t foresee this happening again with any other hosting provider.

On the same livestream, Matt was asked by Brian Coords about allowing WP Engine users more time to transition to new hosts. Matt acknowledged the suggestion, admitting it was a valid point.

WP Engine tweeted: “We’re pleased to see access restored to the repository of WordPress plugins for our customers who operate their sites with us at WP Engine.”

The community remains divided—some support the decision, while others are less impressed.

While the reprieve is a temporary solution, it remains to be seen how the situation will unfold in the long run.

Hi there,

This was anything but a slow WordPress news week, though, however none of it related to the software and the block editor. There are a few WordPress news places where you get updates and opinions. Official WordPress news is one, Michelle Frechette over at Post Status has a great summary with links: Give Back … Deeply, Matt Medeiros and the WP Minute team share what they know, and Anil Gupta, Multidots is taking a stand for the WordPress Ecosystem: why we must all give back 

Next week, WordPress 6.7 Beta 1 is on the schedule for October 1, 2024. To refresh what is on the docket for this next version you can consult Roadmap to 6.7. If you want to contribute and learn at the same time, keep an eye out for the “Help to test WordPress 6.7” post from the Make Test team as well.

I’ve been battling a nasty cold all week, and it seems I just need to let it run its course. I apologize in advance if my thoughts aren’t entirely coherent. To minimize any potential embarrassment, I’m keeping this weekend’s edition brief.

I will be taking a social media break for a few days, too, it’s good for my mental health people tell me.

Yours, 💕
Birgit

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

Release lead, Kai Hao, shared in his post What’s new in Gutenberg 19.3? (25 September) the highlights from the new version:

• Zoom Out Mode
• Swap the position of the publish buttons
• Use custom block names in inspector controls
• Allow opting out of the “Choose a pattern” modal when adding new pages
• Automatic phone number linking
• Allow dropping multiple images to the image block

Joen Asmussen published his 64th Design Share and shows off the work of the WordPress Design team of the last two weeks:

• Global styles iA
• WP Briefing Landing Page
• Adding “Drag” to Image Placeholder Text
• WP.org: Moving “Log in” to the secondary navigation
• Figma Organization for the new design system
• Secondary button appearance concept
• Unify DropZones
• Updated shadows / elevation in WP Components
• Updating ToggleGroupControl
• Storybook Improvements

🎙️ Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog #107 – WordPress 6.6.2, Gutenberg 19.2, Data Views and Design Systems with special guest Maggie Cabrera

Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners

Anne McCarthy continued in their Core Improvements series about the Simplified Query Loop block with smarter defaults & intuitive settings. The enhancements streamline how you create dynamic post lists, making it more user-friendly and customizable. McCarthy explains how stronger defaults help with the first time usage, a toggle switch lets you change from default query to using a custom query, and the block’s filtering options include post formats now.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

Fabian Kägy, director of editorial engineering at 10Up, documentation release lead for WordPress 6.7 was a guest on the ShopTalk Show 634th podcast episode, with hosts Chris Coyier and Dave Ruppert. “Fabian Kägy helps us understand the modern WordPress development process, Gutenberg vs Block editor vs full site editing, building with blocks or pages, what’s coming in the Twenty Twenty-Five Theme, and whether the theme authoring process has been made too difficult in 2024?” they wrote in the description.

In the article, What WordPress developers need to know about the blocks property in theme.json, Jeremy Holcombe breaks down the “blocks” property in the theme.json file for WordPress. This lets developers set up block settings globally. It makes customizing Gutenberg blocks a breeze by centralizing design options like colors and typography. Plus, it keeps everything consistent and boosts site performance by cutting down on custom CSS. Holcombe also includes easy-to-follow implementation tips, practical examples, and code snippets to help theme developers get the most out of this feature. It really streamlines the development process and amps up overall site optimization.

 “Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2024” 
A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.

JuanMa Garrido published Actions from Data Views: Adding images to the Media Library. It’s a continuation of the tutorial, he published earlier this month: Using Data Views to display and interact with data in plugins in which he walked you through on how to create a plugin that displays a React app in the WordPress admin to list a dataset of pictures using Data Views. In this second part, you learn how to provide users with tools to directly add any listed images to the Media Library.

In this week’s Live Developer Hours, JuanMa Garrido, André Maneiro and Nick Diego gave An Introduction to Data Views and answered a ton of questions. They covered, the fundamentals of the DataViews component, how to add a React app to a custom WordPress admin page and how to display a custom dataset using Data Views.

Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.

Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience

Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.

For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to [email protected]

Featured Image: “Mitchell Library, Sydney (#24)” by Christopher Chan is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Don’t want to miss the next Weekend Edition?

I’ve heard from WP Engine customers that they are frustrated that WP Engine hasn’t been able to make updates, plugin directory, theme directory, and Openverse work on their sites. It saddens me that they’ve been negatively impacted by Silver Lake‘s commercial decisions.

On WP Engine’s homepage, they promise “Unmatched performance, automated updates, and bulletproof security ensure your sites thrive.”

WP Engine was well aware that we could remove access when they chose to ignore our efforts to resolve our differences and enter into a commercial licensing agreement. Heather Brunner, Lee Wittlinger, and their Board chose to take this risk. WPE was also aware that they were placing this risk directly on WPE customers. You could assume that WPE has a workaround ready, or they were simply reckless in supporting their customers. Silver Lake and WP Engine put their customers at risk, not me.

We have lifted the blocks of their servers from accessing ours, until October 1, UTC 00:00. Hopefully this helps them spin up their mirrors of all of WordPress.org’s resources that they were using for free while not paying, and making legal threats against us.

Over the years, we have done a weekly recap on Friday’s. It evolved over time and I always strategize exactly what we will be dropping in here.

It’s not going to be the latest news, products, etc. in the space, as there are more than enough sites doing that.

Instead, this will serve as a good weekly collection of:

• Posts and episodes here on Do the Woo
• Content from our hosts, partners and sponsors.

Plus, if any listener comments on a specific episode or post, we will also be including a snippet from their comment in the recap.

Just a solid list of content that you may have missed. That’s it.

I dropped on the livestream for ThePrimeagen earlier today after a colleague pinged me that he was talking about the Silver Lake / WP Engine situation.

Afterward, I also privately shared with him the cell phone for Heather Brunner, the WP Engine CEO, so she can hop on or debate these points. As far as I’ve heard she hasn’t responded. Why is WP Engine scared of talking to journalists live?

Below is the total amount of sponsor invoices generated to date for WordCamp and WordPress events, including the Community Summit fund and the Global Sponsorship fee.

I’ve been writing and talking about WP Engine a lot in the last week, but I want to be crystal clear about the core issue at play.

In short, WP Engine is violating WordPress’ trademarks. Moreover, they have been doing so for years. We at Automattic have been attempting to make a licensing deal with them for a very long time, and all they have done is string us along. Finally, I drew a line in the sand, which they have now leapt over.

We offered WP Engine the option of how to pay their fair share: either pay a direct licensing fee, or make in-kind contributions to the open source project. This isn’t a money grab: it’s an expectation that any business making hundreds of millions of dollars off of an open source project ought to give back, and if they don’t, then they can’t use its trademarks. WP Engine has refused to do either, and has instead taken to casting aspersions on my attempt to make a fair deal with them.

WordPress is licensed under the GPL; respect for copyright and IP like trademarks is core to the GPL and our conception of what open source means. If WP Engine wants to find another open source project with a more permissive license and no trademarks, they are free to do so; if they want to benefit from the WordPress community, then they need to respect WordPress trademark and IP.

Further reading:

• Automattic’s cease and desist to WP Engine.
• WP Engine is not WordPress.
• WP Engine is banned from WordPress.org.

The dispute between Automattic and WP Engine has intensified. Both companies have issued Cease and Desist orders to each other, leading WP Engine to remove the news feed from the WordPress admin dashboard. In response, WordPress.org has now banned WP Engine from utilizing any of its resources.

The WordPress.org statement read: “Pending their legal claims and litigation against WordPress.org, WP Engine no longer has free access to WordPress.org’s resources. WP Engine wants to control your WordPress experience, they need to run their own user login system, update servers, plugin directory, theme directory, pattern directory, block directory, translations, photo directory, job board, meetups, conferences, bug tracker, forums, Slack, Ping-o-matic, and showcase. Their servers can no longer access our servers for free.”

The statement continued: “The reason WordPress sites don’t get hacked as much anymore is we work with hosts to block vulnerabilities at the network layer, WP Engine will need to replicate that security research on their own. Why should WordPress.org provide these services to WP Engine for free, given their attacks on us?”

The announcement also reiterated what was shared in the WP Engine is not WordPress article. “WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it, with them getting all of the profits and providing all of the services.”

For those wondering about Flywheel, Matt has clarified that Flywheel also would be affected as WP Engine had acquired Flywheel in 2019.

The new status page on WP Engine explains: “There is currently no impact on the performance, reliability or security of your site nor does it impact your ability to make updates to your code or content. We know how important this is for you and we are actively developing a remediation for this issue.”

Meanwhile, Automattic-owned Pressable has a new page.  The WordPress community is not happy with these events. Several people have come forward to offer help to those caught in the crossfire.

Any WP Engine customers having trouble with their sites should contact WP Engine support and ask them to fix it.

WP Engine needs a trademark license, they don’t have one. I won’t bore you with the story of how WP Engine broke thousands of customer sites yesterday in their haphazard attempt to block our attempts to inform the wider WordPress community regarding their disabling and locking down a WordPress core feature in order to extract profit.

What I will tell you is that, pending their legal claims and litigation against WordPress.org, WP Engine no longer has free access to WordPress.org’s resources.

WP Engine wants to control your WordPress experience, they need to run their own user login system, update servers, plugin directory, theme directory, pattern directory, block directory, translations, photo directory, job board, meetups, conferences, bug tracker, forums, Slack, Ping-o-matic, and showcase. Their servers can no longer access our servers for free.

The reason WordPress sites don’t get hacked as much anymore is we work with hosts to block vulnerabilities at the network layer, WP Engine will need to replicate that security research on their own.

Why should WordPress.org provide these services to WP Engine for free, given their attacks on us?

WP Engine is free to offer their hacked up, bastardized simulacra of WordPress’s GPL code to their customers, and they can experience WordPress as WP Engine envisions it, with them getting all of the profits and providing all of the services.

If you want to experience WordPress, use any other host in the world besides WP Engine. WP Engine is not WordPress.

I knew going to war with Silver Lake, a $102B private equity firm, they would pull out every dirty trick to try to smear my name, do oppo research, imply I’m a mafia boss trying to extort them, etc.

I have kept my personal philanthropy private until now. I would like to offer up one piece of evidence for the public to consider, which is the IRS accounting of my 501c3 charitable donations.

This is something I’ve tried to keep quiet, because true philanthropy isn’t about recognition. As you can see, my personal liquidity goes up and down but I give back as much as I can when I can.

• 2011: $295,044.60
• 2012: $401,121.00
• 2013: $2,088,890.88
• 2014: $98,648.00
• 2015: $101,947.00
• 2016: $42,300.00
• 2017: $51,562.50
• 2018: $606,957.68
• 2019: $620,802.65
• 2020: $607,452.48
• 2021: $2,151,602.26
• 2022: $2,780,054.20
• 2023: $2,276,425.06

If Lee Wittlinger, who controls Silver Lake’s investments in the WordPress ecosystem, or Heather Brunner, the CEO of WP Engine, would like to publish their charitable contributions over the past 12 years, they are welcome to do so.

Ajmer, a city in the Indian state of Rajasthan, is all set to organize its first-ever WordPress event – WP Campus Connect. This month-long initiative in October aims to empower students across multiple campuses by introducing them to the powerful tools and opportunities that WordPress offers.

Organizers have partnered with four different colleges to host a series of interactive workshops over four weekends – October 5-26, 2024. Each workshop will take place on a different college campus, providing students with the chance to learn in a hands-on environment.

Participants can expect comprehensive training sessions led by experienced professionals from the WordPress community. In addition to technical skills, the workshops will also cover various career paths within the WordPress ecosystem. 

Pooja Derashri, event organizer and co-founder of WPVibes, said: “By introducing students to WordPress, we’re providing them with more than just technical knowledge; we’re giving them access to a world of career possibilities. This initiative will help students not only build valuable skills but also connect with professionals and peers who can guide them in their career journey.”

The Ajmer WordPress Meetup group has been active since 2017, and the organizers had planned to engage with students even before the pandemic caused the group to go quiet. They later shifted their approach, opting to conduct workshops at colleges rather than gathering students in one location.

With an anticipated turnout of 350 to 400 students, WP Campus Connect promises to be a vibrant hub for learning and collaboration. The event is designed not only to educate but also to inspire students to consider future careers in web development, digital marketing, and more.

The organizers have ambitious plans to expand the program in the future. They aim to bring in global speakers to offer valuable industry insights and establish a mentorship program that connects students with experienced WordPress professionals. They also plan to host hackathons and competitions focused on WordPress while collaborating with industry partners to create internship and job opportunities for students.

Recently, much emphasis has been placed on attracting new users, especially students, to WordPress. Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of the WordPress project, discussed this month the importance of WordPress and how it equips students with essential skills for thriving in their future careers. WordPress.com is also giving away 1,000 free premium websites exclusively to university students.

On the podcast today we have Isla Waite, Bet Hannon and Ryan Bracey.

Isla Waite, originally from the UK, has lived in Sacramento, California for 17 years. With a background in graphic design and over a decade in website project management, she recently started her own accessible web design business. Three years ago, Isla joined the WordPress Accessibility Meetup, led by Amber Hinds, which has led to her involvement with the WordPress Accessibility Day. She is now a team lead, managing the tech and vendors teams to promote web accessibility.

Bet Hannon has worked with businesses and nonprofits for over 16 years, helping them build WordPress websites, integrate other communication channels, and learn how to use digital marketing tools more effectively. She is the founder & CEO of AccessiCart, a services agency that focuses on accessibility and eCommerce, along with other high user interaction websites. Bet lives in Bend, Oregon, and is a co-organizer of the WordPress Meetup there.

Ryan Bracey is the Director of Web Development & User Experience at Second Melody. A mid sized branding agency located in NJ, which builds custom WordPress websites for clients of all sizes and industries. In this role Ryan has taken a holistic approach to accessibility within the agency by promoting collaboration between clients and departments alike, to ensure all phases of a project are completed with intention.

During the podcast we discuss the significance of WordPress Accessibility Day, which is a 24-hour virtual conference running on 9th to the 10th October, 2024. It’s free to attend and will offer a wealth of resources around the topic of WordPress accessibility. The event will include live captions, ASL interpreters, and professionally created event transcriptions. It’s being driven by a team of passionate volunteers and is geared towards making the digital space accessible for all.

We cover the logistical details, including how to register and the optional donations and sponsorships that can enrich your participation. Our guests share their personal motivations and experiences that fuel their dedication to the accessibility cause. We also get into the global reach of the event, with translation efforts and volunteer opportunities that make WordPress Accessibility Day 2024 a truly inclusive initiative.

Isla, Bet, and Ryan talk about the challenges and triumphs of advancing web accessibility, the importance of both conformance and compliance, and practical steps you can learn about during the event to make your website more accessible. Whether you’re a developer, a designer, or a content creator, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration to help you contribute to a more accessible web using WordPress.

If you’re interested in making the web a more accessible and inclusive place, this episode is for you.

Useful links

WP Accessibility 2024 website

WordPress Accessibility Meetup

AccessiCart website

Second Melody website

Knowbility website

International Association of Accessible Professionals website

After the incidents at WordCamp US 2024, WP Engine sent a “cease and desist” letter to Automattic demanding that Automattic and its CEO, Matt Mullenweg, retract and stop making false, harmful, and disparaging statements about WP Engine.

Automattic Confirms Legal Action 

Matt Mullenweg has confirmed that they have officially initiated legal action against WP Engine for the “Unauthorized Use of WordPress Foundation and WooCommerce, Inc. Intellectual Property” and requested them to stop the unauthorized use of trademarks belonging to Automattic & Woo. 

The document reads, “Our Client owns all intellectual property rights globally in and to the world-famous WOOCOMMERCE and WOO trademarks; and the exclusive commercial rights from the WordPress Foundation to use, enforce, and sublicense the world-famous WORDPRESS trademark, among others, and all other associated intellectual property rights. We are writing about WP Engine’s web hosting and related services that improperly use our Client’s WORDPRESS and WOOCOMMERCE trademarks in their marketing.“

The letter further asserts: “We understand that our Client has contacted you about securing a proper license to use its trademarks, yet no such agreement has been reached. As such, your blatant and widespread unlicensed use of our Client’s trademarks has infringed our Client’s rights and confused consumers into believing, falsely, that WP Engine is authorized, endorsed, or sponsored by, or otherwise affiliated or associated with, our Client. WP Engine’s unauthorized use of our Client’s trademarks also dilutes their rights, tarnishes their reputation, and otherwise harms the goodwill they have established in their famous and well-known trademarks, and has enabled WP Engine to unfairly compete with our Client, leading to WP Engine’s unjust enrichment.”

The legal team also accuses that, “WP Engine has developed a business generating annual revenues of over $400 million, which has been based entirely on extensive and unauthorized uses of our Client’s trademarks.”

Automattic’s lawyers warned, “Our Client is entitled to file civil litigation to obtain an injunction and an award of actual damages, a disgorgement of your profits, and our Client’s costs and fees. Our Client also is entitled to seek an award of attorney’s fees due to the bad faith and extraordinary nature of WP Engine’s knowing and willful infringements.” 

But Automattic is willing to amicably resolve this matter, including through a licensing relationship for use of its trademarks. WP Engine has time till October 03 to confirm its understanding of and compliance with Automattic’s requests including the below ones. 

The document also contains screenshots (shared below) from social media and WP Engine’s website, highlighting alleged misuse of trademarks and community confusion.

The legal battle between the two giants will have long-term effects on the community at large. Even more interesting is that Automattic had invested in WP Engine in 2011. 

More About Cease and Desist Letter From WP Engine 

WP Engine’s cease and desist letter stated that “WP Engine is fully prepared to take all necessary steps to protect its business, employees and customers, as well as the entire WordPress ecosystem, from the harm Automattic is attempting to inflict upon them.” 

The document stressed that “Automattic and its CEO Matthew Mullenweg must immediately cease and desist from disparaging WP Engine and/or its investor by making false factual statements.”

“Mr. Mullenweg’s statements also reflect a clear abuse of his conflicting roles as both (1) the Director of the non-profit WordPress Foundation, and (2) the CEO of at least two for-profit businesses that compete with WP Engine. From his sham assertion of trademark rights, to his market-wide disparagement, to disruption of known business relationships by either convincing or coercing WP Engine’s customers from doing any further business with it, these acts reflect just a few examples of Mr. Mullenweg’s unethical abuse of power. That Mr. Mullenweg quietly demanded tens of millions from WP Engine for his for-profit company while publicly claiming to be selflessly safeguarding the interests of the community is shameful.” WP Engine’s legal team stated. 

Matt also attended a Twitter Spaces discussion and Courtney Robertson has shared an AI-generated version of its transcript.

Other Developments

WP Engine’s News Feed Removed?

Matt tweeted about rumors that WP Engine removed the news feed from wp-admin dashboards. Some users confirmed that the whole WordPress News Metabox has been removed from the WP Engine dashboard but is still available in Local.

Users were divided on the widget’s importance, but several people expressed dissatisfaction with WP Engine’s move.

WP Tavern Articles Missing?

A Reddit post alleged that several WPTavern posts had disappeared after the WC US Q&A session. However, WPTavern founder Jeff Chandler debunked the claims, stating, “With some help, I conducted a thorough investigation and I can confidently say that not only were those posts not deleted, they never existed.” The Reddit post was later deleted.

(This concludes Part 2. Stay tuned for Part 3.)

The highly anticipated Q&A session with Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp US kicked off with him stating, “This might be one of my spiciest WordCamp presentations ever.” He opened the session by reading his recent article, WordCamp US & Ecosystem Thinking, set against the backdrop of jazz music. Matt then used the analogy of the “Tragedy of the Commons” to discuss the importance of Five for the Future. He also addressed his cryptic tweets and warned about the potential threat of private equity hollowing out and undermining open-source communities.

Key Points from the Q&A Session

This might be the last Word Camp you see WP engine have a booth at.

– Matt Mullenweg

Matt said that most of the information he’s about to share in the presentation has come from WP Engine employees who reached out to him. WPEngine is controlled by Silver Lake a Private Equity Firm that in Matt’s words “doesn’t give a dang about your open source ideals it just wants return on Capital.” 

He went on to discuss the fate of other companies Silver Lake has acquired. In 2010, they bought 25% of Talend and proceeded to monetize its open-source user base, eventually generating 20x returns over seven years. Silver Lake also bought 5% of Unity for $400 million and raised prices drastically, leading to multiple CEO changes and the rise of the open-source alternative, Godot Game Engine.

Silver Lake, valued at $102 billion, also owns WP Engine, but Mullenweg criticized the company for contributing little to the WordPress community’s “Five for the Future” initiative. He referred to Lee Wittlinger, the Managing Director of Silver Lake, as “a schoolyard bully” and announced that WP Engine would no longer be allowed at future WordCamps.  

Mullenweg offered to return the $75,000 WP Engine had paid to be a Super Admin Sponsor and also accused them of misusing the WordPress trademark. “WP Engine sounds like WordPress, and their colors are even similar to WP’s blue. There’s brand confusion.”

He also touched on broader issues, noting that WordPress growth had slowed in the last 18 months, partly due to changes in W3 Techs’ methodology and non-contributing companies outcompeting contributing ones. However, he pointed out that WordPress had recently regained momentum and “grown an entire Drupal of market share.”

What we create together is bigger than any one person.

– Matt Mullenweg

Matt admitted he didn’t want to make the presentation but felt compelled to speak out against bad actors. “The only way to fight a bully is to fight them back. If you just allow them to run rampant on the playground they’re just going to keep terrorizing everyone.”

Mullenweg explained that he had attempted to discuss increasing WP Engine’s contributions, but after receiving no positive response, he felt it necessary to call them out publicly. He encouraged users to consider switching to hosts that actively contribute to WordPress when their WP Engine contracts are up for renewal. He also emphasized that WP Engine employees are not at fault and that he supports those who speak out about their company’s lack of participation in the WordPress community.

Mullenweg also shared some exciting developments for WordPress, including upcoming Google Docs-like collaboration features. He stressed the importance of software licenses, likening them to the Constitution, as they guarantee freedom. Additionally, he expressed his pride in seeing WordPress adopted by the U.S. Army and the federal government.

A fan of AI, Mullenweg advised developers to explore AI-assisted tools like Cursor and also promised to honor Jessica Lyschik’s Speed Build Challenge.

The video of Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A session at WordCamp US is now available on YouTube.

Phase 2 – Matt’s Next Steps

Matt’s statements at the WordCamp session were just the beginning. He then followed up the attack on WP Engine by publishing WP Engine is not WordPress in WordPress.org. One of his major criticisms was that WP Engine is the only WordPress hosting provider that disables revisions by default. 

He didn’t mince words, stating, “What WP Engine gives you is not WordPress, it’s something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress, but actually they’re giving you a cheap knock-off and charging you more for it. This is one of the many reasons they are a cancer to WordPress, and it’s important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread.” 

“WP Engine is setting a poor standard that others may look at and think is ok to replicate. We must set a higher standard to ensure WordPress is here for the next 100 years.”, he continued. 

He then launched a Twitter poll asking the community if WP Engine should be allowed to have a booth at the next WordCamp, and the majority voted in favor of WP Engine’s continued presence.

Response From WP Engine

In response, WP Engine published a blog post titled Highlighting Over a Decade of Innovation and Contribution to the WordPress Community. In it, they detailed their contributions to WordPress, including sponsoring WordCamps, organizing educational events like DE{CODE}, and empowering the WordPress community through content like the WordPress Roundup and Building WordPress series. They also highlighted their products like Faust.js, WPGraphQL, Headless WordPress platform,  Local,  Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), and Genesis Blocks. 

However, WP Engine did not address any of Mullenweg’s specific accusations. They concluded their post by reaffirming their dedication to WordPress, saying, “WP Engine’s commitment to WordPress and its passionate community is unwavering…WP Engine will remain at the forefront, finding new and exciting ways to drive the WordPress ecosystem’s success for years to come in partnership with this vibrant, innovative community.”

Community Reactions

Matt Mullenweg’s comments sparked intense debate within the WordPress community, leaving it shocked and divided. While some rallied behind Matt, even going so far as to cancel their WP Engine subscriptions, others were uncomfortable with his approach.

Rodolfo Melogli, founder of Business Bloomer tweeted, “I don’t think a CEO should attack people/corps based on personal opinions, no matter if right or wrong. Not good for the WordPress ecosystem tbh.”

Nate Finch, author at Level Up Tutorials suggested, “As far as I know, there is no requirement that any company that sponsors a WordCamp be involved with 5FTF, let only hit a certain threshold. If this is the case, and maybe it should be a requirement, it should be added to the sponsor agreement for WordCamps.”

“It’s not enough to provide services and products and marketing at WordCamps; if you’re making millions of dollars off WordPress I think we all can agree you really need to contribute some real hard value back into it.”, said Seth Rubenstein of Pew Research Center.

Hendrik Luehrsen, CEO of Luehrsen // Heinrich was worried, “With his recent remarks, @photomatt may have just killed the #FFTF program. It’s a tough sell to maintain public profiles on a platform that can be weaponized against someone – deserved or not.” However, Matt assured that his goal is to raise awareness of the 5FTF initiative.

“You can’t really promote the benefits of open source and then moan when companies build on that free platform and monetize it.” tweeted WPTuts. 

WPHercules published WordPress.com is not WordPress as a parody countering WP Engine is not WordPress. They point out that “plugin extensibility is sacred,” but WordPress.com restricts plugin installation in lower-priced plans. 

Andrew Palmer, in The Complex Dynamics of WordPress: A Passionate Critique, pointed out Matt’s difficulty letting go of certain issues, which at times contradicted his own WordPress philosophy. He recommended elevating other leaders within the WordPress community to help balance decision-making and ensure clearer guidance and recognition of contributions.

Kevin Geary’s WordPress’ Big “Tragedy of the Commons” Problem shares, “The problem is that Matt is putting a massively important project, and our future, in the hands of a historically failed model. Some of the smartest minds in economics have arrived at another obvious conclusion when tackling the Tragedy of the Commons problem: owned land is better cared for than public land because it benefits the private owner to protect and care for it.”

He suggests, “WordPress should be driven by a proper funding model, a proper visionary, a consistent core development team, and consistent marketing.”

James Giroux analyzed Matt’s actions as a Project Lead in WCUS: Freedom Isn’t Free. “Matt is the Project Lead, and he has a track record of calling things out in a direct, and sometimes uncomfortable way…I think it’s pretty hypocritical to say that Matt is mean or a bully while also saying things like “it’s because Matt wants Automattic to win” or “it’s because Matt doesn’t like competitors to Automattic”.

Another hot topic was the brand confusion Matt highlighted between WP Engine and WordPress. Robert DeVore pointed out that more people are confused by WordPress.org vs WordPress.com than by WordPress vs WP Engine. Daniel Schutzsmith also shared his experience with a client who faced the same confusion.

Discussions are taking place on Reddit too.

Pantheon & GoDaddy – Then & Now 

Matt’s criticism of companies is not new. One of the most memorable incidents took place the night before WordCamp US 2016 when Pantheon’s $100K sponsorship was abruptly revoked. Their promotional materials, including their booth, were stashed away in a storage room, and the sponsorship fee was later refunded in full.

Fast forward to this year’s WordCamp, and Pantheon returned as an Editor Sponsor alongside Automattic. Courtney Robertson of GoDaddy tweeted: “Wild how we are all talking about @wpengine and not the elevator doors from Pantheon sponsored. I would like to know more about standards changing.”

In 2022, Matt identified GoDaddy as a “Parasitic Company” and an “Existential Threat to WordPress’ Future”. And this year, the very same GoDaddy was a Super Admin sponsor. They sponsored Courtney Robertson for Contributor’s Day and allotted $2,000 for eight self-funded Table Lead contributors. Matt even mentioned their contributions in his Ecosystem Thinking article.

(This concludes Part 1. Stay tuned for Part 2.)

This show is sponsored by…

Avalara: help developers make sure their Woo projects are tax compliance done right with Avalara’s API. Visit their extensive developer resources today.

WooCommerce: Join the official WooCommerce Marketplace and get your products in front of millions of engaged WooCommerce store owners.

In this episode of Woo DevChat, Marcel and Mike dive deep into the critical aspects of hosting for WooCommerce stores.

They explore how hosting directly impacts your store’s performance, sales, and user experience, and discuss essential factors like RAM, CPU power, PHP workers, caching systems, and database optimization.

The conversation highlights the importance of choosing the right hosting provider that can scale with your store’s growth, while providing top-notch support. Whether you’re just starting out or building a high-traffic WooCommerce site, this episode will equip you with valuable insights to ensure your WooCommerce store runs smoothly and efficiently.

Takeaways

Hosting Directly Impacts Performance and Sales: A slow-loading WooCommerce store can lead to lost sales and lower search engine rankings. Choosing a hosting provider with sufficient resources, speed, and reliability is crucial for success.

The Importance of Support: Quality support is just as essential as having the right hosting resources. A knowledgeable support team that can proactively troubleshoot and resolve issues can be a game-changer, especially for non-technical store owners.

RAM, CPU, and PHP Workers: WooCommerce sites require more RAM and CPU power than regular WordPress sites due to the dynamic nature of e-commerce. PHP workers are crucial for processing simultaneous tasks, and understanding the right balance of resources can prevent slowdowns during peak times.

Caching Systems: Implementing effective caching strategies, such as page caching, object caching, and browser caching, is one of the most impactful ways to improve performance. However, WooCommerce stores require customized caching due to the dynamic content of e-commerce sites.

Database Optimization: Regularly optimizing your database by clearing transients and optimizing tables can significantly boost site performance, especially as your store grows and accumulates more data.

Scalability is Key: As your WooCommerce store grows, having a hosting provider that can easily scale from shared hosting to VPS or dedicated servers is important. Scaling smoothly without disruption requires the right provider and strong support.

Backups and Security: Frequent backups and a robust security setup are non-negotiable for WooCommerce stores. Automated, smart backup systems and proactive monitoring can save you from major losses in the event of a failure or security breach.

Monitoring and Staging Environments: Good hosting providers offer monitoring dashboards and the ability to create staging environments. These tools help developers test changes without affecting live sites and provide insights into performance, memory usage, and potential bottlenecks.

Links

• WordPressVIP
• New Relic
• Cloudflare
• Redis
• phpMyAdmin
• AWS (Amazon Web Services)
• Google Cloud

I wrote a bit more on Lee Wittlinger / Silver Lake and WP Engine over on WordPress.org: WP Engine is not WordPress.

It has to be said and repeated: WP Engine is not WordPress. My own mother was confused and thought WP Engine was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they’re giving you WordPress, but they’re not. And they’re profiting off of the confusion. WP Engine needs a trademark license to continue their business.

I spoke yesterday at WordCamp about how Lee Wittlinger at Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102B assets under management, can hollow out an open source community. (To summarize, they do about half a billion in revenue on top of WordPress and contribute back 40 hours a week, Automattic is a similar size and contributes back 3,915 hours a week.) Today, I would like to offer a specific, technical example of how they break the trust and sanctity of our software’s promise to users to save themselves money so they can extract more profits from you.

WordPress is a content management system, and the content is sacred. Every change you make to every page, every post, is tracked in a revision system, just like the Wikipedia. This means if you make a mistake, you can always undo it. It also means if you’re trying to figure out why something is on a page, you can see precisely the history and edits that led to it. These revisions are stored in our database.

This is very important, it’s at the core of the user promise of protecting your data, and it’s why WordPress is architected and designed to never lose anything.

WP Engine turns this off. They disable revisions because it costs them more money to store the history of the changes in the database, and they don’t want to spend that to protect your content. It strikes to the very heart of what WordPress does, and they shatter it, the integrity of your content. If you make a mistake, you have no way to get your content back, breaking the core promise of what WordPress does, which is manage and protect your content.

Here is a screenshot of their support page saying they disable this across their 1.5 million WordPress installs.

They say it’s slowing down your site, but what they mean is they want to avoid paying to store that data. We tested revisions on all of the recommended hosts on WordPress.org, and none disabled revisions by default. Why is WP Engine the only one that does? They are strip-mining the WordPress ecosystem, giving our users a crappier experience so they can make more money.

What WP Engine gives you is not WordPress, it’s something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress, but actually they’re giving you a cheap knock-off and charging you more for it.

This is one of the many reasons they are a cancer to WordPress, and it’s important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread. WP Engine is setting a poor standard that others may look at and think is ok to replicate. We must set a higher standard to ensure WordPress is here for the next 100 years.

If you are a customer of “WordPress Engine,” you should contact their support immediately to at least get the 3 revisions they allow turned on so you don’t accidentally lose something important. Ideally, they should go to unlimited. Remember that you, the customer, hold the power; they are nothing without the money you give them. And as you vote with your dollars, consider literally any other WordPress host as WP Engine is the only one we’ve found that completely disables revisions by default.

WordCamp US (WCUS), North America’s largest WordPress event, hosted over 1,500 attendees from around the world at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, from September 17 to 20.

Over four days, WordPress professionals and enthusiasts came together to explore the latest advancements and use cases, collaborate on open source projects, and strengthen community connections.

A dedicated team of more than 40 volunteers, led by Aaron D. Campbell, Julia Golomb, Katie Richards, and Sandy Edwards, made the event possible.

Building WordPress

Contributor Day brought together over 400 contributors across 25 teams to support the WordPress project. As with any Contributor Day, participants learned and collaborated while tackling key projects, including triaging issues, exploring performance improvements, advancing the Twenty Twenty-Five theme, and preparing for the upcoming WordPress 6.7 release.

Celebrating WordPress

At WCUS 2024, the inaugural Showcase Day highlighted how enterprises like Disney Experiences, The New York Post, CNN, Vox Media, and Amnesty International are leveraging WordPress across a variety of industries. With 19 sessions, attendees gained diverse insights into WordPress’s wide-ranging capabilities and features.

Sustaining WordPress

Joseph “JJ” Jacks, founder of OSS Capital, kicked off the first day of programming with a keynote about how open source will dominate the next wave of software. In looking at emerging trends in tech, he expressed how closed core, or closed source, software is hitting a plateau. Commercial open source companies are able to disrupt and forge the path for a shift in the space. 

Sharing his optimism for the future, JJ highlighted emerging projects OSS Capital is excited about and emphasized that the most successful open source companies thrive by generating more value than they capture.

Learn WordPress

The second half of the conference featured more than 20 sessions and workshops across three tracks. Topics ranged from leveraging AI in WordPress to getting the most out of wp-admin.

Thursday’s dedicated networking session brought attendees to the sponsor hall to explore and connect with the vast ecosystem of hosts, plugins, agencies, and service providers. The WordCamp US Lounge, located within the exhibit hall, held focused discussions on hosting, neurodiversity, inclusivity, and content marketing.

Friday began with a fireside chat between TIME’s CTO Burhan Hamid and WordPress VIP’s CMO Tim Hossain. The duo discussed how TIME’s implementation of reusable components allowed them to scale and support major traffic-generating topics such as Taylor Swift’s Person of the Year, House of the Dragon, and political events.

WordCamp attendees stopped by the Code is Poetry lounge to try their hands at the vintage Smith Corona and have a poem written by the Typewriter Troubadour.

Attendees take a break in the center of the exhibit hall at the “campfire” where various discussions were held throughout the event.

Q&A with Cofounder Mullenweg

In a dynamic keynote, WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg delivered one of his “spiciest” WordCamp presentations, combining insights on WordPress’s open source future with a creative twist. He opened by reading his recent post that explores open source philosophy, touching on themes of freedom, collaboration, and the ongoing influence of open source projects like WordPress. Mullenweg also critiqued companies for misleadingly labeling proprietary models as open source, stressing the importance of true open source licenses for the future of software freedom.

Matt further emphasized WordPress’s ecosystem-driven development and highlighted the Five for the Future initiative, an effort to avoid the tragedy of the commons and ensure that WordPress thrives for everyone. His speech addressed community concerns about companies profiting off WordPress without giving back and urged attendees to support companies that contribute to the platform’s growth.

Before diving into the Q&A segment of the presentation, Matt expressed the importance of recognizing:

“What we create together is bigger than any one person.”

WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg on the main stage at WCUS 2024.

Matt Mullenweg and Brian Richards on stage at WCUS 2024.

Save the Dates

In his closing remarks, emcee Brian Richards expressed gratitude for the fantastic work the event organizers and volunteers contributed to produce WCUS 2024.

Brian reminded attendees to save the date for WordCamp US 2025, which will once again take place in Portland, Oregon, from August 26 to 29, 2025. 

No WordCamp is complete without an after-party, with this year’s taking place at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI). Attendees concluded a week of WordPress with refreshments while visiting the exhibits—including a submarine and planetarium—and posing in the photo booth.

Stay connected

WordPress events enable technologists, open source enthusiasts, and community members around the globe to meet, share ideas, and collaborate to drive WordPress and the open web forward.

Mark your calendars for State of the Word (Tokyo) on December 16, 2024, 2025’s WordCamp Asia in Manila, WordCamp Europe in Basel, Switzerland, and WordCamp US in Portland, Oregon!

This post is a collaboration between the contributors who produce content for wordpress.org/news and the WordCamp US Communications Team.

Props to the following contributors for the work reviewing/contributing to this post: @rmartinezduque, @juliarosia, @brettface, @eidolonnight, and @cbringmann. Thank you to the Photos Team for supplying images for this post and the official WordPress social media accounts throughout the event: @gwallace87, @m_butcher, @correliebre, and @zstepek.

Hi there,

This turned out to be a slow news week in WordPress, apart from four days of WordCamp US. You can read the recap here.

I miss my US WordPress friends, I haven’t seen since 2022. To give you a head start on watching the fantastic programming, I added four video links in this edition. I held back the newsletter for the fourth video: Matt Mullenweg’s In-Person Q & A, which was uploaded in the wee hours of this Saturday.

WCUS 2025 will take place in Portland again, August 26 – 29, 2025, and I added it in my calendar to take the long journey to the West coast in Summer once more. Will I see you there?

Have a splendid weekend ahead!

Yours, 💕
Birgit

Join JuanMa Garrido, André Maniero, and Nick Diego on September 24th, 2023 at 15:00 UTC for the Developer Hours: An Introduction to Data Views. Data Views offer a flexible way to display data as tables, grids, or lists, with options for filtering, sorting, and more. Even though it’s still being improved, you can already use the DataViews component in your projects and plugins. In this Developer Hours session, you will explore:

• How to display a custom dataset using Data Views
• The fundamentals of the DataViews component
• How to add a React app to a custom WordPress admin page

Q&A will follow the presentation. As a reminder, JuanMa Garrido recently published Using Data Views to display and interact with data in plugins on the WordPress Developer Blog.

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

Riad Benguella‘s post on the WordPress Core blog shares critical insights into Gutenberg development practices and pitfalls like inefficient code patterns and the importance of adhering to coding standards. Emphasis is placed on thorough testing and clear documentation to ensure smoother development and collaboration. The post is a handy guide for current and aspiring Gutenberg developers, helping them to avoid mistakes and streamline their workflow for better results. Worth a read if you’re diving into Gutenberg or looking to polish your skills!

The second update on DataViews made it on the Make Design Blog. Here are the highlights:

• Ensure primary filter visibility 🚀
• Re-order table columns in view options 🚀
• Re-balance header area in List layout 🚀
• Combine Featured Image and Title field display ⚙️
• Pin table columns and rows 🎨
• Advanced filtering 🎨

🎙️ Latest episode: Gutenberg Changelog #107 – WordPress 6.6.2, Gutenberg 19.2, Data Views and Design Systems with special guest Maggie Cabrera

Matt Walker, designer at Automattic, shared his thoughts on Design Systems: Storybook Improvements. First, he references other design systems based on the Storybook. Then he reviewed the current space and suggests a broader architecture review. Walker is at the start of the exploration and request feedback along the way to find out if he is on the right track with his ideas. At the end of the post, you can also locate previous discussions regarding a future design system on color scales, corner radius, elevation, and typography.

Plugins, Themes, and tools for #nocode site builders and owners

In case you are keen to learn how the Speed building battle with Jamie Marsland went at WordCamp US, here is the direct link to the recording from the Live stream.: Brian Coords and Amber Hinds rebuilt the home page of a site from the WordPress Showcase: Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco. Tracy Levesque commented on X: “This is one of the best things I’ve ever seen at a WordCamp. It was as riveting as watching a sporting event. Good job, everyone!!”

Rich Tabor, product manager at Automattic, wants you to Meet Kanso, my best blogging theme yet. He wrote: “In Japanese, ‘kanso’ means simplicity or plainness, embodying a minimalist aesthetic that emphasizes clarity and the elimination of the unnecessary. I wanted to create a WordPress theme that reflects this philosophy in the design, writing, publishing, and reading.” The theme comes with 16 color palettes, and offers various patterns to lay out your post list. The source code is available on GitHub and the theme is also available in the WordPress repository.

Big Bite shared a case study about their work with The Times & Sunday Times. “When it comes to breaking news, every second counts. Discover how we transformed digital publishing for one of the UK’s largest publishers, resulting in record-time content creation.” You’ll find a video and impressive numbers. To read the full story, you need to give an email address, though.

Automattic’s special projects team published a list of their open-source tools and plugins. You’ll find five plugins and two blocks, the Accordion and the Stretchy Type Blocks. The plugins are

• Pause Renewal Actions,
• Auto Flickr Importer,
• Query Loop Load More
• Safety Net
• Plugin Autoupdate Filter

Theme development for full site editing and blocks

Anne Katzeff continues on her quest to create her first block theme. She shares in her 4th post of a series: Building My First WordPress Block Theme – part 4: Child Themes, how she saves changes to a child theme and syncs it to a GitHub repo for version control.

In his video, Fränk Klein answered Theme.json V3: Common questions, among them: “What did version 3 change? and How to migrate from v2 to v3?”

 “Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2024” 
A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test, and Meta team from Jan. 2024 on. Updated by yours truly. The previous years are also available: 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Building Blocks and tools for the Block Editor

Mike Davey, Senior editor at Delicious Brain, highlighted a few Golden Guides and Hidden Gems From the WordPress Developer Blog. “The WordPress Developer Blog is a treasure trove of valuable resources that can help you stay ahead of the curve” he wrote. And he wrote about the What’s new for developers roundup posts: “If you can only manage one post a month, make sure it’s this one. We have to warn you, though: there’s a very good chance it’ll lead you down at least one rabbit hole, and you’ll end up spending more time (and learning much more) than you intended.”

📣 Never miss a Developer Blog post again: Subscribe!

Speaking of which, if you haven’t read the What’s new for developers? (September 2024) edition, it was my turn to put it all together.

Troy Chaplin, long-time WordPress developer and designer from Ottawa, Canada, published his first article on the WordPress Developer Blog. In his tutorial How to build a multi-block plugin, you’ll learn how to build a multi-block plugin by registering several static and dynamic blocks all in one plugin while optimizing its structure along the way.

In his talk at WCUS, Damon Cook unleashed the power of the Interactivity API. He explored with the audience what this API is all about, why it matters, and how to get started with it. By the end, you’ll have a solid understanding of the Interactivity API and be ready to implement it in your projects. You’ll see some great examples, too.

During his WCUS talk, The Power of Extending the WordPress Editor: A Block Visibility Showcase on Showcase day, Nick Diego gave people a peek behind the curtains of his Block Visibility plugin and showed how to make the most out of WordPress Core components. He shared some really useful tips and tricks that help you level up your own projects by extending the WordPress Editor and boosting block functionality. You can follow along his slidedeck here.

Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s master branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.

Now also available via WordPress Playground. There is no need for a test site locally or on a server. Have you been using it? Email me with your experience

Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.

For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to [email protected]

Featured Image: Photo by Ravi Palwe on Unsplash

Don’t want to miss the next Weekend Edition?

Some people have been interpreting my comments around private equity and investors as saying they’re all bad and you should never accept investment or trust a company that does… I don’t agree with that at all. Investors are amazing, they’re the fuel of entrepreneurship and capitalism and responsible for most of what we enjoy today. I can look in the eye of another founder and wholeheartedly recommend Automattic’s investors—True Ventures, Addition, Tiger Global, Salesforce, GIC, ICONIQ, LVMH/Aglaé, Akkadian, Wellington, Sweetwater, Alta Park, Schonfield, Chris Sacca…—and say they’ve upheld open source values and allowed us to nourish the open source ecosystem and flourish as a business. (They’re not an investor, but there are new folks like OSS Capital which are totally open source aligned.)

So investors, even “private equity” ones can be okay, but just like with anything, there are good ones and bad ones, so it is worthwhile to look into their track record. After an investor joins a company, what happens next? Do they change away from an Open Source license? Does the community flourish or wither on the vine as a result of their actions? It can be complex because you can have, as we do in WordPress, some companies contributing and some companies just taking. Some investors, like ours, are minority investors, which means they don’t control the company. Some buy a majority share in companies and control them, and that’s where who ultimately owns things matters the most.

Can they change? Of course. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. I think everyone should be afforded that grace. But it can’t just be in words, it has to be in action.

I may make my keynote tomorrow a deep dive presentation into some specific examples of this going poorly, because I think it’s highly relevant to WordPress’ survival. Tune in! There will be a livestream here.

Patchstack, a leading WordPress security company, recently raised $5 million in its Series A funding round. The funding round was led by Karma Ventures, G+D Ventures, and Emilia Capital, an investment firm backed by Yoast founders Marieke van de Rakt and Joost de Valk.

“With the Series A, we plan to accelerate Patchstack product development and build a top-level sales and marketing team,” said Patchstack’s co-founder and CEO, Oliver Sild. He believes Patchstack could “potentially hyper-automate the entire open-source software security process.”

In 2022, the company received a €2.7M R&D grant from the European Innovation Council. Earlier this year, Patchstack was also selected by Google for its AI for Cybersecurity accelerator program, leveraging its vast dataset—the largest in the world of open-source security vulnerabilities.

The company’s managed VDP platform, developed in collaboration with the European Union, is free for all plugin and theme developers and helps projects comply with the upcoming European Cyber Resilience Act. 

Last year they published 76% of all known WordPress-related security vulnerabilities and became the largest CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) Naming Authority by volume in 2023. Their Zero-Day Bug Bounty Program awarded the highest bounty in WordPress history – $14,400- to John Blackbourn, who exposed a critical vulnerability in the LiteSpeed Cache plugin last month.

“I have been following Patchstack’s progress for some time, have had many great discussions with Oliver, and think that the team is on a noble and exciting mission to protect users of open-source technologies from cyber threats,” said Kristjan Laanemaa from Karma Ventures.

WordCamp US 2024 is in full swing, and Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, shared his thoughts on a powerful philosophy driving Open Source. 

Ecosystem Thinking

Mullenweg introduced the concept of “Ecosystem Thinking,”  a philosophy that drives successful collaborative projects. 

“Actual Open Source licenses are the law that guarantees freedom, the bulwark against authoritarianism. But what makes Open Source work isn’t the law, it’s the ethos. It’s the social mores. It’s what I’m now calling Ecosystem Thinking: the mindset that separates any old software with an open source license from the software that’s alive, that’s humming with activity and contributions from a thousand places.” he noted.

This philosophy comprises four essential elements:

1. Learn: Embrace the beginner’s mindset and constantly engage with new ideas.
2. Evolve: Apply what you learn to the next iteration, allowing real-world feedback to guide you.
3. Teach: Teaching others reinforces your own understanding, spreading knowledge throughout the ecosystem.
4. Nourish: Share the fruits of your success with the broader community to help everyone thrive.

‘Nourish’ is the philosophy behind WordPress’s Five For the Future initiative, where companies and individuals commit a portion of their resources to supporting the WordPress project and ecosystem. This ethos is what keeps Open Source alive and vibrant.

Mislabeling Open Source

He also shared the challenges Open source is facing. Even though Open Source has taken over as an “intellectual and moral movement,… false prophets like Meta are trying to co-opt it.” He referenced Meta’s “open-source” AI model, Llama, as a prime example of this trend.

While LLaMA is free, its license restricts use for companies with over 700 million active users. Mullenweg argued that although Meta has the right to impose such terms, labeling it as “Open Source” misleads the public.

Vote with your Wallet

Mullenweg encouraged the community to “vote with your wallet” by supporting companies that actively contribute to the Open Source ecosystem. He praised organizations like Newfold, Awesome Motive, 10up, Godaddy, Hostinger, and Google but warned of “parasitic entities that just want to feed off the host without giving anything back.”

To make his point, Mullenweg compared the Five For the Future contributions from Automattic and WP Engine, a competitor of similar size. Automattic contributes 3,786 hours per week, while WP Engine contributes just 47.

“Those of us who are makers, who create the source, need to be wary of those who would take our creations and squeeze out the juice. They’re grifters who will hop onto the next fad, but we’re trying to build something big here, something long term—something that lasts for generations,” he said.

Mullenweg urged the community to be mindful of their choices: “Think about that next time it comes up to renew your hosting or domain, weigh your dollars towards companies that give back more, because you’ll get back more, too. Freedom isn’t free.”

This is not the first time Mullenweg has discussed this point. “Those who care about the future of WordPress should spend their dollars with less parasitic companies,” he said in 2022.

In this episode, BobWP records from his hotel room at WordCampUS, sharing exciting updates about the soft relaunch of the Do the Woo blog.

Bob reflects on past decisions, including the removal of blog posts from the site, and how he now realizes the blog’s absence created a void in the community.

He outlines plans for the blog’s future, including contributions from hosts, guests, and even listeners, creating an open space for continued conversations around podcast episodes.

Keep your eyes and ears open to hear more about how Do the Woo is amplifying voices and building stronger community connections.

Links

• The Soft Relaunch of the Do the Woo Blog
• Unpacking Blogging, a BlogStorm with Ronald Gijsel and BobWP

WordPress.com announced that it is giving away 1,000 free premium websites exclusively to university students. This offer is a fantastic opportunity for students to build their online presence.

The first thousand students who sign up will receive a premium WordPress.com website for one year, complete with a free custom domain name, SSL certificate, 13 GB of storage, access to premium themes, and an ad-free experience. With these features, students can create professional websites to showcase their portfolios, projects, or blogs. 

“This offer is perfect for students looking to stand out in their personal and professional journeys, ” WordPress.com said in the official announcement.

Interested students can fill out a simple form with their educational details and email address. After submitting, they will receive an email asking them to verify their student status. Once verified, a unique code will be provided within 24-48 hours to unlock their free premium website. 

Recently, the WordPress community has been trying to find ways to attract new users in the backdrop of discussions about the WordPress market stagnating. Executive Director of the WordPress Project, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, has also recently spoken about how WordPress equips students with essential skills for thriving in their future careers.

On the podcast today we have Jamie Marsland, and it’s his third appearance on the podcast, which is a first.

Jamie has recently embarked on an exciting new journey as the Head of the WordPress YouTube channel at Automattic. This role is set to amplify the WordPress story through engaging and informative video content, capitalising on YouTube’s reach to over 2.7 billion monthly users.

As you’ll hear, Jamie only started his role a few days prior to recording, but he’s already full of plans to transform the WordPress YouTube presence. Automattic created this role to ensure a more focused effort on growing the channel, which currently has around 36,000 subscribers, significantly lower than some of the other WordPress YouTube channels.

Jamie envisions targeting distinct groups: beginners, DIYers, developers and designers, agencies and freelancers, product suppliers, and the community. Each piece of content will aim to add value, whilst trying to maintain some fun.

Throughout our conversation, Jamie shares his insights into why this role is necessary, especially in light of commercial rivals like Wix and Squarespace, who possess enormous marketing budgets. He discusses the importance of bringing new users into the WordPress ecosystem, whether they’re complete beginners or migrating from other platforms.

We also explore Jamie’s broader vision for the channel, including making high-quality content that genuinely adds value to the viewer, regardless of its production quality. He stresses that every video needs to answer the question of what value it brings to the audience. Fun and engagement are key themes, but quality content is paramount.

We also touch on his plans to bring in other voices, aiming to build a diverse team that reflects WordPress’ global reach.

Jamie also talks about the balance between engaging the YouTube algorithm and producing valuable content. He shares his experiences and strategies for creating content that draw viewers in, emphasising the importance of creativity in ensuring all target groups find something of interest.

Jamie assures us that his new role won’t mean an end to his own popular YouTube channel, which has been advocating for WordPress for many years. He plans to continue creating content on this channel, whilst focusing on growing the official WordPress channel.

Towards the end, Jamie hints at the changes that might start materialising by October, post WordCamp US. He’s eager to hear from the community, so if you have innovative, fun, or valuable content ideas, Jamie wants to know.

If you’re interested in the evolving landscape of WordPress on YouTube, Jamie’s strategic approach, or how you might contribute to this exciting venture, this episode is for you.

Useful links

Jamie’s Speed Build session at WordCamp US 2024

WordPress YouTube channel

Learn WordPress

Developer Blog

Jamie on X

(This post should be read while listening to Wish by Joshua Redman. The writing is synchronized to the music reading speed.)

Contributor day just wrapped up for Portland for WordCamp US. If you ever have a chance to visit a WordCamp, I recommend it. It’s an amazing group of people brought together by this crazy idea that by working together regardless of our differences or where we came from or what school we went to we can be united by a simple yet groundbreaking idea: that software can give you more Freedom. Freedom to hack, freedom to charge, freedom to break it, freedom to do things I disagree with, freedom to experiment, freedom to be yourself, freedom expressed across the entire range of the human condition.

Open Source, once ridiculed and attacked by the professional classes, has taken over as an intellectual and moral movement. Its followers are legion within every major tech company. Yet, even now, false prophets like Meta are trying to co-opt it. Llama, its “open source” AI model, is free to use—at least until “monthly active users of the products or services made available by or for Licensee, or Licensee’s affiliates, is greater than 700 million monthly active users in the preceding calendar month.” Seriously.

Excuse me? Is that registered users? Visitors to WordPress-powered sites? (Which number in the billions.) That’s like if the US Government said you had freedom of speech until you made over 50 grand in the preceding calendar year, at which point your First Amendment rights were revoked. No! That’s not Open Source. That’s not freedom.

I believe Meta should have the right to set their terms—they’re smart business, and an amazing deal for users of Llama—but don’t pretend Llama is Open Source when it doesn’t actually increase humanity’s freedom. It’s a proprietary license, issued at Meta’s discretion and whim. If you use it, you’re effectively a vassal state of Meta.

When corporations disingenuously claim to be “open source” for marketing purposes, it’s a clear sign that Open Source is winning.

Actual Open Source licenses are the law that guarantees freedom, the bulwark against authoritarianism. But what makes Open Source work isn’t the law, it’s the ethos. It’s the social mores. It’s what I’m now calling Ecosystem Thinking: the mindset that separates any old software with an open source license from the software that’s alive, that’s humming with activity and contributions from a thousand places. 

Ecosystem Thinking has four parts:

1. Learn
2. Evolve
3. Teach
4. Nourish

Learn is about keeping ourselves in a beginner’s mind, the curiosity to always engage with new ideas and approaches.

Evolve is where we apply those learnings to our next iteration, our next version. We see how things work in the real world: it’s the natural selection of actual usage.

Teach is actually where we learn even more, because you don’t really know something until you teach it. We open source our knowledge by sharing what we’ve learned, so others can follow on the same path.

Nourish is the trickiest, and most important part: it’s where we water the garden. If you’ve done the previous three steps, you’ve been very successful; now your responsibility is to spread the fruits of your labors around the ecosystem so that everyone can succeed together. This is the philosophy behind Five For the Future, which you’re going to see us emphasize a lot more now.

That’s the ecosystem. But if it’s the yin, what’s the yang? This openness and generosity will attract parasitic entities that just want to feed off the host without giving anything back. There are companies that participate in the Learn/Evolve/Teach/Nourish loop like a FernGully rainforest, and there are those who treat Open Source simply as a resource to extract from its natural surroundings, like oil from the ground.

Compare the Five For the Future pages from Automattic and WP Engine, two companies that are roughly the same size with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion. These pledges are just a proxy and aren’t perfectly accurate, but as I write this, Automattic has 3,786 hours per week (not even counting me!), and WP Engine has 47 hours. WP Engine has good people, some of whom are listed on that page, but the company is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets under management. Silver Lake doesn’t give a dang about your Open Source ideals. It just wants a return on capital.

So it’s at this point that I ask everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet. Who are you giving your money to? Someone who’s going to nourish the ecosystem, or someone who’s going to frack every bit of value out of it until it withers? Newfold, especially since its acquisition of Yoast and Yith, gives back. (I’ve asked them to consolidate their Five for the Future pages to better represent the breadth of their contributions.) So does Awesome Motive, 10up, Godaddy, Hostinger, even Google. Think about that next time it comes up to renew your hosting or domain, weigh your dollars towards companies that give back more, because you’ll get back more, too. Freedom isn’t free.

Those of us who are makers, who create the source, need to be wary of those who would take our creations and squeeze out the juice. They’re grifters who will hop onto the next fad, but we’re trying to build something big here, something long term—something that lasts for generations.

I may screw up along the way, or my health may falter, but these principles and beliefs will stand strong, because they represent the core tenet of our community: the idea that what we create together is bigger than any one person.

(Hat tip to Automattician Jordan Hillier for the great ecosystem image.)

Update: I ended up presenting this post and furthering the case against Silver Lake and WP Engine at WordCamp US on September 20^th.

Hari Shanker and Courtney Robertson have introduced experimental WordPress contribution health dashboards designed to monitor the performance of various WordPress teams. They also presented the pilot dashboards developed for the Make/WordPress Core, Community, and Training teams, along with key statistics from the WordPress 6.6 release.

History and Challenges

The concept of performance dashboards dates back to 2021 when Community Gardener Ian Dunn started a discussion about “the idea of having a stats dashboard for each Make team. If that’d make a big impact, Meta could build an automated system to facilitate it.”  This sparked interest, particularly from the Community and Support teams.

The topic resurfaced at WordCamp Europe 2023, where Matt Mullenweg highlighted the importance of “project health dashboards” that provide better visibility into the performance of various teams. This led to the formation of a working group composed of Naoko Takano, Isotta Peira, Hari Shanker, and Courtney Robertson, tasked with turning this idea into reality.

The team sought community input through project health hangouts this year and analyzed the data using the open-source tool Bitergia Analytics. However, Bitergia lacked integration with several essential tools frequently used by WordPress teams, such as HelpScout, Figma, Trac, SVN, and GlotPress. To fill this gap, the working group manually analyzed additional data sources, including the WordPress 6.6 props list and internal contributor data from the Community and Training teams.

Hari Shanker acknowledged the challenges in manual data compilation, stating, “Manually compiling the data is time-consuming and may not be sustainable. @courane01 and I invested significant effort into preparing them. If they prove valuable, we hope to encourage other Make/Teams to create their own and explore a project-wide dashboard, though this could be resource-intensive.”

Key Insights From the Dashboards

The Core Team dashboard reveals that 37% of WordPress 6.6 contributors were new, highlighting the project’s ability to attract fresh talent. However, there’s a growing concern as the number of inactive contributors in 2024 is rising, and close/merge rates in Core GitHub repositories are declining. Contributions tend to spike around major releases, and much of the work is driven by sponsored contributors from companies like Automattic, Yoast, GoDaddy, and 10up.

The Training Team has exceeded its goals, achieving a 50% retention rate for video content and an enrollment rate of almost 60% for its courses. The Learning Pathways project also performed well, with high enrollment and course completion rates, along with an impressive 90% learner satisfaction rate.

The Community Team is just shy of its 45% target for new attendee participation, with a current rate of 44.76%. While the number of WordPress events dipped after the pandemic, the team has seen steady improvement in event participation as in-person gatherings continue to recover.

Key Insights From WordPress 6.6 Stats

Major points include:

• Approximately 640 people from 53 countries and 129 companies contributed to WordPress 6.6.
• 241 people contributed to WordPress Core for the first time, making up about 38% of the total contributors.
• The USA led with 1033 contributions, followed by Australia with 762 contributions.
• In terms of contributors by country, the USA had 84, followed by India with 69, and Bangladesh with 23.
• Automattic had the largest number of contributors (105 people), followed by rtCamp (14), and 10up (12).
• 26.5% of all WordPress 6.6 contributors were officially pledged through Five for the Future, accounting for 75.5% of all props.

Next Steps 

“Our long-term goal is to build automated, live dashboards for WordPress,” Hari Shanker revealed. The dashboards are in the experimental phase and future developments will depend on community feedback. Feedback can be submitted in the comments section of the post till October 7, 2024.

In this episode, Devin chats with Wil Brown, a seasoned WordCamp organizer, about the return of WordCamp Sydney after a five-year hiatus.

Wil shares updates on the event’s organization, including the diverse team of organizers from across Australia, the challenges of planning in a post-COVID world, and the focus on rebuilding local WordPress communities.

They also discuss what attendees can expect from the two-day event, covering everything from speaker sessions and networking opportunities to the importance of community-driven initiatives and sponsorships that make the event possible.

Takeaways

WordCamp Sydney’s Return After 5 Years: The last WordCamp in Australia took place in 2019, and WordCamp Sydney is making a long-awaited comeback, with excitement building across Australia and New Zealand.

Organizing a Large Event: Wil leads a diverse team of 12 organizers from all over Australia, and the event is expected to draw a large crowd. The team’s goal is not only to deliver a successful event but to train future organizers who can take WordCamps to their own cities.

Focus on Networking: Beyond the speaker tracks, the primary focus of WordCamp Sydney is on networking. Many attendees come specifically for the opportunity to connect with others in the WordPress and broader tech community.

Two Days of Talks and Discussions: The event will have two tracks of talks, including a mix of technical and non-technical sessions. While workshops were considered, the team decided to focus on talks to streamline planning.

Sponsorships and Financial Support: Wil highlighted the role of sponsors in making the event accessible, with 93.41% of the expected sponsorship already secured. They are also offering travel grants to support students and others who may need financial help to attend.

Local Community Growth: Rebuilding local meetups post-COVID has been a priority, with efforts to encourage more local WordPress communities to form and grow. Wil emphasizes that smaller, informal meetups are just as valuable as larger events like WordCamp.

Collaboration with Linux Australia: WordCamp Sydney benefits from a strong collaboration with Linux Australia, which provides financial and logistical support, including event insurance and grants for local open-source meetups.

Encouraging First-Time Speakers: Wil and his team have hosted workshops to help first-time speakers craft and submit their talk proposals, fostering a more diverse speaker lineup and encouraging new voices in the community.

Links

• Wil on WordPress.org
• Wil on LinkedIn
• WordCamp Sydney 2024
  • Get your ticket
  • Sponsor
  • Schedule

WooSesh, the virtual conference specifically designed for WooCommerce store builders, is scheduled for October 29-30, 2024, and promises an exciting experience. WooSesh 2024 will feature 33 speakers and 22 sessions packed with valuable insights, case studies, and tutorials on building customer-centric eCommerce experiences.

One of the best parts about WooSesh is that every presentation is recorded and published on WPSessions after the event. Whether you’re juggling multiple projects or living in a different time zone, you’ll have the flexibility to watch the sessions at your convenience.

Call for Speakers is Out

The Call for Speakers is open, and the last date to apply is September 21, 2024. Each speaker can submit up to two different presentation topics. This year’s theme is Customers First, and the organizing team is looking for case studies, tutorials, and demos that showcase innovative, customer-focused eCommerce experiences.

Speakers can pre-record their 20-25 minute sessions and share them with the organizers by October 23rd. Live Q&A will take place on Slack during and after each presentation, allowing speakers to interact with the audience in real-time.

For their contributions, each selected speaker will receive a $250 USD honorarium, a free ticket to WordSesh, and up to two coaching and review sessions to fine-tune their talk.

The organizers emphasized their commitment to diversity, “We are actively looking for a mix of voices – folks from different backgrounds, with different journeys and experiences, and who don’t look or sound alike. Everyone is encouraged to submit a talk proposal, especially people groups who don’t feel well-represented at tech conferences.”

The Seshies Awards

One of the highlights of WooSesh is the Seshies Awards, which celebrate the talent and innovation within the WooCommerce community. Nominations are now open for the six prestigious award categories:

• Innovation Award
• Store of the Year
• Agency of the Year
• Developer of the Year
• Extension of the Year 
• Community Advocate of the Year

Anyone can nominate themselves or their favorite WooCommerce store or expert for the awards. For more information about the event, visit the official WooSesh website.

WordCamp US 2024, the flagship WordPress event in North America, will start in a few hours. WordPress enthusiasts from around the globe are making their way to Portland, Oregon, for this highly anticipated event, scheduled for September 17-20 at the Oregon Convention Center.

This four-day event with around 45 engaging sessions kicks off with Contributor Day on the 17th, where attendees can collaborate on improving WordPress and giving back to the community. This year, WordCamp US introduces an exciting new addition—the Showcase Day.

Slated for September 18, Showcase Day highlights some of the most impressive websites powered by WordPress, including The New York Post, CNN Brazil, Disney Experiences, Harvard Gazette and Vox Media. Attendees will get a deeper understanding of how WordPress can scale for some of the world’s most notable brands.

The organizers have also added four Campfire sessions on Content Marketing, LGBTQ+ Community, ADHD and web hosting. 

The full schedule is already live, and attendees can experience engaging talks on key topics like Gutenberg, AI, accessibility, open-source technology, web designing, WooCommerce, and WordPress Playground.

In addition to the talks, WordCamp US attendees can look forward to the highly anticipated WordPress Speed Build Battle, networking opportunities at Networking Blocks, and plenty of side events for further engagement and connection. Attendees can also visit the famously closed-to-the-public Nike Company Store in nearby Beaverton.

To wrap up the event, the WordCamp US Social will take place at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) on the 20th from 7:00 to 10:00 PM, giving attendees a chance to relax, network, and celebrate the week’s successes.

And, of course, WordCamp US wouldn’t be complete without the live Q&A session with Matt Mullenweg, which will take place on Friday, the 20th. Interestingly, this year’s event concludes on a Friday instead of the weekend.

For those unable to attend in person, all the presentations will be live-streamed on the WordPress YouTube channel. Later, it will also be available on WordPress.tv.

Join us this week as Josepha takes a personal journey down memory lane to her first encounters with WordPress. In this episode, she shares the story of her very first WordPress website, the excitement of getting involved with WordCamps, and how those early discoveries shaped her rewarding path in the WordPress community. Whether you’re a seasoned user or new to the platform, Josepha’s reflections will inspire you with insights from her earliest days in WordPress.

Credits

Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy
Editor: Dustin Hartzler
Logo: Javier Arce
Production: Brett McSherry
Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

Show Notes

• Josepha’s Blog
• WordPress Playground
• Small List of Big Things
  • WordCamp US arrives this week (September 17-20)
    • WP Briefing: It’s your first WordCamp? Welcome!
  • Upcoming WordPress Meetings
    • Data Liberation Project
  • WordPress Events
  • Make WordPress
• Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to [email protected].

Transcript

[00:00:00] Josepha: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.

[00:00:28] (Music intro)

[00:00:39] Josepha: Folks, this week is WordCamp US, and over the past week or so, I spent a fair amount of time talking to people about that first-time experience. And as with any person who’s talking about their version of a shared experience, I started thinking back to mine.

I think my first experience of WordPress was not typical, though. I had never even heard of WordPress when I first went to a WordCamp. I think, I think most of the time people have heard of it before, but I was just there for the plot. So, like many people in my generation, all of us old people of the internet, I was first online with things like Angelfire and GeoCities.

[00:01:16] Josepha: When I went to college, I was keeping friends and family up to date on what I was up to with a little, like, newsletter? And then Xanga made it to our college campus, and eventually, so did Facebook. And I was one of those kids kind of like half-breaking sites with HTML and CSS I found online. I was changing layouts like every week to suit my mood.

Then, when I graduated and found myself in a city with more talent and more competition than I’d actually accounted for, and started to realize that this online stuff I’d been doing for fun might actually be something that I needed to use as a tool professionally. So, I first went out and reserved my screen name everywhere I could think of.

[00:02:01] Josepha: And we’re talking, like, LiveJournal, WordPress.com, Blogger, all the things, and eventually wound up building my first site on Weebly. And it was super ugly. I’m not able to design things. I have an okay sense for a design that is good, but like, left to my own devices, it’s gonna be what that was, which is like a tie dye background for some reason, and had everything organized into little, like, blocks, I guess? You know, like, old magazine layouts? And it technically had everything that I wanted, but it wasn’t necessarily the best version of any of those things either. I could write a little bit about myself and my services, I could add a few photos, there was a way to contact me, and I could do it all by myself.

And so it was a good place to start. Not long after that, though, I graduated into the need for a more professional-looking website, and it was beautiful. I received a website; someone built it for me. It was beautiful; it had this elegant design. Had a lot of custom functionality, but it was built using ColdFusion. I couldn’t do anything to it. I couldn’t change anything. All minor changes just had to kind of wait until there was enough to make sense to use that maintenance time, that maintenance retainer that I had. It really was just kind of formal. It was an isolated snapshot of all of the sorts of information that was required to be on the web at that time.

[00:03:28] Josepha: And then, later that year, I went to my first WordCamp, and I moved my site over to WordPress. And for the first time, I had that kind of mixture of professional expression that was on top of something that enabled my own expression. And honestly, I didn’t learn much more about the software for a few years. It was doing what I needed it to do, how I needed it to be done, and that’s really what mattered to me.

And when I skip a few years ahead after that, a few years later, when I was learning by organizing Meetups and WordCamps that had speakers that I wanted to hear from, that had topics that I felt like I needed to learn more about, what I remember most about that learning period for me is that I knew that I wasn’t the first person to run into any of my problems, which meant that a solution was probably already out there, and I could find someone to come and teach us about their solution.

[00:04:23] Josepha: And also, I knew that if we were running into a new problem and started breaking things left and right, there was always a way back. I was never really too far away from success. Like I felt like I might be lost, but I still was pretty much findable. And I guess I always want that for new users of the open web now, like new members of our WordPress community.

I want them to feel like the breaking of things is fine and safe and that no mistake is irretrievable. I want us to have some place where perfection isn’t the point. Now listen, I know the software is complex right now. The admin is a little mismatched, your first choices are huge choices, and there are a million places to start.

[00:05:03] Josepha: So, all I can say is, start with what you need, and once you’ve got that, like the back of your hand, move on to what you need next. And keep doing that, bravely and messily, until what you’ve got is all you ever wanted. I’m gonna leave for you, in the show notes, a link to something called WordPress Playground.

It’s gonna launch a little WordPress site in your browser. There will be no host. It’s just all in the browser itself. And it will have the latest bundled theme on it, Twenty Twenty-Four, and the latest version of WordPress. And that’s it. Go in there and click around on the left-hand menu. Start a post, change a page, modify the theme.

Just play around a while. See if it’s something that seems fun to you or valuable, or if it’s something that you can use as a time capsule for your kid because that sounds like a nice little mix of fun and work. And remember, sometimes perfection’s not the point. 

[00:05:57] (Music interlude)

[00:06:04] Josepha: That brings us now to our small list of big things.

Folks, as I mentioned at the top, WordCamp US is happening this week. It is September 17th through 20th this year, quite a few more days. But that also means that we’ll have quite a bit more stuff to do. If you have your tickets and haven’t looked at all of the presentations occurring over the four-day event, remember to take a look at the schedule and pick out topics that are interesting. And remember, just because you picked it out before you went doesn’t mean that if you get in there and it doesn’t work for you. You can’t choose a different topic while you’re there. And as a bonus, if this is your first WordCamp that you’ve ever attended, I have you covered. You can check out my previous episode on all the things to remember for your first time attending a WordCamp. And we have a pretty active community as well. If you just have questions or want to get in there and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to a vegan restaurant for lunch; who wants to join me?’ You can do that, and you can definitely find somebody.

Also, there are some upcoming WordPress meetings. So, if you’re not attending WordCamp US but still want to connect with the community, there are a ton of team meetings that are happening. You can find those on make.WordPress.org/meetings, I think. So really, really easy URL to remember. You can join your fellow community members and contribute to the WordPress project there.

[00:07:18] Josepha: And I also wanted to just call your attention to a few really big projects that still need a little bit of help around the project. So, on the one hand, we have Data Liberation. That is still a really big project, but specifically, we are nearly ready to start working on some user-facing elements of that. It is being powered by Playground, and because the data liberation, the migration of one site to another, is so complex, once we get those elements built into Playground, I think it also stands to fix a bunch of the problems that we have across our user flow, our user experience for the project. Things like having better theme previews and being able to get a sense for what a plugin functionally will do for you versus what it says it’s going to do for you. And getting a sense for what the admin looks like, all of those things. And so, anyone who wants to learn more about contributing to Playground or to Data Liberation, I absolutely encourage you to go check out those meetings, see what’s happening, and get your hands a bit dirty with that.

[00:08:26] Josepha: We also have a bunch of stuff happening in our community space. If you had received this podcast from somebody because they were like, hey, I know someone who might like WordPress or who has just learned WordPress and has never been to an event or any other reason that you are listening to this but don’t yet know the community, there is an easier option than just jumping straight into a WordCamp like I did. You can go to a meetup. You can see there’s a widget in your dashboard that’ll tell you what your nearest event is, but if you put your location into that widget, and nothing comes up. Technically, that means that you have an opportunity to bring a bunch of people together to teach you stuff you wish you knew about your site right now. So you can wander over into your dashboard and see those, or you can also head over to the community area on make.WordPress.org and anybody over there is happy to help you get started. And let me tell you, it is a very low-effort sort of thing to do. Here again, perfection’s not the point. And so that, my friends, is your small list of big things.

[00:09:28] Josepha: Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there is a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at [email protected]. I am your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. Or tomorrow if we’re all going to WordCamp US. 

[00:09:58] (Music outro)

I noticed recently that WordCamp Nairobi is on the calendar for 1-2 November. Then I noticed their Camp slogan is “Beyond the Savannah: Connecting the Kenyan WordPress Community to the World”, and I thought “Yes! That’s so perfect for HeroPress!” So much so that it’s going to help drive the mission of HeroPress in the future.

At the moment we’re simply a Media Partner, so I’m here to tell you that the call for speakers is open! If you can attend you should apply to speak, we need as many voices as possible.

I recently met with Moses Cursor Ssebunya, Patrick Lumumba, and Emmanuel Lwanga, all organizers of the WordCamp. If you see them, say hi and shake their hand for me. It sounds like it’s going to be a great event.

Moses Cursor Ssebunya

Patrick Lumumba

Emmanuel Lwanga

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