Last year, I asked Tavern readers if WordPress should notify end-users when a plugin’s owner changes. The post was not entirely based on theory. There have been some cases of real-world confusion. The consensus from the comments on that post seemed to be that, yes, such notifications would be welcome.

When I wrote that post, there was already another plugin changing hands. Dark Mode, which had grown in popularity in its earlier years, had a new owner, WPPool. There were no public notifications of this ownership change. A mere GitHub issue filed, a corner of the web that few users venture.

Fast forward a few months, and Dark Mode had not only changed owners, but it also had a new name and set of features unrelated to the plugin’s original promise. The plugin is now named WP Markdown Editor and bundles at least part of the commercially available Iceberg Editor plugin. It is also a limited version in which users are prompted to upgrade for the complete feature set.

WP Markdown Editor (formerly Dark Mode).

Iceberg is licensed under the GPL version 2, so it is legal for anyone to fork it. However, there does not seem to be any mention of the copyright, and only a few references to the original product remain in the source code.

While I did not perform a line-by-line comparison, it is clearly a fork when examining both plugins. However, the company has also built upon it with new features.

Iceberg Editor.

“We have recently added productivity sounds, new fonts (more legibility and one for Dyslexic users), which we think definitely adds value to new users,” said the WPPool Team^[1].

WPPool announced the WP Markdown Editor plugin in November 2020. However, the post was written as if it was a new product. Technically, it was, but there was no mention of repurposing an existing plugin to launch the features.

The company reached out to the Dark Mode plugin owner in August 2020, which seemed to have changed hands a couple of times, at least. “The plugin was discontinued, lacking security updates, compatibility with latest PHP versions, and the project was abandoned,” said the WP Pool Team.” And, since the last few updates, it was apparent that Classic Editor is not going to stay the same. Gutenberg was the future, and we wanted to give users a Dark Mode for Gutenberg as well.”

WPPool was able to adopt the plugin. The company kept the Dark Mode feature original to the plugin. However, they eventually began tacking on new features.

“Our intention was to add more features on top of it,” said the WPPool Team. “Why not create a new plugin? Because the plugin was already being abandoned, and we thought why not add some more features, keep the old functionality intact as well, and put regular updates?”

The change clearly left some users frustrated and confused about what was happening with the plugin. Many had installed it in hopes of having a simple method of toggling on a dark mode for the WordPress admin interface.

Reviews after the change.

The plugin now has an “Only Dark Mode” setting, an option that users can enable to remove the additional features. It is disabled by default.

When asked about whether the addition of seemingly unrelated features abused user trust, the WPPool Team replied, “The problem was, since the last few updates of Gutenberg and Classic Editor — Classic Editor uses an iframe to load its content. It’s not possible for the Dark Mode plugin to serve the Dark Mode in Classic Editor anymore. That’s why some users were really frustrated. We really tried hard to restore that functionality to Classic Editor as well, but the way it is, we couldn’t find a way to invoke Dark Mode on Classic Editor.”

While some support questions and reviews indicate the frustration with losing Classic Editor support, many others questioned the addition of features that make little sense as part of a dark-mode plugin.

“This used to be a dark mode feature plugin, but now it’s been turned into a Markdown editor,” wrote Derrick Tennant, an earlier contributor to the plugin. “A complete bait and switch.”

Another user named rehoff had similar concerns, stating, “I still believe that it is not ok to so radically repurpose an otherwise popular plugin. I find it misleading.”

Back to the original question I posed last year, another user summed up the answer with a review titled “This plugin has been sold for sure.”

In private, one person has said that it feels like the team is capitalizing on the plugin’s active install base, which currently sits at 3,000+.

Adding to the potential confusion, the company has a separate and unrelated plugin named WP Dark Mode. A reviewer noted on that plugin:

This same developer had another plugin called Dark Mode. They apparently sold the plugin to someone and now it’s a random Markdown plugin with a terrible UI. All of a sudden, this random Markdown editor that I don’t want or need is on my site.

Who knows what this plugin will become when they get enough users and decide to CA$H IN AGAIN??

If you like having random plugins installed on your site, give it a whirl. Otherwise it may be best to look for a different solution.

This case is unique because the Dark Mode plugin was once a feature proposal for core WordPress. Daniel James, the original creator, started the process to make this a reality in 2018. There was support for the idea, but it never jumped the hurdles needed for inclusion or a more formal proposal.

James put the plugin up for adoption in 2019, stating that he was stepping back from plugin development but hoped that someone would pick it up. David Gwyer picked it up shortly after, eventually making two updates to the plugin. The plugin’s commit history shows that Tennant started contributing several months later before WPPool landed on the scene.

While Dark Mode was never officially endorsed by WordPress or given the green light for merging into the core platform, there was still a level of trust that some might expect from a plugin that was at least proposed as a feature.

Perhaps this is one of those cases where an ownership-change notification would have been warranted, but that notice would not have solved the issues that came months later.

The developers did note the new Markdown editor in the plugin’s change log: “New: Write post/ page with markdown syntax (Markdown Editor).” However, it is doubtful the average user read or understood what that meant. Maybe a more thorough disclosure system is necessary, and would such a system cover cases where plugins are repurposed?

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1: I have attributed quotes to the “WPPool Team” throughout this article. I was able to reach the company through their Facebook chat. However, the team did not provide a person’s name and role within the company for attribution. At the moment, I still do not know which employee(s) I spoke with directly.

Jetpack 9.7 was released today with updates under the hood that ensure the plugin’s blocks are compatible with the full-site editing features coming in WordPress 5.8. It also changes how sites access features that require the WordPress.com infrastructure.

A pull request merged in version 9.7 changes the connection flow to make Jetpack active as soon as the plugin enables a site level connection, instead of requiring a user to authenticate with WordPress.com in order for it to work. This is what the Jetpack team has been referring to as “user-less” in development.

The copy has been updated for this step so that after Jetpack is connected on a site level, it says, “Jetpack is activated! Unlock more amazing features by connecting a user account.”

Jetpack users who connect their sites will immediately have access to Stats, Site Accelerator, most Jetpack blocks, widget visibility, SEO tools, Related Posts, Likes, and many more modules. Other features, such as Publicize, Activity Log, Monitor, and Backup require you to authorize Jetpack to perform these actions on your behalf.

A new documentation page details why a WordPress.com connection is necessary for certain features, bringing more transparency to what has been a contentious topic in the past. The new page outlines which features are available for site connections versus authenticated WordPress.com accounts. These specific updates in 9.7 do not change any of the data or activity that Jetpack tracks or uses.

The general public was not privy to the product discussion behind making more features immediately available to user-less accounts, but there are a few reasons this is a good business idea. It allows users to get started faster so they get hooked into using more features on their sites before being forced to connect to a WordPress.com account. This will likely reduce the number of users who install the plugin but decide not to move forward because of needing to connect an account.

Jetpack 9.7 also brings performance improvements to the Carousel feature, several bug fixes for Instant Search, and more. The full list of enhancements and fixes can be found in the changelog.

Going through my routine this week, I skimmed the latest WordPress theme releases and found a new project that supported the block editor. It even shipped a few custom patterns. While the design was nothing extraordinary, it was a solid theme overall. However, after spending the better part of today writing about it, I did not think I could move forward with the story. Something was bugging me.

It was the same thing I have felt with several others as of late. There were too many missed opportunities. The theme had the foundation, the underlying potential, to be more than it was.

The theme had a commercial “pro” version that users could purchase. However, nearly every pro feature relied on old-school tactics of upselling extra theme options. The one exception was a block-related feature that will be free as part of the Global Styles component likely to ship with WordPress later this year.

Where were the custom block styles? Where could a user snag some unique patterns? Extra nav menus, sidebars, color settings, and typography options are becoming less and less of a value-add for end-users. It is probably safe money right now, and I can understand the comfort of not taking too many chances.

Theme authors need to start shifting gears. Upsells need to come in the form of features that will not be available from stock WordPress. Right now, that means building unique block patterns and styles.

Exploring Pattern Ideas

In the last month, I have been tinkering with custom patterns. While I was in the design and development business for over a decade, what I was able to accomplish with the block editor alone — using no custom code — and a well-rounded block-ready theme is merely scratching the surface. We have far better talent in the WordPress community, and I want to see their artistry unleashed.

It all started with the WP Tavern Jukebox podcast — you should check out episodes #1 and #2 if you have not heard them already. Nathan Wrigley, the new host, pushed me enough to put my design-and-dev cap back on to implement some features that he needed. Over the years, I have not worked much with podcasting or any type of audio. This was new territory for me. Ultimately, the podcast inspired me to think about audio patterns.

What is possible with WordPress’s editor today?

I scoured the web for various layouts, looking for modern audio presentations. Numerous concepts were impossible for an end-user to implement from the editor alone. They would need extensive custom block styles from the themes themselves. And, there were several designs that I simply did not think could be done at all, but these typically had plugin-territory elements.

However, I did find ideas that I could run with and make my own. I started with a simple audio file from The Martian soundtrack — I had re-watched the movie the night before and was on a David Bowie kick.

Soundtrack single audio pattern.

It was simple. Just add Group, Columns, Image, Paragraph, Heading, Audio, and Social Icons blocks. I was happy with the result, and some of my Twitter followers responded positively.

Inspired by the support, I created an alternative layout. It was even simpler by adding Cover, Paragraph, Heading, Audio, and Social Icons blocks.

Audio embed pattern nested in a Cover block.

Based on the original pattern, I built one that used a SoundCloud embed instead of the Audio block. I also created another with some alterations that catered more toward podcasters.

SoundCloud audio and podcasting patterns.

As I dived deeper into this project, the more capable I became at creating layouts. I began to understand what some of the limitations were and piecing everything together around them.

One of the most problematic areas with the editor is that it does not hand over enough spacing control. Therefore, I had to make liberal use of the Spacer block, something I prefer not to use because it relies on pixel units and puts an extra <div> into the markup. To build some patterns, I had to become a little less of a purist and just use the available tools.

That change in mindset opened some more possibilities. I built a couple more audio-related block patterns. They were, again, simple layouts, but I wanted to make them stand out visually with imagery that end-users could add. The goal is to give users one-click access to pre-designed sections, starting points where people can showcase their own creativity.

DJ and musician block patterns.

The next step was to start thinking beyond audio patterns. There is so much more others can do in that space. I wanted to venture out a bit more.

I have since built several other patterns like the following news-type article header that I would love to use on the Tavern in the future:

News or data-driven article header pattern.

I could share more concepts, but this seems like an ideal place to stop. The goal is not to showcase my portfolio of patterns. It is to inspire our theme design community in hopes that they build something far better. I also wanted to show how easy it was to pop out a few patterns. Instead of hours of development time, many ideas were cut down to mere minutes. That is the power the block system provides today.

When I wrote about the block system creating commercial opportunities for theme authors in January, it was a theoretical post. This is a follow-up that puts it into a little more practice (without the actual selling, of course).

Imagine, as a theme company, you are building a freemium theme for musicians. You might want to include a few base patterns for users to choose from. However, there is an endless number of alternatives you could offer as part of a pro package.

I am sure there is already a theme author/company out there right now with a multi-purpose theme concept in mind that will eventually have hundreds of patterns. I can only hope that they have a solid categorization system or offer separate packages or imports.

The block pattern directory is slated to land alongside WordPress 5.8. At first, it will primarily be core patterns. However, others will be encouraged to contribute over time. This is a welcome feature for the platform, but it will never match every theme design perfectly. Each theme has its own design nuances. Each has different methods of solving problems.

The best patterns will come from theme authors themselves, especially when combined with custom block styles, packaged and marketed as part of their theme’s experience. Developers can wait until the entire market catches up or jump ahead of the game.

As WordPress grows, both in usage as a CMS and in participation as a community, it’s important for us to shed the idea that software creation is only about what literally can be done to code or what literally can be done to core or what literally can be done to the CMS. 

That was Josepha Haden Chomphosy on the “Your Opinion is Our Opportunity” episode of the WP Briefing Podcast, speaking about the importance of co-development and testing for the continued growth and maintenance of WordPress. This month’s updates align closely with these ideas. Read on and see for yourself. 

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WordPress 5.7.1 is launched

WordPress security and maintenance release – 5.7.1 came out in April. The release fixes two major security issues and includes 26 bug fixes. You can update to the latest version directly from your WordPress dashboard or by downloading it from WordPress.org.

Want to contribute to WordPress 5.8? Check out the 5.8 Development Cycle. To contribute to core, head over to Trac, and pick a 5.8 ticket –– more info in the Core Contributor Handbook. Don’t forget to join the WordPress #core channel in the Make WordPress Slack and follow the Core Team blog. The Core Team hosts weekly chats on Wednesdays at 5 AM and 8 PM UTC. 

Gutenberg Version 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5 are out

Contributor teams released Gutenberg version 10.3 on April 2, version 10.4 on April 14, and version 10.5 on April 30! Version 10.3 improves the block toolbar and the navigation editor, whereas version 10.4 adds block widgets to the customizer and improvements to the site editor list view. In version 10.5, you will find a set of new block patterns and enhancements to the template editing mode, along with the ability to embed PDFs. 

Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. The “What’s next in Gutenberg” post offers more details on the latest updates. If you are unfamiliar with the Gutenberg plugin, learn more in this post.

Full Site Editing updates

Following the Full Site Editing (FSE) feature demo hosted by Mattias Ventura, the project leadership decided that WordPress 5.8 will only include some FSE features, such as a template editor for pages/blank templates, a widget editor screen, and the theme.json mechanism. Other features like the Global Styles interface and Site Editor (managing all templates) will be made available later. The team has started working on the next steps in shipping these chosen FSE features with version 5.8.

New to FSE? Check out this blog post for a high-level overview of the project. You can help test FSE by participating in the latest FSE Outreach Program testing call –– leave your feedback by May 5th. Want to participate in future testing calls? Stay updated by following the FSE outreach schedule. You can also submit your questions around FSE right now.

WordCamp Europe 2021 is on the calendar

One of the most exciting WordPress events,  WordCamp Europe 2021, will be held online on June 7-9, 2021! Event organizers have opened up calls for sponsors and media partners. Free tickets for the event will be available soon — sign up for email updates to be notified when they are out!

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Further Reading

• WordPress now powers 41% of the web!
• Q1 2021 updates from the WordPress project have been published.
• The Core Team discussed a proposal to treat Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), a Google Chrome feature, as a security concern. The team eventually decided to track the status of the FLoC trial/implementation in a Trac ticket and monitor periodically. 
• The Core Team will remove Internet Explorer 11 support in WordPress version 5.8. 
• The Community Team has opened up a discussion on the path to in-person WordCamps and is requesting feedback from community members.
• The Community Team is also requesting feedback on whether companies who run competitive ads against WordPress can apply to sponsor WordCamps. 
• WordCamp Centroamérica 2021 and WordCamp Greece 2021 were held successfully in April. Videos of WordCamp Centroamérica are now available on WordPress.tv! While you are at it, don’t miss this excellent recap of WordCamp Prague 2021 on the WordCamp Central blog.
• Contributor teams are actively working on building the Block Pattern Directory. You can read about work updates on this project from the Meta Team and the Design Team.
• Check out the blog post on getting started with the Figma WordPress Design Library. You can use the library to create design prototypes for the WordPress UI in Figma.
• The Polyglots Team is making significant progress on the Polyglots Training course.
• The Training Team has proposed a contributor ladder as a resource for team contributors to understand ways to participate and find growth opportunities. 
• The Requests library has moved to the WordPress GitHub organization and has a new release: version 1.8.0. 
• The Docs Team is working on redesigning HelpHub by reviewing its content and design.
• The Themes Team has shared a proposal on fixing upload issues for block themes.
• Tyler Lau from the U.S. was featured in April’s People of WordPress.

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

The following folks contributed to April’s Month in WordPress: @andreamiddleton @cbringmann @chaion07 @hlashbrooke and @jrf 

The People’s Voice voting for the 25th annual Webby Awards closes in three days on May 6, 2021. Since 1996, the Webbys have recognized excellence on the internet among what is now seven major media types: websites, video, advertising, media and PR, social, apps, mobile, voice, games, and podcasts. After nearly 13,500 entries were submitted from 70 different countries, the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences selected fewer than 10% as Nominees and opened voting on April 20.

WordPress is well-represented among nominees and honorees in the website category. In fact, nearly every single sub-category of five nominees includes at least one WordPress site. If you want to vote for the WordPress sites linked below, click on the category name to view the five nominees and vote for your favorite one. Just remember that you can only vote for one site in each category to win the Webby People’s Voice.

In the Government & Civil Innovation category, 4 out of 5 nominees are powered by WordPress. The current front-runner, WhiteHouse.gov, was built by the Wide Eye agency with help from 10up, and a team of many others. The website uses the block editor with a highly customized site editing and management experience.

Update: WordPress actually sweeps this category with 5/5 nominations, as we just learned the XQ Super Schools site is a headless WordPress + Gatsby + WPGraphQL site. The Political Playlist site is also a is headless WordPress site using NuxtJS + WPGraphQL.

10up has another competing site in that same Government & Civil Innovation category, The California Grants Portal. The company designed and built a web portal for state agencies to submit their grant data.

10up also worked on another nominated site, The Undefeated, which was recently migrated to the block editor. The site is contending in the Cultural Blog/Website category against two other WordPress-powered sites: The New York Review of Books and Culture Type.

Web developer Daniel Schutzsmith shared in Post Status’ Slack that a site he built custom Gutenberg blocks for is up for a Webby under the Professional Services & Self-Promotion category. The site, audouy.com, is a portfolio for production designer François Audouy.

Real estate has been a hot industry over the past year and 2 out 5 nominees in the Real Estate category are running on WordPress: Tri Pointe Homes, a US-based builder site, and Zillow’s “What Moved Us” site. Zillow is currently in 2nd place with its WordPress-powered landing page that details visitors’ search behavior. It also displays surprising facts from this past year of sales and searches, such as “In 2020, 1 in 8 people made an offer sight unseen.” The page is beautifully illustrated and looks just as good on mobile as it does on desktop.

In the Activism category, Amnesty International’s WordPress-powered Tear Gas investigation website is leading the way in 1st place right now. Visualize NYC 2021, the other WordPress site in this category, is currently in 5th place. Both are powerful examples of primarily black and white design created to evoke a response from the visitor.

In the Charitable Organizations/Non-profit category, 3 out of 5 nominees are using WordPress, including Everytown, Antisemitism Uncovered, and the Photography 20/20 Compendium. Each design is wildly different from the next and it’s tough to tell that these are WordPress sites without viewing the source code. Everytown, a gun violence prevention organization, leads the pack in this category, followed by Antisemitism Uncovered in 2nd place, and the Photography 20/20 Compendium in 5th place.

The Law category is also dominated by WordPress sites with 3 out of 5 nominees using the software to create compelling designs. Gilleon Law Firm, which handles sexual harassment cases, is currently in first place by a wide margin, followed by two other WordPress sites, Ashcroft and Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel P.C., in 2nd and 4th place. If you build websites for attorneys, these sites should provide some solid design inspiration.

One thrilling byproduct of the Gutenberg project can be seen in these nominations: As more of digital forerunners adopt the block editor and explore its limits, WordPress site designs have become less predictable and more vibrant.

These nominations are just a handful of the best WordPress sites nominated for a Webby, and the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences site is also running on WordPress. If you find more WordPress site nominations or want to share one you worked on, please leave a link in the comments. Webby People’s Voice voting closes on May 6, 2021, so there is still time to help your favorite websites take first place. Winners will be announced on May 18, 2021.

Howdy,

Happy May 2021! We are a third into 2021. Phew.

I can’t tell you how relieved I feel that my husband and me as well as many US friends got vaccine shots. It’s also bitter-sweet and sad. In other places of the world there are again lock-downs. Hospitals are filling up fast. Hundreds of thousands new infections. People dying. Distribution of vaccines is slow, if there is any available at all. The WordPress community spans all around the globe. We are not out of the woods. We still have friends and business partners in places of crisis. The team of the New York Times curated this list: “How to Help India Amid the Covid Crisis“. Consider donating and ask your employer if they have matching programs.

How are you and your communities weathering the epidemic 14 months later? Please share in a reply!

Hang in there, my friends. Stay safe. 😷

Yours, 💕
Birgit

WordPress 5.8: Four weeks to Feature Freeze:

The Gutenberg and WordPress Core team is gearing up for the next major release 5.8 in July 2021. We are less than four weeks and two more Gutenberg plugin releases away from feature freeze.

Goals of Gutenberg updates for the next major WordPress release

In the last two or three weeks, I listened to the interviews and Q & As. I learned the team working on the block-editor pieces for this release has two goals:

First, to release enough stable tools for developers and designers to start using aspects of Full-site editing in their themes, via theme.json and hybrid constructs for classic themes. The hope is that by the time the rest of Full-Site-Editing interface is released to the users in December 2020, there are plenty of block-based themes and block patterns available from the community of extenders.

Second, to introduce the new page template feature. It’s a new way to use the block editor to create and modify page templates for landing pages. This will be the first time in WordPress that a content creator or site owner would be able to change headers and footer for single pages. This takes a bit of a switch in the publishing / producing mindset. Gutenberg developers are hoping here for plenty of user feedback to make sure that the new blocks and in their new context, the user-facing elements are clear enough to handle in this smaller scope of a single page before the expanded version of Full-site editing is released in December 2021, that allows users to create and modify site-wide templates, template parts and to build new themes.

Block-Editor Features to come to WordPress 5.8

After the Go/NoGo meeting and decision, technical lead Hector Prieto published Full Site Editing Go/No Go: Next steps with more details around the full scope of the block editor pieces for WordPress 5.8

• Gutenberg plugin releases 9.9 – 10.7
• First version of theme.json for theme builders of block-based themes.
• Theme Blocks (Query, Navigation, Site information)
• Template Editing with the post editor
• Widget Editor and block widgets in Customizer
• Persistent List view in the post editor
• Duotone (Image filter) block supports
• Gallery block refactor

In the post you’ll find links to issues and pr for even more details.

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Increased Buzz about Full-Site Editing

On the WordPress News site, there were a few posts regarding the block-editor and Full-Site Editing. Using the WordPress News space to published more frequently about the ongoing development and ideas is one part of the stronger communication outreach planned for this new feature release. The more intense communication about Full-site editing from the core team is a direct result from the feedback from the WordPress community after the first Gutenberg release in 2018.

Curious about Full-Site Editing by Josepha Haden Chomphosy. A short article on what Full-site Editing is and how it will affect different kinds of users. You have been following Full-site Editing for a while now. So it’s not necessarily for you. It is a great first article to share with WordPress users and co-workers that hear about Full-site editing for the first time. The resources share are good starting place to catch up.

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The second article wasn’t about Full-site editing, so much but about the Gutenberg. Anne McCarthy posted Become an Early Adopter With the Gutenberg Plugin, and tackled the various terms, we have mostly used as synonyms between Gutenberg, block-editor etc. Also, a good place to start, if someone likes to dive deeper into Gutenberg beyond the WordPress Core implementation.

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The latest article in the WordPress News section, is the tutorial Getting Started with the Figma WordPress Design Library by James Koster. Learn how to quickly create design prototypes for WordPress UI in Figma, a collaborative interface design tool. The tutorial is quite comprehensive and not only shows you how you work with it. Being knowledgeable about Figma can also jump start contributing to WordPress as it’s the tool of choice by the WordPress design team.

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WP Briefing is the new podcast hosted by Josepha Haden Chomphosy. In her fifth episode, she was Talking Full Site Editing with Matías Ventura (ICYMI). Josepha and Matías answered user questions, from “is full site editing a standalone plugin?” to “will full site editing break my current site?”. The episode comes with a transcript.

Gutenberg Release and Block editor updates

In Core Editor Improvement: Refining the Block Toolbar, Anne McCarthy elaborates on the refinement and standardization implemented for the Block Toolbar with the goal to simplify the hierarchy of the block, to make it more predictable what goes where. Below graphic is part of the newly updated Best practices for Block Design page of the developer handbook.

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This week Gutenberg 10.5 was released and in short succession v 10.5.1, v 10.5.2 and v 10.5.3. to fixing regression bugs. Ajit Bohra wrote about What’s New In Gutenberg 10.5. 15 new block patterns made it into the release and template editing is now also available for classic themes. For the latter, exercise optimistic caution should you use the Gutenberg plugin in productions. Many, many more changes came to the block-editor. Grzegorz Ziolkowski and I recorded our take on it for the Gutenberg Changelog podcast yesterday, and it should come to your favorite pod catcher over the weekend.

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Justin Tadlock shared his experience in his post Gutenberg 10.5 Embeds PDFs, Adds Verse Block Color Options, and Introduces New Patterns

 “Keeping up with Gutenberg – Index 2021” 
A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. The index 2020 is here

Block Pattern Directory

Speaking of Block Patterns, Kelly Choyce-Dwan posted the Block Pattern Directory Update from the Meta team. She invites you to follow along on the site that is a red-hat zone for now, but it already gives you a good idea on how it is going to work. Check it out on wordpress.org/patterns. The patterns are arranged in squares in five categories: Buttons, Columns, Gallery, Header, Text. You click on the square to see a details page with a larger representation and a button “Copy Pattern” or add them to your ‘Favorites’. Although, Kelly wrote that the copy button doesn’t work yet, I quickly tested it, and you can just paste it into your next post, even if you are not in code edit mode. 

The meta team is now working on the process for WP.org users to submit patterns into the directory, and the accompanying automated evaluation and moderation feature. WordPress users will be able to find block patterns right from the block editor inserter and add them directly to their post or pages.

Ultimately, the core block patterns will be removed from Gutenberg and made available through the Pattern directory only.

Testing Full-Site editing: The outreach program

The Full-Site Editing Outreach program is in full swing.. Anne McCarthy and dozens of people contribute to WordPress by testing the new feature.

Since the last Weekend Edition, there were quite a few updates coming out of the program.

🗓️ Upcoming FSE Outreach Program Schedule – Synch your calendars! 😂

For anyone who wants to learn more about the program, Anne McCarthy was a guest on the WordPress Jukebox podcast last month. Nathan Wrigley, host of the revived WPTavern podcast Jukebox, discussed with her How Full Site Editing Will Impact WordPress and why the program and its participants are an essential part for a successful implementation of the new features.

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In Building a Restaurant Header Summary you can read a curated list of outcomes and finding from the 4th Call for Testing.

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In this week’s Hallway Hangout: Discussion on Full Site Editing Issues/PRs/Designs, participants in the FSE program talked through the findings of the last call for testing with Anne McCarthy, Marcus Kazmierczak and Sabrina Zeidan. Using screen sharing and video the groups was able to discuss some of the interface challenges much easier than when just reading through a blog post. This was already the second of this Video chats. The first Hallway Hangout chat took place on April 8th, 2021, when Caroline Nymark, Paal Joachim Ramdahl, and Olga Gleckler joined Anne and Marcus.

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You have until May 5th, 2021 to participate and comment on Testing Call #5: Query Quest.

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If you have questions that still need answers, Anne McCarthy started the second round of collecting questions to bring back to the team and get you answers. Bookmark this page, so you can open it quickly when you have another question. If you want to read up on the answers for the previously submitted 47 questions, follow this link to previous posts of Q & A

Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg’s main (trunk) branch?
Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review.
Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.

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Developing for Gutenberg

Jem Turner, a reluctant adopter of Gutenberg, has six things she does to make developing websites with Gutenberg easier. It’s a great mix of developer and content creator processes.

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Will Morris posted How to Create a Custom Gutenberg Block in WordPress (In 3 Steps) on the Torque Magazine site and helps you how to extend your WordPress site with the Genesis Custom Blocks, one of the few ‘almost’ #nocode block building tools.

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Do The Woo podcast, co-hosted by Bob Dunn and Mendel Kurland, discussed WordPress Core and Gutenberg Blocks with Grzegorz (Greg) Ziolkowski. They talked about the opportunities of working with blocks in an eCommerce context and beyond full-site editing. Grzegorz explained how micro templates and blocks are the building material for more complex implementation and the advantages of the standardized interface for users and extenders in WordPress Core. 

Plugins for the Block Editor

Speaking of WooCommerce: Jamie Marsland shared his Top 10 Blocks for WooCommerce – Plugins mentioned:

• WooCommerce Blocks
• Storefront Block
• WooBuilder

New Era for WordPress Themes

Anders Noren, Swedish theme developer and co-author of the WordPress Twenty-Twenty theme, sees A New Era for WordPress Themes. In 2021, we will “see the introduction of the most significant change to WordPress themes since the modern theme system was released in version 1.5 of WordPress, 16 years ago.”. He has great explanation and insights, and embraces the new era and is happy about the slow release this time around, so theme developers can get familiar with the new tools. “Developers will have plenty of time to create fully block-based themes by the time the Site Editor and Global Styles are released in WordPress 5.9. And no excuses if they don’t.” Last month, Anders released a new free theme called Eskell. Read Sarah Gooding’s review on WordPress Tavern.

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The 47th edition of the Gutenberg + Themes roundup by Maggie Cabrera from the Themes team, lists all FSE related issues and PRs from the Gutenberg repository that need your attention, your opinion and your comments. The post also provides a list of resources if you are just now getting into block-based theme development. One issue caught my eye specifically: Presets used in patterns: register them as user presets? in it Andre explores a way how block pattern could be used across a theme change and still keep their styling. Reading through the comments from the Gutenberg contributors, it’s clear that there are a few questions still unanswered, when users can change colors. This applies to a few other elements of the themes and blocks, when classes don’t survive a theme change, and designs in navigation or group blocks lose their background colors. There are quite a few of these discussions that need your input and ideas.

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In his latest post, Chris Wiegman walks us through the process of reducing WordPress themes to the bar minimum and still be able to render blocks. Creating A Minimal WordPress Theme In The Era Of Gutenberg. This minimalistic and sustainable theme is available on GitHub

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If you are looking to share your future block-based theme in the WordPress.org repository, Carolina Nymark has a proposal for you: Removing blockers for block themes on the Themes team. I am quite surprised that it hasn’t received any feedback from the community yet.

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In his post Themes Set Up for a Paradigm Shift, WordPress 5.8 Will Unleash Tools To Make It Happen Justin Tadlock took a tour around the upcoming WordPress 5.8 features and took them for a spin and a first evaluation. “Themes are not going the way of the dinosaur. All of that overly complex PHP code work necessary in the past might just be. The shift is putting themes back into their proper place: design. Previously available tools such as patterns and styles coupled with the new pieces like theme.json and template-related blocks will be the backbone of the new system. It is all starting to come together.” he concluded.

As a former Theme developer, Justin Tadlock keeps his ear to the ground of theme development. I very much appreciate the tremendous effort he puts into his Theme reviews. I learn something new every time.

• Churel Is a Colorful and Minimalist Block-Ready WordPress Theme
• With Some Hits and Misses, the Guten Blog WordPress Theme Has Potential

WordPress Events

10 – 14 May 2021
Page Builder Summit 2021
Gutenberg is part of it with the following sessions:

• How to turn Gutenberg into a Page Builder with Stackable w/ Benjamin Intal
• Don’t Compete with Gutenberg – Embrace It w/ Danielle Zarcaro
• Google’s Core Web Vitals – Get Green With Gutenberg w/ Jake Pfohl
• Creating newsletters in the Gutenberg block editor w/ Lesley Sim
• Building Fast, Block Based Landing Pages with Mike Oliver

May 24-28, 2021
WordSesh 2021

June 7 – 9th, 2021
WordCamp Europe
A virtual event and contributor day. Call for Sponsors is open.

June 20 – 26
WordCamp Japan
The schedule has been posted. Most sessions will be on Japanese, with exceptions, I think…

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Digital consultancies Alpha Particle and Flowspoke have acquired the Kanban for WordPress plugin, a tool that puts Kanban boards into the admin to measure progress on a goal. The plugin is used for agile project management, sales tracking, editorial scheduling, and other planning purposes.

WordPress developer Corey Maass created Kanban for WordPress in 2015 but struggled to market it enough to grow beyond 2,000 users. In 2020, he saw Alpha Particle CTO Keanan Koppenhaver post on Twitter that he was looking to acquire a plugin business and jumped at the chance to sell Kanban for WordPress. Koppenhaver wanted a plugin that already had $1k-$12K annual revenue and wasn’t tied in with Beaver Builder, Elementor, Divi, or any other page builders. Integration with WooCommerce or other third-party software was a plus.

“I’d burned out on the project so I’d thought about selling for a while but didn’t do anything about it,” Maass said. “When Keanan posted he was looking, I inquired because I’d met him and knew he was solid. After a chat I knew he was the right buyer because his approach to WordPress was similar to mine – not too detached, not too dogmatic.”

Maass had monetized Kanban for WordPress for the past five years through a $149/year pro version (the most popular price point) and a $499.00 lifetime support license. He said revenue had peaked around $20K/ARR but had dropped to about $10K/ARR due to his minimal involvement. During his peak revenue months there were some weeks he would work 40 hours and some that he would work no hours at all.

“I applied the ’12-18 months of revenue as a selling price’ rule, and sold it for $15k,” Maass said.

He also commented on the difficulty of finding a non-technical partner in the WordPress world. Maass searched for someone to market the plugin while he concentrated on the product but never found a match:

I interviewed non-WordPress people. No luck. I’ve found a few people in the WordPress eco-system, but most already have one more products they’re growing. It’s one of the quirks of the WordPress world – there are more devs than non-devs. Most everywhere else in the tech-business world, it’s the other way around. And of course most of the success stories of WordPress are tech founders that pivoted to marketing/biz dev, which a lot of devs can’t do, myself included.

The teams at Alpha Particle and Flowspoke saw potential to grow the Kanban for WordPress plugin business with their combined design, marketing, and development skills.

“As WordPress continues to become an even more full-featured platform, we think there’s a demand for great applications to be built inside WordPress,” Alpha Particle CTO Keanan Koppenhaver said. “And Kanban is a perfect example of that. It’s already proven useful for a lot of people and we want to take even more of the features from other project management tools and integrate them tightly with tools WordPress folks are already using, like the Block Editor and WooCommerce, to help add to that unified WordPress experience.”

Although Alpha Particle and Flowspoke already have in-house products they are working on, they wanted to acquire a business where they could immediately start experimenting.

“With a plugin that already has some traction, it just makes it a lot easier to try new things and get quicker feedback on new features and new ideas,” Koppenhaver said. “Since there’s already an engaged user base, we saw the opportunity to take the things we tell our clients to do with their projects and apply them to a product of our own. I think that long-term this wouldn’t be the only one we acquire, but we’ll be on the look out for the next right opportunity. We’re excited about the long-term roadmap we’ve laid out for Kanban, too, and ready to put in the time to focus and make that vision a reality.”

Alpha Particle and Flowspoke plan to release the long-awaited version 3 of Kanban for WordPress in the near future. It has been completely redesigned and rewritten from the ground up. They will also be building in tighter integration with WordPress where users will be able to link posts to cards and automatically have cards moved to the “Published” column after publishing. Kanban for WordPress already has integrations for Gravity Forms and Ninja Forms but the team has more third-party integrations on the roadmap and is also taking suggestions.

BuddyPress 8.0.0-beta1 is now available for testing!

Please note the plugin is still in development, so we recommend running this beta release on a testing site.

You can test BuddyPress 8.0.0-beta1 in 4 ways :

• Try the BP Beta Tester plugin.
• Download the beta here (zip file).
• Check out our SVN repository: svn co https://buddypress.svn.wordpress.org/trunk/
• Clone our read-only Git repository: git clone git://buddypress.git.wordpress.org/

The current target for final release is June 2, 2021. That’s just five weeks away, so your help is vital to making sure that the final release is as good as it can be.

Please note BuddyPress 8.0.0 will require at least WordPress 4.9.

We repeat it each time we announce a beta release : testing for bugs is VERRRY important. Please make sure to test this pre-release using a testing configuration which is very close to the one you are using in production. If you find something unusual (aside from the great new features below), please report it on BuddyPress Trac or post a reply to this support topic.

Here are the three hottest 8.0.0 features to pay close attention to while testing (Check out this report on Trac for the full list).

BP Members Invitations

Whether you allow open registration or not you can use this opt-in feature to let your community grow itself. Once enabled from the BuddyPress Options Administration screen, your members will be able to invite their network of friends, co-workers, students, developers, well possibly anyone, to join your site .

Selectable xProfile sign-up fields

Until now, only the Primary group of xProfile fields was displayed on the registration form of your community. 8.0.0 gives you the freedom to choose any field from any field group to add to your site’s registration form .

Include WordPress user fields in your BuddyPress member profiles

8.0.0 introduces 2 new xProfile Field types. The WP Textbox can be used to include the user’s first name, last name, Website link or any potential WP contact methods. With the WP Biography field you can display the Biographical Info in the group of xProfile fields of your choice .

And so much more such as the new Welcome BP Email, the terms of use acceptance profile field, improvements to the BP Nouveau template pack & to the BP REST API…

We’ll tell you more about all these soon into our developer notes.

I reach over to grab my phone to check the time. I am debating whether I should stay awake and watch one more episode of The Walking Dead — it would be my fourth, maybe fifth, binge of the series.

11:12 pm.

I noticed that Slack was blowing up my phone. I had it on silent, so I had to catch up. One message stood out above all the rest:

No matching template found.

That was the front page of the Tavern last night as it updated to Gutenberg 10.5. I knew it was related to the Full Site Editing (FSE) changes in the latest release. I had seen that error enough in local testing and needed no more information to know what to do — deactivate the plugin. Then, I could get back to my internal debate of staying up for an hour past my bedtime for TV.

Sometimes, such is life on the bleeding edge, or at least life when running the fortnightly releases of the Gutenberg plugin with automatic updates enabled. It presents a challenge or two or a hundred. I had let my guard down after a smooth 10.4 release, and I knew better. After several prior releases of fixing issues on the backend, the development team gave me a break. It was almost as if they were saving up for something big.

Gutenberg now explicitly declares that anyone running the plugin is on a block-based theme, despite whether their theme actually supports block templates. It should generally fall back gracefully if there none. This seems to be centered on a change that allows classic users to create custom block templates. However, with the plugin activating a “theme-supported” feature automatically, it triggers a chain of events that overrides the template system. Any theme with a custom template hierarchy could break. I created a code snippet on Gist if anyone else runs into the issue and needs to deactivate “block templates” support.

I like that we run the plugin. Daily usage means that we can effectively write about it — a practice-what-you-preach sort of thing.

Sometimes, Gutenberg, you break my heart. You will find few enthusiastic cheerleaders more loyal than me. I believe in the project, but some days, you try your best to make it rough.

But, all is well. There are some exciting things about this release.

Template-editing mode is now enabled for classic themes. Despite this breaking the Tavern theme, it is a feature that I look forward to as a necessary transitional feature toward FSE. Another quick highlight is the work the team has done in making the Columns block more accessible. Each column now has a numbered label that is read aloud via screen-readers.

Embedded PDFs

Inline-embedded PDF.

A decade ago, I had one theme user in particular who needed to embed PDFs. As a young developer, it was just the sort of challenge I needed to build for an audience of one out of 100,000+. So, within the day, I wrapped up a solution similar to what the Gutenberg team did in version 10.5. It is nice to see WordPress finally catching up.

Only the block system makes such embedding much nicer. Drag a PDF into the content canvas and let it work its magic.

There is one caveat: many mobile phones and tablets will not show an embedded PDF. The File block does make a note of this. It also allows users to disable the inline embed and control the height.

This feature offers the best of both worlds. Visitors can read the PDF directly on the page, and they can also click the download button to snag a copy of the file.

Color Options for the Verse Block

Verse block with custom colors.

Poets can rejoice at last
The time of the Verse being a second-class block lies in the past
Users can add subtle colors or those that clash
A tweak here or there can give their words the flash
they need
to breathe
to exceed, all expectations
Text, background, and links are fair game
Unreadable if they were all the same
A splash of color is what it takes to tame
the words…

I will stop there and let the pros handle actual poetry.

Gutenberg 10.2 added the standard block color options to the Verse block. Perhaps all blocks will get the same treatment down the road. I am still waiting on colors for the Quote block too.

New Block Patterns

The latest plugin update removes all 10 of the default WordPress block patterns and replaces them with 15 fresh designs. The new set is an attempt to better showcase the editor’s capabilities.

Testing new block patterns.

For end-users who might be worried about losing their old patterns, this will not affect your content. Because patterns are merely predefined sets of blocks, it is the blocks rather than the patterns that actually get inserted into the content canvas and saved.

The removal of old patterns with replacements of new ones was always a part of the plan. Web design changes over time, and the patterns system allows core developers to keep pace. Perhaps the old patterns will live in the upcoming block directory for those users who still want them.

Gutenberg 10.5 also introduces a few opinionated Query block patterns: Post Grid, Large Title, and Offset Posts. The ultimate goal is to provide an array of options for users as a starting point.

“Large title” Query block pattern.

There is still an open call for the designers to pitch in, contributing custom Query patterns to the project. It is an opportunity to give back that requires almost no JavaScript or PHP programming knowledge.

My name is Jan, I am a Toolset developer at OnTheGoSystems. For the past several years, I have been actively involved in the Czech WordPress community. On Saturday 27th of February 2021, we held an online conference WordCamp Prague 2021.

Switching an interactive, in-person event to the online format while keeping most of its magic has been difficult but certainly not impossible.

As this year’s lead organizer, I want to share pieces of this sometimes arduous but extremely rewarding journey, together with some crucial ingredients that made it a success beyond our wildest expectations.

Let’s just face the truth: If I knew what I was actually getting into, I wouldn’t have said yes. But I am deeply grateful that I didn’t know. Even after being on the team two years prior to this one, the experience of being a lead organizer is pretty much non-transferable.

Even so, I — a backend software developer with questionable social and team management skills — was very reluctant about taking such a huge responsibility.

One of the things that convinced me — besides the fact that, apart from the then lead organizer, nobody else from our team was willing to take the role — was that this time, we were going to do an online conference.

This unique situation meant two things that removed most of my anxiety. First, nobody knew what to expect from an online WordCamp Prague: It was a completely new thing, an experiment, even. Let’s do our best and see what happens.

Second, the budget was no longer nightmare-inducing, compared to previous years (especially the fact that we were never sustainable without sponsors, and every time, we worried if we would manage to secure enough funding).

With the pandemic foreseeably about to wreak havoc on our small country, with all the uncertainty, and with me in strict isolation until a vaccine is available, a fully online event was the only realistic way we could actually make it happen.

And so we did.

Specifically, by “we”, I mean the fourteen of us: My fellow WordCamp organizers, most of whom have been on the team for years (many of them previous lead organizers), some new faces, and a small recording studio owner who demonstrated superhuman patience during the whole process. Even with this amount of people, it took considerable effort, and without the dedication, good teamwork, and communication, this wouldn’t have worked at all.

Part of the WordCamp Prague 2021 organizer team at the closing speech

The Recipe

My goal since the very beginning was to make it very interactive and to emulate the experience of a physical conference — where, as everyone who ever attended one will testify, the true magic of WordCamps happens — as closely as possible.

A great source of inspiration was WordCamp Europe 2020, which had to be hastily switched to an online version just a couple of months before (and I deeply empathize with its organizers, it must have been an extremely hard blow for them, much harder than for us who have “just” booked a hotel in Porto or already bought non-refundable airline tickets). I got some ideas from there that we copied and also some things I knew I wanted to avoid.

So, here’s our “online WordCamp recipe”, if you will:

A local target audience

From the get-go, we decided to explicitly focus on the Czech and Slovak audience, and we didn’t accept any English talks whatsoever (some of the speakers who applied will be talking at our monthly meetups, though).

The reasoning behind this was what I call online conference fatigue. Attending an English-speaking WordPress event is very easy these days, with WordCamps or meetups happening every couple of days or weeks. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course.

But, considering that many of our fellow citizens aren’t fluent English speakers — the language barrier is still rather high, unfortunately — and that we were told there are no other WordCamps planned in the Czech Republic or Slovakia for the upcoming year, we found ourselves in a unique position to kind of fill this niche (side note: Czechs and Slovaks understand each other very well) and to effectively add some value to the WordPress ecosystem in our region.

In the end, I believe this was one of the main reasons for such a high attendance (over 650 registered attendees, 595 of which showed up).

A proper online conference platform

WCEU — and other WordCamps as well — went with a combination of YouTube Live or Crowdcast for presentation tracks and Zoom for networking or virtual sponsor booths. While that is affordable, relatively easy, and accessible (and once again: I cannot blame WCEU for this choice due to the time pressure), I was not entirely satisfied. The result felt a bit confusing, constantly switching between browser tabs or different applications.

We put a lot of effort into finding a good platform, and we eventually settled on Hopin. It wasn’t without its quirks and little obstacles, it definitely wasn’t for free. But it worked great for the attendees. It allowed us to have a main “stage”, networking rooms, sponsor booths, even the schedule all in one place. It was immersive.

Front page of the event on Hopin

One track only

I have to admit that the two-track experience of WCEU (which also meant two networking rooms on Zoom) was pretty overwhelming. I can be an information sponge and I had a hard time deciding what I want to see or where I want to be the most.

Also, we didn’t have enough resources to effectively run multiple tracks for WordCamp Prague. To cover one track for a whole day, you need at least two hosts and then two other teammates who will stay in the networking room (we called ours “foyer”). We were very lucky to find our two hosts and we decided to go for quality instead of quantity.

From the feedback we received, this was a good choice. Even with keeping presentations to only one track, many people still struggled with wanting to be both in the main track and in the foyer at the same time.

Pre-recorded talks, live Q&A

One of those things that I truly liked about WCEU — and that we’ve easily agreed upon — was that our speakers’ talks would be pre-recorded and then they would join together with a host for a live Q&A session.

With fourteen speakers, the risk that something somewhere would go wrong was considerable. This way, the worst that could happen would be losing the Q&A.

The approach had some unexpected secondary benefits too: Our hosts could see the talk in advance and prepare for the Q&A much better. We knew when it would end, so we could plan our timetable accordingly. The speakers knew they really had to submit their completed talk a couple of days before the event. And so on.

Networking with the speaker afterward

If I had to pick one key aspect that made the most difference, this would be it. Also inspired by WCEU, after every talk (ca. 20min + 5min for Q&A), the speaker was invited to join the foyer (networking room) where the attendees could catch up with them either by asking further questions in the chat or by connecting with their audio and video and talking to them directly.

This ended up being very popular, there were always a couple of dozen people in the foyer. Sometimes, the conversation had to continue in a newly created room after the following speaker had finished their talk and joined in as well.

We had two of our team members always present, ready with some of their own questions for the speaker, to help start the conversation if needed.

Virtual sponsor booths with schedule

The highest two tiers of our sponsor program included a virtual sponsor booth. We suggested the sponsors pick one hour on the schedule and hold their presentation then, instead of having to attend for the whole day.

It was also practical for the attendees, I believe, to know what’s the best time to visit and ask questions.

When not active, the virtual booth was in a “presentation” mode with a sponsor’s slideshow on repeat.

Happiness bar and afterparty

No WordCamp is a proper WordCamp without these two things.

We implemented the happiness bar as another virtual room (same as the foyer) and two to three volunteers were always present to answer any attendees’ questions about their WordPress sites.

As for the afterparty, we created four different “tables” – virtual rooms. One of them also for English speakers, since some of our sponsors’ representatives wanted to attend as well.

To my surprise, two of those tables stayed active for a pretty long time, and when we concluded the afterparty around 10 PM, there were still about twenty, thirty people around. Perhaps we’ve become more used to online socializing because of the pandemic endless lockdowns, but some of the feedback we received went along the lines of “it felt almost like a physical WordCamp.”

Interviews with speakers

In years past, before the conference itself, we usually did write interviews with speakers and then shared the articles on our social media to bring attention to the event. It was usually quite difficult to produce these interview articles: The speakers rarely found enough time for this and we often got late submissions or content that was not wordy enough. Then, the text had to be polished and reviewed before publishing.

This year, instead, someone had the brilliant idea to just do live interviews via Zoom. The advantages were numerous: It was fast to make, we immediately had the final product (videorecording) with minimal post-processing, and it was also fast to view and more attractive on social media than a long text.

A strong, positive organizer team

I can’t stress enough how well my team managed to self-organize and how dedicated the vast majority of us were to deliver a great result. Even under time pressure, we’ve always done our best to keep the spirit up.

After all, we should all remember, it’s a WordCamp, a volunteer-organized event that should be interesting and fun, not a question of life and death. Everything doesn’t always have to be perfect. It’s important to keep that in mind.

WordCamp Prague 2021 organizers

Looking back

In retrospect, the whole experience was intense, difficult at times, but ultimately rewarding beyond expectation.

I find myself struggling to compare it with previous years. The physical event is really something else, and my perspective was dramatically shifted in my new role.

But I will say this: We keep building on the work of previous years. Be it our visual presence, the experience of individual team members with their agenda, or the way we organize and carefully handpick and balance the content of the whole event. It seems that we manage to move the event forward every year, and that’s ultimately what matters.

The most challenging part was time management — no surprise there. Because of the pandemic, everyone was kind of busy with their lives and we started seriously organizing only towards the end of September. In combination with the already somewhat problematic timing, we set ourselves up for quite a wild ride.

If you want to do the event before the main conference season, that also means that you have less than two months from confirming speakers to make everything happen. Practically nothing gets done during December, and the speakers will not plan that far ahead as to apply in November already.

This timing is kind of set in stone for us and we will have to handle everything that we can beforehand so that the run to the finish line is without unnecessary obstacles.

Also, with my limited experience, I would say that organizing a team of — albeit very motivated — volunteers who have different daily jobs is quite different from any sort of project management at work. The primary occupation or other things often have taken precedence over WordCamp and can easily mess up the team’s schedule in a bad way. That’s why we always have to strive for asynchronous communication.

Looking forward

And what’s next? I might apply to lead the next year as well, especially if my teammates decide to continue as well. The idea of starting with a physical event organization around May feels downright ridiculous at this point because of the situation in our country. And since I already have experience with leading an online event, I might as well exploit it.

For the next year, I want to again iterate on our know-how, keep what has worked, and replace the things that didn’t — simply, to move the whole project a couple of steps forward.

Most importantly, my great desire is to make the preparations run smoothly, do things in advance, reduce the amount of stress for the whole team.

Apart from that, we’ll be also focusing on monthly WP Pivo meetups and other activities of the community, but that is a topic for another time.

If you have any comments or questions, I invite you to reach out to me.

WordCamp Prague mascot, The Wapuu King

This post was originally published on onthegosystems.com.

Last month WordPress contributors published the initial designs for the upcoming pattern directory, which will host community-submitted patterns that can be installed with one click from the block inserter in the editor. A live prototype of the work in progress is available at wordpress.org/patterns.

The previously planned masonry style, which accommodates variable thumbnail heights, has not been implemented yet. Clicking on the individual pattern reveals a live preview with a handy resizing bar for trying it out on different screen sizes. The copying and favoriting features are not yet fully working. I was able to copy and paste patterns into the editor, but the previews aren’t yet very accurate.

The project is clipping along and contributors are aiming to have the new directory ready to launch in tandem with the upcoming WordPress 5.8 release. Features planned for the first version include browsing and searching patterns, live preview of patterns, and the ability to copy the block code. Users signed into WordPress.org will be able to create and submit patterns to the directory using a set of curated images and media. They will go through a basic moderation process and patterns will be available for download directly through the block editor.

Once the directory is launched, contributors plan to add support for internationalization, forking and iterating on patterns, expand the available media for use in pattern creation, and add a pattern browsing UI to the editor.

WordPress 5.8 is expected to land in July 2021 with the new Query, Site Logo, and Navigation blocks, template-editing mode, and the block-based widgets screen and customizer integration. The availability of pre-made patterns will be a beneficial accompaniment to the first round of full-site editing features added to core in the next release, enhancing the basic page building experience.

The Gravity Forms team formally announced version 2.5 of its form plugin yesterday. The product, owned by Rocketgenius, promises an overhauled experience that is more in line with the core block editor. The team also wanted to put accessibility at the forefront of this release.

The design is fresh, ditching pieces of the older WordPress UI in favor of cleaner lines and branding. The update should make current users feel like they are getting an overhauled product that still offers all the tools they are accustomed to. It should also feel more attractive to new customers.

“Our big push with 2.5 is to update our editor so it looks more like Gutenberg, added more enhancements to using it in the block editor as well as doing our level best to make Gravity Forms the easiest form plugin in the ecosystem to make accessible,” said James Giroux, Community Experience Manager at Rocketgenius.

• Version 2.5 Form Editor
• Version 2.4 Form Editor

Comparison between new and old Gravity Forms editor screens.

While much of the new UI looks and feels like the block editor, there are differences in the user experience. Instead of a block inserter, form fields can be clicked or dragged and dropped from the right sidebar. Users more accustomed to slash commands will not be able to work directly from the content canvas. Even with the differences, building forms felt natural.

“The native WP editor experience is changing a lot, and things are continuing to evolve there,” said Giroux. “One of the things we’ve worked really hard on with this latest release is to be as consistent as we can with our UI without being completely identical to the editor. This gives us the freedom to adapt to our users’ needs without being constrained by the timelines and development priorities of the WP editor. Our previous form editor was designed to fit in with the look and feel of the editor of the day, and I expect we’ll continue to be influenced and shaped by what the community designs and creates for Core.”

Gravity Forms always carved its own path, leaping when others were still learning to crawl. Building entirely with native WordPress methods could hinder their goals, and the block system is still rapidly changing.

“We’re very excited about the new UI patterns that the block editor has introduced,” said Giroux. “It gives us a blueprint to create with consistency that we believe will lead to better user outcomes. The legacy WordPress Dashboard was not opinionated by design. The Block Editor and now Full Site Editing workflows, however, are giving us a lot more that we can apply. This will make Gravity Forms more familiar to WordPress users, and that’s probably the biggest way the new editing experience has shaped our approach.”

Forms management screen.

“The Block Editor is a great tool for users,” said Giroux. “If we can find ways to give more functionality on a per post or per-page basis that will maintain the stability and performance that our users have come to expect, I don’t see why we wouldn’t move in that direction. For now, there is a lot of opportunity for us to explore the existing options available within the editor that keep development complexity to a minimum, and we’re keen to do that and provide more value to Gravity Forms users via the block editor.”

On accessibility, the primary lesson the team learned is that there is no magic switch to make a site WCAG compliant. It takes a holistic approach. WordPress, themes, and plugins must each do their parts to make this path easier for users.

“What we have done is invest in learning as much as we can about accessibility, the challenges of accessible forms, and worked with Rian Rietveld and the team at Level Level to make creating accessible forms easier and faster,” he said.

Gravity Forms 2.5 introduces new tools to enable accessible forms and outputs warnings when a user is configuring a form in a way that would pose an issue. The team also has extensive documentation on accessibility and a blog post covering it in the context of version 2.5.

“We’ve committed ourselves to making accessibility and accessibility testing a part of our development process,” said Giroux.

Outside of mentioning that the current release is the foundation going forward and excitement over new ideas, he remained tight-lipped about specific features in the pipeline for version 2.6 and beyond.

Competition and the Forms Market

Extensions from the Certified Add-On program.

For years, few developers or companies could afford the time and monetary investment of creating visual builders, for forms or otherwise. It is no small feat to accomplish what Gravity Forms and others have done in the past. However, the block system is a set of APIs that could take some legwork out of the equation. Eager developers might see this as an opportunity to carve out their own slice of the market.

Even while Gravity Forms is taking cues from core WordPress, the block editor could level the playing field, introducing new competition.

“I’m very excited by what we’re seeing plugin developers do with the functionality in the WordPress editor,” said Giroux. “Giving users common patterns that work the same regardless of the developer, I believe, will only help further adoption of WordPress and the plugins that capitalize on the power of the editor. Gravity Forms is more than just a form builder, it’s a platform for building some pretty exciting workflows which can be challenging to adapt to the pace of change in the editor. As the development cycle matures and becomes more predictable, I’m eager to see how more complex plugin ecosystems like ours adapt to it.”

The Gravity Forms team looks at forms as “just the tip of the iceberg,” seeing value in helping web professionals solve problems with different types of business data.

Even in an increasingly crowded space, they have tripled their team size in the past two years, launched a Certified Developer program, and upgraded their support and user feedback system.

“We are committed to being the most reliable, secure, and accessible form solution, and I think that’s what keeps us relevant,” said Giroux. “The WordPress ecosystem is maturing, and while it is harder to stand out today than perhaps a few years ago, there is still a lot of opportunity for great ideas and great innovation, just like we’re seeing with the WordPress editor.”

Created by James Koster, (@jameskoster)

As the name suggests, the WordPress Design Library is a library of WordPress design assets, enabling anyone to quickly create design prototypes for WordPress UI in Figma.

These tools are useful for designers when creating new UI and for anyone looking to contribute ideas, enhancements, or even solutions to bug reports. Sometimes pictures really do speak a thousand words.

In this post, we’ll talk about some key features of Figma before diving into a practical example that demonstrates some of the WordPress Design Library utilities.

What Is Figma?

Figma is a collaborative design tool that members of the WordPress project’s design team have been using for several years to work on and share design concepts. It offers a variety of handy features such as: in-browser access, rich prototyping tools, component libraries, code inspectors, live embeds, inline commenting, plugins, and much much more.

Perhaps best of all, it is totally free to sign up and start playing around. If you join the WordPress.org Figma organization (instructions below), you’ll gain access to the WordPress Design Library enabling you to design WordPress UI in no time.

What Is the WordPress Design Library?

In Figma, you can share components and styles by publishing them, transforming your file into a library so that you can use instances of those components in other files.

Figma.com

It may be easiest to think of the WordPress Design Library as a visual representation of all the javascript components that compose UI in the WordPress codebase. As an end user of the library, you can use those components in a self-contained environment to create new interface designs. It’s kind of like a big LEGO box containing all the UI pieces (buttons, form inputs, etc.) that you can use to create and try out new designs.

Creating designs with these assets enables rapid ideation on new interfaces by removing mundane processes that one would ordinarily have to work through. Nobody wants to repeatedly double-check that the button they made perfectly matches the buttons rendered by the code! And on the flip-side of that coin, anyone sharing a design with others will generally endeavor to make specific elements (like buttons) match what exists in the code as closely as possible. The WordPress Design Library solves both these headaches and more.

An additional benefit to these assets visually matching what exists in the codebase is that any designs you create with them will inherently make use of the latest WordPress design language and consequently feel like WordPress with almost no effort required. Passing such designs on to developers makes them easier to interpret and implement too.

Figma Fundamentals

Before getting into the practical section of this post, let’s quickly cover some of the fundamental features of Figma libraries. This will help prepare us for working with the WordPress Design Library.

Components

As we touched on above, the library consists of “components” that serve as visual counterparts to their code-based equivalents. That is to say, there is a Button component in Figma, and a matching Button component in the WordPress codebase.

But what is a Figma component?

Components are elements you can reuse across your designs. They help to create and manage consistent designs across projects.

help.figma.com

Let’s quickly explore some of the properties of Figma components to understand the ways they help when working on our next design.

Variants

Some Figma components offer variants. One example is Button(s) which all have the following states:

• Resting
• Hover
• Focus
• Disabled

These can be manipulated via the variants interface in Figma:

Other examples of components with variants are form inputs and menu items. Variants are a new feature in Figma, so we’ll be adding more over time.

Overrides

Although any components you insert are intrinsically linked to the master component in the library, it is possible to override some properties.

While working with an instance of the Button component, you can change things like the label, or even the background color, while maintaining the link to the master component in the library. If you’re familiar with git workflows, this is kind of like creating a local branch. Any changes you make can easily be reset in a couple of clicks.

Overrides made to your local instance will persist even when the master component is updated. So if your design calls for a button with a green background, you can apply that override safely with the knowledge that even if the master component is updated, your button can inherit those updates and remain green.

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We’ve only really scratched the surface of components here. So I would recommend the official Figma documentation for more advanced information.

Figma Styles

In addition to components, styles are also published as part of the WordPress Design Library. They have similar properties to components in that a master style exists in the library and can be utilized in your local Figma file. Just like Components, Styles will receive updates when changes to the library are published.

Styles are used to define colors, typographical rules, and effects like drop-shadows present in the WordPress codebase. They enable you to apply things like text or background colors that will match other UI parts.

Using Styles from the library, you ensure that your creations match existing UI elements, making it easier to implement.

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To learn more about styles in Figma, I recommend the official documentation.

Views and Stickers

“Stickers” are simply arrangements of Components and Styles that have been combined to represent common UI elements. They are not good candidates for full componentization due to their frequent customization needs. Examples of Stickers include the Inspector sidebar and the block inserter:

Their utility is simple: find the sticker you need, peel (copy) it from the WordPress Design Library, and stick (paste) it into your local file before customizing as needed.

Stickers are not Figma features like Components and Styles, but any stickers you copy to a working file will stay up to date by virtue of their underlying assets.

Views are arrangements of components, styles, and stickers.

Designing a Block Using the WordPress Design Library

Okay, now that we have a handle on the basics of Figma libraries and their features and the utilities of the WordPress Design Library like Stickers and Views, let’s work through a practical example – designing the UI for a brand new block.

Getting Started

All you need to get started is a Figma account added to the WordPress.org Figma organization.

Once you’ve signed up at Figma, simply join the #Design channel on the community Slack and request an invite. Include your Figma username, and a friendly community member will help get you set up in no time.

Now the fun begins!

To create a fresh new design file in Figma, visit the Gutenberg project and click the “+ New” button.

Now let’s include the WordPress Design Library in our working file so that we have access to all the goodies we’ll need:

1. Open the “Assets” panel and click the little book icon to view the available Team Libraries.
2. In the modal, toggle the WordPress Design Library on. You can leave the others off for now.

After closing the modal, you’ll notice a number of components become visible in the assets panel. To insert them, they can be dragged on to the canvas:

It’s kind of like inserting a block

Creating a Pizza Block

I love to eat pizza, so for fun, I’m going to design a new block that simply allows the user to display a delicious pizza in their posts and pages. I want the block to include options for a total number of slices and different toppings.

Work Out the Flow

I always like to concentrate on individual flows when designing blocks. That is to say, the linear steps a user will take when working with that block. In this case, I want to create visualizations of the following steps/views in our Figma file:

1. Inserting the block from the Block Inserter
2. The Pizza Block placeholder state including options in the block, its Toolbar, and the Inspector
3. The configured Pizza Block settings
4. The end result – a delicious pizza sitting comfortably on the canvas

Sketch the New States

Thanks to the WordPress Design Library, I’ll be using as many existing UI components as possible, but I still need a rough idea of how they will be composed in the new interfaces that my Pizza block will require. I normally find it helpful to sketch these out on paper.

Here’s the placeholder state which users will see when they first insert the block. This should be all I need:

Prepare the Views and Stickers

Helpfully, there are Views in the WordPress Design Library I can use for each of the steps in the flow outlined above.

I open the library, navigate to the Views page, find the views I need, copy them, and paste into my working file.

It is very important to copy (not cut) Views from the library so that they remain intact and other people can still access them. If you cut them, they’ll be gone forever, so please don’t do that

I’m also going to need a block placeholder sticker, so I navigate to the Stickers page, copy the one that most closely resembles my sketch from before, and paste it into my working file.

As with views, please only copy stickers; do not cut them.

Gather the Components

Referring back to the placeholder state I sketched out on paper (it can be helpful to import this into your Figma file), I can see that I’m going to need some form elements to realize the design.

I navigate to the Assets panel, locate the components I need, and drag them into my file:

Helpful tip: Once a component has been inserted, you can transform it into another component via its settings panel. Sometimes it is easier to copy/paste a component you already inserted and transform it this way, rather than opening the assets panel over and over.

Arrange the Views, Stickers, and Components to Create a Coherent Design

Now that we’ve gathered all the individual pieces we need, it’s simply a case of arranging them so that they resemble each of the steps of the flow we outlined before. This is done with simple drag and drop.

If you’re familiar with software like Photoshop, Sketch, and others, this should feel very familiar.

Once everything is in place, our flow is complete:

I still find it incredible that we’re able to do this in just a few short moments.

Hook up the Prototype

With each step of our flow created, the last piece of the puzzle is to connect them and form a clickable prototype.

I switch to the Prototype panel and create click behaviors by selecting a layer, then dragging the white dot to the corresponding frame.

There are a variety of behaviors that the Figma prototyping tools support, such as a hover, drag, and click. It is even possible to create smart animations. Perhaps that’s something we can explore in another tutorial, but for now, I will refer you to the Figma documentation for more advanced prototyping.

Now that I’ve connected all the appropriate elements, I am able to take my prototype for a test drive by clicking the Play icon:

You can try it too; just click here.

That’s All, Folks!

I tried to keep this tutorial fairly simple and concise; even though we only really got to grips with the basics here, you can see the power of Figma and the WordPress Design Library when it comes to trying out new designs.

The Creative Commons search engine will soon be part of WordPress.org, as Automattic will begin sponsoring several members of the CC Search team to maintain it. The engine currently offers over 500 million images, audio, and videos, under Creative Commons licenses or the public domain, aggregating more than 45 different sources.

Matt Mullenweg announced the acquisition on his personal blog, saying that CC Search would be “joining the WordPress project.” It is a major benefit to the community, providing a valuable resource for finding GPL-compatible images for use in WordPress-derivative products like themes and plugins. Mullenweg hinted at a long-term plan where deeply integrating CC search into WordPress.org is just the first step:

I am eager to give a new home to their open search product on WordPress.org in continued commitment to open source freedoms, and providing this community resource for decades to come. This is an important first step to provide a long-term, sustainable challenger to proprietary libraries like Unsplash.

The reference to Unsplash follows the company’s controversial licensing changes, where it abandoned CC0 licensing in 2017 after making a name for itself by offering images originally shared to the public domain. That body of work was hidden away by Unsplash’s refusal to use its API to differentiate these CC0 images going forward. In July 2020, the controversy was renewed after Unsplash launched its official WordPress plugin. Some users are apprehensive about the company’s willingness to change its license and terms in the future, especially after Unsplash was acquired by Getty Images.

Creative Commons search remains one of the few places to find CC0-licensed images that are compatible with the GPL. It will be interesting to see how this news of CC Search finding a new home on WordPress.org will affect Automattic’s relationship with Pexels, another image library with even more restrictive licensing than Unsplash. Access to Pexels was added to WordPress.com in 2018 and is also integrated with Jetpack.

“When I started CC Search, I always hoped it would become part of the infrastructure of the Internet,” former Creative Commons CEO Ryan Merkley  said. “Matt Mullenweg and I first talked about CC Search in 2018, and he immediately saw the potential. I’m so happy to see this happen. It’s great for WordPress, and great for the Commons.”

Mullenweg’s announcement said he anticipates CC search will be live and and running on WordPress.org in a few weeks. The new Automattic employees who were hired from Creative Commons will have their contributions sponsored by the company as part of the company’s Five for the Future commitment.

WordPress theme development company Themix released its third free theme to the official directory this week. Churel is described as a theme for organizations and businesses that also works for traditional blogging.

The development team has a keen eye for modern color schemes and font families. The theme has a refreshing design that is rare for the free theme directory, at least at first glance. It is the sort of project with just the right amount of eye candy to pull users in.

If that was everything necessary for great design, the theme would land in my top 10 picks from WordPress.org without a second thought. However, after digging deeper, it was clear the design had some issues. They are fixable. It would not take much nudging of a few CSS rules to make this a much better theme, so let’s just dive right into the problems before getting into the good stuff.

The theme’s most clear-cut flaw is with its typography. Sizing and words-per-line work well enough. The default Open Sans font is rarely a poor choice for readability. However, the line height is far too large for a good flow, and the white space between paragraphs makes it tough to tell where one ends and the other begins. It is almost as if the team got halfway through with fine-tuning the typography and decided to simply stop. It is a glaring issue that makes the theme practically unusable for long-form content, but it could be addressed with two minor style changes.

• Default body copy.
• Adjusted body copy.

For a theme “designed to take full advantage of the flexibility of the block editor,” it is missing one crucial component: editor styles. It is marked with the official “Block Editor Styles” tag in the directory and passed through the review process with no mention of it.

This seems like an oversight. Maybe something was lost in the build process or accidentally deleted before submission.

• Front end design.
• Block editor design.

Churel relies on the Kirki Customizer Framework, a requirement for accessing any theme options. Most controls the theme uses are built directly into WordPress. It does not make much sense to tie them to the activation of a third-party plugin, particularly for its simple color options.

Despite its faults, I fell in love with its homepage design immediately. The modern card design coupled with a minimalist page layout and bright colors makes me want to explore. And, you just got to love the ghost in the demo logo, right?

Churel theme homepage.

I also welcome any theme that actually creates a unique design for sticky posts on the homepage. Far too many theme authors either ignore it in whole or relegate it to a last-minute addition. The design team did not go overboard, but they made sure that readers know, “Hey, this is important,” while keeping it simple.

Other elements are attractive about the theme, such as its subscription/newsletter area in the page footer. The attention to detail when styling the core widgets means everything looks good in the theme’s sidebars. And a handful of animations sprinkled throughout the design, such as floating circles and an underline effect on post title links, add an extra dimension without feeling clunky.

Churel is almost a top-tier block-ready WordPress theme. With a handful of trivial CSS changes and — I will sound like a broken record to regular readers — some block patterns, it could be.

The theme’s “Authors” page template is an example of a missed opportunity for a block pattern. The page template itself might be perfect for some but not others. It automatically lists administrators and authors along with their profiles. By overlooking other roles that can publish posts, the system is rigid. “Authors” or, more commonly, “team” pages are an ideal fit for the block system. Site administrators could quickly create and customize such a page if they merely had a pattern for doing so.

Churel theme “Authors” page template.

A pattern built from the Columns block with nested Image, Heading, Separator, and Social Icons blocks would make this easy. Throw in an “alternating colors” block style (or just let users control the colors) for the Columns, and users can build what they want more easily than theme authors doing guesswork about what user profiles should appear.

The block editor exists to solve these problems, and theme authors are leaving half their tools in the bag. Block patterns will be a cornerstone of theme design in the coming years.

I may be overusing the term as of late, but this yet another theme that has potential. It is not the best that it can be yet, but it is a decent 1.x launch.

The WordPress community has long advocated for a repository with GPL-compatible images, and it’s time to listen to that need. CC Search, a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) image search engine, is joining the WordPress project with over 500 million openly licensed and public domain images discoverable from over 50 sources, audio and video soon to come.

I am a long-time supporter of Creative Commons and their influential work on open content licenses, and when we heard they were considering shutting down their CC Search engine we immediately started exploring ways we could keep it going. I am eager to give a new home to their open search product on WordPress.org in continued commitment to open source freedoms, and providing this community resource for decades to come. This is an important first step to provide a long-term, sustainable challenger to proprietary libraries like Unsplash.

Automattic has hired key members of the CC Search team and will sponsor their contributions as part of our Five for the Future commitment. I look forward to seeing the project grow and welcome them to the WordPress community! Will share in a few weeks when everything is live and running on the site.

The second major release of the year is right around the corner. You might have heard a bit of buzz about full site editing around your WordPress circles, so this post will give you some big picture things to know as well as a few wayfinding links for anyone who wants to know more.

For Site Owners and Operators

If you own and operate a WordPress site, updating to version 5.8 should be a seamless experience, just like any other update. All the conversation around full site editing is very exciting, but shouldn’t be alarming—everything in the next release that relates to full site editing is opt-in. To experiment freely with it, you need a theme that is built for it. Check the links at the end to see a few examples!

For Agencies and Theme/Plugin Developers

If you extend the functionality of the WordPress CMS for clients, updating to version 5.8 should also be seamless. As always, it’s smart to spot-check custom implementations in a staging environment or fully test when the release candidate is made available. Want to test your products and get everything client-ready? Check out any of the testing options below.

For Contributors and Volunteers

If you contribute time and expertise to the WordPress project, you can join us in the interesting work leading up to the WordPress 5.8 release and update your site with the deep satisfaction of a job well done. There is a lot that goes into every release—from design and development to documentation and translation; if you’ve got some time to spare, and want to help support the project that supports the tool that supports your site (whew!), check out the links below.

Resources

• A few block themes: TT1 Blocks, Hansen, Block-based Bosco, Q
• A few focus areas: Gutenberg plugin focuses
• A few ways you can test: Gutenberg plugin, Beta testing plugin, Gutenberg Times nightly build
• A few pieces of documentation: Full Site Editing Overview

Now that COVID-19 vaccinations are becoming more widespread, many hope that in-person WordCamps can once again be a reality. There is no official path forward just yet, and decisions will likely be locally based in the coming months. Angela Jin, a community organizer for Automattic, announced an open discussion around the topic.

Currently, all WordCamps are online-only events. There is no official decision on when in-person events will begin anew.

This is a follow-up to an earlier discussion that began in December 2020. It served as an initial opinion-gathering mission. For communities that have more effectively contained the COVID-19 spread, the Community Team posted guidelines and a checklist for local Meetups in February.

Most of the ideas from the December 2020 dialogue are at the forefront of the current open discussion. Mandatory masks, restricting the length of events, limiting attendance, and capping attendance according to the venue’s capacity top the list.

One of the tougher-to-achieve goals might be setting up safety guidelines around food or drink, which are often steeped in the local culture. It will also be a primary safety concern.

Mandatory registration is on the table. This would allow organizers to contact attendees in case of exposure.

Other suggestions center on maintaining local events, which is what WordCamp is all about. While some of the conferences are held in major cities and draw international crowds and speakers, this could be an opportunity to make sure that events focus directly on their communities. It would also be necessary for containing any spread of the virus or variants to outside populations.

There is one suggestion to recommend that only vaccinated conference-goers attend. This would likely fall under an honor system. Making this mandatory could create potential hurdles based on local jurisdictions. For example, there is a House Bill in Alabama, my home state, that would not allow entertainment events to “discriminate” based on vaccination status if passed. I have yet to verify if WordCamps fall under the definition of “entertainment events” like a concert or sports match.

There are still many unknowns at this point, and every potential in-person WordCamp would have to follow local laws. However, we are nearing a time where such events may once again be a reality.

“I’m going to get a little more personal here: returning to in-person WordCamps is going to be an emotional experience that is going to affect everyone differently,” Jin said in a final note, sharing thoughts that echo throughout the WordPress ecosystem.

“The WordPress community has a big range of introverts to extroverts, and we’ve gone through major changes to how we interact with each other. For all that I want to hug everyone, it also is strange and a bit frightening to think about all that human contact after a year-and-then-some of this pandemic. Supporting organizers in bringing back WordCamps in a way that acknowledges and accommodates all our excitement and fears, as well as our love of WordPress, is a worthy goal.”

Last week WordPress contributors began a heated discussion regarding blocking FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts). Google’s experimental alternative to third-party cookies has become a highly contentious topic that made its way into last week’s Core developers meeting.

Representatives from the Chrome team also attended the meeting to clear up any confusion and answer questions about how FLoC currently works. They related that during the FLoC Origin Trial (the process by which Chrome introduces new proposed API’s for feedback from developers), a page will only be included in the browser’s FLoC computation for one of two reasons:

• The FLoC API document.interestCohort() is used on the page.
• Chrome detects that the page loads ads or ads-related resources.

“In the final end state, we expect the way FLoC will work is that the only pages that will be relevant to calculating your cohort are the pages that call the FLoC API,” Chrome representative Michael Kleber said. “So pages will ‘opt in’ by using some new JS function call.”

Since FLoC is still in the the beginning stages, the Chrome team cannot confirm the final behavior for what pages will be included in FLoC calculations. At this point, it seems like it will primarily affect publishers and ad-supported websites in the future.

Although the authors and proponents of the proposal prescribed immediate action, WordPress’ leadership has determined that an implementation discussion is premature at this time.

“I am now amending my posted request for a reworking of the proposal – I do not want to see another proposal for action in WordPress right now,” WordPress lead developer Helen Hou-Sandí said during the meeting. “What we need is a Trac ticket where we track the status of the FLoC trial/implementation and discuss periodically to see if action is needed. I have an opinion, but it’s not really relevant at this time, and I think more of us should be comfortable with that idea.”

The Chrome team did not expect that many people would be considering FLoC at this point, as Origin Trials generally only attract a handful of people who are curious about the technical details. FLoC gained more widespread attention after the critical article from EFF. The original proposal on make.wordpress.org also attracted media attention due to its confusing approach, premature assumptions, and lack of critical peer review.

Peter Wilson commented on behalf of WordPress’ security team after meeting to discuss the issue, stating that it is unequivocally not a security concern:

Treating this as WordPress currently treats any other security issue would require releasing 21 versions of WordPress. As identified in other comments on this thread, it would also break the implicit contract of security releases by including an enhancement in the release.

As a result of these consideration, the security team have concluded that treating this as a security issue is inappropriate.

Whether this is suitable to be included in WordPress and subsequently released as part of the next 5.7.x maintenance release are discussions for the Core team. The security team do not have a consensus view on these questions.

Hou-Sandí opened a ticket where discussion continues on the implications of FLoC. As more information becomes available from Chrome’s Origin Trial, WordPress contributors will be better prepared to discuss how it may affect publishers and whether a core block, privacy setting, or other action is necessary.

In this episode, Josepha discusses the importance of co-development and testing for the continued growth and maintenance of the WordPress project. 

Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to [email protected], either written or as a voice recording.

Credits

• Editor: Dustin Hartzler
• Logo: Beatriz Fialho
• Production: Chloé Bringmann
• Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

References

• 2.5 Usability Testing Report 
• WordCamp Europe 2021
• Pune Work Along (Self Study) Meetup
• French Mini-Translation Day, April 30, 2021
• April 14, 2021, Full Site Editing Go/No-Go Demo Recap
• Full Site Editing Go/No-Go Next Steps
• Test WordPress.org

Transcript

0:10

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of some of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project and the community around it, as well as get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!

0:39

Prior to Gutenberg, our current multi-year project that is changing the way we see WordPress, another multi-year project changed the way we saw WordPress. Starting in 2008, substantial changes to the WordPress interface came in a series of major releases, starting with WordPress 2.5. That was before my time in the project; I’ve only ever worked with the current dashboard in WordPress. But, from what I’ve read, the user testing that would have gone into it was a huge undertaking and very well coordinated. Now, WordPress has not taken on that type of robust testing project since, but starting around 2014 or 2015, a community testing practice was started. I’ve shared these calls for testing frequently, both on Twitter and in this podcast. But you may not really know why I find the testing program so valuable. So today, I’m going to explore with you the concept of co-developers in open source.

1:52

Open source software, like WordPress, is built by the people who show up. There are a few obvious groups when you think of software, the developers, designers, technical writers, folks who monitor the forums, and really, all the teams you find in our WordPress project. Co-developers or co-creators, if you’ll join me in making our tent a little bigger, refers to the users of an open source product who actively engage and contribute to the work by using the software and sharing any bugs that they find.

2:25

I mentioned this group in the episode about how WordPress improves. Specifically in that episode, I underlined that if you consider users to be part of the collaborative process, as long as people use your product, those people will have opinions about your product’s needs. And today, I’m extending that thought a bit further to say that, as long as there are opinions, there are opportunities.

2:51

When you know what isn’t working, you can focus your attention on a solution, you can focus on making sure that you can make it work. The existence of co-creators is one of the great things about open source. No designer or developer or product owner has to know every sort of user to be able to get feedback from them. If they show up, test the software and get their thoughts written down, then you can start to see patterns and common pain points. It is also, unfortunately, one of the great difficulties of being an open source project. After all, if users don’t show up, or don’t test, or don’t write down their feedback, it’s impossible to know what worked for them and what didn’t. And on top of that, with such a large percentage of the web being supported by WordPress in this case, not every problem is part of a pattern. And not all patterns are part of the current priorities.

3:54

Looking beyond that double-edged sword. Let’s say that this idea of a co-creator makes sense to you. And more than that, you feel like it describes you. What does it mean for you to show up in WordPress? There are lots of good ways to offer this sort of feedback and contribute to those patterns that can help us see through the fog. So I have for you a mini list and, of course, a bunch of links in the show notes for you. 

So some good ways. First, you can participate in any of the dedicated calls for testing. They are short and frequently have a guide. I participate in them and generally find them fun. I say generally because sometimes I also find them frustrating. That’s really okay too; the frustrations helped me to identify that I found a problem. And if I can find a problem, then I have saved someone else from finding that problem in the future. The second thing you can do is file a bug report with information about what happened when you ran into a problem and how someone like me could make your bug happen on their site. Bug

5:00

Reporting is one of the things I’ve grown to really love in my time and open source; I did not love it. At first, I was really scared to do it. I mostly used to send videos of the bugs that I found to other people and ask them to file the bug reports for me. But then, of course, I never knew whether they got fixed or not. So I was scared to do it at first. But once I figured out what makes a “good report,” I felt like I was helping circle hidden treasure on a map or something. I realized also not everyone’s excited about finding hidden treasure on a map. But I play video games and finding hidden treasure on maps is, like, a thing.

5:43

A third really great way to contribute like this is that you can join any community meeting to learn more about what’s happening now and in the future, or just to see what makes WordPress work. As a heads up, these meetings go really fast. And they’re all in text. And there’s sometimes, but not all the time, a little bit of jargon that you have to head to your favorite search engine to find. But I sit in on about half of them myself and get a lot of really good information about things that I’ve been wondering about, things that looked broken, but actually are functioning exactly the way that they should. And I just didn’t want them to function that way. And more often than not, I found out that something that I thought was broken, was already identified and being fixed. Those are three great ways to show up and help give feedback that helps make WordPress better and more functional for more people. 

There are also a few other ways that we see people trying to share that feedback that don’t work quite as well. And I’m going to touch on a few of them just because it’s important to know, as you’re trying to figure out how to get started with this. The first one is just tweeting your frustrations, and I get it like that’s literally what Twitter is for.

7:03

But also it’s hard to create a block from “I am frustrated, behold my hateful rhetoric.” Not that any of you, my dear listeners, ever tweet hateful rhetoric. Still, that is really hard for anyone to figure out what was actually wrong in that moment. Another thing that is not the most functional way to give feedback is review brigading. The Internet rewards this kind of behavior, but I have found at least for WordPress, those false positives and false negatives can be really confusing for our new users. And the third way, that’s not our best way, and probably is the least best way, is just by giving up and not telling anyone what broke for you.

7:45

I know that I already said it’s not possible to fix everyone’s problems. But while it’s not possible to fix everyone’s problems the moment they get shared, it’s also truly impossible to fix any problems that no one knows exist. And so giving up and not sharing an issue so that we can identify it as part of a pattern of problems is probably the least effective way to help us help you get your problem solved.

8:13

This brings me back to the question of the value of WordPress users as co creators in the development process. As WordPress grows, both in usage as a CMS and in participation as a community, it’s important for us to shed the idea that software creation is only about what literally can be done to code or what literally can be done to core or what literally can be done to the CMS. It’s also important for us to constantly remind ourselves that the best outcomes are the result of collaboration with the people who use WordPress the most. I know that not every type of user we have is showing up to give us feedback about where WordPress doesn’t work for them. And I would love to see more feedback that helps us to figure out where our patterns are.

9:03

So the bottom line is this without user feedback that has some clarity of what was expected versus what happened, the work to make a good choice involves a whole lot of guessing. So since open source software is built by the people who show up, I hope this gives you an idea of how you can show up and help improve the tool that powers your sites.

9:32

That brings us to today’s community highlight every episode or so I share either a great story of WordPress success or a great story of a WordPress contributor who helped some folks along the way. Today’s community highlight comes from @trishacodes who shared one of her early to WordPress mentors. She says “@RianRietveld was such an encouragement and helped me find the courage to speak up.” I have had myself many conversations with Rian, and that rings true for me as well. 

10:00

That brings us to the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the small list of big things. It’s actually kind of a medium list. Today, I’ve got four whole things to share with you all. The first thing on my list is that WordCamp Europe is coming, that will be June 7th through the 10th. It’s a multi-day online event. I will share in the show notes a link to the main website; there you can get an idea of what will happen, the schedule, and get your hands on some tickets so that you can get it in your calendar and prepare yourselves. 

The second thing I want to share is for all of our polyglots out there. The French team is planning a translation day coming up on April 30. I will share a link to that as well so that you can get an idea of what that takes if you’re feeling like you want to do some translation work. The third thing I want to share is that the Indian community in Pune actually started a new meetup series. It is a translation work along self-study – also for all of our polyglots out there. I would love to see as many people as are interested in both learning about how to do translations and certainly translating WordPress get registered for that. A final thing I want to share with you all is that if you are curious about what full site editing features will be included in the 5.8 release, that’s the WordPress release that’s coming out in the middle of July, you can check out my recap and recording of the demo that was held with Matt, Matias, and the rest of the team. There’s are also a number of other posts of next step ideas that I will share in the show notes as well.

11:51

That, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for joining in today for the WordPress briefing. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks!

The WordPress Community Team is discussing banning companies from sponsoring WordCamps if they advertise competitively against WordPress. A WordCamp organizing team recently brought the concern to community deputies regarding a potential sponsor that is advertising its product in such a way that it puts WordPress in “an unflattering light.”

This particular instance is prompting community leadership to clarify expectations for how sponsors advertise WordPress derivative products – products built on top of WordPress, such as themes, plugins, or distributions.

Cami Kaos published a list of the existing expectations for sponsors and those who want to participate in the community’s events program. These include items such as no discrimination, no incitement of violence, respecting the WordPress trademark and licensing, and others from the WordCamp Organizer Handbook. Kaos posed the following two questions to the community:

Should the WordCamp and meetup programs accept sponsors, speakers and organizers who engage in competitive marketing against WordPress?

How should competitive advertising be defined in the WordPress space?

The discussion post did not specify the potential sponsor in question but recent campaigns from Elementor meet the criteria of advertising against WordPress with a negative slant. The ads insinuate that WordPress isn’t user -friendly or intuitive and that without this particular product WordPress is frustrating. The company has also run ads that co-opt the term “full-site editing” on Google searches, with Elementor representatives claiming that it is a generic industry term.

Elementor has sponsored events in the past. If the community guidelines are changed to explicitly prohibit advertising that puts WordPress in a negative light, then the company may be required to pull all of its ads that violate the new requirements in order to become a sponsor.

Bluehost is another company that might come under the microscope for its recent trademark misuse. Although the company had a meeting to resolve matters with WordPress’ executive director Josepha Haden, Bluehost still has multiple ads running with the same issue.

Feedback so far has been minimal. One participant in the discussion mistakenly thought the proposal was referring to competition in general. Andrea Middleton clarified in the comments.

“The question is whether WordPress events should co-promote or endorse people and companies that are competing against WordPress itself,” Middleton said.

“For example, if someone is running ads saying ‘WordPress is terrible, use our product instead,’ or even ‘WordPress is terrible, but our plugin makes it good’ do we want to include them as a sponsor for WordPress events?”

Defining competitive advertising to exclude all forms criticism may be too strong of a line but there should be guidelines that cover more egregious cases where a company is disparaging WordPress for the purpose of exploiting its community.

“Criticism can be healthy and good marketing when done in good faith and with a tool that truly addresses a user need,” Mark Root-Wiley said. “What makes criticism objectionable is when it strays past details of software and into harmful criticism of people and communities, and it seems like the existing standards cover that.”

The discussion will be open until April 29, 2021, when comments will be closed and the discussion will move to final review.

Earlier this week, Plausible Analytics released version 1.2 of its WordPress plugin. The update includes a missing feature that should make it more appealing to end-users. The plugin now supports an “embedded mode” that displays a site’s stats directly in the WordPress admin interface.

Without counting the self-hosted users of its open-source project, Plausible Analytics recently surpassed 14,000 users on its hosted service. That is a step forward in its two-year path toward making a dent in the analytics market.

“We’ve taken 1.4 billion pageviews directly from Google Analytics to date,” said Plausible’s co-founder Marko Saric”. We’re about to reach 3,000 paying subscribers by the end of the week.”

It is an exciting moment for the small, EU-based team. However, the work does not stop there. The plugin has gained 500 active installs after its recent launch. It is a small number, but Saric seems happy that the plugin is simply showing up in the directory when people search for “web analytics” at this point, hoping that it will bring more WordPress users around to a privacy-first solution.

It is a slow burn and organic growth. However, WordPress users are stepping up and filing tickets through the plugin’s GitHub repository now. Activity and feedback are the lifeblood of young products, giving developers goals to reach toward.

The latest version of the Plausible Analytics plugin gives users access to their stats dashboard from the WordPress admin. Hooking it up is as simple as generating a shared link via the service’s website.

Generating a shared link from the Plausible Analytics site.

Earlier versions of the plugin did not include this functionality because the team was still building their public API, a necessary feature for sharing the data outside of their system.

The new stats API is not just for the plugin. Developers can build on top of the system, retrieve stats, and present them however they want. Dailytics, a third-party service, already integrates with it and sends out daily analytics emails. The team has detailed documentation on using it.

Realtime stats embedded into the WordPress admin.

The latest version of the self-hosted Plausible script is available too. It features all of the same capabilities. However, the WordPress plugin does not yet support embedded mode for analytics just yet.

“The development of the WordPress plugin started before this self-hosted release was completed, so WP dashboard for self-hosters is not part of the 1.2 plugin release, unfortunately,” said Saric. “I’ve now spoken with Mehul Gohil, who is the WordPress developer that has helped us with the plugin, and we will try to do a mini-release of the plugin in the upcoming days to allow the self-hosters to get their stats within the WordPress interface too.”

Version 1.3 and Beyond

Saric said his team already has a roadmap for the next version of the plugin. Several new features should land in version 1.3, such as excluding authors and editors being counted in the stats. This option exists for administrators at the moment.

“The second one is a widget that gives a quick overview of the most import metrics such as unique visitors and pageviews, so you don’t need to go into the analytics section if you don’t want to,” he said.

The team is also looking at out-of-the-box integration with some popular third-party plugins to support event tracking. At the moment, this is primarily a developer-friendly feature because it requires a bit of JavaScript to track signups and conversions. Making it work by default is the goal.

“We’ve already done some work to make it easier, such as the recent introduction of the ability to group pages,” said Saric. “For instance, you can now group WooCommerce checkout pages for your eCommerce, so now we just need to enable that out of the box in the plugin.”

They are shooting for a self-hosted or proxied version of their script from the plugin in the long term. This would allow users to run the script from their domain directly as a first-party connection, providing more accurate data. This is a manual process right now, but the team wants the process to be easy for those users going down the self-hosted path.

“Obviously, in addition to the WordPress-specific improvements, we’re constantly working on improving Plausible Analytics itself,” said Saric. “WordPress users automatically get all of those into their dashboard as we improve and update the main site. No need to wait for WordPress plugin updates for those to make it into the WordPress dashboard. One metric we’re hoping to release over the upcoming weeks is the inclusion of states and city data in addition to the countries that we have now. Many of our users have asked for this, so we’re prioritizing it in our development.”

Any time I see a new block-ready WordPress theme, I am like a toddler in a toyshop. I cannot wait to bring it home, rip off the packaging, and play with it. Sometimes it is the type of fun that will create lasting, years-long memories. Other times, the toy is not all it is cracked up to be. It does not deliver on the promises on its packaging. It is too hard to play with or just not what you expected. You discard it and move on to one of your other trusted toys, ones with guaranteed fun built-in.

The latter feeling is where I am at with Guten Blog by Avid Themes. I want to love it. It has many elements that could make for a great theme. At first glance, I even believed it could be one of only a handful of quality, block-supported themes in the directory.

Guten Blog default demo homepage.

However, I was that kid all over again, let down by the shiny veneer of colorful packaging. The upside is that there is potential. It has all the elements needed to be among the great blogging themes. With more work, it could go from mediocre to top-10 material.

The most disappointing thing about the theme is the following homepage section:

Common three-box design pattern.

It is a typical design on the web today — a section containing some intro text with three boxes. I do not dislike the design. The problem is how it is handled by the theme. It relies exclusively on the Gutentor plugin to build this, and there are zero reasons to do so. The block editor is capable of handling this on its own.

This would have been an easy win for the theme to package this section design as a custom block pattern.

For some blocks, I get it; WordPress’s built-in blocks do not cut it yet. For example, the various post-related blocks do not exist yet. Of course, the Query block is slated to land in WordPress 5.8. That would be an opportune moment to make the switch.

However, the above section is representative of all the imported demo content. Everything from columns to quotes to paragraphs — yes, paragraphs — is built with Gutentor’s blocks.

One of my primary fears with theme developers is that they will continue to over-rely on plugins for basic features that exist in WordPress. This teaches end-users to also rely on these plugins, and it is a shame. This creates less flexibility for users, tying basic content to a third-party tool.

There are some stunning pre-made demos that users can import. In total, the theme offers 18 options. Seven of those are available for free. The other demos are part of the “pro” package, ranging from $49.99 to $79.99 depending on the number of sites the customer wants support and updates.

Pre-made, importable demos.

In particular, I am a fan of its third free option for lifestyle-type blogs:

Lifestyle-type free, importable demo.

The importable demos are the bright spot of the theme, most of which showcase various homepage options. The development team simply bypassed the tools available in core WordPress. There are no block styles or patterns, and the demos offer a plethora of opportunities to flesh out custom designs for users to insert with one click.

The theme technically works without extra plugins. It is billed as a blogging theme, so the hope is that it holds up in that regard. With a content size between 730 – 800 pixels and text of 16 pixels, it does not. The text is practically unreadable when it comes to long-form content. It may as well be a jumbled mass of words where you continually lose your place from line to line.

This is not Justin-is-having-a-bad-day-so-let’s-dump-on-a-theme. I genuinely love the potential Guten Blog has. I want it to be better. The overall design is something I could imagine myself using on various websites I am involved with. Its font choices, minimalist layout, and generous use of whitespace are right up my alley.

However, it has some issues. For example, it updates a database option for a third-party plugin on every page load (I am not sure how that made it through the review process). It also missed a lot of opportunities to showcase the core block editor.

Other issues are with the theme’s primary admin notice. The small text that reads “Clicking on get started will activate Advanced Import” felt shady. Literally, the text was intentionally styled with a 10-pixel font size, which was incredibly difficult to read, so tough that I did not catch it until I unwittingly began installing a third-party plugin. It also installed Gutenblog Demo Import and the Gutentor plugin without authorization at that moment.

These are fixable issues. I hope the theme development team can take my complaints and build something that eventually exceeds my expectations. The potential is there.

Update (April 26): I did not notice during the initial review, but I have since confirmed that this theme changed my site title to “WP GutenBlog” at some point in the process, likely during the demo import.

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Disclosure: This theme makes use of a library I built for breadcrumbs. It is using a version that is at least three years out of date.

Google announced this week that it will be delaying the rollout of the new page experience ranking signal to mid-June 2021. Page experience will be included along with existing search signals like mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines. The rollout, previously planned to begin in May, will be gradual and page experience will not be in full force as a ranking signal until August.

In the meantime, Google has been elaborating on how page experience is evaluated and has published an FAQ page with common questions they have been answering:

• If I built AMP pages, do they meet the recommended thresholds?
• Can a site meet the recommended thresholds without using AMP?
• Is there a difference between desktop and mobile ranking?

Google also announced a new Page Experience report in the Search Console that displays the percentage of URLs with good page experience and search impressions over time. Currently, page experience only applies to mobile search. Good URLs refers to the percentage of mobile URLs with both Good status in Core Web Vitals and no mobile usability issues according to the Mobile Usability report.

Google News will also be getting some important AMP-related updates during the rollout, with the removal of the AMP badge icon and the inclusion of non-AMP content in the mobile apps:

As part of the page experience update, we’re expanding the usage of non-AMP content to power the core experience on news.google.com and in the Google News mobile apps.

Additionally, we will no longer show the AMP badge icon to indicate AMP content. You can expect this change to come to our products as the page experience update begins to roll out in mid-June.

Non-AMP pages will also be eligible to appear in the Top Stories carousel as another planned part of this update.

Google Search has been updated to include support for signed exchanges (SXG) on all pages, previously only available on AMP-generated pages. This allows for pre-fetching resources, such as HTML, JavaScript, CSS, images, or font, in order to render pages faster. Web.dev has a guide and tools for monitoring and debugging SXG.

For much of WordPress’s history, the foundational elements of building a theme have been slow to change. Every so often, developers would get a new feature, such as child themes, featured images, nav menus, and template parts. Each of these was epic in its own way. However, theme authors had ample time to adapt to these single feature introductions.

When the block editor landed, it did so with a bang. Love it or hate it, it shifted how we think about design for the web. It was not one of those one-off enhancements, regardless of how many times we were told it would “just work” with any theme. It sometimes does not technically break things. Support and integration are necessary for an ideal user experience, and theme authors have been slow to catch up.

With WordPress 5.8, theme authors are gearing up for another paradigm-shifting set of changes. Josepha Haden Chomphosy, WordPress Executive Director, announced last week that several Full Site Editing (FSE) sub-components will begin shipping with the next release.

In the latest episode of the WP Tavern Jukebox podcast, Nathan Wrigley hosted guest Anne McCarthy. He asked her to calm people’s fears over upcoming changes. “So, as an example, let’s imagine that we’re a theme developer. We may be getting concerned that themes are going to become a thing of the past, that the livelihood that we’ve created for ourselves is going to disappear before our eyes.”

It is a common question. Since the inception of Gutenberg, particularly its features that fall under FSE, themers have wondered if there would be a place at the table for them. If WordPress is moving toward a grander page-building experience, where do themes fit in? If users can change the layout or manipulate all of the styles, what is the theme’s job?

These questions are finally getting some answers. We can see the real-world changes introduced in recent months. They paint a much clearer picture, defining the role of themes in WordPress’s future.

“And for theme authors, themes are going to be so important in a full site editing world,” said McCarthy. “And one of the things I am so excited about is that there’s going to be a ton of what they’re calling…the idea of these hybrid universal themes that can work with, for example, template editing.”

She is referring to a recent discussion that makes some distinctions between universal and hybrid themes. Essentially, universal themes would work in both a classic or block editor context, depending on what the user chose. A hybrid might support parts of the block experience but have a path to becoming a universal theme that fully caters to any user down the road.

While this does not wholly address theme authors’ concerns, these are the building blocks that Gutenberg contributors are thinking about. First and foremost, they want a solid user experience. However, the discussions show that they also recognize that theme developers need to opt into new things at their own pace, supporting features as they understand them and learn how to implement them. This provides a path forward for traditional themes to transition into the new era and be built from scratch with new tools.

Themes may well be more vital to WordPress’s future than they were in the past.

New Tools Coming in WordPress 5.8

The site editor and global styles features are not planned to ship with WordPress 5.8. However, the upcoming release is set to introduce some powerful tools for theme authors. This will be a pivotal moment for theme development companies that want to make their mark in the space. The right team with a forward-looking mindset stands to disrupt the market and make millions. And, there is room for the authors who just want to build cool stuff.

It all starts with the new template-related blocks that should be enabled in the next major update. In particular, the Query block provides an alternative to what was formerly only possible via code and carefully constructed theme options. Coupling it with existing features opens us to a world of possibilities.

For example, I chose a theme from the most popular list on WordPress.org that looked to have one of the most complex query and loop setups of the bunch. The following is the homepage of EnterNews:

EnterNews WordPress theme homepage.

Anyone familiar with theme development can tell you that it would take at least eight different queries to create that homepage design without looking at the code. The only way to build that and allow users to customize which posts appear is through a series of theme options (probably category-based dropdown select boxes).

If the Query block ships with WordPress 5.8 as expected and is also enabled for any theme, this layout is suddenly possible directly from the block editor — no site editor necessary. Via block patterns, users can insert these “sections” of different Query blocks in their page and reorder them. However, it requires buy-in from the theme author.

As I said earlier, theme authors have been slow to adopt block-related features as a whole. Undoubtedly, the system for the EnterNews homepage is already getting the job done. And, if it works for the theme’s current user base, there may seem to be little incentive to change.

However, there are real benefits from a development angle to transitioning to a new system. The most obvious is that it requires little code compared to the PHP needed for building customizer options. Block patterns are little more than HTML with bits and pieces of JSON configuration in the mix. Developers can literally build them from the editor and copy/paste the code part.

By writing less code, it lowers the potential for security issues and other bugs. Theme authors can also be less rigid in their design, allowing users to move pieces of the layout around.

The Query block is not the only one slated for inclusion in 5.8 outside of a block-based theme context. The Navigation, Site Title, Site Logo, and more are ready to ship. Most such blocks are vital components for building an entire page. Theme authors could start handing over the tools for building complex landing pages on launch day this July.

Stepping Stones

Not every theme author needs to step up and attempt to revolutionize the theme space — though I am looking forward to those who do. Others might want to take a more measured approach. FSE is a set of many sub-components, some of which are shipping with WordPress 5.8. Many of these do not require developers to opt into them. They will “just work.” Sort of. Mostly.

Users will be able to switch to a template-editing mode directly from the block editor. From there, they can create entire page templates of their choosing. Theme authors can either stand in their way by not styling for blocks or make the experience more enjoyable.

The widgets screen and customizer will allow end-users of traditional themes to insert blocks in any of their sidebars. Some theme authors will need to account for this in their designs. The HTML output might throw off some layouts. For those who are not ready, they should disable block-based widget support.

The most crucial tool, however, is entirely optional for theme authors. That is the introduction of theme.json support. The theme.json file is the cornerstone of future theme development. It acts as a config file for block settings and styles, allowing theme authors to set up the defaults for anything.

In a nutshell, theme developers can set up any of the block options from this file, and those options are automatically handled in the editor and on the front end.

Themes can also define defaults for block options that do not yet exist in the interface. The system will automatically output these as styles, even if users cannot change them in 5.8.

Again, this means less code work for themers in the long run. While there will likely always be a place for custom CSS, some themes could essentially be built from theme.json configurations. That is not possible today. However, theme authors can start taking advantage of this tool.

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Themes are not going the way of the dinosaur. All of that overly complex PHP code work necessary in the past might just be. The shift is putting themes back into their proper place: design. Previously available tools such as patterns and styles coupled with the new pieces like theme.json and template-related blocks will be the backbone of the new system. It is all starting to come together.

The transition will take some time, and each themer will need to decide for him or herself how much they want to take on. But, the time is near. I might even crank up the old code editor and start putting together a project myself. There has never been a better time to be excited about theme development than now.

Copy by Anne McCarthy (@annezazu) and Design by Mel Choyce-Dwan (@melchoyce)

In WordPress circles (whether it’s your local meetup, a trusted publication, or your networking group), you may have heard terms like Core Editor, Gutenberg, and the Block Editor used interchangeably over the last four years. And if you’re following contributor work on the project itself, you may also have heard some additional nuances—Gutenberg plugin, Gutenberg, or Block Editor. 

It can get a little confusing, so let’s take a look at four terms that will help you find your way: 

• WordPress – WordPress refers to the open source software but also to the community that surrounds it. 
• Gutenberg – Gutenberg is the code name for a multi-year project to update editing areas for the WordPress software.
• Editor – The editor refers to a section of the software that allows you to update content on your site’s posts and pages. 
• Gutenberg Plugin – The Gutenberg plugin is where early work to update the editor is shared.

The Gutenberg Plugin

Now that we’ve cleared up the definitions, let’s talk about the plugin. When might you use it? What would you use it for? You can think of it as an early access program or a “WordPress lab.” The plugin is updated every two weeks, which means that bugs that have been reported are often fixed and that what you see changes rapidly. 

The Gutenberg plugin also contains features that aren’t yet ready for their WordPress debut but are ready for curious users to test and provide feedback. This is a common practice that allows stable features to make it to your site in WordPress releases while allowing experimental features to be tested and refined. To get a sense of whether using the Gutenberg Plugin might be something you want to explore to get access to earlier features, check out the “What’s New” release posts and the Core Editor Improvement post series. 

Do I Need the Plugin to Use Gutenberg?

It depends on your comfort level! Generally speaking, it is not recommended to use the plugin on a site that has launched and is actively in use unless you’re very comfortable with the code side of WordPress. Fortunately, each WordPress release comes ready to go with multiple versions of the Gutenberg plugin. 

But if you are a keen beta tester who loves reporting feedback, or you feel comfortable navigating how to opt-in/out of the experimental aspects of the plugin, here are a few reasons you might want to dig into what the Gutenberg Plugin has to offer:

• Test new features and give helpful feedback. For example, you can use the plugin to help test Full Site Editing. 
• Get early access to the latest & greatest while navigating when to opt-in or out of experimental features. 
• Prepare for the future whether you’re a theme author, plugin developer, agency owner, etc. 

Do you use the Gutenberg plugin and share feedback on GitHub? Thank you! This kind of feedback is what helps ensure stability in what’s shipped in WordPress releases. 

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About this episode.

So the podcast today features Anne McCarthy. Anne is Developer Relations Wrangler for Automattic. Her work is focussed on the WordPress.org space, and she is leading the Full Site Editing Outreach Program.

Full Site Editing is an endeavour to make it easier to manage how your WordPress website works. It’s hoped that tasks which once required a fairly technical understanding of the WordPress code, will become available to all. Creating headers and footers, deciding what information to pull from the database and where it should be displayed. These will become part of the Block Editor interface. Complexity replaced by simplicity; or at least that’s the goal.

This, as you might imagine, is not an easy task. Now that WordPress is pushing beyond 40% of the web, there’s a lot to consider, and that’s what Anne is doing. She’s part of the team trying to work out how this might look, how it should work and when it will be ready.

We start off with an introduction from Anne and how she became involved with WordPress and the Full Site Editing initiative in particular.

Then the discussion moves to an explanation of what Full Site Editing hopes to achieve. Which areas of a website are intended to be made available with Full Site Editing?

We then get into the specific details of what constraints the project faces; and there are many points to consider. Backwards compatibility, accessibility and how commercial and free plugins feed into the project roadmap.

Towards the end of the podcast we get into the process of how Full Site Editing is moving forwards, who is making the decisions and how the WordPress community can get involved in shaping WordPress’ future through endeavours like Anne’s Outreach Program.

It’s a very timely episode. Many of the areas discussed will be landing in WordPress soon.

If any of the points raised here resonate with you, be sure to leave a comment below.

Useful links.

Full Site Editing is moving fast. Since the recording of this episode, there’s been some movement. To get the latest information and learn more, see the following links:

Full Site Editing Outreach Program

Full Site Editing for WordPress Overview

Full Site Editing Go/No Go | April 14, 2021

Full Site Editing Go/No Go: Next steps

Transcript

I launched a WordPress-based business sometime around 2013. Starting a business is a goal for a lot of people, but it was never something I intentionally set out to do. I was in university at the time and blogging about books — just doing something I loved. But then I had an idea for a WordPress plugin that would make book bloggers’ lives easier. Although I did decide to sell it instead of releasing it for free, making a lot of money was never my goal. I thought maybe I’d make $500 overall if I was lucky. But three months in I’d already made nearly $1500 and those numbers would only continue to climb.

By the time I graduated university, this little business of mine was already fully paying my bills. I went straight from graduation to running a full time business. Over the next few years, I sold pre-made plugins, built custom plugins, launched custom websites for authors and bloggers, dipped into the managed WordPress hosting space, and created WordPress e-courses. Objectively, business was great.

But by 2016, I was waking up every morning and thinking, “What the hell am I doing?”

The more my business grew, the more I was afraid it was about to crash and burn.

The more I diversified, the less confident I felt about what I was doing.

Above everything, I was tired.

Turns out, I’m not a businesswoman

I was tired of selling, of marketing, of advertising, of promoting. I was tired of asking myself “will this sell?” before I started a new project. I missed creating just for the sheer fun and joy of it, which was how my very first plugin even came to be. I just wanted to build cool things and quietly release them into the wild. I love to create but I don’t love to sell.

Perhaps I could have hired people to help me with the aspects of my business I didn’t enjoy, but although business was going well for a one person show, I didn’t feel like it was going well enough to hire more people and confidently feel like I could pay their salary every month. And the thought of having that responsibility just brought me even more anxiety.

I felt stuck and, honestly, ashamed of how I felt about my business. Was I being ungrateful?

I had this incredible thing going for me — I was paying all my bills, working flexible hours (and from home!), and calling all the shots. This is what other people aspire to have, and I had it! I was embarrassed to admit that maybe I didn’t like it anymore. I didn’t want to be in charge. I didn’t want to have the entire success or failure of a business resting on my shoulders.

I remember looking through job listings trying to imagine myself doing something else — anything else. But another problem I had was that running my own business straight out of school had spoiled me. I didn’t want to be in charge, but I also still wanted to work from home. I still wanted flexible hours. I didn’t want to sacrifice my 3pm gym session. I still wanted a certain degree of freedom in what I did each day. I wanted all the benefits of running my own business, without any of the downsides I had come to dread.

A well timed opportunity

In late 2016, sheer luck and good timing brought me to Sandhills Development. I was offered a job at a company that could amazingly check every box on my dream list. I could work from home, set my own hours, have a weird schedule, still make the gym at 3pm, and most importantly: my job would just be one thing. I could focus on building really cool stuff, and nothing else. I wouldn’t have to think about marketing or sales or profit.

It’s been over four years since then and I’m now the lead developer for Easy Digital Downloads — the plugin I originally used to sell my first product. So I think things are going pretty well! My old business does still exist, but in a very low key way. I still work on and maintain the products out of love and passion for them, but with zero pressure to actually make sales or be successful.

The biggest difference is the boundaries I’ve been able to create in my life.

When running my own business, I didn’t work all day long, but I did tend to think about work all the time. Growth was always on my mind because making that happen was purely up to me. I was putting so much pressure on myself to do well, that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. But now, work goes away as soon as I decide I’m done for the day. I don’t think about it after hours. There’s comfort in the fact that although I care about the company, it’s not my company, and the success — or failure — of the company isn’t purely up to me; if something does go wrong when I’m gone, there’s someone else capable of handling it.

What works for someone else may not work for you

Some people would consider it a downgrade to go from business owner to employee, but it was absolutely the right move for me. Running your own business is often glamorized, but not everyone is cut out to wear all the hats that a one-person business requires, and not everyone has the drive to grow a business into something larger. And that’s okay. At the time, it was immensely hard for me to admit that out loud because I thought it would make me a failure.

There is no “one size fits all” dream job and I learned that being the owner of a company is not mine. If what you’re doing now isn’t working then there’s absolutely no shame in bowing out, even if you’re currently living someone else’s dream.

The post You Don’t Have To Want What Everyone Else Wants appeared first on HeroPress.

WordPress contributors are proposing the project take an active position on Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). This particular mechanism is Google’s alternative to third-party cookies that doesn’t require collecting users’ browsing history. The GitHub repository for FLoC explains how Google will group people together and label them using machine learning:

We plan to explore ways in which a browser can group together people with similar browsing habits, so that ad tech companies can observe the habits of large groups instead of the activity of individuals. Ad targeting could then be partly based on what group the person falls into.

Browsers would need a way to form clusters that are both useful and private: Useful by collecting people with similar enough interests and producing labels suitable for machine learning, and private by forming large clusters that don’t reveal information that’s too personal, when the clusters are created, or when they are used.

WordPress contributors are proposing blocking FLoC in core, citing the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s article titled “Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea.”

“WordPress powers approximately 41% of the web – and this community can help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and discrimination against those with mental illness with a few lines of code,” the proposal states.

One of the more controversial aspects of the original proposal was that it was spectacularly miscategorized as a security concern, clouding the issue at hand. It identified FLoC as a security issue for the sake of getting it into core on a more aggressive timeline, which was outlined as follows:

1. Include the patch the next minor release, rather than waiting for the next major release;
2. Back-port the patch to previous versions of WordPress.

The proposal was later revised to clarify that treating FLoC like a security concern referenced only the timeline of accelerated development and back-porting.

Although blocking FLoC seemed to have wide support in the comments on the post, the premature suggestion of treating it as a security concern weakened the proposal.

WordPress core committer Ryan McCue said that while he is in agreement with the overall sentiment, rolling it out like a security updatet would abuse users’ trust in automatic updates:

The implicit contract with users for security autoupdates is that they are used in order to protect the user from their site (data or codebase) being compromised imminently. This isn’t the case with FLoC, and may in some cases damage the site’s behaviour.

More concretely: as someone who operates a hosting service where we keep users up-to-date with security patches, this changes our approach substantially. Right now, we can confidently roll out security updates trusting the update has minimal effect outside of purely security changes, but breaching that barrier means that now scrutiny needs to be applied to every security update in order to avoid rolling out potentially breaking changes to our clients.

That erosion of trust would ultimately hurt WP’s users.

The proposal has started an active discussion with more than 100 commenters, including participation from the Chrome DevRel team who added more context on the current status of the experiment.

“It’s also worth noting that because this is an origin trial it means that nothing is set in stone — this is an experiment to gather feedback,” Chrome Developer lead Rowan Merewood said. “The API may change, the opt-out mechanism may change, the eligibility criteria may change. Any code changes relating to an origin trial should also be treated as temporary and experimental.”

Those who were critical of the proposal consider FLoC a personal privacy issue that is not WordPress’ problem to solve. Others believe a proposal to block FLoC is reactionary at this point, since Google has not yet finalized its FLoC experiment.

“Thinking about users… i.e. the readers of a blog, they deserve choice,” Andy Beard commented.

“They can choose which browser they use.
“They can choose settings in the browser.
“They can choose some overall options on a Google privacy site.
“They can install a multitude of plugins.

“Alternatively, if WordPress blocks FLoC by default, that actually removes a choice – the choice of a user to see more relevant advertising.”

Several participants in the discussion were opposed to FLoC but also not supportive of a WordPress core effort to block it.

“While I’m not pro-FLoC (and won’t have my browsers using it) I certainly wouldn’t expect a website to make the choice to opt-out for me, and I can’t see why the majority of WordPress users and people visiting WordPress sites would expect that either,” WordPress lead developer Dion Hulse commented.

“Perhaps more importantly, would WordPress also continue to opt out all future browser protocols too? Once you delve into blocking one, you’ve either got to block them all, or you’re playing favorites.”

Mika Epstein, who also expressed her opinion as anti-FLoC, said she is not in support of backporting a block due to the practicality of such an effort.

“If the decision is made to include this, I would support it as a filterable privacy enhancement only, not security,” Epstein said.

“That said, I do not support backporting with the precedent that we did not backport the GDPR exporting stuff. Having it exist as a plugin (there are three already) is sufficient for those who are on older versions. The undue strain of increased backporting needs to be minimized, not maximized in my opinion.”

Others commented on the harm to independent publishers whose main source of revenue is often advertising.

WordPress lead developer Helen Hou-Sandi requested the proposal be re-written to clarify the differences between disabling FLoC on a site level vs the browser level as a consumer. She also discouraged referring to the matter as a security issue and recommended the proposal’s proponents justify the work required to backport the block. Hou-Sandi recommended opening a trac ticket as a more appropriate avenue of discussion regarding core implementation and inclusion, as contributors have not yet reached a consensus.

The topic will be up for discussion at the next core developers’ chat on Wednesday, April 21, 2021. Representatives from the Chrome team will also be attending to answer any questions about FLoC.

Patchstack, which recently rebranded from WebARX, released its 2020 security whitepaper. The report identified a total of 582 security vulnerabilities. However, only 22 of the issues came from WordPress itself. Third-party plugins and themes accounted for the remaining 96.22%.

“These are all security issues disclosed by the Patchstack internal research team, Patchstack Red Team community, by third-party security vendors, and by other independent security researchers,” said Oliver Sild, Patchstack founder and CEO. “So it includes all public information about vulnerabilities.”

Patchstack is a security company that focuses on third-party extensions to WordPress. Its vulnerability database is public and available for anyone to view.

In the second quarter of 2020, Patchstack surveyed nearly 400 web developers, freelancers, and agencies about web security. “Over 70% responded that they were increasingly worried about the security of their website, and the top reason was ‘vulnerabilities in third-party plugins,'” according to the whitepaper. “About 45% of respondents saw an increase in attacks on websites they were managing, and 25% had to deal with a hacked website in the month prior to participating in the survey.”

Ranking at the top, 211 of the vulnerabilities found were Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) issues, 36.2% of the total.

“XSS in WordPress plugins almost always happens because user input data is directly printed onto the screen without any sanitization,” said Sild. “esc_html would be used to convert certain characters to their HTML entities, so it will be literally printed onto the screen. Then you also have esc_attr for user input variables, which need to be used in HTML attributes. There are many good resources published by OWASP (The Open Web Application Security Project), such as the ‘Secure Coding Practices.'”

Injection vulnerabilities ranked second with 70 unique cases. It was followed by 38 Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) issues and 29 instances of sensitive data exposure.

“The vulnerabilities found in plugins and themes tend to be more severe than those found in WordPress core,” wrote Sild in the whitepaper. “What makes matters worse is that many popular plugins have millions of active installations, and the numbers aren’t pretty when we look at how many websites are affected by the vulnerable plugins.”

The total number of active and vulnerable theme and plugin installations throughout the year was 70 million. According to WordCamp Central, WordPress is installed on 75 million websites. Many sites likely had more than one vulnerable plugin during 2020 rather than 70 million individual sites being at risk.

Patchstack surveyed 50,000 websites and found that they averaged 23 active plugins at a time. About four on each site were outdated with an upgrade available, which often increases the risk of a security issue.

WordPress plugins accounted for 478 vulnerabilities in the report. However, there were only 82 unique theme issues. While themes are typically far more limited in scope, they can do anything a plugin can do with a few exceptions.

It is not surprising to see that number lower for themes. However, one has to wonder if the ongoing plan to loosen the WordPress.org theme directory review guidelines will factor into that in the coming year or two. Currently, reviewers for the official directory perform extensive code checks that may be more likely to catch issues before themes arrive in users’ hands. If the trade-off is better automation, it could also mean stricter coding standards and fewer security issues that human reviewers might miss.

“Vulnerabilities from third-party code remain as one of the biggest threats to websites build on WordPress,” concluded Sild in the report. “We already see a growth in unique vulnerabilities reported in the WordPress plugins and themes comparing 2020 with the beginning of 2021.”