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People of WordPress: Yordan Soares

Posted September 30, 2021 by webcommsat AbhaNonStopNewsUK. Filed under Interviews.

WordPress is open source software, maintained by a global network of contributors. There are many examples of how WordPress has changed people’s lives for the better. In this monthly series, we share some of the amazing stories.

To coincide with International Translation Day and the final day of the 2021 WordPress Translation celebration, we feature the story of a WordPresser who has made a major impact in the polyglots team.

Beyond software, meeting the WordPress community

For Yordan Soares from South America, finding WordPress also meant discovering friends, community, and opportunities. He had not expected to find a whole global movement behind the web development software.

Yordan, who is from Venezuela, South America, said: “The first time I used WordPress, I had no idea what was going on behind the software or beyond it. I knew there was someone making it all work, but I couldn’t even remotely imagine all the people who were making WordPress not just a tool for developing websites, but a whole movement that comes together to share, build, and help make the world better.”

Turning your hobby into your job

Initially, Yordan earned his income from computer technical support and installing networks for small and medium-sized businesses. Back in 2005, web development and code-writing was just a hobby. When he discovered the concept of CSS and how it could make everything dynamic. This opened up a whole new career pathway for him.

In 2010, an introduction to WordPress through a friend opened up a future he had not imagined. He stopped using any other content management system (CMS) and wanted to explore how much he could do with the platform.

Three years later in 2013, he was able to take his WordPress journey further by starting a small advertising agency with some of his friends. During this time, they crafted commercials for local radio and TV stations. Through WordPress, they found it easy to build more than 15 websites for businesses in a market that previously had not valued the importance of having an online presence.

He said: “We were working for almost four years until at the end of 2017 the economic crisis in Venezuela became too acute, and we decided to close the agency when we stopped making profits. Taking stock of that period, I think we changed the way merchants saw the Internet business in the city.”

Working full time as a freelancer

One year on in 2018, Yordan began to freelance full-time as a web developer. His first clients were primarily agencies and friends who had emigrated to other countries. Later, he expanded into freelance marketplaces.

At that time, getting started as a freelancer was quite a challenging task in Venezuela. The first hindrance was getting a fair level of recompense. Additionally, the deteriorating conditions in the country with constant blackouts and internet connection failures complicated matters.

At the time, Yordan was living in Guarenas, where the situation was relatively better. He managed to get a reasonably uninterrupted electricity supply with adequate internet speed, which was just good enough to complete his projects.

Meeting the WordPress community

“Surely if I hadn’t met the community, I would have continued to work on my own, like a lone wolf, doing the ordinary work of solving problems for occasional customers and paying my bills,” he said.

Living in Guarenas, Yordan began to experience stability in his career and made new friends and contacts. He began looking for co-working spaces or technology communities nearby, and that’s when he met the WordPress community in Caracas.

He quickly signed up for the first face-to-face event. As soon as the event concluded, he went to talk to the co-organizer and offered his help. He was inspired to help with designing promotional pieces, managing social networks, and organizing events.

Through such events, he met and connected with several people living in nearby cities.

A few months later, with other WordPress users in the area, the idea emerged to start a new Guarenas-Guatire meetup group. The idea became a reality by December 2019, when they applied to the WordPress community team.

Once the final approvals came in, the team started scheduling the activities. The WordPress Guarenas-Guatire Meetup was officially recognized!

During the first quarter of 2020, just before the pandemic, Yordan and colleagues organized five face-to-face events. With the worldwide lockdown, in-person community engagements came to a halt. However, the Guarenas-Guatire community was eager to continue meeting.

To keep the community active and motivated, and with the support of sponsors, they started organizing online events under a format called “WordPress a la medianoche” (WordPress at midnight).

The format of these events was inspired by Alexis Arnal, who suggested meeting at midnight to make the most of the internet speed that would usually improve somewhat after that time!

At the time of writing, Yordan and the team have organized 16 WordPress a la medianoche events with an attendance of up to 50 people per online gathering. An impressive audience which enabled a comparatively small meetup to keep communications flowing at a difficult and unprecedented time.

One positive of such events, is an opportunity to invite people from other countries and run sessions in partnership with others. An example was a special translation event with Javier Esteban, a member of the translation team from Spain. The meetup also invited contributors from Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia who were happy to participate.

Strengthened by the community

Yordan (pictured bottom left) speaking at the WordPress Translation Day 2020 events

Yordan believes that he would have continued to work on his own had he not met the WordPress community.

He said: “Fortunately, this was not the case and I have been able to live a lot of transforming experiences that have shown me the meaning of the words ‘community’ and ‘volunteerism’.”

Yordan felt empowered by the community and it led him to volunteer for many other roles and activities, including Locale Manager for Spanish Venezuela, a moderator for WordPress.tv, and as a support contributor in the forums helping people with technical issues. He has also developed free plugins for the official WordPress directory and spoken at community events including WordCamp Spain 2020.

All this has a boomerang effect, Yordan explains. These experiences helped him grow personally and professionally, as it’s always rewarding to know that you’ve helped improve the WordPress ecosystem.

He also likes being able to directly help people when they need it and feels it is a two-way learning process.

“At first, when I told my family and friends about the community and the work I was doing, they would ask me ‘what do you get in return?’ Perhaps they expected me to tell them a specific amount of money, but the answer is more complex,” he said.

“It’s rewarding to know that you’ve helped improve the WordPress ecosystem, the tool you use to work and put food on the table.”

During his journey, Yordan has met many wonderful people with common interests and values, and the best part is that many of these people are now his friends, business partners, or customers.

At the same time, he has learned new skills and gained experience, which have given him a significant confidence boost in facing difficult situations that may come in life.

Polyglots special appreciation. Yordan Soares.

As part of the WordPress Translation Day 2021 celebrations, Yordan was nominated for his contribution to the work of the Polyglots Team translating WordPress. The full nominations list and stories will be published in October and November on the WordPress Translation Day website. Check out the final events for International Translation Day.

Contributors

Thanks to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), Larissa Murillo (@lmurillom), Maedah Batool (@maedahbatool), Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann), and Nalini (@nalininonstopnewsuk) for work on this story. Thank you to Yordan Soares (@yordansoares) for sharing his Contributor Story, and to Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support of the series. The WordPress Guarenas-Guatire logo on this page was designed by Bragniel Jimenez

This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an article originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. The initiative highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories would otherwise go unheard. Meet more WordPressers in our People of WordPress series.

#ContributorStory #HeroPress

Upcoming Gallery Block improvements

Posted September 27, 2021 by Kelly Hoffman. Filed under Design, Development, Features.

Thanks to @javiarce & @annezazu for design and copy contributions.

An exciting update to the Gallery Block gives you more ways to show off images in your posts and pages. While this change won’t be available for most folks until WordPress 5.9’s launch in December, we wanted to share some of what’s to come to get you excited about the future.

Style individual images

You can now use the same tools that are available for individual image blocks on each image in the Gallery Block! This added flexibility means you can do more customization – from adding links to each individual image, inline cropping to edit on the fly, apply unique styles for more visually compelling images, and apply an array of duotone filters.

Add custom styles

For more advanced folks who like to go a bit deeper in their customizations, you now have the option to add custom CSS styles per image. This is thanks to the ability to assign CSS classes to each image.

More accessible and intuitive 

With this change comes the benefit of improved keyboard navigation and the ability to add alt text right within the block sidebar. You can also drag and drop to rearrange images.

Next steps

This will be available in December with the release of WordPress 5.9. You can check it out now if you’re using the Gutenberg plugin on any of your sites. Read more about becoming an early adopter if you’d like to get ahead.

If you’re a plugin or theme author who has built upon the Gallery Block functionality, be sure to check out this Dev Note detailing what steps need to be taken for compatibility since this is a breaking change.

We’re excited to see the new galleries that these options open up and what ideas you have to make creating galleries even better.

Join us for WordPress Translation Day Global Events in September 2021

Posted September 16, 2021 by webcommsat AbhaNonStopNewsUK. Filed under Events, Updates.

WordPress contributors around the world are celebrating the sixth Global WordPress Translation Day throughout the entire month of September! That’s 30 days dedicated to help and encourage the volunteers that translate the software and its related resources. One of the highlights will be a series of exciting global events, starting on September 17 2021 and finishing on the United Nations’ International Translation Day itself on September 30, 2021.

Everyone is welcome to watch these events live on YouTube and to share their translation stories which will be featured during the celebrations and beyond. The global events will be in English and include presentations on how and why to you should join the thousands of translators in the project, tips and tools, interviews, and much more.

There are now 205 locales translating in what is a remarkable open source effort, bringing the opportunities of the software and its community to people in their own native languages.

Inaugural session: Introduction and latest news on WordPress Translation

Friday, September 17, 2021 at 10:00 UTC

We will start the global events with a panel featuring the latest update on what is happening in the world of WordPress polyglots. Panellists will include translators and polyglot supporters Petya Raykovska and Erica Varlese. There will be a video demonstration on how to translate WordPress, a short presentation on translation statistics, a run down of upcoming events, and more.

Watch the event live on YouTube (or click on the play button below) – sign-up for notifications in the video stream right now so you don’t miss it when it goes live! 

Friday, September 17, 2021 at 11:00 UTC

Right after the livestream, there will be a ‘drop-in’ translation sprint on Zoom video-conferencing, open to all. You can join and hang out virtually with your Polyglots friends from all around the world and translate WordPress in your own language! RSVP for the session now and get joining links!

Check out the other exciting global events

Sunday, September 19, 2021 12:00 UTC

Panel on Polyglots Tools
Join Jesús Amieiro, Peter Smits, Vlad Timotei, and Vibgy Joseph to talk about the tools they’ve contributed to or developed to help translators and translation editors.

Tuesday, September 21, 2021 11:00 UTC

Panel on Open Source Translation Communities (YouTube link – opens in a new tab)
Join Zé Fontainhas (WordPress), Ali Darwich (WordPress), Michal Stanke (Mozilla), and Satomi Tsujita (Hyperledger Fabric) to learn about nurturing translation communities.

Thursday, September 30, 2021 16:00 UTC

Finale Event – Why do you translate?
Our finale event for 2021 with emcee Abha Thakor and a panel from the WordPress Translation Day Team. It will feature highlights from some of the local and global events during the month and a selection of results. Some of the nominees for this year’s polyglots appreciation will join the livestream to share their stories.

The livestream will be followed by an after party celebration for anyone who has taken part in the event or is a WordPress polyglot. Book now for the session on Zoom.

Ideas on how to get involved this September

There’s lots of ways to take part – discover this list of ideas.

You can also nominate translation contributors to be featured in this year’s celebrations.

Help us spread the word about #WPTranslationDay

For more information on the 2021 WordPress Translation Day celebrations, visit the WordPress Translation Day website.

Props to @webcommsat, @harishanker, @lmurillom, @oglekler, @meher, @nalininonstopnewsuk, @evarlese for contributing to this story.

WordPress 5.8.1 Security and Maintenance Release

Posted September 9, 2021 by Jonathan Desrosiers. Filed under Releases, Security.

WordPress 5.8.1 is now available!

This security and maintenance release features 60 bug fixes in addition to 3 security fixes. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 5.4 have also been updated.

WordPress 5.8.1 is a short-cycle security and maintenance release. The next major release will be version 5.9.

You can download WordPress 5.8.1 by downloading from WordPress.org, or visit your Dashboard → Updates and click Update Now.

If you have sites that support automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process.

Security Updates

3 security issues affect WordPress versions between 5.4 and 5.8. If you haven’t yet updated to 5.8, all WordPress versions since 5.4 have also been updated to fix the following security issues:

  • Props @mdawaffe, member of the WordPress Security Team for their work fixing a data exposure vulnerability within the REST API.
  • Props to Michał Bentkowski of Securitum for reporting a XSS vulnerability in the block editor.
  • The Lodash library has been updated to version 4.17.21 in each branch to incorporate upstream security fixes.

In addition to these issues, the security team would like to thank the following people for reporting vulnerabilities during the WordPress 5.8 beta testing period, allowing them to be fixed prior to release:

  • Props Evan Ricafort for reporting a XSS vulnerability in the block editor discovered during the 5.8 release’s beta period.
  • Props Steve Henty for reporting a privilege escalation issue in the block editor.

Thank you to all of the reporters for privately disclosing the vulnerabilities. This gave the WordPress security team time to fix the vulnerabilities before WordPress sites could be attacked.

For more information, browse the full list of changes on Trac, or check out the version 5.8.1 HelpHub documentation page.

Thanks and props!

The 5.8.1 release was led by Jonathan Desrosiers and Evan Mullins.

In addition to the security researchers and release squad members mentioned above, thank you to everyone who helped make WordPress 5.8.1 happen:

2linctools, Adam Zielinski, Alain Schlesser, Alex Lende, alexstine, AlGala, André, Andrei Draganescu, Andrew Ozz, Ankit Panchal, Anthony Burchell, Anton Vlasenko, Ari Stathopoulos, Bruno Ribaric, Carolina Nymark, Daisy Olsen, Daniel Richards, Daria, David Anderson, David Biňovec, David Herrera, Dominik Schilling, Ella van Durpe, Enchiridion, Evan Mullins, Gary Jones, George Mamadashvili, Greg Ziółkowski, Héctor Prieto, ianmjones, Jb Audras, Jeff Bowen, Joe Dolson, Joen A., John Blackbourn, Jonathan Desrosiers, JuanMa Garrido, Juliette Reinders Folmer, Kai Hao, Kapil Paul, Kerry Liu, Kevin Fodness, Marcus Kazmierczak, Mark-k, Matt, Michael Adams (mdawaffe), Mike Schroder, moch11, Mukesh Panchal, Nik Tsekouras, Paal Joachim Romdahl, Pascal Birchler, Paul Bearne, Paul Biron, Peter Wilson, Petter Walbø Johnsgård, Radixweb, Rahul Mehta, ramonopoly, ravipatel, Riad Benguella, Robert Anderson, Rodrigo Arias, Sanket Chodavadiya, Sergey Biryukov, Stephen Bernhardt, Stephen Edgar, Steve Henty, terraling, Timothy Jacobs, tmatsuur, TobiasBg, Tonya Mork, Toro_Unit (Hiroshi Urabe), Vlad T, wb1234, and WFMattR.

The Month in WordPress: August 2021

Posted September 3, 2021 by Hari Shanker R. Filed under Month in WordPress.

I really believe in WordPress’ mission to democratize publishing. And I, for one, will never stop learning about what gives people more access to the software, and what makes the software more usable, and especially how we can combine usability with accessibility in a way that puts form and function on a level playing field.

That was Josepha Haden on the “The Art and Science of Accessibility” episode of the WP Briefing Podcast, talking about accessibility and exploring how it applies to the WordPress open source software. You will find that many of our updates from August 2021 tie in closely with the core principles of access, accessibility, and usability. Read on to find out more!


Join the 2021 WordPress Translation Day Celebrations in September

WordPress Translation Day 2021 September 1 - 30, 2021

Join WordPress contributors around the world on WordPress Translation Day celebrations for the entire month of September! The sixth edition of #WPTranslationDay – which is a cross-team effort led by the Polyglots and Marketing Teams, has a host of fun programs aimed at helping WordPress speak all languages of the world. Want to join the fun? Here’s how.

 For more information, check out the translation day website and the Polyglots blog.

WordPress Release Updates

The Core Team commenced work on the next major release – WordPress 5.9. The team aims to ship some cool features such as intrinsic web design to blocks, improved block patterns, navigation menus, better design tools, edit flows for block themes, and a new interface for theme.json. Check out the WordPress 5.9 development cycle to know more. This release is set to go out in December 2021. The team is also working on shipping a minor release WordPress 5.8.1 –– its release candidate is already out and the final release will launch on September 8.

Want to contribute to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Don’t miss the Core Team chats on Wednesdays at 5 AM and 8 PM UTC. You can also help translate WordPress to your local language – and what better time to do it, than in September, during the translation month celebrations? Another fun way to contribute would be to share about WordPress 5.8 on social media!

Say Hello to Gutenberg Versions 11.2 and 11.3

We launched Gutenberg version 11.2 and version 11.3 this month. Version 11.2 adds customizing/color options to the search block, a flex layout for the group block, and a new button for creating posts as part of the publishing flow. Version 11.3 offers a new dimensions panel (replacing the spacing panel) with more styling options, dimensions control for the feature image block, and significant performance improvements for block inserters.

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. 

Get Excited about WordCamp US 2021

The biggest WordCamp in North America – WordCamp US 2021- is barely a month away. Get your (free) tickets, if you haven’t already! The organizing team has opened up calls for musicians, contributor stories, and media partners. Check out the event website and follow the event on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to stay updated on all that #WCUS news.

Important Announcements/Updates

Feedback/Testing Requests from Contributor Teams

WordPress Event Updates

  • WordCamp Florianopolis 2021 was held on August 11-12, 2021. The event, which sold 390 tickets, had 11 speakers and 4 sponsors. Catch the event recap on YouTube!
  • WordCamp Galicia 2021 is being held from September 30 – October 2, 2021! 
  • do_action Karnataka 2021 was held from August 7-15, 2021. Check out the recap!
  • The Core Team organized a hallway hangout to compare the ‘experimental’ Gutenberg navigation feature with the built-in core feature. The team decided to wait until feature parity with core nav menus, to move the feature from experiments to the main plugin.
  • The Diverse Speakers Training group (#WPDiversity) of the Community Team held their first “Allyship for WordPress Event Organizers” workshop on August 19, 2021. The event had 13 attendees from six countries who reported a 52% increase in preparedness to help create inclusive WordPress events. Stay tuned for their next workshop in November!

Further Reading

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 August’s Month in WordPress:  @evarlese @meher @nao @jillbinder @webcommsat

See Also:

Want to follow the code? There’s a development P2 blog and you can track active development in the Trac timeline that often has 20–30 updates per day.

Want to find an event near you? Check out the WordCamp schedule and find your local Meetup group!

For more WordPress news, check out the WordPress Planet or subscribe to the WP Briefing podcast.

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