In this episode, WordPress’s Executive Director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, answers two recently asked questions. Tune in to hear what those questions were and her response, in addition to this week’s small list of big things.
Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to [email protected], either written or as a voice recording.
Howdy, World!
Mark your calendars; it’s almost time for State of the Word 2021!
State of the Word is the annual keynote address delivered by the WordPress project’s co-founder, Matt Mullenweg. Every year, the event allows us to reflect on the project’s progress and the future of open source. This year will include that and more.
Due to the pandemic, we moved the State of the World online for the first time ever in 2020. This year, the event will be livestreamed from New York City. That will enable us to take as many folks as possible along for the ride!
Join Matt as he provides a retrospective of 2021, discusses the latest trends he’s seeing, celebrates the community’s amazing wins, and explores the future. Expect to hear about a range of topics, from WordPress 5.9 and Openverse to Web3 and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
What: State of the Word 2021
When: December 14, 2021, between 5 and 7 pm ET/10 – 12 am (December 15) UTC
How: If you’re watching from the comfort of your home or local watch party, the livestream will be embedded on wordpress.org/news.
Have a question for Matt?
State of the Word will be followed by a Question & Answer session. If you want to participate, you can either send your question ahead of time to [email protected], or ask during the event in the livestream chat on YouTube.
If you’re new to State of the Word, the previous years’ recordings (below) will help you get a sense of what the event is about. Check them out:
We hope to see you online on December 14th!
Thanks to @anjanavasan @eidolonnight @rmartinezduque for their work on this post. The featured image was created by @beafialho.
Each year, members of the WordPress community (users, site builders, extenders, and contributors) provide their valuable feedback through an annual survey. Key takeaways and trends that emerge from this survey often find their way into the annual State of the Word address, are shared in the public project blogs, and can influence the direction and strategy for the WordPress Project.
Simply put: this survey helps those who build WordPress understand more about how the software is used, and by whom. The survey also helps leaders in the WordPress open source project learn more about our contributors’ experiences.
To ensure that your WordPress experience is represented in the 2021 survey results, take the 2021 annual survey now.
You may also take the survey in French, German, Japanese, Russian, or Spanish. These are the top five languages (other than English) based on the number of WordPress locale downloads. For 2022, additional languages may be considered for translation.
The survey will be open through the end of 2021, and the results will be published in a future post on this blog for anyone to view. Next year, there will be a new format for this survey, including which segments and questions are included, so that your valuable time spent responding results in equally valuable information.
For the 2020 survey, more than 17,000 responses were collected, representing the highest submission volume in four years, up three times from the prior year. In the inaugural year of the survey (2015), over 50,000 responses were collected. Given the reach and adoption of WordPress, there is a significant number we have not reached. As you take the 2021 survey, consider sharing the link on social media and with other colleagues who use WordPress. Gathering feedback from more folks who benefit from WordPress will strengthen our project.
The 2020 survey results show that the pandemic has had a major impact on how we operate as a community. With few in-person events, many community members continue to find it challenging to balance community contributions with their own personal and professional obligations.
Data security and privacy are paramount to the WordPress project and community. With this in mind, all data will be anonymized: no email addresses nor IP addresses will be associated with published results. To learn more about WordPress.org’s privacy practices, view the privacy policy.
Like last year, the 2021 survey will be promoted via a banner on WordPress.org, and throughout the make blogs. However, taking a moment to amplify these posts through your own social media and Slack accounts will ensure broader participation. Each of the translated surveys will be promoted through banners on their associated localized-language WordPress.org sites.
Thanks to @dansoschin for the initial draft of this post, and to @annezazu & @zackkrida for review!
WordPress 5.8.2 is now available!
This security and maintenance release features 2 bug fixes in addition to 1 security fix. Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately. All versions since WordPress 5.2 have also been updated.
WordPress 5.8.2 is a small focus security and maintenance release. The next major release will be version 5.9.
You can download WordPress 5.8.2 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.
For more information, browse the full list of changes on Trac, or check out the version 5.8.2 HelpHub documentation page.
The 5.8.2 release was led by Jonathan Desrosiers and Evan Mullins.
In addition to the release squad members mentioned above, thank you to everyone who helped make WordPress 5.8.2 happen:
Ari Stathopoulos, Bradley Taylor, davidwebca, Evan Mullins, Greg Ziółkowski, Jonathan Desrosiers, Juliette Reinders Folmer, Mukesh Panchal, Sergey Biryukov, shimon246, and Yui.Props @circlecube and @pbiron for peer review.
October 2021 brought a lot of new things to WordPress, from release updates to new versions of Gutenberg. More notably, in the latest episode of WP Briefing, Executive Director Josepha Haden reminded us about the importance of freedom in open source platforms like WordPress.
Free speech has with it a lot of responsibility, just like being a part of a community. Governments or communities, or in our case, this software is built by the people who show up.
Josepha Haden, Executive Director of the WordPress project
For WordPress, at 42% of the web, every small choice we make can cause huge changes in the way that people experience the web today and tomorrow.
Last month was yet another chapter in this journey. So keep reading to learn what’s new.
Interested in contributing to WordPress core? Join the #core channel, follow the Core Team blog, and check out the team handbook. Also, don’t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at 8 PM UTC.
We released three new versions of the Gutenberg block editor between the end of September and October:
Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? Follow the Core Team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Make WordPress Slack. For details on the latest updates, follow the “What’s next in Gutenberg” post.
WordCamp US 2021 was on October 1, and it was online for the first time. The event drew more than 3,600 attendees, 27 sponsors, and 18 remarkable speakers on topics ranging from accessibility and sustainability to e-commerce, to name a few.
Matt Mullenweg’s “State of the Word” is expected to be held as a separate event later this year, rather than being part of WordCamp US.
If you missed the live event, you can still watch the Yukon Track and the Columbia Track of WordCamp US 2021.
Sign up for the Polyglots monthly newsletter, if you haven’t already.
Share your feedback on the new Gutenberg landing page design in Trac or by commenting on the blog post by November 5, 2021.
We had several WordPress events in October, and several more to look forward to the rest of the year:
Don’t miss the following upcoming online WordCamps: WordCamp Spain 2021, WordCamp Sâo Paulo 2021, and WordCamp Taiwan 2021!
Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out this form.
The following folks contributed to October 2021’s Month in WordPress: @anjanavasan, @harishanker, @rmartinezduque, @callye, @webcommsat, and chaion07.
In this nineteenth episode, WordPress’s Executive director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, discusses and expresses gratitude for the inspiration behind the People of WordPress series, HeroPress.
Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to [email protected], either written or as a voice recording.
WordPress 5.9 Development Cycle
In this series, we share some of the inspiring stories of how WordPress and its global network of contributors can change people’s lives for the better. This month we feature a WordPress e-commerce specialist on the difference it makes.
For WordPress contributor Ronald Gijsel, open source is a lifeline and a perfect place for people with creative minds. It led him on a transformational journey from chef to WordPress e-commerce specialist. Originally from the Netherlands, where he trained in hospitality, he was to find a restorative and energizing power within the WordPress local and global community.
Ten years ago, life took a sad turn for Ronald and his wife Nihan when their baby daughter passed away only a few days after she was born. At that time, Ronald was a restaurant owner in the UK, working hard in a challenging economic environment. Discovering open source was in many ways his lifeline and helped him and his wife through their considerable heartache. Through this community, a journey to understand the opportunities of the web and new career paths began.
Ronald believes that working together in WordPress and other open source communities can lead to massive benefits for a large number of users. Not least, an online presence has been essential to the survival of many businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic.
During recent years, he has visited open source events worldwide as a partnership manager at a WordPress e-commerce plugin company and community supporter. His enthusiasm for WordPress has steered him to being part of local support, solutions and collaboration as a co-organizer of WordCamp Bristol, the WordPress Cheltenham Meetup and more.
When Nihan enrolled in the UK’s Open University to complete her computer science degree, Ronald found her course materials stirring his own interest. He started to follow the lectures with her and even attempted some of the course work for himself – all whilst he continued to work as a chef in various local pubs.
Through this, he discovered how to generate affiliate commission earnings through blogging on different platforms. “Creating websites was slowly becoming a passion. In these first few years, I enjoyed every part of the steep learning curve, from tackling the basics to more advanced coding and designs,” said Ronald.
Ronald reduced his hours as a chef and devoted more time to online courses learning coding, e-commerce, SEO, and online marketing. Yet when he applied for a job as a WordPress designer, he had only heard of the platform in the context of blogging. This was all to change when an online tutor on one of the training sites revealed the many functions available with WordPress. It was the start of a new career and life journey. This tutor was Topher DeRosia, who went on to create HeroPress.
To learn WordPress, Ronald ‘binge-watched’ webinars on various development topics and over time he became more familiar with it. Securing a job as a designer was only the beginning of his journey into the WordPress ecosystem.
A year later in 2015, after landing the job as a WordPress designer, Ronald’s boss asked him to consider taking on the business and its clients. With his wife, Ronald decided to take on the firm and to expand their work in WordPress e-commerce and online marketing.
As an advocate for learning new skills and practicing them, Ronald encourages others to continue to expand their knowledge through study, attending talks at Meetups and WordCamps, and using the new Learn WordPress resource.
“WordPress has evolved in so many branches that require different skills. There are hundreds of areas of expertise, roles, and jobs that complement WordPress to make it what it is.”
“WordPress is an essential tool in my box.”
Ronald Gijsel
Ronald believes WordPress thrives on diversity, with many contributor opportunities and jobs in the ecosystem that require a wide range of skills.
“A big part of this is that each person’s personal background complements their skill sets. Who you are and what you do is influenced by what you have done and learned. We need to cherish this. These things also add to our culture, language, experience, and knowledge,” he said.
Ronald initially extended his interest in the WordPress ecosystem through representing a plugin company at WordCamps in the UK. He became hooked and went on to attend events in many different countries.
In 2018, he realized he could do more with his connections and create meaningful partnerships. Within a few weeks, he had crafted his dream job and sent a proposal to the CEO of a WordPress e-commerce firm.
But pitching to strangers wasn’t an easy task, as he did not know if they would understand his vision.
Ronald said: “The doubts went through my head for months. ‘Do I give up my business and work for the benefit of another company? What if I don’t get on? What do I do with my customers?’ But I decided to take the leap.” His pitch proved successful, joining his current firm in 2019.
In the firm’s CEO, Ronald found a mentor, supporter, and a friend. He explained: “Nando Pappalardo never tells me what to do, but instead, he asks questions to make me realize what is achievable, or could be even better. He simply makes suggestions that I read something and reach my own conclusions.”
Taking risks or changing directions in mid-career often involves a giant leap. In Ronald’s view, through WordPress, you don’t need to be alone. He believes its community can offer support and help to process thinking.
Ronald said: “I often think back to the moment my daughter passed away. She only lived for a few days. Every day, I wonder how events would have unfolded if she had survived. Maybe her memory lives on in every decision I make and the paths I decide to take.”
From his experience, he found that changing a career can sometimes take a few years and have a period of transition. He said: “Only looking back do I realize that each small step slowly made a difference in my life.”
“It was WordPress that made the online world easier to navigate and empowered me to make a change”
Ronald Gijsel
He added: “Feeling welcomed into the WordPress community through Meetups and WordCamps added a human dimension and confidence that I can do ‘this’ too.”
Ronald’s wish is that his story will offer support to others who may have experienced tragedy in their lives. “I hope that I can give you the hope and strength to try and put your energy into something else that can lead to more significant changes in your life. Try to take it as one positive decision at a time.”
Help us share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community. Meet more WordPressers in the People of WordPress series. #ContributorStory.
Thank you to Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), and Surendra Thakor (@sthakor) for the interviews and writing this feature, and to Ronald Gijsel (@just2ronald) for sharing his story.
Thanks to Meher Bala (@meher), Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann), Anjana Vasan (@anjanavasan), Collieth Clarke (@callye), and Reyes Martinez (@rmartinezduque) for their content contributions, and Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune), and Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) for their support for the series.
This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard. #HeroPress
In episode 18 of WP Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy reflects on a recent lecture that she gave to students at Hendrix College in which she explored the economics of WordPress and the principles that sustain the project’s ecosystem.
Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to [email protected], either written or as a voice recording.
The Value of WordPress: The World’s First Study of the WordPress Economy
WordPress 5.9 Feature Go/No-Go
Becoming Better Digital Citizens Through Open Source
Empowering Generations of Digital Natives
Responsible Participation in Online Communities
There’s a lot of tolerance in open source software for shipping slightly imperfect work. And that’s good. When we ship software that’s a little bit imperfect, it makes it clear how everyone can participate, how everyone could participate, if they could find this WordPress community that supports the CMS.
That was Josepha Haden on the “A Sneak Peek at WordPress 5.9” episode of the WP Briefing Podcast, talking about what goes into a WordPress release like version 5.9. Read on to find out more about updates on the latest release and the latest WordPress news from September 2021.
WordPress Contributor teams, led by the Polyglots and Marketing teams, organized WordPress Translation Day celebrations for the entire month of September. Contributors from across the world joined the celebrations by translating WordPress into their own languages. Additionally, the team organized a host of global and local events. Translation sprints were organized by the Community and Training teams, as well as local groups.
As part of the celebrations, nominations were invited for contributors who had made a significant impact on the translation of WordPress and its availability in so many languages worldwide. More than 30 notable polyglot contributors were nominated for their contributions. They will be featured in the coming month on the WP Translation Day website, together with event recaps and more news.
Read the latest People of WordPress feature on polyglots contributor Yordan Soares, from South America.
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.
We launched Gutenberg version 11.4 and version 11.5 this month. Version 11.4 adds image blocks to the gallery block, duotone filters for featured images, and padding support for Button Blocks. Version 11.5 adds flex layout support to the group and social icon blocks along with widget group blocks. It will support the addition of a site logo or title directly into menus.
Want to get involved in developing 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 gives details on the latest updates.
The Community Team published new guidelines for returning to in-person WordCamps in regions where in-person events are allowed by the local public health authorities.
Community members can now organize in-person WordCamps for fully vaccinated, recently tested negative, or recently recovered folks (in the last three months) — provided their region passes the in-person safety checklist OR if vaccines and/or COVID testing are accessible to all. Organizers can continue to plan online WordCamps if their region does not meet the guideline.
New guidelines are also available on the return of in-person do_action hackathons.
Want to get involved in the Community Team and help bring back in-person WordPress events? Follow the Community Team blog and join the #community-events channel in the Make WordPress Slack! Check out the following upcoming WordCamps and meetups.
Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Please submit it using this form.
The following folks contributed to September’s Month in WordPress: @webcommsat, @chaion07, @dansoschin, @harishanker, @meher, and @tobifjellner
In episode 17 of the WordPress Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy reflects on her WordCamp US keynote and digs into how participating in open source projects can help you learn 21st Century Skills.
Have a question you’d like answered? You can submit them to [email protected], either written or as a voice recording.
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