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site owners,</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Please note <a href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/bp-classic.1.3.0.zip">BP Classic 1.3.0</a> is now available for upgrade/download. 1.3.0 is a maintenance release of the BuddyPress backwards compatibility <a href="https://buddypress.org/2023/07/bp-classic-1-0-0/">Add-on</a> helping you to stay <em>classic</em> so that you can carry on:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>enjoying 3rd party BP plugins / themes that are not ready yet for the <strong>modern</strong> BuddyPress (12.0.0 &amp; up);</li>\n\n\n\n<li>and / or using the deprecated BuddyPress Legacy widgets;</li>\n\n\n\n<li>and / or using the deprecated BP Default theme.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What about 1.3.0 changes?</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>4 issues have been fixed:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Switch to BP root blog when migrating directories if necessary (See <a href="https://github.com/buddypress/bp-classic/pull/33">#33</a>).</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Make sure BP Tooltips are used in Legacy widgets (See <a href="https://github.com/buddypress/bp-classic/issues/35">#35</a> &amp; 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My name. Is Nathan Wrigley.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jukebox has a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, advocating for accessibility and diversity in the WordPress community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you, and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So on the podcast today we have Michelle Frechette.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is going to sound like a lot, and that&#8217;s because it is.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Michelle Frechette is the director of community engagement for StellarWP at Liquid Web. She was called the busiest woman in WordPress by Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp US 2022. She is also the host of the WP Coffee Talk Podcast, co-founder of Underrepresented in Tech creator of WP Speakers and WP Career Pages, president of the board for Big Orange Heart, Director of Community Relations and contributor at Post Status, co-host of the WP Motivate and Audacity Marketing Podcasts, host of the WP Constellations Podcast, author, and frequent organizer and speaker at WordPress events. Michelle lives outside of Rochester, New York, where she&#8217;s an avid nature photographer. You can learn more about Michelle at meetmichelle.online.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You see, like I said, that&#8217;s a lot.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This willingness to engage in all manner of WordPress projects has given Michelle a voice. And she&#8217;s on the podcast today to discuss a topic which is close to her heart. Diversity equity, inclusion and belonging.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>She talks about her experiences at WordPress events, and how they were not always easy for her to attend and be a part of. Michelle uses a scooter to get around, and there have been situations in which she could not enter venues and access all the facilities.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This frustration made her take action, and, as you&#8217;ll hear, effect change at subsequent event she attended.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not all about events though. Michelle talks about the wider goals of making all aspects of the WordPress community more open and inclusive.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being one of the voices promoting this message has not always been easy. And we hear about how Michelle copes with those who disagree with her quest to create change.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in thinking about inclusivity and how embracing diverse perspectives can impact the WordPress community, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Michelle Frechette.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am joined on the podcast by Michelle Frechette. Hello Michelle.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:40] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> Hi Nathan, how are you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I am very good. Michelle has been called the busiest woman in WordPress, I think that&#8217;s the right wording, by Matt Mullenweg. And if I was to read out her bio, which I&#8217;m not going to do, I&#8217;ll let Michelle introduce herself. You would have some understanding of why that happened.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I&#8217;m going to give you an opportunity right at the beginning, you can go as deep as you like, Michelle. Give us your bio, give us your story about your relationship with WordPress, and the different projects that you are in, before we begin our conversation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:09] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> So my day job, I always feel like a superhero when I say that. By day I am the Director of Community Engagement for StellarWP, and all of our plugins and themes, that are part of that company at Liquid Web. And my external projects though, are the ones that I think you are more interested in talking about today, perhaps.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which are things like WP Career Pages, WP Speakers, and underrepresentedintech.com. So a lot of the side projects that I do, and the things that I do within the WordPress community, really are community oriented projects that are to help others find their footing and move forward in the work that they want to do within WordPress, and within the WordPress community. So I really enjoy doing those kinds of things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How did you discover WordPress?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:55] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> Oh, that&#8217;s a good story actually. It has to do with spaghetti. So actually, one of my best friends and I, we had started a nonprofit together. I was working at a massage school, as the director of the massage school. She was a massage therapist, and graduate of the program. And she came to me and she said, after a thousand hours of working in this program, you graduate, you take an exam, and then you&#8217;re just on your own spinning in the wind. Because you really have no idea how to build a business, how to get clientele, all of these things. You know how to do massage, but that&#8217;s about it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so we started a nonprofit to help massage therapists actually have careers. So we did classes, we had, you know, meetings. We did all of these different things, special education and continuing education, those kinds of things. And so we decided we needed a website, and her husband was a WordPress developer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So he created this beautiful website for us. And so we started sending him content. And he&#8217;s like, hold up ladies, no. These are your logins, you log in and you put your content in. I built you the frame. Have fun. I was terrified. I like logged in and I thought, what button am I going to press that&#8217;s going to make the whole thing come crashing down? And I&#8217;m going to have to say to him, I broke this site.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But of course that doesn&#8217;t happen really. So I remember putting information on the homepage, hitting update, and then quickly opening a new tab to see what happened, right? And the fact that there was all of these words that I just wrote, out there for the whole world to see. Nobody saw it, because nobody knew about the site at that particular moment. But the idea that they could, that somebody in Europe could open up this website, and see that I had put words out into the universe, was incredibly intoxicating.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I started doing more and more with that site. I decided I could do this for a living, or at least for a side project. And so I contacted him and I said, okay, I understand how to use WordPress, and I understand how to buy a domain. What I don&#8217;t understand is, how do I have hosting in one spot and a domain in the other, and actually put those two things together so that I have a domain on the web?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said, Christine&#8217;s working almost every night this week, if you come over and make spaghetti for the kids, because they had four kids, I will show you how to do WordPress. And so I went over there, the kids helped me. We made spaghetti, all of the things that go with the dinner like that. The kids cleaned up dinner. We sat down at his dining room table, opened up, and he showed me how to buy a domain, how to buy hosting, and then how to put WordPress on that hosting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wish I still had it. I had a little blue piece of paper that had four steps. The third step I remember was, change the salt keys. We don&#8217;t really do any of that anymore, right. But I remember doing that. And so from that, I started building websites for other people. I left higher education at some point and said, I think I could do this as a full-time job. Hung a shingle, figuratively. And within a few weeks I had so many clients that I was doing marketing for, and building websites for. Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of like the rest is history.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s absolutely fascinating. The thing that I&#8217;ve noticed about you, apart from the fact that you&#8217;ve built websites, is you&#8217;re heavily, heavily involved in the WordPress community. And it can be quite a jump, going from WordPress user to WordPress community member. In fact, I&#8217;d go as far as saying that, you know, most people that have contact with WordPress, probably have absolutely no idea that there is a community of any description at all.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So how did that happen? How did it become such an integral part your life? How did you discover the community, events and so on? And how did it become the fulcrum of so much in your life?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:20] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> Same person. So, you know, shout out to Christine&#8217;s husband, Rob. But he said, hey, you know, we have this meetup in Rochester for WordPress users. And I said, okay. He said, well, this is the next one, this is where it is. And I showed up to that meetup. It was in a darkened room, because they had a slide projector, you know, overhead going so they could show what&#8217;s going on with this website.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The topic that day was Digital Ocean. I had no idea what was happening. And then they showed some CSS, and I was like CS what? And so I was the only woman, in a dark room filled with men, talking about things I had no concept of. And it took me two years to go back.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>After two years, he had also said, look, you got to look at this thing called WordCamps. And so I went to WordCamp Buffalo, and I literally sat there all day learning from people whose names I had heard of but had never been, you know, in their presence. And thought for $25, I think at that time it was $20, I just got so much information, and lunch. You know, it was amazing. And so I thought that&#8217;s pretty cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so the next year, Rob said, I can&#8217;t, first of all, he was organising meetups on a whim. Hey, we haven&#8217;t had one in a while, is everybody free next Tuesday? My brain can&#8217;t operate that way. It&#8217;s like, I need structure. So when he said, I can&#8217;t run this anymore, does anybody want to step in? I was like, me, I&#8217;ll do it, I&#8217;ll do it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so we have regular meetups, at the same time every month. Same day, every month. And things got a little organised that way. I went to WordCamp US, and said to Andrea Middleton at the time, yeah, maybe someday we&#8217;ll have a Word camp in Rochester. And she said, why not this year? And so I was like, okay. So we had the first WordCamp Rochester.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was speaking at that time at different WordCamps all over New York and Canada, actually, eastern part of Canada. And things just kind of started to snowball from there, I guess, where I got asked to speak in more places. My name started to be recognised here and there, and I&#8217;m not a developer, so I was constantly surprised that people wanted to hear what I had to say. But that&#8217;s where I really started to learn that the majority of our community are WordPress users, not necessarily developers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that it takes everybody in our ecosystem to make WordPress the product that it is today, and that you can be a marketer and contribute to WordPress. You can be an, you know, a community person, contribute to WordPress, and that it really takes everybody. If it was just software, without the rest of us, it would not be nearly what we are today as WordPress, and what we know as WordPress. So, yeah, I don&#8217;t know if I answered question.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:10:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> No, that&#8217;s really interesting. There&#8217;s an awful lot that&#8217;s gone on. And you&#8217;ve obviously, right from the get go of finding WordPress decided that you wanted to, well, you had that 2 year hiatus, but after that you were in with both feet.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>More recently, I think it&#8217;s fair to say that there are some areas of the WordPress community that you&#8217;ve taken on as, well, crusade is the wrong word, but you&#8217;ve got issues which you think are important. And you&#8217;ve made them the focus and the fulcrum of what you do. And we&#8217;re going to get into some of these today.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So let&#8217;s, first of all, just introduce the acronym under discussion a lot today, and it&#8217;s the acronym DEIB. It may very well be that people have no idea what that means. So first of all, can we unpick that? What do those letters stand for, and how does it in any way go with WordPress and community, and all of that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:33] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> So DEIB, the acronym itself stands for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. And so the idea is that there are entire groups of underrepresented folks in any organisation, in any community. And those are going to be the people that are either minority groups of some sort or another, whether it&#8217;s racial, ethnic minority, whether it&#8217;s ability minority, whether it&#8217;s age.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s so many different ways that somebody can be in an underrepresented group, the LGBTQ+ community for example. And so, what DEIB activities try to do is kind of level the play field a little bit, and make sure that everybody has access to whatever the community is. So in our case, of course, WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And not just access to WordPress, anybody can download WordPress, as long as you&#8217;re in a country that doesn&#8217;t restrict access. Of course, we know that that does exist too. But it&#8217;s more than just having access to the software, it&#8217;s having access to representation within the community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so what we do at Underrepresented in Tech, what I&#8217;ve done with some of the other projects that I do, is really seek to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to be heard. Have a voice in the community. And see others like themselves on stages, in podcasts, writing for blogs, and CEO or C-suite positions, things like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we actually have a better community when it isn&#8217;t just one homogeneous group. I don&#8217;t know why that never rolls off my tongue right. But we don&#8217;t just have one group of people. In our case, you know, white, straight, males, who are running everything.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s important, if we are going to have truly the best product that we could ever have, that different voices, different perspectives, different experiences help shape what that looks like going forward. And so DEIB really does, the DEIB movements and the things that we can do for that, is super important in order for us to have the best product ever.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A lot of times you&#8217;ll hear it referred to just as DEI. A lot of companies have DEI. But the B part of it, that belonging part of it, that brings it from tokenisation to actually inclusion. That inclusive part of it is so important.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not just enough that a CEO decides that they have a black person on the cover of their website, or on the cover of their brochure, and things like that to show, hey, look at us, we&#8217;re with it. We know what this is all about. Anybody can use a stock photo, but what do you really do? How are you really including people and how are you celebrating differences? That&#8217;s what&#8217;s important.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:13:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I don&#8217;t know what your experience is outside of WordPress in the recent past, but do you feel, do you have an intuition that the WordPress community is actually quite open to these kind of discussions? Do you sense that there&#8217;s an acceptance that this is an issue, which needs to be air and talked about?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because I can well imagine that in any community, there&#8217;s going to be people who think, well, you know what, the core thing is, for example, the code. That&#8217;s the thing that counts, so that&#8217;s what we should all concentrate on, and all these other things are not for me to worry about, and we don&#8217;t need to worry about them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have this intuition that WordPress might be ahead of the curve on these kind of things, and addressing these issues, but, what do you think?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:27] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> I think it&#8217;s grown over the last few years. So few years back, we had the first, what was originally called the all women&#8217;s release squad. And then it was the all women non-binary release. And at that point in time, lots of people got behind it. It was a wonderful thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But there&#8217;s always a faction of people who grumble and say it&#8217;s not necessary. I think it was Joost de Valk posted in the Advanced WordPress Facebook Group, how exciting it was that this was all happening. And I think by the time they closed that thread, there were over 300 responses to that one post. The majority of which were negative, and then replies to those negative responses.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And this was what, three years ago? It wasn&#8217;t that long ago. And so, to be able to look at that and say, wow, that many people, not just men, but majority men, were against having a release squad that was all women and non-binary folks. Saying that it couldn&#8217;t possibly be the best release that it ever could be, because men weren&#8217;t involved.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Assuming that, just because it was women and non-binary folks, that it would not be the best that it could be. And that&#8217;s just, that&#8217;s just rubbish, to use a British term. It&#8217;s rubbish. There are women and non-binary people, who can absolutely code as good as any man, and we can lead, we can do other things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I think that that really was, perhaps not the beginning, but that was that snowball starting to get some more traction, and build bigger as we came down that hill. Because we had champions behind that, like Josepha, because Matt was behind that kind of movement as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>After that, and because my voice started to grow within our community, people would start to approach me and Ali Nimmons and say, we really do want to have like more diversity at this WordCamp, or at this event. Do you know a black person who would be willing to speak? Do you know a woman who would be willing to speak there?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And we thought, well, how do we respond to this, right? How do we tell people, well, check with this person, check with that person. And so we started to build a spreadsheet for ourselves, of people that we could recommend. And about 20 people into that spreadsheet, and literally two days after we started it, were like this doesn&#8217;t feel right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Number one, we don&#8217;t know everybody, right? Believe it or not, I don&#8217;t know every black person in WordPress. I just don&#8217;t. I don&#8217;t know every disabled person. I don&#8217;t know every woman in WordPress. And so for me to only recommend 20 or 30 people, means that the other people aren&#8217;t necessarily getting recommended by me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I understand networking, you know who you know. But we started to talk about the fact that we could build something that people could opt into, and others could search without us have to either gatekeep or be the go-between. And so we built Underrepresented in Tech for that reason. There&#8217;s a whole database there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to find somebody for your podcast, you&#8217;re looking to hire somebody, you can go there. You don&#8217;t necessarily know why they&#8217;re underrepresented, so you might look at something, you might search WordPress and see what looks like a white male. Which you don&#8217;t know if he&#8217;s sitting in a wheelchair, because you only see his face, or you don&#8217;t see anything. You don&#8217;t know if he&#8217;s part of the LGBTQ+ community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because it&#8217;s not our job to out people with what their disability or their gender is, or their sexual preference and orientation, or their abilities, things like that. So that&#8217;s not up to us. We do vet everybody that&#8217;s in the database. You have to trust that that person is who they say they are, and that we&#8217;ve vetted that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But we wanted to give an opportunity for people to be found. That grew into what we started as a vlog. Because we were like, well, let&#8217;s be cutting edge. Let&#8217;s go back, let&#8217;s be retro, let&#8217;s have a vlog. Which quickly like, all right, we scrapped that idea, and turned it into a podcast. We have over a hundred episodes, over 10,000 downloads of our podcast, which is Underrepresented in Tech, where we talk about those issues.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We talk about what it&#8217;s like to be an underrepresented person in technology. We sometimes bring in guests, so we get their perspectives as well. But the whole idea is that me as a 50 something year old woman, 55 now, but at the time wasn&#8217;t right. 50 something year old woman who has a disability, in tech, and a young black queer woman in tech, we kind of ticked a lot of those boxes, right, of what it means to be underrepresented.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so we have perspectives, and we have ways that we can engage with people. But also people started listening, and people started learning. And the things that we write, and the things that we say, sometimes come under incredible scrutiny. But more often than not help inform, and also effect change within organisations, and within the community, to be more inclusive, and to at least understand and be aware of the fact that not everybody experiences the world and the WordPress community in the way that the person listening to it does.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:06] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I wonder if geography has anything to play here. So there&#8217;s a whole raft of things that I want to ask you on back of what you&#8217;ve just said, but let&#8217;s begin there. So, for example, if I live in your part of the world, so you are in North America. The complexion of countries in North America may very well be different to, I don&#8217;t know, for example, South America, or the Middle East, or Australia, you know, pick any part of the world.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is there anything in that, or do the proclivities of North America, do they spread across the board? So let&#8217;s just take two events. Let&#8217;s take Word Camp US and Word Camp Asia. If we were to try to apply criteria, would they be the same criteria in your estimation? Or, does geography in any way play a role in how you would want that event to look, based upon where it is?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:55] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> It&#8217;s definitely going to play a role, because underrepresentation is going to look different ethnically, within different places. It&#8217;s not going to change how many women are included. It&#8217;s not going to change the LGBTQ+ acceptance, in a particular community. It&#8217;s not going to change ability and disabilities.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So if I go to an event and nobody at all, there&#8217;s very few women on stage. Everybody looks the same. Everybody has the same physical abilities. Then I&#8217;m not seeing a lot of diversity there. That&#8217;s not to say that people aren&#8217;t, right? Sometimes you don&#8217;t see diversity. You can&#8217;t know that somebody is disabled necessarily, because they can walk. I don&#8217;t, but other people do, and still are disabled folks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so, yes, you&#8217;re not always going to be able to tell just by looking at the lineup, or looking at the room. And certainly, ethnic inclusion around the world is going to look different. After we started Underrepresented in Tech, Nigel Rogers invited me to speak to his meetup, which was, and I&#8217;m never going to remember, I never remember where he is. But he is in one of the African nations.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I get online, I&#8217;m talking to this group of, it was all men I believe, all black men. And one of them said, we&#8217;re not minorities. And I said, I understand that in your community, you are not minorities. I would be the minority in your community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, globally, if you look at the entire WordPress community globally, yes. If you look at all the people who have contributed to core. If you look at all the people who have been part of release squads. If you look at the stages of all of the WordCamps around the world, you are still the minority.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Your faces do not have equal representation, in the entire community, and all of the different places. And that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re striving for, is that when we look at a global level, who is holding power? Who are the people who are being uplifted? And, can we make sure that other people have those opportunities too?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:21:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s a difficult tightrope to tread that one, isn&#8217;t it? Because obviously if you were to, for example, put on an event in, as you just described, say Africa, or in the center of Europe, the makeup of those communities would be different. And so casting the net wider and saying, well, this is about the world, that&#8217;s kind of interesting, isn&#8217;t it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because we&#8217;re really in the first generation of people that have been able to sort of do that really. Because we&#8217;ve got, you know, we&#8217;ve got instant communication, and things like that. And so we can have this much bigger perspective.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, so that&#8217;s really interesting. If somebody&#8217;s putting an event on, and again, we&#8217;ll just take those as an example, let&#8217;s say Africa, or Europe, or wherever you know, something different from North America. Is there a correct amount of different things that you need to do, to satisfy these DEIB, well, I think criteria is the wrong word, but recommendations is maybe a better word, I&#8217;m not sure?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In other words, do we have to see in the speaker lineup, okay, there needs to be 4 of this thing, and 8 of this thing, and 12 of this thing and, you get what saying? Does need to be so prescriptive, or is it more of, okay, we&#8217;ll try our best? We&#8217;ll do what we can, and we&#8217;ll accept what comes out the other end.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:22:54] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> There&#8217;s a little bit of a combination, that&#8217;s kind of a spectrum. And somewhere in the middle of those two things that you just said is what I would love to expect. And part of that is, take a look at the, what you&#8217;re doing to recruit. If all you do is put it out, and just say anybody, this is what I&#8217;ve been told. It&#8217;s out there, anybody can apply. I can&#8217;t help it if minorities aren&#8217;t applying.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, yes and no, because you can invite people to apply. If traditionally your event has had white faces, and mostly male on stage, do people who are not white faces and mostly male, feel encouraged to apply? Do they feel that&#8217;s a space that they&#8217;re welcomed in? Do they feel that that&#8217;s a space where they have a voice?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What have you done to make sure that those people feel that they could be included, and not excluded, because of what you historically have had on stage, or historically have had as your outreach, or historically have had as your organising team?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So if you really do want to make a difference going forward, what can we do? We can invite people to speak. Just because we have always had it as the luck of the draw, doesn&#8217;t mean it has to be that way. We can say, I want to make sure that I am inviting people to apply.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And one of the things that I&#8217;ve suggested in the past is, don&#8217;t just say, Sarah Smith over here, you have a darker face than Michelle does, we want you to speak. And then hope that she&#8217;s going to suggest a topic, or apply with a topic that fits. So what I&#8217;ve always said is, we really do want you to speak, I want to make sure you&#8217;re in our lineup, can you suggest three topics? And then we can make sure that one of those topics fits within everything else.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So for example, if everybody wants to talk about SEO, unless it&#8217;s an SEO conference, that&#8217;s not a good lineup, right? So you need to make sure that the topics work too. But if Sarah Smith says, I could talk about SEO, I can talk about building your public persona, and I can talk about outreach to underrepresented communities.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;ve given Sarah three different things, and one of those topics is most likely to be able to be in your speaker sessions, in your topics, without overlapping other people&#8217;s topics. So there are definite ways that you can increase your diversity on your stage, by making sure that you&#8217;re inviting people to speak, at the very least encouraging.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So there is a process of, there&#8217;s work to be done basically. If you are, let&#8217;s say you are putting on an event as described, in the scenario that you are suggesting, merely saying there&#8217;s the form, it&#8217;s online, everybody can access that form. That&#8217;s possibly not going to be enough because of history, really.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;ve been to a WordPress event as me, then all of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle kind of fit. I should probably say, if you haven&#8217;t seen my face before, I am a white male. And so, you know, if I attend any of these events, there&#8217;s really no impediment to anything for me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But is what you are saying that, if it&#8217;s not a situation where you see people on the stage that look like you, think like you, behave like you, it&#8217;s unlikely that you are going to make the effort to go in the first place. And so you need to take steps to redress that balance. And those steps have to be proactive, because it&#8217;s not going to happen by accident, given what we&#8217;ve got in the past, the history of these things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:55] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> And think about the history of a disabled person. Think about the history of a minority person. Think about the history of women. Not only have we not seen ourselves there, but in many cases, we&#8217;ve been discouraged and actively barred from access to those kinds of events.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, if as a disabled person, I&#8217;ve tried to go someplace, there&#8217;s no curb cuts, there&#8217;s stairs, there&#8217;s escalators. I have to go in through the kitchen to have access to an event. I would be discouraged from attending that event. Would I love to be on stage, yeah. But if I can&#8217;t actually get on the stage, what good is it, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that&#8217;s just from the perspective of a disabled person. If I walked into a dark room of a meetup, and I&#8217;m the only woman, with 10 men in a darkened room, how does that make me feel welcomed? That doesn&#8217;t. Because now I&#8217;ve put myself in a position where mothers all over the world say, never put yourself in a dark room with a bunch of men, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there&#8217;s just history that comes along with being in an underrepresented group, that says to us, and whether that&#8217;s passed on through oral tradition or, you know, our families have taught us, or it&#8217;s just our own experiences in the past. We can sense, by looking at something in the history of something, whether or not we would traditionally be included in that event.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And we have people like me, who just like try to break those barriers open. Because I have broad shoulders and thick skin. I want to make sure that other people behind me feel welcomed, and have the access to those things. So I&#8217;m willing to be the person to suffer the slings and arrows, as Shakespeare would say, to make sure that it&#8217;s easier for other people to go through.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think of myself as that icebreaker ship, that&#8217;s going through, you know, the Arctic, making it possible for other ships to follow through in my path. It&#8217;s not easy. And sometimes there are sleepless nights involved with some of those things, because you put yourself out there in a way that says, I need to see access for more people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And other people who have traditionally held those positions, aren&#8217;t necessarily willing to give them up. And I understand that because power is a powerful thing, and we like being in a position of power, traditionally. And so the idea of seeding some of that power to other people, whether that&#8217;s a space on a stage, whether that&#8217;s in a boardroom, you know, that you bring people on your board, whatever that looks like. It&#8217;s not easy to include people that don&#8217;t look like us, and might have other ideas than us.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that&#8217;s truly how we make a better community, and better products. I use this example all the time when I talk about inclusion. Back in the forties and fifties, they marketed vacuum cleaners to men, by showing pictures of vacuum cleaners with women in their pearls, and there are high heels and beautiful smiles, vacuuming their houses. Do you know how we market vacuum cleaners today? It&#8217;s how they work.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, we see a picture, a dog is knocked over a plant, and the Roomba, or somebody else is vacuuming it up. Kids spill Cheerios, let&#8217;s cut to a picture of that vacuum cleaner picking up the Cheerios. We talk about what the product does, not how pretty the woman looks using it. Because guess how many women actually want a vacuum cleaner for Christmas? Zero. That should not be a gift.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so the idea is, more women started to join boardrooms, and more women started to be marketing and ad people, in the seventies and eighties, and we started to see some of that change. Because traditionally, women are the one now buying those kinds of products for the home. Let&#8217;s appeal to her, instead of show a man how happy your wife will be if you bring home a vacuum cleaner.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The same thing is true in every place, is you bring more people who have different experiences into those decision making processes, and you make a better product or a better service, to appeal for more sales. So it&#8217;s just good business. For your bottom line, much less, let&#8217;s be inclusive and let&#8217;s do the right thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:29:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you prefer carrot or stick for this? And, is it necessary to sometimes deploy both. My intuition is that you are going to prefer carrot. But maybe the stick has to come out at various times. And I have seen those, I don&#8217;t really know what the right word is, but I&#8217;ve seen those miniature battles, if you know what I mean, where people have said one thing, and then there&#8217;s been people reacting and saying, we don&#8217;t need this, and they&#8217;re trying to explain it, and what have you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So yeah, carrots or stick? Would you rather that we were able to introduce this idea and everybody came on board? Or, do we have to at some point say, look, nope, this is just what&#8217;s going to happen, you&#8217;ve got to come along for the ride?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:30:05] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> Obviously carrot would be the better thing. If we can show people why inclusion is better, and how they can make their products and services better by bringing in more perspectives, and bringing in more experiences that people have. Those lived experiences are really what enrich the whole product and the whole process.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like I said, whether it&#8217;s a service or it&#8217;s a product. How are people using it? If we only approach things from one perspective, we could only sell to that perspective, plus or minus maybe one standard deviation. But if we can make that bell curve wider instead of narrower, we have an opportunity to do more, and affect good for more people through what it is that we have created.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In order to do that, we have to understand how more people are using our products and services, or what we intend our products and service to be, so that we can appeal to all of those people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:30:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you have a sense that during the time that you&#8217;ve been in the community, things have changed? Can you, for example, give us an anecdote or a story about something that you know has changed, as a result of something maybe that you said, or somebody else said, which can just deliver the message that, well, everything is not set in stone. Things that were once the way they were can be altered.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:31:09] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> So WordCamp US, the first one after the pandemic had shut everything down, was in San Diego. It was a very small event. They only sold, I think, 650 tickets, including sponsors and speakers. So it was, you know, that&#8217;s still a big event, don&#8217;t get me wrong, but as a global event, a very, very small.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was there with my scooter, and tried to navigate an entire event. And by the end of the second day, I was in tears, because it was so difficult to be there as a disabled person. I got stuck in the bathroom, in the lobby bathroom, not in my hotel room. But in the lobby bathroom, because of the way that the room was built, and the exit was built, and where the trash can was, I couldn&#8217;t get close enough to the door to be able to open it, pull it to the side, and then go through the door. I literally had to wait until somebody came through. I would&#8217;ve texted somebody, I would&#8217;ve called somebody if somebody hadn&#8217;t come through, you know, fairly soon.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But somebody else had to come through that door to let me out. And that&#8217;s not, we&#8217;d like to be as independent as possible. When you&#8217;re a disabled person, you don&#8217;t want to have to rely on people to do everything for you. That doesn&#8217;t ingratiate you to the community, when you&#8217;re constantly begging and asking for assistance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that wasn&#8217;t the only problem that I had there. Several of the doors to access buildings didn&#8217;t have paddles, so they wouldn&#8217;t open themselves. So I had to ask people to help me get in and out of doors. My room, which was tagged as a handicapped accessible room, had a tub that I would&#8217;ve had to step over and into, which is dangerous for me. So I wasn&#8217;t able to actually take a shower or a bath. I had to, you know, sink bathe for five days.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there was just so many things that just were inaccessible for me. And at the end of that, I did talk to people about it, and told them that it was coming. But I wrote an article for Post Status called Five Days Without a Shower. I very unemotionally explained what had happened, and how things were difficult for me. I pointed out what worked, and the people who were very helpful in it. But then I also gave a list of things that I think could be done, looking at future events, to make them more accessible to other people.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know that I have a voice in our community. I know that people, you know, I&#8217;ve thousands of followers on Twitter, and I speak a lot, and that people know who I am. And so I realised that what I say in the community might be listened to more than people who don&#8217;t have that kind of following. And I don&#8217;t take that lightly. And I do try to use that for good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I wrote this article. I gave copies of it to, you know, to Angela Gin, and I sent it to Matt Mullenweg and just, this is the experience, this is what I think we could do better. As a result of that, Wordcamp Asia, which I attended this year, reached out to me and said, we want to make sure, but this is what we&#8217;ve put in place and I think that everything is accessible to you. And it was.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The places that had stairs, they had put temporary ramps, so that I could get to them. The stage I was speaking on, I didn&#8217;t have to try to walk up three stairs, they had a ramp there for me. So everything was accessible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordCamp US this year, we had a team specifically for accessibility. You know, Alex was on that team, and he was looking at the accessibility from, no pun intended, looking at the accessibilities from the perspective of blind man.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But he was looking over the website. He was making sure that there were things in place, that he couldn&#8217;t get lost in a space that big if he wasn&#8217;t, you know, always having somebody on his side. So we had phone numbers in place where, if he literally couldn&#8217;t find his way out, somebody could come to him, and help him navigate.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We made sure that every place was accessible with wheels. We made sure that people who were neurodivergent, who might need quiet spaces, had the ability to step out and find a space that was just listed as a quiet space. We made sure that there were rooms for nursing mothers, that they could sit and nurse their children, or pump if they needed to. And not have to do that in a bathroom, which is not sanitary.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was one of my suggestions, is that we had a person or a committee to look at the venue, to see what needed to change, in order for it to be an accessible event. So that was just one thing. One article that I wrote that was taken seriously, and that there&#8217;s a page in the handbook now for WordCamps, to make sure that you&#8217;re looking at things like curb cuts, like elevators. That there&#8217;s no place that, in a WordCamp, is inaccessible to somebody who can&#8217;t walk.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so there&#8217;s lots of things that I&#8217;ve been able to, because I have a voice in this community, put out there, that have then been able to be accommodated. WordCamp Europe was terrified, that because it was old, such an old city, that I would have difficulty.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I was in constant contact with Estela Rueda, who made sure that everything that there was, you know, she said, this is where you can go. Some places have stairs, but this is the way to get around that. If you get stuck, here&#8217;s my number. Like there was lots of things, there was constant communication, in order to be able to know that not just me, but anybody with, physical disabilities would be accommodated.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so, is it easy to put myself out there as the disabled person who needs accommodations all the time? It&#8217;s not, right? So nobody likes to say, hey, my legs don&#8217;t work. I&#8217;m not a perfect person, and I can&#8217;t do the things that everybody else does. But by me being able to do that, hopefully means that I&#8217;ve, not only opened doors electronically for other folks, but put ramps in place, and given access to people who might not have had access otherwise. And so, yeah, I think there&#8217;s things that I&#8217;ve been able to say and do that have had an impact, positively, in our community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:36:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The curious thing, especially in terms of events, which is what we&#8217;ve just been talking about, is it doesn&#8217;t lessen the experience for people that don&#8217;t require it. You know, if there&#8217;s a ramp there, it&#8217;s no more difficult for me to use that. And so I think that&#8217;s brilliant. That&#8217;s such a nice tale of something actually changing, not in a heartbeat, but in a fairly short space of time. And so, well, bravo, firstly for writing the article.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I guess it does beg the question, do these things get thought about, unless there is somebody like you who has to go through, well, let&#8217;s call it the pain or something like that? You know, somebody&#8217;s got to go through it, in order to live that experience, so that they can report back on what needs to be fixed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you sense that there&#8217;s still people having to go through pain in the future, or do you think that as a community we are getting better, you know, at a fair pace, so that it&#8217;ll be approaching perfect soon? Anything like perfect soon, have we still got a long way to go?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:37:11] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> I think it depends on the location. I think some cities, some countries, it&#8217;s not as easy for them to pivot and be as accessible, just because of the history of the city. You know, there are places I said, oh, I&#8217;d love to go there. And somebody said, I don&#8217;t think you&#8217;d be able to. Disabled people in that city have a tremendous difficulty getting around.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even in Asia. So, in Thailand, the cars are smaller, so to accommodate, to put me in an Uber, and also my scooter, which does come apart, some of that had to be at my feet and on the seat next to me, because it didn&#8217;t all fit in their trunk, for example. And so there are places that it might not be possible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, like, I was in Phoenix Arizona earlier this year, and I called for an Uber, and I knew exactly what the person looked like, I knew what their car looked like, and I knew what their license plate was because that&#8217;s on the app. And this person pulled up, saw me in my scooter and sped away, because they didn&#8217;t want to deal with my scooter.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They canceled it, but they didn&#8217;t say, hey, I&#8217;m sorry I don&#8217;t have room in my trunk. Like they didn&#8217;t even communicate with me. They literally just drove away, and that was a terrible experience. And that was here in the United States, where we&#8217;re supposedly really accommodating to people with disabilities.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so, yeah, it&#8217;s not always easy. I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;re ever going to not have to look at it, and make sure that things are accessible. And I think that there will always be places that are historically more accessible than others.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>They actually, in Athens now you can, with a wheelchair, go up on the Acropolis. I didn&#8217;t because my daughter didn&#8217;t want to, even though I wanted to. But I was also told that once you get up the top of there, of course it&#8217;s just this ruins. And that&#8217;s not easy to navigate in wheels either. But they&#8217;ve done everything they can, even to make things like the Acropolis accessible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so is everything always going to be accessible? No. There are apartments with only stairs. I will never be able to visit friends who live upstairs, in apartments that have only stairs. But being able to access public spaces, and finding ways to accommodate with temporary ramps, and things like that, I think is super important.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I hope that as long as I&#8217;m in the community, and I continue to talk about these things, that people will think about them for their events. And make sure that as many people possible can attend.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:39:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You always seem very jolly, and we would say in the UK, fairly chipper. You know, you&#8217;ve got the glass is half full, kind of approach. Or at least that&#8217;s the impression that I have. But does this, so we&#8217;re going to stray into something maybe personal, you may not wish to reveal this, it&#8217;s entirely up to you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do these issues make you angry? Do you get a little bit annoyed on behalf of other people? Is there a bit of you that thinks, this is just not on? You know, it cannot be that events haven&#8217;t thought this through. It cannot be that these people aren&#8217;t represented. I&#8217;m just wondering, what the emotions it stirs in you are.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:39:44] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> I would say frustration more than anger. It&#8217;s frustrating to me. Anger would come into place, if people acknowledged it and chose not to act. That&#8217;s anger. Not even looking, or not even thinking about it is the frustration. I think, traditionally, if somebody thinks about it, then they will try to be as accommodating as possible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But to think about it and then not act, which is to make a deliberate decision not to include others. That&#8217;s when anger would come into play. But traditionally, anytime I&#8217;ve challenged or I&#8217;ve said, hey, have you thought about, most people are like, oh my gosh, I never even thought about that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, WordCamp Buffalo this year. I was the mentor, I was part of the organising team for that event. And it was in an old school building. And the only way for me to get there was to go in the back of the building, up a little delivery ramp. And, was I angry? No, because I could still get in there. It was an old building that that was the only way to accommodate me, that&#8217;s fine.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If I&#8217;m going into a restaurant, I don&#8217;t want to come in through the kitchen. To me, that&#8217;s anger. They haven&#8217;t thought about it. They don&#8217;t want to include people in wheelchairs, if there&#8217;s no way to get in, when you&#8217;re trying to be open to the whole public. There&#8217;s ways that you can be accommodating. There&#8217;s just lack of understanding, lack of thinking, lack of thought to inclusion, that&#8217;s frustration. Deliberately denying access, that&#8217;s anger.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:40:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Are you ever on the receiving end of other people&#8217;s frustration and anger? Do the causes that you champion, do sometimes you find that your social media is full of people who disagree with you, and perhaps, maybe disagree as too polite term there? Does it sometimes descend into things that you&#8217;d rather didn&#8217;t happen? In other words, is it always equanimous, the kind of conversations you have, or does it sometimes get a little bit fraught and frayed?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:41:24] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> It does. A year and a half ago, I think, I wrote an article for a Post Status, called Misogyny In WordPress Is Real. And talked about the fact that women are still denied access, and still undervalued in a lot of places. And, you know, specifically, I pointed to that thread of all those people talking about the all women non-binary release, when Joost had posted about it in Advanced WordPress and Facebook.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are other things that I&#8217;ve pointed to specifically, some of it tech related, some of it&#8217;s specific to WordPress. And the amount of people that attacked me, men, I will say. The number of men who posted replies to that post or comments on that post, completely misogynistic. It&#8217;s like, oh, look you&#8217;ve proven my point.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And attacked me openly on, you know, Twitter and things like that. I mean, it irritating, right? But it doesn&#8217;t anger me, because I&#8217;m like, okay, so you are just set in your misogynistic ways. Block. I will just block you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>People talk about me all the time. They don&#8217;t necessarily say kind things. I can&#8217;t own what somebody else thinks of me, that&#8217;s on them. So, you know, block them and move on. That&#8217;s the best way to be. I could be all angsty and carry it with me in a negative way, but I know that the work that I&#8217;m doing in our community, to try to level the playing field, to try to forward inclusion, the DEIB work, means that I&#8217;m going to encounter people that don&#8217;t agree with me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Okay, fine. Move on. I&#8217;m going to try to talk to the people who do, who want to learn. If I can educate in a way that helps people learn, and they at least consider, if not actually enact change, I&#8217;ve done some good. And if there are people who are absolutely going to stonewall, because they like the way that things are, I can&#8217;t move a stonewall. I&#8217;m going to move on to the people that I can help. And so those are the kinds of things that I look at.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, am I always cheery? No. That is what you&#8217;re going to see publicly, of course. But you know, I referenced the fact that, by day two of WordCamp, I was literally bursting into tears, because I was so frustrated by the fact that I couldn&#8217;t access things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Does it feel good when you get attacked? No, it doesn&#8217;t. You know, I challenged WordCamp Europe this past year, because the first couple of, it was three or four I think, announcements of the speaker lineup were less than 20% women.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s always hard to judge ethnicity, and you can never tell by looking at a person that they might not be an ethnic minority. You can&#8217;t tell if somebody&#8217;s part of the LGBTQ+ community. You don&#8217;t know if somebody&#8217;s non-binary. I acknowledged all of that, and I said I really hope that we see more of a balance going forward, with the rest of the announcement.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that one tweet has almost 30,000 impressions, because people either said, yes, absolutely, we need this, or you don&#8217;t understand how it is in Europe, Michelle. It&#8217;s not the same as it is in the US. I acknowledge that. But you have women in Europe, right? You do have minorities, you have people of color, you have people with different abilities. You have all of the different things that make up underrepresentation. So to only show us a bunch of white men, really starts to make you wonder, well, what is the rest of the lineup going to look like?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I say I created controversy, I actually pointed out the controversy. I did not create controversy. The controversy already existed. I was simply the conduit, by which the rest of the world started to notice it. Because we&#8217;re so used to seeing so many white men in every lineup, but we need to make sure that that changes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so I had people, I mean, I went to WordCamp Europe. I had people there telling me things like, you don&#8217;t understand. I had people sign up on my calendar, just to tell me how wrong I was, and to say that you have a big voice in this community, you need to use it better. And I said, well, I did.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not always going to be everybody&#8217;s favorite person. I actually have a sticker, I will bring one to you next time I see you, Nathan, that says, I&#8217;m not everybody&#8217;s cup of tea, and I&#8217;m okay with that. Because if you&#8217;re going to be a change agent, if you&#8217;re going to try to help things be better, there will be people who don&#8217;t like what you do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There will be people who feel challenged by what you&#8217;re doing. And there will be people who just flat out disagree with you. And that&#8217;s okay. Those are not the people that I&#8217;m going to change. The people that you can actually influence, are the people who want to do better, and don&#8217;t realise that they haven&#8217;t been to that point.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so, if you listen to my words and you think, gosh, I could be more accommodating, I could outreach to people who don&#8217;t look like me, and really make the speaker lineup more diverse. If those people have listened to me and enact a change, and really think about the way they do things, then I can say my work is done. Or at least you know, part of my work is done, and I will continue to fight the good fight.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:45:46] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> That&#8217;s the perfect segue then to probably round it off. And if I ask you, Michelle, where can people contact you? Should they have those intuitions, and they do wish to speak to you. Where&#8217;s the best place? What&#8217;s the selection of things that you, are you most frequently using?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:01] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> Yeah. So I am still on, I like to call Twitter, but X. You can&#8217;t change your name on there, once you have so many links back to you. Yes, you physically can change your name, but I&#8217;m still @michelleames on Twitter and X. But if you go to meetmichelle.online, you will find access to all of the different things that I&#8217;ve done, my projects, WP Speakers, Underrepresented in Tech, WP Career Pages. All of those things that I&#8217;ve done for the community, to try to help people find jobs, help people find speakers, and just make the world a little bit more balanced.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:31] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I will make sure that every single one of those is listed in the show notes. So if you head to WP Tavern, at the very least, you&#8217;ll know that they are there. Michelle Frechette, thank you so much for chatting to me on the podcast today. I really appreciate it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:46:44] <strong>Michelle Frechette:</strong> It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://meetmichelle.online/">Michelle Frechette</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is going to sound like a lot, and that’s because it is.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Michelle Frechette is the Director of Community Engagement for StellarWP at Liquid Web. She was called &#8220;The busiest woman in WordPress,&#8221; by Matt Mullenweg at WCUS 2022. She is also the host of the WP Coffee Talk podcast, co-founder of Underrepresented in Tech, creator of WP Speakers and WP Career Pages, president of the board for Big Orange Heart, Director of Community Relations and contributor at Post Status, co-host of the WP Motivate and Audacity Marketing podcasts, host of the WP Constellations podcast, author, and a frequent organiser and speaker at WordPress events. Michelle lives outside of Rochester, NY where she’s an avid nature photographer. You can learn more about Michelle at meetmichelle.online.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You see, like I said, that’s a lot.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This willingness to engage in all manner of WordPress projects has given Michelle a voice, and she’s on the podcast today to discuss a topic which is close to her heart, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>She talks about her experiences at WordPress events, and how they were not always easy for her to attend and be a part of. Michelle uses a scooter to get around and there have been situations in which she could not enter venues and access all the facilities. This frustration made her take action and, as you’ll hear, effect change at subsequent events she attended.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It’s not all about events though. Michelle talks about the wider goals of making all aspects of the WordPress community more opening and inclusive.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being one of the voices promoting this message has not always been easy, and we hear about how Michelle copes with those who disagree with her quest to create change.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in thinking about inclusivity, and how embracing diverse perspectives can impact the WordPress community, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://stellarwp.com/">StellarWP</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://www.liquidweb.com/">Liquid Web</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://wpcareerpages.com/">WP Career Pages</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://wpspeakers.com/">WP Speakers</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://www.underrepresentedintech.com/">Underrepresented in Tech</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://poststatus.com/5-days-without-a-shower/">Five Days Without a Shower</a> article</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://poststatus.com/misogyny-in-wordpress-is-real/">Misogyny in WordPress is Real</a> article</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://twitter.com/michelleames">Michelle on Twitter</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://meetmichelle.online/">Michelle&#8217;s website</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 24 Jan 2024 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:2;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"Do The Woo Community: Content Strategies for Woo and WordPress Businesses with Adam and Emma";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=78922";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"https://dothewoo.io/content-strategies-for-woo-and-wordpress-businesses/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:438:"<p>Adam and Emma talking about all things content when it comes to building brand recognition and trust for your Woo and WordPress business.</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a href="https://dothewoo.io/content-strategies-for-woo-and-wordpress-businesses/">Content Strategies for Woo and WordPress Businesses with Adam and Emma</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce and WordPress Builder Podcast</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 24 Jan 2024 10:30:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:3;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:100:"HeroPress: My Journey as an Engineer with WordPress – エンジニアとしての WordPress の旅";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=6450";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:154:"https://heropress.com/essays/my-journey-as-an-engineer-with-wordpress/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=my-journey-as-an-engineer-with-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:20935:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/012324-min.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: Your action may save the world. あなたのアクションが世界を救うかもしれない" /><p><a href="https://heropress.com/feed/#japanese">この記事は日本語でも読む事が出来ます。</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>I currently live in Tokyo, Japan, and work as a freelance engineer. I would like to talk about what my life was like before I met WordPress, how I met WordPress, and the freedom it has brought me.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-before-i-met-wordpress">Before I met WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If I remember correctly, the first time I touched a computer was when I was in junior high school. I remember a big all-in-one desktop machine coming to my house with Windows 3.1 OS.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Japan at the time, magazines dealing with computers and programming were being published for users. It&#8217;s unthinkable now, but the magazine had pages and pages of &#8220;printed&#8221; code to run small tools and games! I remember typing that code line by line into the computer and being so excited to see the incredibly simple racing game working.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Around the same time I was in middle school, I met the guitar. From then on, I fell in love with music and spent most of my time from middle school to my 20s playing the guitar, forming bands with friends, and performing at live shows.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-meet-with-programming">Meet with Programming</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>However, of course, it is not easy to earn money in the music world and make it my lifelong career. When I was around 30 years old, I started thinking about my future.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Up until then, I had experienced various jobs in order to earn income for my music activities. Many of these jobs were Internet and computer-related, such as helping end-users improve their Internet experience and configure hardware over the phone. At the same time, I was also using music software to compose music. I decided to take advantage of these experiences and become an engineer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, at that time I was already over 30 years old. Generally speaking, it&#8217;s probably a late age to start programming or gain experience as an engineer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In order to fill that gap, I studied hard and obtained several qualifications necessary to become an engineer. Fortunately, I was able to get a job as a programmer even though I had no experience as an engineer.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>At that company, I was able to work on languages such as HTML, CSS, PHP, and C#. However, in a desperate attempt to make up for the lack of experience, I probably pushed myself too hard. After two years of work, I lost my mental and physical balance and quit my job.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-meet-with-wordpress">Meet with WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, we need money to survive. I started working as a freelancer, and at first I gradually increased my abilities and experience through small projects.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of those projects involved customizing already published WordPress sites. The first time I met WordPress was around 2018.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>After that, I developed WordPress sites from the beginning by myself and got involved in larger projects, so projects related to WordPress started to take up most of my work.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>While searching for information about WordPress on the internet, I learned about the existence of the community. In 2020, I also attended <a href="https://www.meetup.com/tokyo-wordpress-meetup/events/271290548/">an online Meetup event</a> for the first time. At that time, I didn&#8217;t fully understand what &#8220;open source&#8221; or &#8220;contribution&#8221; meant. However, as I met people who were willing to generously share their technology and experience and who were contributing to making open source better, I became more fascinated with WordPress and wanted to get involved in the community in some way and contribute in any way I could.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-my-first-contribution-with-code">My First Contribution with Code</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I was just developing a WordPress theme. I was looking through the browser&#8217;s developer tools to see what CSS was applied to the block on the block editor. By chance, I discovered a small CSS typo.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the time, I knew very little about Git and had never used a CLI tool. However, it turns out that this code is contained in a project called Gutenberg, which is managed on GitHub.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is my first ever pull request to the Gutenberg project, and my first contribution with code to the WordPress community. Just one line change!</p>\n\n\n\n<img src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/6GI1ZS0N-0MRgSYh9IupC93IGHvMnMCvDmDReeb17bs-FZJbTm9NRN8CLnKG6VhMkRktfzvk4zYSJnaFpKjthkxml1PQsoO8SuwL8gMMOUyqCZ70hQhBLAIcW4tV1kHLsrCkntyr3ZWWwPrcRAPqmA" alt="Screenshot of Github" />My first pull request to the Gutenberg GitHub repository\n\n\n\n<p>I was so excited to imagine that the code I had written, even though it was just a small change, would become part of WordPress itself and be spread around the world.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-deep-dive-into-gutenberg">Deep Dive into Gutenberg</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>After that, I started checking out Gutenberg issues and sending small pull request whenever I had time. Through that experience, I learned that WordPress was created by a huge number of people and is evolving at an alarming speed every day.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In February 2022, I became part of the Gutenberg team. In June 2023, I was honored to be invited to join the Gutenberg Core team. I became more immersed in contributing to Gutenberg, discussing things with other members through Slack and GitHub Issues, and working on solving more complex problems.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-economic-freedom">Economic Freedom</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Many members of the WordPress community contribute as volunteers. I&#8217;m one of them, and I was struggling to find time to contribute to the WordPress community while also working to make money.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In July 2023, <a href="https://loos.co.jp/">LOOS Co., Ltd.</a>, a company represented by a member of the Japanese WordPress community that sells WordPress themes and plugins, will support my contribution activities to WordPress. Thanks to his support, I have been able to spend more time contributing to WordPress and earn a good income at the same time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>My contributions to the Gutenberg project also made my GitHub account very active. I believe that this, more than any other resume, objectively proves what I can do. I believe that there are clients who have come to commission work from me after seeing my history of activities like this.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-my-first-wordcamp">My First WordCamp</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In October 2023, I attended <a href="https://tokyo.wordcamp.org/2023/">WordCamp Tokyo 2023</a> held in Japan. This was the first offline WordCamp I ever attended, and the first time I was a WordCamp speaker. I was able to meet many friends that I had only interacted with through the internet and video calls.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">\n<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wctokyo/53304247147/in/album-72177720312401523/"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53304247147_2138125dc4_z.jpg" alt="WordCamp Tokyo 2023" width="640" height="480" /></a>\n</div>Photo by Chiharu Nagatomi / <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.ja">CC BY 4.0</a>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-be-open-and-positive">Be Open and Positive</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether it&#8217;s an issue or a pull request, the WordPress community raises, discusses, and makes decisions every day.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are three things that I think are very important in this process:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Everything is done in the open</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Thinking rationally based on objective facts and listening to each other&#8217;s opinions</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Always be positive and strive to create something better</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost every discussion and decision made in the WordPress community should be based on these three ideals. With the development of social media, we now have many opportunities to come into contact with negative emotions, and this psychological safety is soothing to my spirit.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-your-action-may-save-the-world">Your action may save the world</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Neither WordPress Core nor Gutenberg is perfect. There are tons of problems to solve, just like there are tons of tickets and issues.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean you have to write code. If you have the courage to take a step forward and share what you think is a problem or challenge in an open space, those who see it may be able to solve it and help other WordPress users around the world.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-6450_6d576e-d3"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>\n\n\n\n<h1 class="wp-block-heading" id="japanese">エンジニアとしての WordPress の旅</h1>\n\n\n\n<p>私は現在、日本の東京に住んでおり、フリーランスエンジニアとして活動しています。WordPress に出会う前の自分がどのような人生を送ってきたのか、どのようにして WordPress と出会ったのか、そして WordPress が私にどのような自由をもたらしたのかをお話ししたいと思います。</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wordpress-に出会う前">WordPress に出会う前</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>私がはじめてコンピュータに触れたのは、記憶が確かならば中学生の頃です。Windows 3.1 OS を搭載した大きな一体型のデスクトップマシンが自宅にやってきたことを覚えています。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>当時の日本では、ユーザー向けにコンピュータやプログラミングを扱う雑誌が刊行されていました。今では考えられないことですが、その雑誌には小さなツールやゲームを動かすためのコードが何ページにも渡って「印刷」されていました ! 私はわけも分からず、BASIC 言語で書かれたそのコードを一行一行コンピュータに打ち込み、おそろしくシンプルなレースゲームが動いた事にとても興奮していた事を覚えています。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>ちょうど同じ中学生の頃、私はギターに出会いました。それからというもの、私は音楽にのめりこみ、中学生から20代までのほとんどの時間を、ギターを演奏したり、友人たちとバンドを結成したり、ライブに出演する事に費やしてきました。</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-プログラミングとの出会い">プログラミングとの出会い</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>しかし、もちろん音楽の世界で収入を得て、それを一生の仕事とする事は簡単なことではありません。30才頃のとき、私は将来の事を考えるようになりました。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>私は、音楽活動のための収入を得るために、それまでに色んな仕事を経験してきました。それらの多くはインターネットやコンピュータに関連するものであり、例えば電話を通じて、エンドユーザーのインターネット環境の改善、ハードウェアの設定を手助けする仕事でした。また同時に、作曲のために音楽ソフトウェアも使用していました。私はこれらの経験を活かし、エンジニアとなる事を決意しました。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>しかし、私はその時にもう30才を超えていました。一般的に言えば、プログラミングを始めたりエンジニアとして経験を積み始めるには遅い年齢でしょう。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>私はその溝を埋めるために必死で勉強し、エンジニアとして必要ないくつかの資格を取得しました。そして幸いにも、エンジニアとしての経験が無いにも関わらず、プログラマとしての職を得る事が出来ました。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>私はその会社で、HTML、CSS、PHP、C# といった言語に関わる事が出来ました。しかし、足りない経験を必死で埋めようと、私は無理をしてしまったのでしょう。2年間の仕事を通じて、私は心身のバランスを崩し、退職しました。</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-wordpress-との出会い">WordPress との出会い</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>もちろん、生きていくためにはお金が必要です。私はフリーランスとして活動をはじめ、最初は小さなプロジェクトを通じて、自分が出来る事や経験を少しずつ高めていきました。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>それらのプロジェクトの中には、既に公開されている WordPress サイトをカスタマイズするものも含まれていました。はじめて WordPress に触れたのは 2018年の頃です。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>それから、自分1人で最初から WordPressサイトを開発したり、より大きなプロジェクトに関わる事で、自分の仕事の多くを WordPress に関するプロジェクトが占めるようになっていきました。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress に関する情報をインターネット上で調べているうちに、コミュニティの存在を知りました。2020年に、初めて<a href="https://www.meetup.com/tokyo-wordpress-meetup/events/271290548/">オンラインの Meeup イベント</a>にも参加しました。私はその頃、「オープンソース」や「貢献」とは何なのかという事も十分に理解していませんでした。しかし、自身の技術や経験を惜しみなく共有したいと考える人たちが集まり、そのオープンソースをより良くしていこうと貢献している人たちに出会った事で、より WordPress の魅力に惹かれ、自分も何らかの形でコミュニティに関わり、自分が出来る方法で貢献したいと考えるようになりました。</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-はじめてのコードでの貢献">はじめてのコードでの貢献</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>ちょうど WordPress テーマを開発していた時です。私は、ブラウザーの開発者ツールを介して、ブロックエディター上のブロックにどのような CSS が適用されているかを調べていました。偶然にも、小さな CSS のタイポを発見しました。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>私はその頃、Git についてもほとんど理解していませんでしたし、CLI ツールも使った事がありませんでした。しかし、このコードは Gutenberg と呼ばれるプロジェクトに含まれており、そのプロジェクトは GitHub で管理されている事が分かりました。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>これは、私が人生で初めて、かつ Gutenberg プロジェクトに初めて送ったプルリクエストであり、初めての WordPress コミュニティへのコードによる貢献です。たった一行の変更だけです !</p>\n\n\n\n<img src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/6GI1ZS0N-0MRgSYh9IupC93IGHvMnMCvDmDReeb17bs-FZJbTm9NRN8CLnKG6VhMkRktfzvk4zYSJnaFpKjthkxml1PQsoO8SuwL8gMMOUyqCZ70hQhBLAIcW4tV1kHLsrCkntyr3ZWWwPrcRAPqmA" alt="" />Gutenberg GitHub リポジトリに初めて送ったプルリクエスト\n\n\n\n<p>ほんの僅かな修正ですが、私が自分で書いたコードが WordPress そのものの一部となり、それが全世界に広がる事を想像し、私はとても興奮しました。</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-gutenberg-に深く潜り込む">Gutenberg に深く潜り込む</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>それから、私は時間がある時に Gutenberg の issue を調べたり、小さなプルリクエストを送る事を繰り返すようになりました。その経験を通じて、WordPress は膨大の人の手で作り上げられており、毎日恐ろしいスピードで進化している事を知りました。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>2022年2月に、私は Gutenberg チームの一員となりました。2023年6月には、光栄な事に Gutenberg Core チームにも招待されました。Slack や GitHub Issue を通じた他のメンバーとの議論、より複雑な問題の解決に取り組みながら、私はより Gutenberg へ貢献する事に没頭するようになりました。</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-経済的な自由">経済的な自由</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress コミュニティの多くのメンバーは、ボランティアとしての貢献しています。私もその1人であり、お金を得るための仕事をこなしながら、WordPress コミュニティへ貢献するための時間を確保する事にとても苦労していました。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>2023年7月、日本の WordPress コミュニティの仲間が代表を務める会社であり、WordPress テーマ・プラグインを販売している<a href="https://loos.co.jp/">株式会社 LOOS</a> 様が、WordPress への貢献活動をサポートしてくれる事になりました。彼の支援のおかげで、私はより多くの時間を WordPress への貢献活動に充てる事ができるようになり、同時に十分な収入を得る事が出来るようになりました。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>また Gutenberg プロジェクトへの貢献を通じて、私のGitHub アカウントの活動履歴は非常に活発なものとなりました。これはどんなレジュメよりも、私がどのような事が出来るかを客観的に証明するものだと考えます。このような活動履歴を目にしてに、自分に仕事を依頼してくれるようになったクライアントも存在すると信じています。</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-はじめての-wordcamp">はじめての WordCamp</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>2023年10月、日本で開催された <a href="https://tokyo.wordcamp.org/2023/">WordCamp Tokyo 2023</a> に参加しました。これは、私が初めて参加したオフラインの WordCamp であり、初めて WordCamp にスピーカーとして登壇したイベントでもあります。これまで、インターネットやビデオ通話を通じてしか交流した事のない沢山の仲間たちと会う事ができました。</p>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">\n<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wctokyo/53304247147/in/album-72177720312401523/"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53304247147_2138125dc4_z.jpg" alt="WordCamp Tokyo 2023" width="640" height="480" /></a>\n</div>Photo by Chiharu Nagatomi / <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.ja">CC BY 4.0</a>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-オープンであり-前向きである">オープンであり、前向きである</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>issue や プルリクエストに関わらず、WordPress コミュニティでは日々沢山の問題提起がなされ、議論され、決定がなされます。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>このプロセスの中で、私が非常に重要だと思う事は以下の三点です。</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>すべてがオープンな場で行われること</li>\n\n\n\n<li>客観的な事実をもとに合理的に考え、お互いの意見に耳を傾けること</li>\n\n\n\n<li>より良いものを作り上げようと、常に前向きであること</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress コミュニティで行われている議論や決定は、ほぼすべてこの三つの理念に基づいているはずです。ソーシャルメディアの発達にともない、沢山のネガティブな感情に触れる機会が多くなってしまった現在、この心理的安全性は私の精神を癒してくれます。</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-あなたのアクションが世界を救うかもしれない">あなたのアクションが世界を救うかもしれない</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress コアも Gutenberg も完全ではありません。膨大なチケットや issue があるように、解決すべき問題は山積みです。</p>\n\n\n\n<p>必ずしもコードを書かなければならないというわけではありません。勇気を出して一歩踏み出し、自分が問題や課題だと思っている事をオープンな場で共有すれば、それを目にした人達がその問題を解決し、世界の WordPress ユーザーの役に立つかもしれません。</p>\n<p>The post <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/my-journey-as-an-engineer-with-wordpress/">My Journey as an Engineer with WordPress &#8211; エンジニアとしての WordPress の旅</a> appeared first on <a href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 23 Jan 2024 23:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:10:"Aki Hamano";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:4;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:49:"BuddyPress: BuddyPress 12.2.0 Maintenance Release";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://buddypress.org/?p=332922";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://buddypress.org/2024/01/buddypress-12-2-0-maintenance-release/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1399:"<p>Immediately available is <a href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.12.2.0.zip">BuddyPress 12.2.0</a>. This maintenance release fixes four bugs. One of them was pretty annoying for users first activating BuddyPress with version 12.1.1. In this particular case, the 12.0 deprecated code wasn&#8217;t loaded which could cause nasty errors with 3rd party BP plugins / themes not ready yet for the modern BuddyPress (12.0.0 &amp; up). That&#8217;s the reason why we&#8217;ve been working hard and as fast as possible to quickly wipe this bug.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For details on all changes, please read the <a href="https://codex.buddypress.org/releases/version-12-2-0/">12.2.0 release notes</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Update to BuddyPress 12.2.0 today in your WordPress Dashboard, or by <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress/">downloading it from the WordPress.org plugin repository</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Many thanks to 12.2.0 contributors <span class="dashicons dashicons-heart"></span></h2>\n\n\n\n<p> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/jnie">jnie</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/roberthemsing">roberthemsing</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/vapvarun">vapvarun</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/emaralive">emaralive</a>, &amp; <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/imath/">imath</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 23 Jan 2024 21:15:33 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Mathieu Viet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:5;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:98:"Do The Woo Community: More Takeaways from State of the Word with Miriam, Nik, Patricia and Mariano";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=78917";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"https://dothewoo.io/more-takeaways-from-state-of-the-word/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:366:"<p>One more show with reflections and takeaways from State of the Word 2023.</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a href="https://dothewoo.io/more-takeaways-from-state-of-the-word/">More Takeaways from State of the Word with Miriam, Nik, Patricia and Mariano</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce and WordPress Builder Podcast</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 23 Jan 2024 09:48:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:6;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:24:"Matt: Art No One Can See";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=110719";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:41:"https://ma.tt/2024/01/art-no-one-can-see/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:492:"<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">\n<p>Proprietary software is like creating art which no-one can see. Open Source elevates software engineering to a collaborative art form. Code <em>is</em> poetry.</p>\n<cite>— Tom Willmot</cite></blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Some choice words <a href="https://tomwillmot.com/open-source-code-is-a-remix/">from Tom Willmot</a>, who was watching Kirby Fergusen&#8217;s Everything is a Remix, which I’ll check out now.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 22 Jan 2024 21:51:05 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:7;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"Matt: Open Source Creed";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=110716";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:40:"https://ma.tt/2024/01/open-source-creed/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:247:"<p><strong>Every</strong> human has an intrinsic right to put their creative work into the commons. Once freed, work can never be withdrawn, and it has the opportunity—but not the obligation!—for everyone to improve upon it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>(v1)</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 22 Jan 2024 14:27:04 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:8;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 71: New Year, New Blog!";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=16745";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/01/episode-71-new-year-new-blog/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18615:"<p>In the latest WordPress Briefing, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy revisits our roots in blogging and breaks down the essentials of starting your first WordPress blog. Tune in to Episode 71 for practical tips and inspiration to kickstart your blogging journey.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Credits</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Host:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a><br />Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a><br />Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/">Javier Arce</a><br />Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/">Brett McSherry</a><br />Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Show Notes</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/download/">WordPress 6.4.2 Download</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/getting-started-with-wordpress-get-setup/">Getting Started with WordPress: Get Setup</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/285233962/">How to Make a WordPress Blog Social Learning Space Event</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/">WordPress Plugins</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/">WordPress Themes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Small List of Big Things</strong>\n<ul>\n<li>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2023/12/29/a-year-in-themes-team-2023/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A Year in Review With Themes Team</a>\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/12/22/wordpress-end-of-year-celebrations/">WordPress End-of-Year Celebrations!</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/12/leap-into-2024-with-these-site-editor-tools/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Leap into 2024 with these Site Editor Tools</a>\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/">WordPress Developer Blog</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/team-reps/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2024 Team Reps</a>&nbsp;&#8211; Watch for updates as we move into 2024. Each team in the WordPress project goes through a process to review and elect new team reps. Those elections are happening now.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2024/01/19/big-picture-goals-2024/">Big Pictures Goals 2024</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transcripts</h2>\n\n\n\n<span id="more-16745"></span>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:00]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong>&nbsp;Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:28] (Intro music)&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:40]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong> Today, we&#8217;ve got a throwback episode about blogging. If you&#8217;re like me, you sometimes miss the early days of blogs, where the words were a little more pensive, and the images were a little less professional. If you&#8217;re on a slow hobby journey like so many of us are right now, give this one a listen.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:58] (music interlude)</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:01:05]&nbsp;<strong>Josepha:</strong> You may be one of these contributors I keep mentioning. You may be an agency owner or freelancer. Maybe you&#8217;ve wondered how to make a WordPress blog for your big idea. Or maybe you&#8217;re one of the many people who use WordPress for their own project or business.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before WordPress was known as a content management system, as a way to get sites online fast, it was a blogging tool. We have long since outgrown that, but even 20 years into our journey, blogging is still a key part of what WordPress enables you to do. That&#8217;s because, even after those 20 years, the mission of WordPress is still the same, and that is to democratize publishing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>To help people have a place online where they can tell their stories, or share their projects, or set up their businesses. If you&#8217;ve ever tried to set up a blog, you know that there isn&#8217;t a lot of information about what to know before you get going at all. So, I&#8217;m going to talk about that a little bit today.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:02:06] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And just by the way, if you heard the word blog right now and thought, Oh, Jospeha, how old fashioned. I think it&#8217;s important to remember that there&#8217;s a business advantage to having well-written, relevant content on your website. And if you&#8217;re not blogging for business, because not all of us are, then the benefits are a little different but still important to my mind. Things like the cathartic benefits of journaling, a chance to build community, and the general importance of preserving wisdom for the ages. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway, back to the topic at hand, before we can get to any of the fancy things that WordPress can do nowadays, it&#8217;s important to know a few things as you get ready to set up your first-ever website. So let&#8217;s dive in. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is how you need to get yourself started. First, have an idea and a plan. So, have an idea for what you&#8217;re doing, the concept of your content, who you want to reach, but also some concept of a domain name. I would encourage you to not necessarily get your heart set on a domain name at first, cause like, if you want the domain name WordPress.org, like, we own that, you can&#8217;t have that. But if you know that you want a domain like &#8216;WordPressbloggingforthefuture.com&#8217; like, that one might be more available. And if you know kind of the words you want in your domain, then you can be a bit flexible about what is there.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:30] <strong>Josepha:</strong> The second thing that you need to do is that if you are just getting started, ask yourself the question, what sort of host do I want? We kind of mention all along the WordPress process that, like, you need a good host, but it&#8217;s not always clear where that decision has to happen. It happens right here at the start before you even know what WordPress is most of the time. So, the earliest question that you have to answer for yourself is, what sort of host do I want? Where do I want my site to live? So ask yourself how much you want to get into the maintenance and configuration of your website and the hardware that it lives on versus creating content or keeping your shop up to date. There&#8217;s this whole spectrum of hosting options, and they range from full service, where they will keep your WordPress software up to date and provide daily backups, and have customer support if something goes really wrong.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:23] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So it ranges all the way from full service like that, all the way down to essentially zero service, just kind of hands off. They give you a space to keep your WordPress software, to keep your WordPress site, but they leave everything else up to you. They leave the backups up to you; they leave updating up to you, things like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that&#8217;s the first thing you have to ask yourself and the first question you have to be able to answer. Most of the time, you will want to start with one of the full-service options. That way, you know that your software is set up correctly and safely from the start. And as you learn more about the software, and what you want, and what you need, and you have the ability to learn in the time that you have, the more that you can add on either services with the existing host that you chose or moving to a different host; however, that works out for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:09] <strong>Josepha:</strong> So if that one sounds like the right option, then you choose a host, go to their site, and actually, most of them will have a way to walk you through how to set up a WordPress site inside their system. Most of the time, it&#8217;s just one click, and then they ask you some questions to get some configurations right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other option that on the like zero, zero service side, that&#8217;s not quite fair, but you know, on the other side of that spectrum, that probably will be appealing to you if you are already familiar with code or already know how to manage a server, or you know how to work in this thing called cPanel, etc. So if you already have a lot of information on how all of that works, you can, if you want to, head over to WordPress.org/download and you can download a zip file of the WordPress software and set that up in your own environment. Okay, quick check here. If this all sounds roughly doable to you, or at least it feels like we&#8217;re in the right starting point, but you find yourself thinking, gosh, I just wish she would slow down a little, I&#8217;ve got you covered.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:17] <strong>Josepha:</strong> In the show notes, you&#8217;ll find a link to one of the LearnWP courses for getting started with WordPress. There&#8217;s a section on choosing a host, as well as various other early steps of this process. If you felt like I blazed through all of that, which, honestly, I kind of did. You can work through those lessons in that course at your own pace, and it&#8217;s really a very good guide.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>All right. So let&#8217;s pretend we did all of that. Now you&#8217;ve got yourself a website. The thing that you will want to do next, or rather the first thing that you&#8217;ll notice once you get your site up and running, is that there&#8217;s this &#8216;Hello World&#8217; post. There&#8217;s a post that already exists in there. The Hello World post is a placeholder for the common features of a blog post.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:03] <strong>Josepha:</strong> There, you can find your featured image, your title, your content, and even some fake comments. You can either edit this post so that you can see how your writing will look from the start, and you can kind of compare, like, okay, the Hello World part over here on this page exists in this field over here on this page. So you can kind of see where everything works, how it all looks together. Or, if you&#8217;re more familiar with WordPress or CMSs in general, you can simply remove that and start fresh. We&#8217;ve got now a website. We know kind of how to look at our posts and create posts, where comments are, where they can be moderated, and stuff.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so, the most fun task for everyone is choosing a theme. But if it doesn&#8217;t sound like a fun task to you, I can help you kind of do some choose-your-own-adventure guiding questions here. Firstly, you can ask yourself how you want the site to look. Do you want it to mostly be a lot of photos or entirely words? Mostly animations? You can head to the theme directory and search for a theme with most of the features that you want. There&#8217;s like a filtering system where you can put in, like, you want, three columns so that you can have three columns of text if you want it to look kind of like an old school newspaper kind of layout and things like that.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:24] <strong>Josepha:</strong> There&#8217;s also a way to look for themes inside your instance, your WordPress site, but like, if you haven&#8217;t set that up yet, but you do still want to see kind of what your theme options are, you can go to WordPress.org/themes and take a look at what&#8217;s out there. Just as a quick side note, if you get to that theme directory, if you get to WordPress.org/themes, and it feels overwhelming, which I can understand, I recommend starting with a theme that is designed for blogging specifically, so that you can see how things look right away. And there&#8217;s actually a theme that does come with every WordPress site, so if you&#8217;re not ready, you can skip this thing entirely. And just work with the theme that&#8217;s already there. Every WordPress instance ships with a theme, and it is fully functional when you get your site up and running, so you don&#8217;t need to choose a theme right now if you don&#8217;t feel ready. And then the other very fun thing that people do with their WordPress sites, is to add plugins to them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:09:20] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Plugins are these little pieces of software that you add on to the WordPress software that lets it do additional things. It adds additional functionality to it. The questions that you can ask to kind of guide yourself through what sorts of plugins you might want what sorts of functionality you might want to add to your site are a little similar to the ones that you want to ask for figuring out which themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, figure out if there are tasks that you need visitors to do. Do you need them to contact you? Do you want them to watch a video? Should they review and respond to questions? If you have a concept of the things that you want users to do on your website, then you can head to the plugin directory and search for a plugin with features that you need.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:10:05] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Also, there are just endless lists of recommended plugins out there. If that is something that you find valuable as part of your research, those are also easy to find. And as a general side note here as well, there are even more plugins than there are themes. So if you have gotten to this point and feel like you don&#8217;t quite know the answers to the questions that I shared, and it&#8217;s going to be a while until you feel like you can know what those answers are. That&#8217;s totally fine. I&#8217;ll tell you this, I have never seen a site without a contact form. So feel free to begin your journey there. There are a lot of great plugins for contact forms, and it can kind of help you figure out how to work with plugins in that way. So, yeah, I made it sound like you can get a WordPress website built in like seven minutes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And on the one hand, you definitely can. And on the other hand, it&#8217;s still a little bit more complicated. So here I have a final note for everyone. You will hear around the WordPress ecosystem and, obviously, hear some things that could make you feel a little nervous about doing this for the first time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:10] <strong>Josepha</strong>: Things like the five-second installation, which WordPress has been famous for for years, but also about how easy and simple it all is. And as somebody who was once in the position of learning WordPress for the first time, like I first encountered a WordPress site in 2009, and I started learning how to use WordPress in 2010. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>I can say with confidence that once you learn it, it&#8217;s easy. We are the easiest of the hard options for CMSs like content management systems are just complicated. But we are the easiest one out there. And so, as you&#8217;re learning, I want to just remind you to celebrate your small wins along the way. If you feel like you&#8217;re late to this blogging game like you should have had a website for years, I mean, sure, that could be true.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:12:01] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And yes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second best time to plant that tree is today. WordPress didn&#8217;t start out powering over 40% of the web, and your first site can&#8217;t be immediately measured in the millions of readers. So, what will your small beginning lead you to?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:12:18] (Music interlude)</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:12:25] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And now, our small list of big things. Today we&#8217;ve got some look-back items and some look-forward items. So let&#8217;s hop right in. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>First thing is we have a year in review with the themes team. So much amazing work has been done by the themes team over the past year, both for reviewing themes and creating them. So I&#8217;ll leave a link to those in the show notes. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also have a post out that just has some general celebrations from teams around the community. I&#8217;ll leave a link to that. It probably has been linked in quite a few places, but you know, we don&#8217;t always embrace those moments of celebration. We don&#8217;t always embrace our wins. And so it&#8217;s always good to share those early and often. There are probably more than just those two. So if you posted one or you saw a really interesting one that you think that we should know about, don&#8217;t forget to share it.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:13:16] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Next, we have a leap into 2024 with Site Editor tools. So, on the new Developer Blog, if you haven&#8217;t seen it yet, there is a lot of excellent content there for whether you are like an advanced developer in WordPress or you&#8217;re kind of intermediate and ready to move into your advanced developer era.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Site Editor will give you a powerful way to visually create every part of your site and tell your story. And this post will help you to kind of see how to handle everything from big style changes to simple copy updates, all in a single place. We want to make sure that you get the most out of your WordPress this year. And that post will give you a few standout tools and features that you&#8217;ll want to try.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;ll also want to keep an eye out for updates as we move into 2024 around team reps. So each team in the WordPress project goes through a process to review and elect team reps, and elections are happening now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:12] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Along with things that are happening now that you should keep an eye on, the annual goals, our big picture post has gone out as well. It went out at the end of the week last week. There&#8217;ll be a link to all of these in the show notes. And yeah, keep an eye out for, hopefully, a fantastic 2024 in WordPress.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don&#8217;t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You&#8217;ll get a friendly reminder whenever there&#8217;s a new episode. And if you like what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser, or if you have questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPbriefing@WordPress.org. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:57] (Music outro)</p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 22 Jan 2024 12:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Brett McSherry";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:9;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:26:"Matt: Upcoming Ignite Talk";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=110700";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:43:"https://ma.tt/2024/01/upcoming-ignite-talk/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1255:"<p>On January 25<sup>th</sup>, this upcoming Thursday, I will be speaking <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ignite-sf-17-tickets-788662429557?aff=oddtdtcreator">at Ignite San Francisco</a> on the topic of <a href="https://automattic.com/benefits/sabbatical/">Automattic&#8217;s sabbatical benefit</a> and my upcoming one, alongside <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Savage">Adam Savage</a>, <a href="https://www.shelbydevlin.com/">Shelby Devlin</a>, <a href="https://elisehu.com/">Elise Hu</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/leanne-gluck/">Leanne Gluck</a>, Kat Lague, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandanagai/">Amanda Nagai</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Schachter">Joshua Schachter</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Emilord">Emily Quinn</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosebroome/">Rose Bloomin</a>, <a href="https://www.jamiejoyce.com/">Jamie Joyce</a>, <a href="https://masovaida.com/">MaSovaida Morgan</a>, <a href="https://kerp.net/">Todd Kerpelman</a>, <a href="https://brett.kistler.life/">Brett Kistler</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharon-niv/">Shary Niv</a>, and <a href="https://connieverse.com/">Connie Yang</a>. The event will sell out so get your tickets soon!</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 22 Jan 2024 07:27:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:10;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:108:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #95 – Gutenberg 17.5, Early Testing of WordPress 6.5 and Block Themes";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=27107";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:121:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-95-gutenberg-17-5-early-testing-of-wordpress-6-5-and-block-themes/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:57531:"<p>In this episode, Carolina Nymark and Birgit Pauli-Haack discuss Gutenberg 17.5, early testing of WordPress 6.5 and block themes</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-95-gutenberg-17-5-early-testing-of-wordpress-6-5-and-block-themes/#shownotes">Show Notes</a> / <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-95-gutenberg-17-5-early-testing-of-wordpress-6-5-and-block-themes/transcript">Transcript</a></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Music:&nbsp;<a href="https://soundcloud.com/xirclebox">Homer Gaines</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/">Sandy Reed</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://markuraine.com/">Mark Uraine</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://icodeforapurpose.com">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class="has-larger-font-size" id="shownotes"><strong>Show Notes</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Special Guest: Carolina Nymark</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/poena/">WPProfile: @poena</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://twitter.com/carolinapoena">X (former Twitter) @carolinapoena</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/">FullsiteEditing.com</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/">Make Themes team</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-5">WordPress 6.5 Release squad</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Live Q &amp; As with Carolina Nymark</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/discussion-going-from-creating-classic-themes-to-building-block-themes/">Discussion: Going from Creating classic themes to Building block themes</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-updates-to-site-editor-fse-and-block-based-themes/">Live Q &amp; A: Updates to Full-Site Editing and Block-based Themes</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Questions</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/quick-tip-how-to-use-a-classic-menu-in-the-navigation-block-of-a-block-theme/">Quick Tip: How to use a classic menu in the navigation block of a block theme</a></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Upcoming Events</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/17/media-phase-3-meeting-feb-7/">Phase 3 Media Meeting: February 7, 2024</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/298440719/">Live stream: Reviewing Gutenberg 17.5</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Extensibility Issues Triage meeting Jan 23 at 12:00 UTC</li>\n\n\n\n<li>February 8th, 2023 15:00 UTC- There will be a Hallway Hangout to discuss Intrinsic Design and how to use it on real life projects</li>\n\n\n\n<li>February 13, 2024, at 16:00 UTC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/298634428/">Developer Hours: JavaScript for modern WordPress development</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data Views &amp; Extensibility</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/55083#issuecomment-1893398270">DataViews: Improve all the table and list views in the site editor and further.</a>&nbsp;#55083 (Riad Benguella&#8217;s response regarding extensibility of new admin views</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/trunk/packages/dataviews/README.md">Documentation of @wordpress/dataviews package</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Community Contributions</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/01/13/early-opportunities-to-test-wordpress-6-5/">Early Opportunities to Test WordPress 6.5</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/01/12/call-for-mentees-mentors-cohort-2/">Call for Mentees &amp; Mentors: Contributor Mentorship Program Cohort #2 (2024 Q1)</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s released</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/18/wordpress-6-5-release-squad-formation/">WordPress 6.5 release squad formation</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/16/6-4-3-an-upcoming-maintenance-release/">6.4.3: An upcoming maintenance release</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-5-17-january-2024/">What’s new in Gutenberg 17.5? (17 January 2024)</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What&#8217;s in the works and discussed</h2>\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/57841"><strong>Try reducing specificity of global styles block selector.</strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Section Styling, Colorways, and Typesets for WP 6.5 &gt; <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/57537#issuecomment-1895419662"><strong>Summary of Explorations and the Current Approach</strong></a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class="has-large-font-size">Stay in Touch</p>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">\n<ul>\n<li>Did you like this episode? <a href="https://lovethepodcast.com/gutenbergchangelog"><strong>Please write us a review </strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ping us on Twitter or send DMs with questions. <a href="https://twitter.com/gutenbergtimes">@gutenbergtimes </a>and <a href="https://twitter.com/bph">@bph</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>If you have questions or suggestions, or news you want us to include, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. </em></li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Please write us a review on iTunes! <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/itunes/">(Click here to learn how)</a></em></li>\n</ul>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<p class="has-large-font-size" id="transcript"><strong>Transcript</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Hello, and welcome to our 95th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about Gutenberg 17.5, early testing on WordPress 6.5 and block themes, and everything in between. I&#8217;m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and a full-time core contributor for the WordPress open source project sponsored by Automattic&#8217;s Five for the Future Program. I&#8217;m so thrilled we were finally able to make it happen. Carolina Nymark is on the show today. Carolina is a core contributor sponsored by Yoast and has been an evangelist, educator and blogger about block themes when we all knew that it was coming but had no clue what it will be and when we still called it full-site editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many of you might have visited her site, <a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/">fullsiteediting.com</a> where she teaches developers and site builders how to use the block themes. Carolina also joined us on the Gutenberg Live Q&amp;As multiple times to talk about that. And I&#8217;m so happy to have you finally also on the podcast. Welcome, Carolina, and how are you today?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Thank you. I am very well. Thank you. So we are recording this on a Friday in January, and I have been back at work maybe only two weeks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: I had December off, which was very, very nice. I used WordPress, but I did not code anything for almost five weeks, so it was a really nice break.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, yeah, I imagine that. I got about two and a half weeks off over the holidays, but I&#8217;m back. Also two weeks. So it&#8217;s all a new year and I hope you got into the new year well.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Block Themes</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So there have been early discussions, you and I and with others that we&#8217;re working on it, early discussions about the block themes in 2020 if not 2019. I&#8217;m a little bit unsure and I really want to thank you for being such a great advocate and educator for block themes. I think it has changed WordPress quite a bit. We are not there yet entirely, but how do you feel about block themes now that you have to work with them over four years?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Well, it doesn&#8217;t feel like four years. It feels like it&#8217;s been much shorter. I agree, it&#8217;s not there yet. While I love working with the site editor and creating visual layouts that I can tweak as a coder, I do love that, but I still wish that we would have come further.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So what do you think is missing? Do you have examples of what you find missing from when you go from a classic theme building and want to recreate the magic also in block themes?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Yeah. So one of the big parts is that when we use PHP to build our themes, we use a lot of conditions if else to display different things depending on what&#8217;s happening, what the user is doing, what they&#8217;re viewing. We can&#8217;t really do that with blocks. At least not with the current core blocks that we have. What is also missing is a way to manage and base custom fields. Of course, the Gutenberg developers are very aware about the need for custom fields management, and it has been of course ongoing discussions for several months and it will happen in some form.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Right now it has had to step back a little bit because a lot of the Gutenberg developers need to focus on the new data views, which is part of the&#8230; Well, it&#8217;s going to be a part of the admin redesign.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So yeah, custom fields that I have seen so early. So there was this whole hangout last week with early views on what&#8217;s in the roadmap of 6.5 and also even if it wasn&#8217;t on the roadmap to go to 6.5, but it&#8217;s actively worked on, and one of them was to have in the block toolbar a button that you can connect something in the content of the block with a custom field.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t know how that all surfaces, but that is really interesting approach because you don&#8217;t have to go out and go into a different interface. You can all do it there. But apart from there, the conditions are pretty big. I think what it comes down to is that you build a lot of templates for different kind of cases, use cases, and that duplicates code quite a bit. So when you want to migrate a site from a classic theme to a block theme, there is no one click conversion.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what would you think a site editor should do? So I had the same conversation with Sarah two weeks ago and because I&#8217;m doing that for the Gutenberg Times, and I&#8217;m trying to find a good approach that other people could follow. So let me tell you what I do. I installed the health and troubleshooting plugin on my life site and then switched off all the other themes and switched on the themes that I wanted to use.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was testing the twenty twenty four I was testing Frost and some other of the block themes, one or two of them from Edna Snoren or Ellen Bauer and then see how my site changes with the new block theme. And then I made notes what needs to be changed. So this archive page needs to change and that needs to change, and here the block don&#8217;t. The biggest hurdle was that my featured image on the block loop, on the archive page is a landscape, and most of the themes that I tested, the feature image was portrait format. So that kind of thing, but that&#8217;s I think not a big&#8230; That&#8217;s an easy fix. You can change the template, you can change your aspect ratio and you&#8217;re done with it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I have my notes. I have my scope of the changes that I need to make, and then I&#8217;ll create a staging site, install the create block theme plugin, and then make my changes there. And then I can export that theme and import it into my live theme. Is that a good process or as good as any?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: I do think it&#8217;s as good as any right now, but it really does sound way too complicated for the, how do I say it, the average user. And it&#8217;s difficult. How are we going to help them? How are we going to make it easier? But it also depends. It all depends on how complex your existing theme and your existing site is. But yes, start with pen and paper. Really write down the already must haves and do spring cleaning. If there are things that you don&#8217;t need, remove them. And then you won&#8217;t have the problem of trying to recreate at least those spots.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: I mean if you&#8217;re switching to a completely new theme, of course, there are going to be a lot of things that don&#8217;t match your current website. So they&#8217;re definitely going to be tweaking. And create a block theme is a great tool because yes, you can activate any block theme and export it as your own. So of course you&#8217;re not limited to using the default themes. If there is a block theme to define that matches what you want closer, pick any of them. What you want to look at though is the last updated date. You don&#8217;t want to pick a block theme that was updated in 2020 or 2022. You want one that is…</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Good reminder.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: &#8230; continued, developed, and supported.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Good reminder. So it should be 2023 or something like that and not the default theme, but the update should be at least in 2023 if not in the last three months or so. That&#8217;s definitely a good point.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: So if you&#8217;re picking from <a href="https://wordpress.org/">wordpress.org</a>. Look at the reviews of this theme. Look at the support firm. Is the developer responsive or maybe they&#8217;re directing you to a different support firm where they&#8217;re active. That&#8217;s also absolutely fine. But just look to see that there is someone who&#8217;s able to help you if you run into bugs or if you&#8217;re blocked somewhere.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Well, most of the time when I switched themes before with classic theme to classic theme, there were always tweaks. There was no one switch and everything was good. There was always a little bit&#8230; CSS kind of change here and template missing here, and the condition are not working right. So I think that&#8217;s pretty much to expect when you switch themes and normally you don&#8217;t. It&#8217;s the third switch in five years for the site. So I think it&#8217;s pretty much on par with that. And I&#8217;m also late, but I also want to do some experimentation with the new features that are there, that are coming out, like the interactivity of PI and the block hooks and that kind of thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was really hard to do this without the block theme because they&#8217;re all built for block themes and the latest. So that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m switching over on the site. So that&#8217;s one thing, the site migration&#8230; But you come from the classic theme building. You&#8217;ve been a theme team rep for many, many years and have been&#8230; So if you are a theme builder and you want to create a block theme, what are the hurdles to overcome? Are there any blockers, pun intended, especially mental blockers? Are there something that is something people need to get on with it, so to speak?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Yes. Mental blocker absolutely are big at perhaps the code challenges, unless you&#8217;re building something very, very highly custom and specialized. So as a coder, if you really enjoy coding, you might love PHP, and then suddenly, if you&#8217;re not working with a designer, of course because we have two different&#8230; Of course, more than two different ways to do this. But if you&#8217;re on your own and then suddenly switching from writing your templates in your code editor, and you have to go to this visual interface, you really need to learn how to maximize the blocks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You do need to learn how to sketch, draft the layout in the editor, and then you will go and make your tweaks. Once you have exported your base layouts for one template or 10 or maybe four is more realistic. When you have four templates, you have what font sizes, what colors, what spacing you&#8217;re using then you&#8217;re going to tweak the details in your exported theme.json file and you tweak the code in your templates. But you still have that element where you need to go to the visual interface and actually move things around, change the alignment, etc. And it&#8217;s a big change of course.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: But it&#8217;s also lowering the barrier for those who don&#8217;t know how to code to create their own themes. So I think it&#8217;s a good balance to get more people involved in creativity and creating themes and do some designs. A lot of designers are actually not coders per se, and they might&#8230; I think what&#8217;s still missing, going back to the earlier question, is actually a user interface for editing the theme.json file. I know it&#8217;s all in the database and you can export it, but you still have to fiddle with that long and the theme.json files, the more features come in, the longer it&#8217;s going to become and the more unwilling it comes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Oh yes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. There are VS Code extensions that help with that, but I think you need to really squint quite a bit when you read the code to get into the right settings and all that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: I absolutely three. So not all the settings in theme.json actually have an interface. It probably shouldn&#8217;t be exposed to all users, and that&#8217;s where do we draw the line? Do we really add an advanced view to the site editor or does it need to be in a plugin? And several people of course have tried to build this plugin because we do need it and have not succeeded or have needed to stop halfway because&#8230; Well, I can&#8217;t really tell why.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: One reason is probably…</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: It&#8217;s just not easy. The base coding in Gutenberg, it just doesn&#8217;t make it easy to do that kind of option page, or at least not right now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I can also see that it&#8217;s really taxing to build a feature for something that&#8217;s so inactive development and has updates every two weeks to keep up with it, especially when you have a product. So I can see that the initial momentum getting this, &#8220;Oh, this is a great idea and let&#8217;s build it,&#8221; kind of weans away when after a year or two you still have to go in every month and update this thing because there&#8217;s new features or things have changed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, I think great way to talk about block themes and thank you for that. Are you planning to work further on the <a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/">fullsiteediting.com</a> or do you think that the new block handbook has been overhauled enough to say, &#8220;Oh yeah, now documentation.&#8221; I think there was a reason why you graded that because there was no documentation and there was a lot of need for explaining the concept and all. But the new developer theme handbook has been overhauled in the last, I don&#8217;t know, four or five months. Do you think that the documentation is up to par now?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Yes. So Justin Tadlock who did most of their work on the handbook has been amazing. The handbook has been greatly updated and <a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/">fullsiteediting.com</a> has not, because I have not had the time. And it&#8217;s a bit of a stressor. I guess I do want to keep it up to date. I want to fight about what I&#8217;m exploring, what I&#8217;m finding, what problems I&#8217;m running into, and of course maybe some more code examples. It&#8217;s difficult for me to prioritize.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I imagine.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: So there&#8217;s room for both. So <a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/">fullsiteediting.com</a> of course I can express opinions in a whole different way that you can&#8217;t do in a handbook, which needs to be very strict and act even a bit friendly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Neutral.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Yeah, I&#8217;m still a little bit apprehensive about how we&#8217;re going to keep it up to date. So even if we only have now three releases per year, that goes into WordPress Core, it&#8217;s still a lot to keep up with.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: You need more volunteers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Yes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So if somebody wants to contribute to documentation specifically for the theme handbook, what would be the steps apart from having a Slack account and having a wp.org account, and a GitHub account?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: The easiest way is to, first of all, reach out in the theme review Slack channel from your account, and we can guide you a little bit more from there. So the team handbook is currently written in WordPress on the website. So the content is not managed right now on GitHub. It&#8217;s not marked on files. It&#8217;s actually WordPress. It&#8217;s a poster page custom post type.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, that lowers a lot of barriers actually.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: But all the issues when we see that the page needs to be updated, we add our issues to the documentation teams issue tracker on GitHub.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, cool. So if you&#8217;re on the documentation team, you already know how the process works. That is really good. So dear listeners, if you have an aptitude for technical writing, your English is good enough, so Carolina is a non-native speaker, and I as a non-native speaker can read it. You are in it. You can join the team and you&#8217;ll have some great people there that help you. I know that Justin Tadlock has quite some onboarding and he&#8217;s happy to help anybody also with writing and do some copy editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you don&#8217;t have to be scared just because you&#8217;re not a native English speaker to do that. All right. So this was all about block themes and I&#8217;m really glad that we talked about some of the issues there. So let&#8217;s get on with the show.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Listener Questions</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>We sometimes also answer some questions that we get either from Twitter or listener question. And this question came through Twitter and that is how to use a classic menu in the navigation for block theme. And it&#8217;s very hard to find when you&#8230; And so I put it a little tutorial together, a quick tick I call it because it&#8217;s less than a hundred words or so on how to use it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s mainly the screenshot and where to find things, a little video. So you need to grab the header in the site editor and then the menu that is there from your theme. And then there is on the right hand side, there&#8217;s this toolbar or the sidebar where the block settings are normally and there&#8217;s one three-dot menu where the switcher where you can see all the classic menus listed that you had previously on your site and then you select it and it&#8217;ll magically appear in the navigation block.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I think you don&#8217;t have to recreate all the classic menus that you had before when you switch it. That is definitely a hidden gem. I don&#8217;t know if you can surface it even better. We need to kind of talk to design about that, but that&#8217;s where you find it and it&#8217;s your secret superpower to know where it is now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Normally, I think, if I understood this correctly and Carolina you help me out, when you only have one menu, the block theme magically adds it. If a navigation block is in the template, it will be added to the navigation block as a default. But if you have more than one classic menu, it doesn&#8217;t know which one to pick. So it kind of makes it up as it goes along. I think when you switch from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, it takes the social menu, which is kind of weird, but that&#8217;s the randomness of this feature. But it also points you right there, this is something to fix.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: At least that problem is quite obvious because it&#8217;s not the correct content inside the block.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So, listeners, that was our quick tip of the week.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Upcoming Events</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>We also have some upcoming events that are on the list that happen in all kinds of different places. So first of all on February 7th at 12 noon UTC, the media component maintainers come together in a meeting to discuss phase three media items that could be ahead of development or phase three. And Anthony Burchell who is one of the maintainers, invites you to be part of it. And if you haven&#8217;t contributed to any code yet in the recent years, that is definitely a good place to see what work needs to be done and how it&#8217;s organized.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then February 8th, a day later, there will be a hallway hangout to discuss intrinsic design and how to use it in a real life projects with the block editor and the block themes and we will have some interesting people there. Fabian Kagy is going to be there, Tammie Lister, Justin Tadlock. They&#8217;re all proponents of the intrinsic design testing. Tadlock wrote a nice introduction to that on the developer blog a few months ago, but it&#8217;s definitely&#8230; But Fabian and Tammie, they have also some ideas of what&#8217;s still missing, what you can&#8217;t do with intrinsic design, which you still would need to do with your own CSS and some conditional coding and templates to get this going.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And they bring some solutions with them. Then not so far out January 25th at 15:30 or 3:30 UTC, there&#8217;s a developer livestream reviewing Gutenberg 17.5 by Ryan Welcher. He does it on Twitch. It&#8217;s not a scripted show, he just dives in into a topic or multiple topics and shows some code. If you haven&#8217;t followed Ryan on the Twitch stream, you can also follow him on YouTube. And he has this fabulous series of the block development cookbook. Every show is a little recipe on how to do things with a block editor development. And then also next week is the extensibility issued triage meeting on January 23rd at noon UTC.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s a project board with increasing Gutenberg extensibility and we go over some of the columns there and see if we can move some of the issues or PRs forward to be slated for some of the major releases this year. So it&#8217;s going to be a real good&#8230; Yeah, there&#8217;s some agency developers in there. We also have joined by Gutenberg developers. So this is a chat meeting. It&#8217;s not a video meeting or something like that. Carolina, do you know of any events that listeners might, we could let them know about?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: There&#8217;s rumors that there might be an upcoming hallway hangout about migrating from classic themes to block themes. But it&#8217;s not scheduled yet, but if you have the chance, definitely join one of these that we just spoke about.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And speaking of events, there&#8217;s always in the theme review channel, there&#8217;s a theme meeting. When do they happen?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: It&#8217;s every other Tuesday. I&#8217;m sorry, I believe it&#8217;s at 4:00 UTC. I&#8217;m usually unable to attend because of the timing, so I don&#8217;t have the exact time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, okay. Well, we can look it up. Tuesday testing JavaScript. Theme biweekly 4:00 PM, Yes. 4:00 PM UTC. And the next one is, it&#8217;s on the 23rd. So next week, Tuesday is the fourth Tuesday. So it&#8217;s on the second and the fourth Tuesday, 4:00 PM UTC. And so if you want to be part of the theme development or theme review documentation team, you can join there and meet all the people there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: So during these meetings, we usually recap how many new themes went live this week, for example. We also repeatedly bring up things like, are the requirements still correct? We need to update them. What are we going to do about react-based themes, settings, pages, onboarding of users when we have a block theme of a need, an easier way for them to select the front page. So both about theme reviews, but also really wide topics. But they are, again, just posted that you can read of course, and also proposed topics too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And if you want to follow up on some of them, the summaries are posted on the make theme blog as well. Cool, cool, cool. Those are the events and meetings. There&#8217;s under <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meetings/">make.wordpress.org/meetings</a>, a calendar of all the teams meetings, not only the theme team but all the teams. So it gets a little bit overwhelming and you shouldn&#8217;t join every channel on WP Slack, but pick the team that you&#8217;re involved in or you want to be involved in. You can definitely be in a meeting every day of the week.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Oh yes. There are often meetings that collide as well if you&#8217;re interested in several topics.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And sometimes they&#8217;re Slack meetings, so you can actually switch between the meetings a bit because people need to type things.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So speaking of extensibility, Fabian Kagy from 10up and also has been a guest on the show quite often, he started a conversation about extensibility for the new admin views, and Riad Benguella posted a great response on how extensibility is actually approached and what they&#8217;re planning once they have the APIs are finalized and they want to create APIs for retracing new fields, new layouts, new field types.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I like the new layouts. The grid layout and the preview layouts and all that. Also, defining default views and fields and allowing third-party developers to have their own views for their pages. What they haven&#8217;t yet put in there, and they want to still do this before any extensibility is considered is inline editing and editing the fields and views in the UI.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I have not seen any design views for those interfaces yet, so that might still be a little bit off, but I&#8217;ll share the issue and the comment in the show notes, of course, like everything else that we talked about. But Riad is also summarizing the approach that the built the APIs, then UIs, and then if it all works together and the APIs are stable, then open that up to third-party developers to using plugins and themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But he also has a suggestion on how third-party developers can start experimenting with it, and that is using the WordPress data views NPM package and start testing those. Documentation is available on the packages read me file, and you definitely can connect with Riad if you have any questions or something like that. But I think it&#8217;s time to start looking at that if you&#8217;re a plugin developer or a theme developer, just to make sure that you start getting the mindset and you see what the users are going to see. Any comments?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: So glad that this question was asked and highlighted, and I&#8217;m happy with the answer. And as always, when this is like, &#8220;We want it now,&#8221; we can&#8217;t have it yet. And third-party extenders, plugin developers, we really do need to help testing. Again, we need to be very clear in our feedback on what we need because we have to leave that feedback when there is still a chance to make changes. If something is not what we expect, the earlier the feedback, the better. Easier it is to respond to and address. I also do my part of the data views.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I need to use it more to really get used to it. I have problems with the very, very narrow list. So on the left side you have a brief description, the name of your, for example, your template or your post. This part is very narrow, but I do like that you can switch views. So you can choose if you want the list, grid or a table. And there are so many more things that you can customize with filters already. So I really like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Also, like the grid layout patterns in the pattern data views or for&#8230; It would be really beautiful for the media library to have a grid layout like it is now. And even posts. If you want the feature image and you don&#8217;t need a list, but you want also kind of see how&#8230; Which have featured images and which don&#8217;t.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Community Contributions</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Which brings us to the next topic that we have here that is early opportunities for testing. Thank you for bringing that up. Test, test, test.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Yes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So Anne McCarthy has published a post called Early Opportunities to Test WordPress 6.5 ahead of beta 6.5 that is scheduled for February 13th. These are early opportunities to feedback and testing it for your own sake. It&#8217;s only a selection of features in the post, but it&#8217;s very good in the instructions of what you can do and what you should test. So a part of the burden for testing is you have to come up with what is it that I actually want to do? Have those decisions and make a list of it. And Anne McCarthy has done that particular work for you and shows you how to test the data views. Also, the pattern overrides and the font library, of course that has been in the works for quite a bit, and the robust revisions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So for templates and styles you now can have&#8230; In 6.4, we already have revisions, but now those are actually getting to the next step and being really cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: The revisions are a really nice update. I also hope that we can do something to improve the post-op block editor revisions, which are not as easy to use, say, style visions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes, absolutely. And in the post you also find ways on how to set up test websites for that. I also will share a link to the playground with the Gutenberg nightly that actually&#8230; At least for the data views, because you need to enable the experiments to do that for the data views as well as for the pattern overrides. So we have some playground instances&#8230; Not have some, but we build the blueprints for those so you can call them up in WordPress playground, which is a nice browser-based WordPress instance. It&#8217;s really amazing how that would work for someone who has done work with so many servers.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a long, long post, but it has all the details that you need for each feature. It&#8217;s divided up into explaining the feature, prerequisites and then test instructions and what you could do with it. Feedback, you could leave it on the post if you have some feedback or if something is not working, or you could do that as a bug report on the GitHub repository or just post it into the co-editor channel and we&#8217;ll figure out which part of your experience is actually the bug report or a feature request or something like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it&#8217;s not always easy to get it right for a GitHub issue, but there are people here to help you. Definitely. Have you tested any of those features or looked at those apart from the revisions you said?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: No, I&#8217;ve tested them on my own. I haven&#8217;t read the full testing instructions. I mean, I have some feedback that I need to add, document and write down, and perhaps why not start working on fixing it as well. So I need to do that maybe next week.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Do you have something else that we could talk about it in community contributions?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: We spoke a little bit about how to find the team&#8217;s team and how to help with the handbook or just join the meetings. But of course there are so many teams that you can contribute to, and the application for the contributor mentorship program has opened. So this is for the first quarter of 2024. It is open for both mentors and mentees. So if you&#8217;re an experienced, well actually, user. You don&#8217;t even have to be a developer. If you&#8217;re an experienced WordPress user, contributor, you can apply as a mentor. To be a mentee you do not have to have any previous experience, just be engaged and want to join.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the mentorship program is a one-on-one mentorship or a group mentorship, which is new. So the group mentorship is new. You can actually apply to work on a specific project together with others with your mentor, which is really interesting. Nice idea. It&#8217;s great to meet more people and collaborate, which is a really nice opportunity.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Thank you for bringing that up. Is there a deadline on it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: The application deadline is February 7, and you can find the application by going to <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/">make.wordpress.org/community</a> and it&#8217;ll be one of the pinned articles on the top of that page.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And of course we&#8217;re going to share the link to it in the show notes of this episode. That is a great new program for getting more contributors. It&#8217;s also meant to create contributor leadership as well, and also to have more sustained contribution. We have in many teams the problem that are these flyby contributors and sometimes you need continued contributions to make a team work and we need both. But I think it&#8217;s harder for contributors to have an ongoing relationship with a team, especially when they&#8217;re not sponsored and their work life or their life.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, if you have a family, your free time is all but WordPress. If you work as a freelance or in an agency, the workload can be up and down and sometimes you don&#8217;t have two months in a row where you can contribute. So this mentorship group is also meant for those who do feel they can do ongoing contributions.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s Released &#8211; WordPress 6.5</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>All right. I think we come to the stage where we talk about what&#8217;s released and we have to talk about three releases. One is the release squad for WordPress 6.5 has been announced and release lead is again, Matt Mullenweg, release coordinators, Akshaya Rane, Hector Prieto, and Mary Baum. And core tech leads are David Baumwald and Pascal Bircher. And editor tech leads are David Smith and Riad Benguella. But there are in total 27 contributors on the list of release leads.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there&#8217;s also editor triage and design and all that. Carolina, you are also part of the release squad in 6.5. Thank you for raising your hand. And you are named as a default themes lead. That seems to be a new role on the release squad. What does that include for a release that doesn&#8217;t have a default theme?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: It means that you are continuing doing what a bundled theme component maintainer does. It is triaging track tickets, looking at new report issues. But the part that I wanted to focus on that we haven&#8217;t really done before is that we need to know what the new features are in the editor. Mostly that can affect our themes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: When you say our themes, you mean previous default themes?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: I mean, the default themes. Are there new features that should be implemented? Doesn&#8217;t have to be implemented, or shouldn&#8217;t. We have to make decisions about this and then we have to start looking at the code. Can we solve this? Do we need to fix CSS conflicts? We have to test on multiple, multiple workers expressions to see that we&#8217;re not causing problems.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s pretty good. I really like that role, but it takes a lot of work because how many default teams are there? 15 or so?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: I&#8217;m hoping that we&#8217;re going to focus on the ones that are actually bonded when you install WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Not the ones that you download. At least not in this round. We haven&#8217;t brought this up, but there is a proposal to have a default theme task force. This was proposed in December and you can volunteer for it. We&#8217;re still waiting for more information, but the idea is that we do need more contributors to help triage all of the open issues. And triaging issues means that we read these issues and confirm is this actually a bundled theme issue or does it belong to a different component?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, if the reported issue is a problem with a block, it probably needs to be moved to the Gutenberg repository and solved there because it affects more than the bundled themes. It affects all themes. So that&#8217;s one of the kind of sorting that this group would need to do.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I think it&#8217;s a brilliant idea, especially because it&#8217;s an early warning for changes in the block editor or in block themes that might trickle down to classic themes and changes CSS behavior. There&#8217;s one discussion right now about the specificity of elements and block themes and does that affect&#8230; If it&#8217;s changed, what&#8217;s the trade-off? It makes it the work that it would cause to update existing themes, but moving forward lessens the work. So I think with your role in there, you definitely can chime in early warning and also say, &#8220;Okay, well this is something we need to have in the developer notes because theme developers will have to take a look at that also for their theme.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So this was missing. It&#8217;s the first release that I won&#8217;t be part of since 6.0 on my first release that I was part of on documentation, 6.0 to 6.4, all five releases. I was part of documentation or editor triage and it was really interesting to see how documentation actually surfaces there. That early warning part could have saved some of the hard work that was done retroactively when there was even a new note there or even a new minor version needed to be cut very early after the release.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So to iterate on the release schedule, I think we talked about it earlier, but you can always look it up about beta one is scheduled for February 13th. 25 days left. So if you want to control it or you have some features that need to be moved forward, get on it. There are two more Gutenberg plugins, 17.6 and 17.7 with features that will go into 6.5. Afterwards it&#8217;s just bug fixing or maybe a little bit enhancement.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then release candidate one and with field guide and dev notes deadline is March 5th, and that&#8217;s just before WordCamp Asia. So we all go release 6.5 and then head out to Taipei because WordCamp Asia starts on March 7th. The final release is on March 26th, 2024. It sounds also far away, but it&#8217;s really not a whole lot of time anymore to see what&#8217;s getting in there. So looking at the hallway hangout where contributors kind walk through all the features might be a good idea to just get up to par with that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before we get 6.5, we get a minor release, 6.4.3. Aaron Jorbin is the release lead for that and he announced the schedule for this minor release for January 24th, 17:00 UTC is the release party scheduled, and I&#8217;ll share the announcement post in the show notes where he also listed the tickets, the bug fixes that are solved for this final release is also maintenance release, so it&#8217;s automatically updated. So watch out next week.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 17.5</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>And that brings us to Gutenberg 17.5, the latest Gutenberg release. There&#8217;s not a whole lot of in there, but there&#8217;s a lot of&#8230; There are big topics in there, but not many specific things. So the continued work on the editor unification, meaning that the site editor and the post editor have the same features, the same panels, the same preferences, and can be reused. And so developers as well as users don&#8217;t have to learn two interfaces for almost the same thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: There&#8217;s some randomized quality of life changes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, absolutely. And then of course that&#8217;s related to the history of how Gutenberg progressed, the post editors from the phase one and the site editors from phase two, and now they&#8217;re making them being the same. Especially the unified distraction free preferences. I&#8217;m really glad that it comes to the site editor now. Also spotlight mode and the show breadcrumbs, broad cramps. Yeah, there&#8217;s some German kind of cohort going in there. Sometimes I have that. It wasn&#8217;t as prominent when I was living in the United States because I was talking English all day long, but now with the German interacting with Germans, sometimes my English kind of sucks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: It happens.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: As long as you all still understand me, dear listeners, I&#8217;m not stopping with this episode with Gutenberg Changelog. There are some component updates and the font library updates that are going into 6.5 to get the final touches done. They had to refactor some of the rest API interactions for the font library, but that is well on the way for the editor or the block library. We have two changes that I want to point out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>One is that in the post featured image block, there is now an attribute that you can set to use the first image that&#8217;s in post as a featured image. I think that&#8217;s a great enhancement. That&#8217;s a feature that was missing from the classic editor or from some of the themes because I was really missing that. Oh, I have pictures in there. So use one of those and sometimes that would work and then sometimes it wouldn&#8217;t work. But now having that as an attribute in the block is really cool. Is there a user interface for that or is it just for the template?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: As far as I know, it&#8217;s just for&#8230; Well, developers are advanced users. We have the user interface.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Okay. And then the second one is the gallery block. Now, you can just do a random setting, order setting for the pictures in the gallery so you don&#8217;t have to fiddle around with the order and moving around and you just&#8230; It&#8217;s a toggle switch in the site editor, in the blog editor sidebar where you can just switch it on and off and it orders the picture at random. Pretty cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It definitely streamlines your production time of things and you don&#8217;t have to spend an hour forming an opinion what order you want and then executing on that opinion. If you don&#8217;t have an opinion, that&#8217;s fine. Is there anything in there that you want to point out, Carolina?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: In the update or in the block library?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: The change log. The change log.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: There are many small permits. We have some exchanges for the pattern overrides, which is their partially synced pattern with a new name.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Naming is so hard.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: It is. It is so hard.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: We&#8217;ll see. Eventually we&#8217;ll see where it actually lands when we have to write a documentation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And then once the documentation is written, it&#8217;s kind of set in stone because nobody knows when you rename things. There are so many people out there who still talk about full site editing in new posts in 2024. So not on the WordPress site, but people here write the portals and all that. The pattern overrides have a lot of expectations and I think the 6.5 first iteration will be very limited in features that I think for paragraphs, for heading and for images.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: It needs to be limited, I guess. Well, we need more time, but also it just makes it easier to test and to receive feedback for it and not as overwhelming hopefully for users to actually learn.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, good point. Good point. I like it. And of course the data views, there are a lot of people working on the data views and it&#8217;s still under experimental flag, but it&#8217;s coming a long way. It really has some great attention right now. You can use it on the one store feature is enabled in the experiments. You can use it on the patterns page. On the pages page it&#8217;s already by default available for templates. I think template parts are still under the experimental flag, but those things will all come out of experiments hopefully very soon. So we can all test everything.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: It&#8217;s moving very fast. It is still unclear what will actually be in 6.5. But we&#8217;ll see.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I think every release in the last so 16 point&#8230; This is 17.5. So 17.3, I think, had the first data views or 17.2 even. And every release had over 20 PRs kind of going in into that feature. So it&#8217;s really moving fast and it&#8217;s beautiful now. I really like it. There&#8217;s quite some excitement out there in the community as well for those who have looked at it. And if you have an opinion, dear listeners, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>, <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there are two items in the documentation section. There&#8217;s a lot of changes in documentation, but two, I want to point out because it&#8217;s for beginners on the block development. There&#8217;s a new section in the quick starter guide. If you haven&#8217;t seen the quick start guide for block development, I only use it to talk about other things. So the quick start guide for block development walks you through a tutorial on grading a block for copyright, dynamic copyright year on your website and use that block.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was a developer just last week and the recording is up on YouTube where Nick Diego and Ryan Welcher go through that tutorial and show how this all meant to be. It&#8217;s one thing to read a tutorial and try to follow along yourself than to watch somebody else go through a tutorial and then follow along. It&#8217;s a much richer experience. And the documentation changes here are all about the local development environment. What are the tools that you can use for local development on your machine?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And one of them is WP-env, which is the built-in WordPress development based on Dhaka. There are actually, I don&#8217;t know if you use them already, efforts to make the WordPress playground a local development. You don&#8217;t need local development. You can use the WordPress playground for development and have code editor in there. So I&#8217;ve seen some great mockups from that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: I have not tried it yet. It&#8217;s on my very long to-do list because I&#8217;m absolutely curious about it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s amazing. But the WP-env script also, you can call it together with a create block scaffolding and you have almost instantaneous a good block development environment set up. There were some changes to block.json as well as theme.json And documentation and that&#8217;s pretty much what I wanted to point out. Code quantity is all very technical and all the efforts to write all the end-to-end tests and playwright migrating fast. And to build tools have been updated to the latest things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>All right. Oh, here it was, yes. So that was a change log for 17.5. It was not a whole lot in there for a WebPress user. It&#8217;s more like the future of things. It&#8217;s really cool, but not for immediate use. But sometimes you have these releases where there&#8217;s some foundation work being done.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: The releases are some frequency, yes. Sometimes there will be these kind of releases but with less new ready features and more work on what&#8217;s coming.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s in Active Development or Discussed</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So speaking of what&#8217;s coming there is this active discussion. I mentioned it before. There is an effort on PR that reduce the specificity on the global styles, CNS by, I think it was Isabel, Brison tele machines. She&#8217;s working on that quite a bit. And there is a call for testing, especially for classic themes to see how impact that will have on your custom CSS or even on block themes because the high specificity makes you create workarounds on all the different places. And if it&#8217;s reduced, you&#8217;re losing your targets. So how much work would it take? I&#8217;ll share the related ticket in the show notes, but did you take a look at that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: I have read it. I have planned, sets time away in my calendar to do some testing and this is where it would really help to know what specifically to test for, like having something to help us get started because it&#8217;s a bit wide right now. It&#8217;s just test if your sales is still correct. This is also where tool like visual regression testing would have really helped. But in the next couple of days, of course we are going to have a little bit more testing done. We&#8217;re going to have some more comments on these issues, tickets and narrow it down a little bit so that we can have tests in the instructions and test results presented there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Aaron Robishaw who&#8217;s also working on those, he did some explorations on the current approach to see&#8230; I think his summary also helps with figuring out as a theme developer, &#8220;Okay, where do I need to look in my theme to test this rate?&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: That sounds good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, I share both of them in the show notes of the show. And it seems that we are at the end of our show. Carolina, you made it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: We made it. Thank you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: We made it, yes. It&#8217;s an awesome show. You have some great discussions on block development and block themes, and contributions, and a call for contributors. So it&#8217;s a full rounded show. Is there anything, Carolina, that you want people to know that you didn&#8217;t get to mention before, while you have an audience and think about it, and you could also tell me where people that want to connect with you, where they find you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Well, you can find me on Twitter, @carolinapoena. You can message me there. If you go to <a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/">fullsiteediting.com</a>, in the footer is also actually a link to a Slack channel that you can join if you like.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: And on the WordPress Slack, my nickname is Poena. Yeah, that&#8217;s the easiest way to reach me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: I think that we need to mention everything a little bit about, but to think about when you&#8217;re switching your website to a block theme or what we need help with in testing the upcoming release and what we need help with for the bundled themes that we need more contributors and we need more testing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right then. Before we end the show, remind you, there&#8217;s these events out there February 7th, that phase three media library. February 8th is the intrinsic design hallway hangout. There will be developer hours in February. I don&#8217;t have a date yet, but keep up on the meetup extensibility issues. Triage meeting is January 23rd. And then there is a livestream on Twitch about reviewing Gutenberg 17.5. I&#8217;m going to watch it and see what Ryan Welcher is digging up from this change log that we might have missed.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dear listeners, thank you all for listening again, and if you have any news or questions, or suggestions, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. That&#8217;s <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. Again, thank you, Carolina Nymark for being on the show and sharing all your wisdom here. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Carolina Nymark</em>: Bye.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Bye.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 21 Jan 2024 13:34:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:11;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:118:"Gutenberg Times: Media Experiments, WordPress 6.5, Gutenberg 17.5 and block building tutorials — Weekend Edition 281";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=27026";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:121:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/media-experiments-wordpress-6-5-gutenberg-17-5-and-block-building-updates-weekend-edition-218/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23550:"<p>Howdy, </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Work on the next major WordPress release, 6.5 is in full swing. Two more Gutenberg plugin releases and Beta 1 will be upon us. You&#8217;ll find more information below, including additional resources. It&#8217;s the first release since 6.0 that I won&#8217;t be on the release squad, by choice. I will, of course, support it anyway I can.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>More about block editor, themes, plugins and tutorials, as always, below.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wishing everyone in the Northern Hemisphere to stay warm and a wonderful weekend for all of us. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p>PS <strong>for WordCamp Attendees: </strong></p>\n\n\n\n<a href="https://asia.wordcamp.org/2024/"><img width="652" height="343" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/wcasia2024.webp?resize=652%2C343&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-27071" /></a>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to meet with me, feel free to <a href="https://calendly.com/pauli-haack/wcasia">use my Calendly link to my public calendar</a> to schedule a get-together. I&#8217;ll be in Taipei, Taiwan a couple of days early in will scout out some meeting locations. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>My friend and college <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> will also be in Taipei, Taiwan. If you want to meet with him as well, you can <a href="https://calendly.com/ryan-welcher/wordcamp-asia-2024?from=slack">use his Calendly link</a> to schedule a meeting</p>\n\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">\n<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/media-experiments-wordpress-6-5-gutenberg-17-5-and-block-building-updates-weekend-edition-218/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a><ol><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/media-experiments-wordpress-6-5-gutenberg-17-5-and-block-building-updates-weekend-edition-218/#wordpress-6-5">WordPress 6.5 </a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/media-experiments-wordpress-6-5-gutenberg-17-5-and-block-building-updates-weekend-edition-218/#wordpress-6-4-3">WordPress 6.4.3</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/media-experiments-wordpress-6-5-gutenberg-17-5-and-block-building-updates-weekend-edition-218/#gutenberg-17-5">Gutenberg 17.5</a></li></ol></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/media-experiments-wordpress-6-5-gutenberg-17-5-and-block-building-updates-weekend-edition-218/#upcoming-events">Upcoming events</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/media-experiments-wordpress-6-5-gutenberg-17-5-and-block-building-updates-weekend-edition-218/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/media-experiments-wordpress-6-5-gutenberg-17-5-and-block-building-updates-weekend-edition-218/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a class="wp-block-table-of-contents__entry" href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/media-experiments-wordpress-6-5-gutenberg-17-5-and-block-building-updates-weekend-edition-218/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</a></li></ol>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="wordpress-6-5">WordPress 6.5 </h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Hector Prieto</strong>, co-release coordinator,  posted the full release squad for WordPress 6.5: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/18/wordpress-6-5-release-squad-formation/">WordPress 6.5 <strong>release squad formation</strong></a> &#8211; a new role is Default Themes lead, suggested by Carolina Nymark, who will also lead the first time around. In her suggestion, she mentioned that it would be great to make sure default themes bundled with WordPress are all compatible with the improvements and features of the Block editor. The abbreviated release schedule: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Feb 13, 2024, Beta 1 </strong>&#8211; Gutenberg 17.7 will be the last version for features in WordPress 6.5</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>March 5, 2024, Release Candidate 1</strong> with Fieldguide and Dev Notes deadline</li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>March 26, 2024, Final Release</strong> </li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>From the Dev Chat Summary by <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/16/dev-chat-agenda-january-16-2024/"><strong>Abha Thakor</strong></a><br />&#8220;Note update on the&nbsp;<a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/59166#comment:21" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Font Library API design proposal,</a>&nbsp;with a particular note for REST API folks to view as&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/57616#issuecomment-1884806194" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">per this comment</a>. The navigation overlay has&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/43852#issuecomment-1888088839" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">been punted from the 6.5 roadmap</a>&nbsp;by the contributors working on this feature.&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>More resources: </strong></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/6-5/">WordPress 6.5 Development Cycle</a> Full schedule and release squad</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/01/13/early-opportunities-to-test-wordpress-6-5/">Early Opportunities to Test WordPress 6.5</a>&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/12/07/roadmap-to-6-5/">Roadmap to 6.5</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/orgs/WordPress/projects/148">WordPress 6.5 Editor Tasks board</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> invited contributors to a <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/17/hallway-hangout-lets-explore-wordpress-6-5-recap/">Hallway Hangout to explore WordPress 6.5</a></strong> at its current stage and posted a Recap with links and video recording. You learn more about the upcoming Data views, the new Drag and Drop features in the editor, as well as the work behind the Pattern Overrides (former partially synched patterns) and the improved Style revision screens. Demos by Anne McCarthy, Isabel Brison and Saxon Fletcher.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to dive in a little deeper into the various features, here is your reminder: <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> also posted <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/01/13/early-opportunities-to-test-wordpress-6-5/"><strong>Early Opportunities to Test WordPress 6.5</strong></a> with clear instructions on what exactly to test, and how to set up a test site for this exercise. All. feedback is welcome, post it either on GitHub or as a comment on the post.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="wordpress-6-4-3">WordPress 6.4.3</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Aaron Jorbin</strong>, release lead for 6.4.3 just announced the schedule and content for the next minor WordPress  release. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/16/6-4-3-an-upcoming-maintenance-release/"><strong>6.4.3: An upcoming maintenance release</strong></a>. Final release is scheduled for next week, January 30, 2024. </p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="gutenberg-17-5">Gutenberg 17.5</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ben Dwyer</strong> managed this week&#8217;s Gutenberg plugin release and published <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-5-17-january-2024/">What’s new in Gutenberg 17.5? (17 January 2024)</a> </strong>. 178 PRs were merged for this release by 45 contributors, two of them first timers. This release is dominated by a lot of foundational work on site editor to allow for feature parity with the post editor and for the Data views, that are still experimental. Dwyer highlighted: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-5-17-january-2024/#editor-unification-1">Editor Unification</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/17/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-5-17-january-2024/#gallery-block-random-order-setting">Gallery Block: Random Order Setting</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Post&nbsp;Featured Image: Add a <code>useFirstImageFromPost</code> attribute. (<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/56573">56573</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Add drag cursor to draggable list items. (<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/57493">57493</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Font Library: Add a progress bar while uploading font assets. (<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/57463">57463</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Gutenberg 17.5</strong> was also part of the Gutenberg Changelog chat with <strong>Carolina Nymark</strong>. We discussed block themes, migration to block themes, the new role on the release squad and lots more. It was wonderful to finally catch up again and talk about her fantastic work on fullsiteediting.com and on the themes team for all those years. The episode will drop into your favorite podcast app over the weekend. </p>\n\n\n\n<img width="652" height="189" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Screenshot-2024-01-20-at-11.42.58.png?resize=652%2C189&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-27074" />\n\n\n\n<p class="has-accent-color has-light-background-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-b21294d93d10468b5f9c6136fdd74073">🎙️ Latest episode:  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-94-state-of-the-word-gutenberg-17-2-17-3-and-17-4-wordpress-6-5-migrating-from-classic-theme-to-block-theme/">Gutenberg Changelog #94 – State of the Word, Gutenberg 17.2, 17.3 and 17.4, WordPress 6.5, Migrating from Classic Theme to Block Theme</a> with Sarah Norris</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="upcoming-events">Upcoming events</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>January 23, 2024, at 12:00 UTC.</strong> <strong>Extensibility Issues Triage meeting</strong> We will go over the <a href="https://github.com/orgs/WordPress/projects/146">project board’s</a> columns: Triage, Needs discussion and PR in reviews. It will be a Slack meeting in the #core-editor channel.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>January 25, 2024, at 15:30 UTC</strong> &#8211; Developer <a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/298440719/"><strong>Live stream: Reviewing Gutenberg 17.5</strong></a> Ryan Welcher is also doing a review of Gutenberg 17.5 on Twitch. It’s a live stream, so not prepared slide etc.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/17/media-phase-3-meeting-feb-7/"><strong>Phase 3 Media Meeting: February 7, 2024,</strong></a> at 12:00 UTC, Anthony Burchell wrote: “kick off a round table discussion about some opportunities and challenges ahead in the development of Phase 3. The Media Component Maintainers hope to find areas of focus where contributors can lean in to align efforts with folks working on Phase 3.”</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>February 8th, 202</strong>4 <strong>15:00 UTC</strong>: There will be <strong>a Hallway Hangout</strong> to discuss <strong>Intrinsic Design and how to use it on real life projects</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p>F<strong>ebruary 13, 2024, at 16:00 UTC</strong> <strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/298634428/">Developer Hours: JavaScript for modern WordPress development</a></strong></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>More events are planned to Learn.WordPress . Here is their schedule of <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/online-workshops/"><strong>Online Workshops</strong></a> </li>\n\n\n\n<li>If you are looking for a WordCamp or Meetup near you, take a look at the new <strong><a href="https://events.wordpress.org/">WordPress events page. </a></strong></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In <a href="https://dothewoo.io/woo-product-chat/">Doo the Woo Product</a> podcast episode: <a href="https://dothewoo.io/gutenberg-present-to-beginnings/">Gutenberg, the Beginning to the Present, </a>Tammie Lister and Jonathan Wold discuss block editor and WordPress. They cover State of the Word, upcoming changes and what it means to Woo and WordPress as a whole. Learn more about the progress on the WordPress way.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Robert DeVore</strong> posted <a href="https://robertdevore.com/boostbox-wordpress-popup-builder-for-the-core-editor/">Introducing BoostBox: The 1st WordPress popup builder for the core editor</a> about his journey to push his newest plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/boostbox/"><strong>BoostBox</strong></a> over the finish line. It&#8217;s available via the WordPress repo. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p>A user posted in the forum, that it wasn&#8217;t clear if he needed to recreate all the menus he used in the classic theme, again to display them on the block theme. The answer is no; however, it&#8217;s not as obvious where to find the menu item to make a classic menu available to the block theme navigation block. Here are the instructions and a video. <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/quick-tip-how-to-use-a-classic-menu-in-the-navigation-block-of-a-block-theme/"><strong>Quick Tip: How to use a classic menu in the navigation block of a block theme</strong></a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ana Segota</strong>, of Anariel Design, published a new Woo Theme, <a href="https://woo.com/products/fuel/">Fuel</a>, meant for food related businesses. It entails plenty of patterns and color options to style the site of a food store. </p>\n\n\n\n<a href="https://woo.com/products/fuel/"><img width="652" height="489" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/fuel-screens.webp?resize=652%2C489&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-27076" /></a>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://twitter.com/wordcandy_co"><strong>John Hughes</strong></a> found four methods on <a href="https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/wordpress-sticky-header/">How to Create a Sticky Header in WordPress</a> and in his post he walks you through all of them. Hughes also explains some consideration and best practices for using Sticky headers in the first place.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pascal Birchler</strong>, core contributor sponsored by Google, and Core Co-release lead for WordPress 6.5 experimented with media handling in Gutenberg and WordPress. He centralized all his experiments in the plugin <a href="https://github.com/swissspidy/media-experiments"><strong>Media Experiments</strong></a> that available on GitHub. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nathan Wrigley</strong> had Birchler on as a guest on the WPTavern Jukebox podcast. <a href="https://wptavern.com/podcast/105-pascal-birchler-on-revolutionizing-image-and-video-processing-within-wordpress"><strong>#105 – Pascal Birchler on Revolutionizing Image and Video Processing Within WordPress</strong></a>, where they discussed the power of WebAssembly, the future potential for moving desktop activities to the web, and Birchler’s innovative work in image and video processing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The list of features of the plugin is spectacular, yet all experimental, more proof-of-concept rather than production ready. For some of them, you&#8217;ll find short videos on how they work: </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://github.com/swissspidy/media-experiments?tab=readme-ov-file#automatic-poster-generation">Automatic Poster Generation</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/swissspidy/media-experiments?tab=readme-ov-file#preview-image-generation-for-pdfs">Preview image generation for PDFs</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/swissspidy/media-experiments?tab=readme-ov-file#converting-gifs-to-videos">Converting GIFs to Videos</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/swissspidy/media-experiments?tab=readme-ov-file#video-muting">Video Muting</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/swissspidy/media-experiments?tab=readme-ov-file#self-recording">Self Recording</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/swissspidy/media-experiments?tab=readme-ov-file#optimize-existing-media">Optimize Existing Media</a> </li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/swissspidy/media-experiments?tab=readme-ov-file#upload-from-another-device">Upload from another device</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>After the revamp of the Theme Handbook to include making block themes, <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> posted about the project and what will be next:  <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2024/01/11/new-block-focused-theme-handbook-docs-and-whats-coming-in-2024/">New Block-Focused Theme Handbook Docs and What’s Coming in 2024</a>. </strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you haven&#8217;t explored the Theme Handbook lately, the team create five new chapters in 2023:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/getting-started/">Getting Started</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/core-concepts/">Core Concepts</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/global-settings-and-styles/">Global Settings and Styles (theme.json)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/templates/">Templates</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/features/">Features</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>For 2024, the team is also onboarding new contributors, to do the heavy lifting of creating the Advanced Topics for Themes. </p>\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2022&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />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. Updated by yours truly. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/"><em>The index 2020 is here</em></a></p>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nathan Schneider</strong> posted a tutorial on <a href="https://developer.woo.com/2024/01/17/getting-to-know-woo-extending-the-new-product-editor-with-react/"><strong>Extending the New Product Editor with&nbsp;React</strong></a> on the Woo Developer Blog and covered how to create two blocks that enforce minimum and maximum quantity on text inputs.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brian Coords</strong> shared his <a href="https://www.briancoords.com/thoughts-on-version-control-for-block-themes/"><strong>Thoughts on Version Control for Block Themes</strong></a> and what he thinks could work and make his life as a developer easier.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://youtu.be/zSU-JOGDcGs"><strong>The recording of the latest Developer Hours</strong></a> is now available. <strong>Nick Diego</strong> and <strong>Ryan Welcher </strong>walked attendees through the <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/getting-started/tutorial/">official Getting Started tutorial of the Block Editor Handbook</a> and explained every step of the journey. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/mattyza">Matt Cohen</a></strong>, engineer lead at Woo Marketplace, published <a href="https://matty.blog/building-a-terms-list-block-for-wordpress/"><strong>how he built  a terms list block for WordPress</strong></a>. He shared his research and approach, as well as his code on GitHub. you learn how to add a custom control to select taxonomies, and his lesson&#8217;s learned. </p>\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>\n\n\n\n\n<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n\n<p>Featured Image: Industrial Storage Space CC0 licensed photo by Makarand G. Mane from the WordPress Photo Directory.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>\n\n\n\n<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button type="submit" class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button><p class="ngl-form-text">We hate spam, too, and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 20 Jan 2024 10:20:01 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:12;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:101:"WordCamp Central: Thanks for sponsoring global WordPress community events across the globe, Bluehost!";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=5109960";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:124:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2024/01/thanks-for-sponsoring-global-wordpress-community-events-across-the-globe-bluehost/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1215:"<p>We can&#8217;t thank <a href="https://www.bluehost.com/">Bluehost</a> enough for renewing their support as a global sponsor for the <a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/sponsor-multiple-wordcamps/">global WordPress community</a> in 2024! Their support of WordPress community events at our Gold level worldwide goes a really long way. They support WordPress communities all over the world!</p>\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-image">\n<a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2019/02/Bluehost-Transparent_HighRes.png"><img width="833" height="220" src="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2019/02/Bluehost-Transparent_HighRes.png" alt="Bluehost logo" class="wp-image-3096744" /></a>Bluehost logo</div>\n\n\n<p><a href="https://www.bluehost.com/">Bluehost</a> has been a WordPress partner since 2005 and powers over 1 million WordPress sites worldwide. Their objective is to help customers, whether novice or pro, create a thriving online presence at an affordable price. With a team of in-house tech experts available 24/7, Bluehost dedicates time and resources to providing the best support and services in the industry. Join millions of other site owners and see what Bluehost can do for you and your online presence.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 19 Jan 2024 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6:"Isotta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:13;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:67:"Akismet: Forum Spam: How to Permanently Stop Spam Bot Registrations";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://akismet.com/?p=283701";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:36:"https://akismet.com/blog/forum-spam/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:24853:"<p>Creating a forum for your organization can be an excellent way to build a community around your product or service. And the information provided in a forum can help customers resolve issues on their own —&nbsp;reducing customer service costs and improving satisfaction. But if you’re not careful, forum spam can detract from the entire experience for members and reflect poorly on your brand.</p>\n\n\n<p>Fortunately, there are tools you can use to stop forum spam. When you leverage this kind of software, your customers won’t have to sift through pesky fake comments and posts to find what they’re looking for. They won’t be directed off&#8209;site for malicious purposes, and you’ll be able to maintain a more professional&nbsp;environment.</p>\n\n<p>This article will start by discussing forum spam and all its variations. Then, it will outline the negative effects of spam and why certain anti&#8209;spam techniques fail to block it. Finally, it will show you how <a href="https://akismet.com/enterprise/">Akismet’s enterprise anti&#8209;spam services</a> can stop spam registrations on your&nbsp;website.</p>\n\n\n<span id="more-283701"></span>\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What is forum&nbsp;spam?</h2>\n\n\n<p>Whether you run a small business or a global enterprise, creating a forum is an effective way to connect with your customers. They provide people with a space to discuss (and potentially resolve) their doubts and issues. And a forum can even lighten the load on your customer support team.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>The only problem is that forums can become a den for&nbsp;spammers.</p>\n\n<p>By definition, web spam is any sort of unwanted message shared with a large number of people online. This can appear in email inboxes, the comments section of a blog post or YouTube video, a contact form, and, of course, a&nbsp;forum.</p>\n\n\n<img width="1448" height="566" src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/image-2.png" alt="example of a spam comment" class="wp-image-283703" />\n\n\n\n<p>Typically, forum spam is generated by bots with a particular goal in mind. For instance, a forum spammer may want to promote a certain product to the members. This is usually quite obvious, as they clutter the forum with messages spouting the benefits of whatever they’re selling.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Other times, spam can be harder to spot. These cases can be even more dangerous, as instances can contain hidden links to malicious sites.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>There are several different types of forum spam, like content spam, profile spam, signature spam, and private messages. We’ll cover these later in the&nbsp;post.</p>\n\n<p>If a forum doesn’t have a moderator or anti&#8209;spam software in place, spam can get out of hand quickly. And even if it does have a moderator, sifting through huge volumes of spam can be a poor use of&nbsp;time.</p>\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What are the motivations behind forum&nbsp;spam?</h2>\n\n<p>You might be wondering why spam happens. Here are some common goals of&nbsp;spammers:</p>\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Promote a product or service</strong>. Forum spammers tend to promote unsavory products and services like gambling sites or unregulated weight loss pills.&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n<li><strong>Harvest personal data</strong>. Often, spam comments will contain links to malware. If a visitor clicks on the link, hackers may be able to gain access to their personal&nbsp;data.</li>\n\n<li><strong>Conduct a phishing scam</strong>: Malicious actors may try to lure unsuspecting victims into phishing scams by pretending to be legitimate companies. They may link to websites that look like a real corporation and then ask users to verify account information. However, that info is just sent to a&nbsp;cybercriminal.</li>\n\n<li><strong>Boost search engine rankings</strong>. If your domain has a decent amount of traffic, spammers may want to post links in your forum that point back to their website. This way, they can generate backlinks and trick Google into thinking they’ve been endorsed by your site. This could improve their rankings in search&nbsp;results.</li></ul>\n\n\n<p>These are some of the most common motivations for posting forum spam. Unfortunately, spam is always evolving, so it’s important to be wary of any suspicious activity on your&nbsp;forum.</p>\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What are the main types of forum&nbsp;spam?</h2>\n\n<p>To stop spam, you’ll need to understand its various formats. Here are the four most common types of&nbsp;spam:</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. Content&nbsp;spam</h3>\n\n\n<p>Content spam refers to anything that’s off-topic or irrelevant to the page that it appears on. Forums are usually centered around a niche subject, so this type of spam should be easy to spot.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Content spam is usually employed to promote a product or service and can contain links to another website.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. Profile&nbsp;spam</h3>\n\n<p>To participate in an online forum, members will likely need to create a profile or an account. Forum spammers can use these profiles to spread spam without anyone&nbsp;noticing.</p>\n\n<p>A spam account can embed hidden links into its profile. The most common example is a link in the username. But spammers might also include a link in the bio section of the&nbsp;profile.</p>\n\n<p>Each time a forum spammer posts a message or someone views their profile, this link will be visible to members. But unless someone clicks on it, no one would know it’s&nbsp;there.</p>\n\n<p>This type of forum spam is commonly used in an attempt to trick search engines or promote a&nbsp;product.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. Signature&nbsp;spam</h3>\n\n\n<p>Signature spam is a type of profile spam. Instead of hiding links in usernames and profiles, spammers include them in their signatures.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That means that they embed a link each time they comment or post. The rest of their comment might be completely legitimate —&nbsp;and thus their work is less likely to be detected. This is another way to manipulate search engines for higher rankings.</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">4. Private message&nbsp;spam</h3>\n\n<p>As the name suggests, private message spam is sent to members of a forum. Considering that these messages don’t impact search engine rankings, this type of spam almost always has an intention of direct harm to your forum&nbsp;members.</p>\n\n<p>With private messaging, forum spammers can promote products, harvest personal data through malware in links, or set up phishing scams. This can be particularly dangerous because moderators are unable to see or stop this spam. It’s up to forum members to flag&nbsp;it.</p>\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What are the consequences of spam on a&nbsp;forum?</h2>\n\n\n<p>This section will discuss the consequences of spam on a forum. These apply to both enterprises and small businesses.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. A degraded user&nbsp;experience</h3>\n\n<p>Online forums are intended to create a dedicated space on the internet for a specific community. Forum members can post questions and raise concerns, or simply start a conversation around a certain topic that they find interesting or&nbsp;important.</p>\n\n<p>In many cases, online forums can provide additional value to customers in the form of educational content. But if a forum is cluttered with spam, its members will likely have a hard time sifting through its posts. It will be up to them to figure out which comments are genuine and which ones are&nbsp;spam.</p>\n\n<p>This will lead to a degraded user experience. It could even prompt members to abandon your&nbsp;forum.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. Damaged forum&nbsp;reputation</h3>\n\n<p>If a forum becomes overrun by spam, most members will assume that there aren’t any moderators to manage it. They might also think that the business or enterprise behind the forum hasn’t invested in any security measures to prevent forum spam and protect&nbsp;visitors.</p>\n\n<p>These perceptions can damage your reputation. Plus, it might prompt some people to look for other, more credible online&nbsp;communities.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. SEO&nbsp;implications</h3>\n\n<p>Search engine bots are always implementing new ways to spot untrustworthy web pages. This is because Google (and other search sites) want to provide internet users with the best experience&nbsp;possible.</p>\n\n\n<p>If your forum is littered with content that spammers are posting to manipulate their rankings, or links to malware and untrustworthy sites, there’s a good chance that search engines will catch on.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since software like <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/googlebot" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Googlebot</a> can’t tell who is attempting to manipulate it, it could end up penalizing your forum, rather than the perpetrators using it to do harm.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>This means forum spammers can hurt your website’s search engine rankings while attempting to boost their own. Your web pages may be removed from search results until you can prove their legitimacy. This will involve removing spam links and asking Google to <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/ask-google-to-recrawl">recrawl your&nbsp;site</a>.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">4. Security threats like malware and phishing&nbsp;links</h3>\n\n<p>Some of the more nefarious types of spam include malware and phishing attempts. These can have serious consequences for your business and&nbsp;customers.</p>\n\n\n<p>That’s because this type of spam puts sensitive data at risk. Spammers can gain access to personal information like names, email addresses, and phone numbers. As a result, affected individuals will receive spammy messages through email or SMS, or their data may be sold off.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">5. Time and resource&nbsp;wastage</h3>\n\n\n<p>When your forum is plagued with spam, you’ll end up wasting resources on eliminating it.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For instance, if you employ someone to <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/how-to-stop-comment-spam-in-wordpress/">moderate and block spam comments</a> as part of their daily work routine, they may be spending too much time on these messages. That means less time to focus on more important tasks, like answering customer queries.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Similarly, any spammer is consuming your website’s server resources. Depending on the level of spam you’re dealing with, this could result in lots of wasted server space.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>The costs associated with hosting for enterprise organizations can get out of hand quickly. Working with efficiency in mind and proactively protecting resources is important. And for small businesses with a modest hosting plan, large volumes of spam could even impact site&nbsp;performance.</p>\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Common characteristics of spambot&nbsp;registrations</h2>\n\n<p>Having an understanding of the different types of forum spam can help you identify spam more easily. Still, it’s always better to stop spam before it can infiltrate your&nbsp;forum.</p>\n\n<p>Here are some of the common characteristics of spambot&nbsp;registrations:</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. Generic&nbsp;usernames</h3>\n\n\n<p>Spambots aren’t very creative. So, one way to spot them is by looking out for generic usernames.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>These include usernames like “lucky_guy” or “shy_gal”. Of course, spambots can also incorporate fake generic names into their&nbsp;handles.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. Suspicious email&nbsp;domains</h3>\n\n\n<p>Some of the most common email domains are gmail.com, yahoo.com, and outlook.com. They are all associated with reputable email providers.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A suspicious or unfamiliar email domain could indicate a forum spammer. Spam accounts are more likely to use these email providers as they may not meet the security requirements to create a legitimate address.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. IP addresses associated with&nbsp;spam</h3>\n\n<p>If you suspect that a forum spammer has infiltrated your online community, you can look into the IP address associated with that spam account. This can help you confirm or deny the legitimacy of the&nbsp;account.</p>\n\n<p>You’ll have to look at the server logs and <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/how-to-block-a-specific-ip-address-from-a-wordpress-website/">find the IP address</a> associated with the spammy comment. Note that you won’t be able to do this with private message spam, as you’ll need access to the comment or&nbsp;post.</p>\n\n\n<img width="1264" height="502" src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/image-3.png" alt="finding a spammy IP address" class="wp-image-283704" />\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Common actions of forum&nbsp;spammers</h2>\n\n\n<p>This section will outline some of the most common actions by forum spammers. Hopefully, this will help you identify them more easily.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. Replying to old/inactive&nbsp;threads</h3>\n\n<p>If a forum spammer wants to utilize your website’s authority to boost their search engine rankings, they’ll often reply to old and inactive&nbsp;threads.</p>\n\n<p>That’s because older forum threads will have received more traffic and better rankings in search results. If your forum has been active for several years, these actions should be easy to&nbsp;spot.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. Leaving minimal replies with links&nbsp;included</h3>\n\n\n<p>Since a spammer has no intention of actually contributing to your online community, they tend to leave short replies with a link included.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>While they may offer a brief comment, this is likely something generic that has been programmed into the spambot’s capabilities. For instance, you might get something like “great content!” or “love this!”.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. Placing a link and website description in their&nbsp;profile</h3>\n\n<p>Profile spam is very common on online forums. You’ll often see a spammer place a link and website description in their profile. In this scenario, the spammer is likely trying to promote a product or manipulate search&nbsp;engines.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">4. Using misleading topic&nbsp;titles</h3>\n\n\n<p>If a member uses a topic title that seems relevant to the forum, but then talks about something different in the thread, this is a major red flag.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>Essentially, this type of spam is trying to lure members into clicking on a thread by suggesting that it will contain valuable information for them. Once they’ve clicked on the thread, forum members will likely find promotional or otherwise spammy&nbsp;content.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">5. Posting off&#8209;topic&nbsp;comments</h3>\n\n<p>Another clear giveaway is off&#8209;topic comments. Similar to misleading topic titles (but more blatant), off&#8209;topic comments are explicitly pushing the spammer&#8217;s agenda without even pretending to contribute to the&nbsp;forum.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">6. Using a website name as their&nbsp;username</h3>\n\n<p>Many forum spammers use a website as their username. This could be a spammy marketing tactic, plain and simple. It could also include a link, which would have <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/eliminating-spam-is-good-seo/">bigger implications for search engine&nbsp;optimization</a>.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">7. Posting in a different language than the&nbsp;topic</h3>\n\n<p>The great thing about the internet is that people have access to forums in almost every country and every language. People often tend to congregate on forums with like&#8209;minded individuals as well as those with similar backgrounds, so while it’s definitely not a guarantee, a new user that posts in a language rarely used by other members of the forum can signal that they’re not there for anything&nbsp;good.</p>\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Common anti&#8209;spam techniques (and why they fail to&nbsp;impress)</h2>\n\n<p>Forum spam can be a serious problem, and common anti&#8209;spam techniques might not always be efficient in spotting it. This section will discuss some of the reasons why these approaches&nbsp;fail.</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. CAPTCHAs&nbsp;</h3>\n\n\n<p>One of the most common anti&#8209;spam methods involves CAPTCHAs. This is particularly common for online forms (like contact forms) and <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/how-to-stop-user-spam-registrations-in-wordpress/">user registration&nbsp;forms</a>.</p>\n\n\n<img width="1600" height="423" src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/image-4.png" alt="example of a CAPTCHA where the user types two words" class="wp-image-283705" />\n\n\n\n<p>A CAPTCHA presents a challenge or puzzle that spambots should be unable to complete. The theory is that it will prevent them from submitting content, but CAPTCHAs have several limitations.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>First of all, they’re not 100 percent effective, since <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/do-captcha-and-recaptcha-protect-wordpress-sites-from-bots/">many bots can bypass CAPTCHAs</a>. Plus, they’re not the most accessible anti&#8209;spam tactic, as they can alienate people who have varying&nbsp;impairments.</p>\n\n\n<p>In the past, CAPTCHAs were pretty straightforward. For example, you would have had to interpret some blurry letters and numbers.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>But CAPTCHAs have become more difficult, even for authentic users who are likely to become pretty frustrated after the first or second failed attempt. These real people might even end up abandoning your site&nbsp;altogether.</p>\n\n\n<p>Newer versions&nbsp;ask users to do things like “find all the images with stoplights.” But they’re just as annoying for humans and still not very effective against robots.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And even the latest option —&nbsp;reCAPTCHA v3 — seems like an improvement for users, since there’s no visible test required to gain access, but it comes with some serious downsides.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, it provides Google with a lot of data that many are concerned violates the privacy of users. It can deter good bots like search engine crawlers. Finally, and perhaps the most annoying, real users can be flagged as spam without any way to prove their legitimacy.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. Question&#8209;based&nbsp;challenges</h3>\n\n<p>Question&#8209;based challenges are another common anti&#8209;spam tactic. Although they aren’t as ubiquitous as CAPTCHAs and reCAPTCHAs, they come with the same&nbsp;limitations.</p>\n\n<p>They can create an obstacle for individuals with different abilities. If they become frustrated enough, they could give up on the challenge. As a result, you could end up losing conversions (or, in this context, new forum&nbsp;members).</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. Email verification&nbsp;</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Email verification is another popular way to prevent spambots from infiltrating websites. It’s a bit more user-friendly than a CAPTCHA, but still creates an additional step in the registration process.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>Since getting conversions is hard enough, this tactic isn’t ideal. You’ll want to avoid any friction and streamline the signup process as much as&nbsp;possible.</p>\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Akismet: The #1 tool to stop forum spam&nbsp;registrations</h2>\n\n\n<p>So how can you eliminate forum spam without deterring real users? This section will introduce you to an efficient anti-spam tool: Akismet.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What is&nbsp;Akismet?</h3>\n\n\n<p>Akismet is an automated anti-spam tool that uses advanced AI technology to identify spam without any input from users. It works in the background and has an incredible 99.99% accuracy rate. There are no annoying puzzles to solve, no questions to answer, and no spam in your forums.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>Whether you run a small business or work at a large company, <a href="https://akismet.com/">Akismet</a> is by far the easiest and most effective way to stop forum&nbsp;spam.</p>\n\n\n<img width="1600" height="820" src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/image-5.png" alt="Akismet homepage with the text " />\n\n\n<p>While it’s known throughout the WordPress community for its considered to be the <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/best-anti-spam-wordpress-plugins-compared/">best anti&#8209;spam plugin</a> that’s easy to install, it also supports other platforms like Joomla! and Drupal. 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In fact, with over 100 million users, it’s the go&#8209;to choice for <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/convertkit-customerstory/">businesses like ConvertKit</a> that use Akismet to boost the performance of their platform by protecting their wide network of business customers from&nbsp;spam.</p>\n\n\n<img width="1600" height="1002" src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/image-6.png" alt="ConverKit homepage" class="wp-image-283707" />\n\n\n\n<p>Once Akismet is set up, it uses AI filtering and a robust spam database to identify and block spam. 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It’s highly effective, easy to configure, and works on multiple platforms. Plus, Akismet stands out from other anti&#8209;spam solutions because it doesn’t add any obstacles for legitimate site&nbsp;visitors.</p>\n\n<p>A seamless anti&#8209;spam solution can greatly improve the effectiveness of your forums. When it comes to contact forms, Akismet can help <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/form-conversion-rate/">increase your conversion rates</a>,&nbsp;too!</p>\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How to get started with Akismet&nbsp;today</h2>\n\n<p>If you’re currently running a forum or want to start one, you’ll need a strategy to prevent spam. Otherwise, your members could be driven away in annoyance. Plus, if your forum is plagued with spam, it could lead to a drop in your site’s search engine&nbsp;rankings.</p>\n\n<p>That’s why your forum needs an <a href="https://akismet.com/enterprise/">enterprise solution like Akismet</a>. This powerful software uses AI filtering, cloud storage, and seamless integrations to block 99.99% of spam without impacting the user experience or your site’s&nbsp;performance.</p>\n\n<p>Are you ready to stop forum spam? <a href="https://akismet.com/talk-to-sales/">Reach out to the Akismet team&nbsp;today</a>!</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 19 Jan 2024 14:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Jen Swisher";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:14;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:73:"WordCamp Central: Thanks to Woo for sponsoring community events worldwide";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=5109963";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:98:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2024/01/thanks-to-woo-for-sponsoring-community-events-worldwide/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1012:"<p>We couldn’t be happier to welcome Woo to the <a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/sponsor-multiple-wordcamps/">WordPress global community sponsorship program</a> in 2024! This year, they’re sponsoring at the Gold level in all regions, supporting official WordPress community events across the globe.</p>\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-image">\n<a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2024/01/Woo-logo-color.png"><img width="1024" height="704" src="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2024/01/Woo-logo-color-1024x704.png" alt="Woo logo 2024" class="wp-image-5129983" /></a>WooCommerce logo</div>\n\n\n<p><a href="https://woo.com/">Woo</a> is the leading open-source ecommerce platform, powering 31.4% of the top million online stores.* Built on WordPress, Woo empowers anyone, anywhere, to sell anything with truly unlimited extensibility, flexibility, and control over how they build and evolve their business.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>* StoreLeads, <a href="https://storeleads.app/reports">StoreLeads.app, January 2024</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 18 Jan 2024 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6:"Isotta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:15;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"Do The Woo Community: AI, Accessibility, Security and Privacy in 2024 with Robbie and Robert";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=78883";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://dothewoo.io/woo-agencychat-look-at-2024/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:415:"<p>Hosts Robbie Adair and Robert Jacobi discuss their predictions for 2024, focusing on the acronym ASP: Accessibility, Security, and Privacy</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a href="https://dothewoo.io/woo-agencychat-look-at-2024/">AI, Accessibility, Security and Privacy in 2024 with Robbie and Robert</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce and WordPress Builder Podcast</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 18 Jan 2024 10:39:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:16;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:75:"Akismet: Version 5.3.1 of the Akismet WordPress plugin is ready to download";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://akismet.com/?p=283692";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:92:"https://akismet.com/blog/version-5-3-1-of-the-akismet-wordpress-plugin-is-ready-to-download/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1004:"<p>Version 5.3.1 of <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/">the Akismet plugin for WordPress</a> is now&nbsp;available.</p>\n\n<p>In this release, we&#8217;ve added a quick link to get to your <a href="https://akismet.com/account/">Akismet.com account overview</a>. This enables you to see summary of activity across all sites using your API key, and manage your Akismet&nbsp;subscription.</p>\n\n\n<img width="1024" height="320" src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/screenshot-2024-01-16-at-14.41.58.png?w=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-283696" />\n\n\n<p>There are also a number of bug fixes and improvements and we recommend upgrading if you&#8217;re using an earlier version of the&nbsp;plugin.</p>\n\n<p>To upgrade, visit the Updates page of your WordPress dashboard and follow the instructions. If you need to download the plugin zip file directly, links to all versions are available in <a href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/">the WordPress plugins&nbsp;directory</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 18 Jan 2024 00:36:17 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:17:"Chris Rosser 🏔";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:17;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:81:"WordCamp Central: Automattic sponsors WordPress community events across the globe";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=5109965";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:106:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2024/01/automattic-sponsors-wordpress-community-events-across-the-globe/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2763:"<p>We&#8217;d like to welcome <a href="https://automattic.com/about/">Automattic</a> to the 2024 Global Sponsorship program! By sponsoring at the Gold level across the globe, Automattic helps make local community events better for WordPress enthusiasts and easier to organize for our wonderful group of hardworking volunteers.</p>\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-image">\n<a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2023/03/automattic-logotype-color.png"><img width="1024" height="341" src="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2023/03/automattic-logotype-color-1024x341.png" alt="Automattic logo" class="wp-image-3163599" /></a>Automattic logo</div>\n\n\n<p>At <a href="https://automattic.com/about/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Automattic</a>, <em>we are</em> passionate about making <em>the web</em> a better place.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are the people behind <a href="https://wordpress.com/">WordPress.com</a>, <a href="https://woocommerce.com/">WooCommerce</a>, <a href="https://jetpack.com/">Jetpack</a>, <a href="https://wpvip.com/">WordPress VIP</a>, <a href="https://simplenote.com/">Simplenote</a>, <a href="https://longreads.com/">Longreads</a>, <a href="http://wpscan.com/">WPScan</a>, <a href="https://akismet.com/">Akismet</a>, <a href="https://en.gravatar.com/">Gravatar</a>, <a href="https://crowdsignal.com/">Crowdsignal</a>, <a href="https://cloudup.com/">Cloudup</a>, <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a>, <a href="https://dayoneapp.com/">Day One</a>, <a href="https://www.pocketcasts.com/">Pocket Casts</a>, and more. We believe in making the web a better place.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://distributed.blog/">We’re a distributed company</a> with 2,007 Automatticians in 97 countries speaking 123 different languages. We’re committed to <a href="https://automattic.com/diversity-and-inclusion/">diversity, equity, and inclusion</a>, and our common goal is to democratize publishing and commerce so that anyone with a story can tell it, and anyone with a product can sell it, regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or where they live in the world.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://github.com/Automattic">We believe in Open Source</a> and the vast majority of our work is available under the GPL.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We strive to live by the <a href="https://automattic.com/creed/">Automattic Creed</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Automattic is a <a href="https://mostlovedworkplace.com/companies/automattic-inc/">Most Loved Company</a> and <a href="https://disabilityconfident.campaign.gov.uk/">Disability Confident Committed</a>. (Here’s <a href="https://happinessengineer.blog/2022/09/08/happiness-for-everyone-working-with-a-disability-at-automattic/">what that might mean for you</a>.) Come <a href="https://automattic.com/work-with-us/">work with us</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 17 Jan 2024 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6:"Isotta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:18;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:89:"WPTavern: #106 – Anil Gupta on the Challenges Posed by Multi Collaboration in WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=152488";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/106-anil-gupta-on-the-challenges-posed-by-multi-collaboration-in-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:52438:"Transcript<div>\n<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, the challenges posed by multi collaboration in WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you could do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice. Or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast, and you can use that URL in most podcast players.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you, and hopefully get you, or your idea featured on the show. Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So on the podcast today, we have Anil Gupta. Anil is the CEO and co-founder of Multidots, Multicollab, and DotStore. His companies serve a wide range of customers, from large publishers and news companies to WordPress users.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of specific interest to this episode of the podcast is Multicollab, which offers a WordPress plugin that allows for Google docs style collaboration, including commenting, suggestions, and real time editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Google docs was first brought to the market, it was a pretty big deal. Perhaps not the first to offer a real time collaborative interface, it was certainly the first to gain widespread adoption.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fast-forward to today, and it&#8217;s more or less inconceivable that you&#8217;d create documents which were not editable by multiple people at the same time. Most modern online software ships with this built in. The extraordinary became the norm and the expectation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what&#8217;s about WordPress? As the largest CMS, WordPress still lacks this functionality, but hopefully not for long.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Phase three of the Gutenberg project, the phase that we&#8217;re in at the moment, aims to make it possible for many users to amend content at the same time. The beguiling simplicity of the Google docs interface makes it seem like this would be a trivial feature to add into WordPress, but this is not the case. Unlike proprietary software, in which the vendor owns and manages the whole stack, WordPress is used by many different people, in many different ways. They might have a shared server, or a range of plugins, and this all complicates the picture.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anil talks about how his team decided to tackle this problem for their own plugin, and he explains some of the hurdles that they&#8217;ve experienced along the way. They&#8217;ve taken a cautious approach, developing different features one at a time, working through the technical challenges with commenting before moving on to real time editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anil paints a picture of a bright future for WordPress, once this new feature set is completed. But it&#8217;s also interesting to see how many challenges the developers will need to overcome before it can be shipped in a future WordPress update.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out about the future of editing content in WordPress, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so without further delay, I bring you Anil Gupta.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Anil Gupta. Hello Anil.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:56] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> Hey Nathan, how are you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:58] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, great. It is an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast. Anil and I have spoken on various occasions before, but we&#8217;ve never had a one-to-one conversation, certainly not about this subject. But we&#8217;re going to be talking today about phase three of the Gutenberg project, and in particular, about the ability to collaborate on documents inside of WordPress. How that might come about. What some of the technical barriers might be.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now in order for Anil to be a credible person on this podcast, it&#8217;s probably a good idea to give him the opportunity to introduce himself, and let him talk briefly about the projects that he&#8217;s working on, or worked on which overlap what we&#8217;re going to talk about.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So Anil, this is just an opportunity really to give your bio, so that our audience know that you know what you&#8217;re talking about. So over to you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:42] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> Absolutely. So I&#8217;m a CEO and co-founder of Multidots, Multicollab and Dotstore. So these three brands serve very different group of customers. Multidots is more like our WordPress agency side of the business, where we help large publishers, news and media companies for their WordPress migration. So whatever CMS they&#8217;re using, we help them to migrate to WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our second brand Multicollab, which is a WordPress plugin, a Google Doc style collaboration, that doesn&#8217;t exist at this moment in WordPress. But with this plugin, you can use commenting, suggestions and real time editing. And that&#8217;s one of the topics that we are going to talk about today.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the third brand is called Dotstore, which serves small e-commerce business owners. So if you have a WooCommerce store, we provide bunch of different WooCommerce plugins that helps you to get more sales and better performance, and all those good stuff.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Apart from these three brands, I also have a podcast called Peaceful Growth, where we talk about some of the strategies on how to grow in life and business, in a more peaceful and balanced way.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, thank you so much. That&#8217;s great. So now we know all about you, well, not all about you, but some things about you. Let&#8217;s get into the subject at hand, which is going to be multi collaboration inside of WordPress. And I think really, to begin with, let&#8217;s imagine in the conversation that we&#8217;re going to have, that we are just creating posts and pages. Let&#8217;s leave it at that for now, because that will mean that the conversation is easier to understand. And I guess I&#8217;m just going to hand it over to you to ask why we need this kind of feature inside of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And just before you begin answering that, I&#8217;ll say, if you&#8217;ve never used Google Docs or Office 365, then it may be that you don&#8217;t even know what we&#8217;re talking about. So this is the ability for a variety of people to log into something at the same time, the same document, and be editing it synchronously. So if you were to edit something, I would see your edits the moment that you made them, and in that way we can collaborate.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is still a mystery to me how this actually happens on the backend, but it certainly isn&#8217;t a part of WordPress. At the moment if somebody&#8217;s editing something, you are locked out, if it&#8217;s not you. And you have to wait until they&#8217;re finished, and that might even mean a phone call or an email to tell them, are you finished yet? And this all seems a little bit Victorian, you might say. It&#8217;s really from a different era, now that everybody&#8217;s got collaborative editing. But, why do we need it in WordPress? What&#8217;s wrong with what we&#8217;ve got right now?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:04] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> Good question. I would say there are multiple reasons, as well as benefits, of collaboration. But let&#8217;s start with the reasons. Traditionally if we go back, when WordPress was launched 18, 20 years ago, the sole purpose of the WordPress was to provide a platform where content creators, publishers, or bloggers, they can create the content easily and quickly, right? And it solved the purpose.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, in the last 10 years we have observed that anything that we do digitally now, it&#8217;s not a single or solo creation. You collaborate, we collaborate with others in regards to creating and producing stuff. Now, if you look at the content publishing, content creation applications, I think Google Docs or Microsoft Word, or any application for that sake, you know, if you look, they kind of like already saw this need, as the internet bandwidth and infrastructure got better. The need to collaborate together and create content together, actually increased, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So 10 years ago, when Google Doc and all other content creation app, they already kind of started working on adding the collaboration as a part of their content creation platform. And in last five years, all the modern content creation platform, whether it&#8217;s Canva or Notion, they kind of all also have started introducing the collaboration.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And unfortunately, WordPress doesn&#8217;t have collaboration. And why we need a collaboration, you know, the one reason I see is like, now we are not creating the content alone. You know, like even if you are a blogger, you have at least someone you know, that you would like to share your piece of content before you publish it. And then they will share some of the ideas like, okay, you know we should add some graphics here. And just that collaborative communication.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And now, yes, there are other apps that we use, maybe Slack, Zoom, Loom. Like a lot of different other communication apps that we might be using, in order to achieve this feature. But because all other content creation apps has all these features inbuilt, now it has become an expectation for anyone who is either using WordPress or switching to WordPress, that I would have the same collaborative tools that I was using in my previous content creation apps.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last thing I would say is since pandemic, you know, that like earlier a lot of people were kind of like working from the same office, so they will be more collaborating over the floor, and just like, you know, or the tea and coffee conversation. Now, as we all are virtual, working from remote places and all that. So then it&#8217;s not real time, where like, you know, two people can be available. The time zone differences, and a lot of things actually creates that space, where the need for async communication has also been increased. And that is where also, if we have all the collaboration features in the WordPress, that will be helpful.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:09:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it&#8217;s interesting because I am of a certain age, and I started using WordPress at a time when, well, not necessarily WordPress, but I started using CMSs at a time where there was absolutely no expectation that anything was collaborative. And so I&#8217;m kind of okay with it. It&#8217;s not perfect, I would love for collaboration to be in there, but I&#8217;m used to it, and this is just how WordPress works. I understand that if somebody&#8217;s editing something, I have to wait a little bit.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I&#8217;m thinking in particular about my children, and the fact that they&#8217;ve been brought up in an era where this is the bare minimum of what a document workflow would be like. You begin creating it, you put a title in, and then maybe even the next step, rather than writing the content, is to click the share icon, wherever that may be, and to get your fellow collaborators in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I know, for example, that schools throughout the UK are using all the different suites that you mentioned, to enable them to hand homework in. And their staff can edit things, and modify things, and correct their work and all of that. And it&#8217;s just the bare essentials. And so somebody like me, it&#8217;s fine. I&#8217;m used to it. But the next generation, the people that are growing up, the people who are, let&#8217;s say, I don&#8217;t know, 20 or below, there&#8217;s no way that it&#8217;s acceptable to not have collaborative editing. It&#8217;s just too strange, alien. And if that&#8217;s the case, it will probably not be used.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, you log into WordPress for the first time, see it cannot do that, and then think, well, I&#8217;ll go to somewhere that can. And as we know, WordPress is in a competitive landscape. We&#8217;ve got the SaaS apps out there, the Wixs and the Squarespaces, and I don&#8217;t actually know if they can do these features.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:36] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> I think Wix does, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Right, okay. So we think that some of them do, and the fact that they&#8217;ve got their own architecture, you know, they own all of the infrastructure, and they can put the resources into place for that. It&#8217;s probably more straightforward to them to do that. So that leads us to the next thing really, which is, when we&#8217;re talking about this, are you able to just flesh out the landscape a little bit?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you have any insight into what specifically is in the proposal for sharing within WordPress? Because Google Docs, you share a doc. Google spreadsheets, you share a spreadsheet, and it&#8217;s fairly constrained. We&#8217;d be sharing something, which can be filled up with a myriad of different things, little blocks. You know, it might be a paragraph block, or a YouTube block, or a image block, or goodness knows what array of blocks you may put in. Do you have some insight into exactly what&#8217;s inside the spec for Gutenberg phase three, this collaborative era?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:12:30] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> Yeah. So Matías, lead architecture of Gutenberg, he kind of shared a full roadmap of what we can expect in phase three, which is a collaboration phase of Gutenberg. It has workflows. So the one thing is, as soon as you have this, all the collaboration features, you know, we need to also control the workflow. Like who will approve, who will publish, because multiple people are on the document. You know, where we want to control, or design a workflow in a way so that, if somebody&#8217;s still drafting, someone else doesn&#8217;t just publish it accidentally, right? So there are like a lot of, I would say, some workflows.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then second I would say, which is their async communication. So async is where multiple people can update, contribute to a piece of content, without need of being online. All the changes are synced. And then, it also has some inline commenting. So we can provide some, select any piece of content, a block, a text, table or image, and leave some comments that like, hey, I don&#8217;t like this image. Can we change that? Or, what do you think? Like, ask someone else&#8217;s opinion.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then, specifically talking about the phase three, I think they also have the whole admin panel. So I think they&#8217;re working on the admin panel. I&#8217;m not sure if directly related to collaboration, but as a part of the phase three, they are working on revamping the admin interface.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we look at the focus only on the collaboration, I would say async communication, inline commenting, and some level of workflows. You know, those are the three big things that I see will be there in phase three.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, there&#8217;s an awful lot packaged into that, isn&#8217;t there? Just as you were speaking there, a whole myriad of things were coming into my head. And I should probably rewind and say, if this is achieved, it will be in a vanilla version of WordPress. I know that you have a solution where you can add a plugin, and we&#8217;ll come to that later. You can talk about some of the hurdles that you&#8217;ve had to overcome.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in a vanilla version of WordPress, everybody will have this functionality, should it be achieved. And at the moment, in a vanilla version of WordPress, the publishing flow is really, pretty straightforward. You log in, and you basically click publish. But you&#8217;ve just introduced a whole raft of different things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So workflows, let&#8217;s take that. You know, if you&#8217;ve got seven people, eight people, a hundred, who knows. Any number of people who are editing in there, there may be a myriad of different permissions. This person is able to do this, and this person is able to do that. But finally, only these three people can publish things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we need to come up with a visual way of surfacing that inside the UI so that, I don&#8217;t know, if six people have been in, and they&#8217;ve edited this, is everything that they&#8217;ve done okay? Can we just have a quick scan through it? None of that exists, really, at the moment. Third party solutions can bring that to bear, but none of that really exists.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The whole async thing, well, that&#8217;s removed entirely at the moment, because you just click either update or, you know, you click publish, and whatever you&#8217;ve got on the page or the post is what is saved. And it&#8217;s as simple as that. Where, you&#8217;re saying that maybe if somebody, I don&#8217;t know, it goes offline temporarily. We have to have some way to keep their content, so that when they come back online, it somehow gets synced.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And anybody that&#8217;s been involved in building or developing realises, you know, if things get outta sync pretty quickly, it&#8217;s a hot mess. And trying to untangle, well, when did that happen? Who put that in, and when did they do it? That&#8217;s going to be interesting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then yes, of course, the whole inline commenting thing. You forget, don&#8217;t you? If you don&#8217;t use the comments in a, let&#8217;s say a Google Doc again, you forget that there&#8217;s that whole interface, which doesn&#8217;t come to bear unless you use it, which enables you to give commentary on things. To say, I think you should modify this, this is fine. And you can tick things off, and it&#8217;s almost like a little task management system.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then it sends out a slew of emails to say, oh, somebody&#8217;s edited this, that, and the other thing. And, you know, it makes decisions about how many emails to send out based upon the rapidity of the changes going on. So there really, really is a lot in there that needs to be, first of all, figured out, and then made visible to us in a way which is intuitive, and that the next generation can understand without having to think too hard. That&#8217;s a lot, isn&#8217;t it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:16:42] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> It is, yeah. And I think, all these little things, if we keep it into account, like email notification that you mentioned, and if somebody&#8217;s already editing a document, there are some changes which are not approved, you know, whether we should be able to publish it or not. There are a lot of little things that we need to think about when we are creating this solution.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But most importantly, people who used to use WordPress, you know, the way as we talked about, you know, you go on a post and start drafting the content, and select some blocks here and there, and then you go ahead and publish it. So now when multiple people are collaborating, yeah, you need to pay attention to all those different things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Permissions that you mentioned, yeah, I think that&#8217;s something that, even in our plugin, we are kind of getting a lot. That the default WordPress roles, we kind of think a little bit more about on that too, in regards to like, hey, I don&#8217;t want this person to approve any changes, you know. It should be this person. Though that person can edit anything, but they will not be able to accept any changes, or close the comments.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So those are like a lot of little things that need to be there. And user experience, I think will be a very big thing that we need to pay attention to as well, so that we don&#8217;t overwhelm the people who love WordPress, simplicity of the WordPress, and when they see all this stuff, is like, why? What&#8217;s going on?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:17:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I do wonder on what level the granularity of permissions works. So, is it all done by the role-based system? So, you know, if you have a certain role, you can go in and edit any post or any page. Or, would it be nice to have it on a more granular level? So, okay, although this person has this particular role, which would preclude them from editing this, I want to allow them to edit this one special thing, because it&#8217;s right in their wheelhouse. So, okay, even though they&#8217;ve got this role, I want them to adopt a different role, just for this one post.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then maybe even delving deeper inside the post or the page itself. What about the ability to just edit certain blocks? So paragraph blocks, yes, go for it. But the YouTube block, no, no, no, that&#8217;s not for you to be editing. Or the images, no, you can&#8217;t do that. You know what I mean? You can get really granular. And I guess it&#8217;s a question of how granular we want that to be, and how do you surface that in a way which is easy to understand?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then you mentioned also, the visual cues that you&#8217;re getting inside of these third party solutions, like Google Docs. You can really see what somebody is doing. So you get this little icon, which is within the document, it kind of stays out the way a little bit. You know, it&#8217;s a very thin, little couple of pixels wide icon with a color. But you can see, okay, that&#8217;s where somebody&#8217;s cursor is, and if they highlight a portion of text, because they want to delete it or something, you can see that that&#8217;s highlighted.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In WordPress that might span several blocks. Whereas in a Google Doc it&#8217;s just, it&#8217;s all one thing so it doesn&#8217;t really matter. But it may be that it highlights, you know, you highlight two paragraph blocks and a heading block, then you&#8217;re going to delete those. How does that all get done? How does it get saved? How can you revert changes that are made? Boy, there really is a lot going on in here.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:34] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> It&#8217;s a massive technical problem that we need to solve, in order to provide this feature, as well as offer that in a way so that it still is helpful. You know, to help them to create and published content faster, not slowing them down.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> The thing about this is, you can&#8217;t really release something that isn&#8217;t working perfectly, in the scenario that it&#8217;s been created for. I don&#8217;t know, we tackle, user permissions first. That has to be perfect before it&#8217;s released. It can&#8217;t be kind of, okay, just test this out a little bit and see how it goes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It has to be bulletproof, the moment it ships into WordPress Core. And I think that some of the things that came into Gutenberg, and went out of Gutenberg, and got changed in Gutenberg, that was more or less okay, because it didn&#8217;t interrupt the publishing workflow. It just, maybe things surfaced on the front end slightly differently. Or there was a block that was suddenly now available, which wasn&#8217;t available there before. And all of that was okay. But if we&#8217;ve suddenly got things which mean, well, no I can&#8217;t publish anymore, that&#8217;s not working for me. Oh, okay, that&#8217;s not so good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So in the background, what are you thinking ought to be in view here? You know, are you thinking that it should just be core blocks at the beginning, the blocks which WordPress ships with? Should they be the things that are tackled? Should it be attached to just posts and pages and custom post types, leave all of that. Templates, leave all of that. Patterns, leave all of that. Do you have any intuition as to how deep it should go at the beginning, to make it even feasible to get off the ground?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:21:00] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> Yeah, so I think that&#8217;s a really good question. The reason is, as we talked about, like collaboration is a massive problem. And you can&#8217;t try to change everything in one go, you know. So you need to take a different part of the collaboration, and slowly build it in a way so that, yeah, you don&#8217;t basically put the whole house down, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure what&#8217;s the WordPress Core&#8217;s approach is, but when we started working on Multicollab, our approach was, let&#8217;s focus on the one feature at that time. So what we did is, we first launched only inline commenting, so no real time editing, so we don&#8217;t have to worry about the permissions and all that. No real time editing, just inline commenting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So in any piece of content, you can select it, whether it&#8217;s a blog, whether it&#8217;s media, whether it&#8217;s a text. You select it, and it&#8217;ll give you little comment box, where you can add a comment like, hey, I need some feedback on this, or changes here. And you can also mention anyone who is a WordPress user. So you type in at, then you can select a user, and they will be notified, and they can see and come back to the WordPress post. And they will see like, oh, somebody wants my feedback and opinion on that, and they can reply there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that was the first thing we launched. And we perfected that inline commenting almost for like a two years. So we focused on that, to make sure that works. And what you mentioned, one of the big challenge with the WordPress is, everyone has themes, plugins, and blocks, right? So, what sort of blocks are they using in Gutenberg setup, or what sort of plugins are they using?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like Yoast SEO also manipulates the page editing interface and workflow. So that&#8217;s why we decided like, alright, we&#8217;ll just start with the inline commenting. We slowly increased it. We still have a compatibility metrics where we continue to tell them like, hey, at this moment, this 20, 25, or 30, or 60, however many blocks are like, this is what it supports.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then we slowly started focusing on more popular plugins, and their blocks. So then, slowly, we are increasing the compatibility to more blocks. But that&#8217;s something that it&#8217;s very hard to do it in a day one.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:22:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Do you mind if I just interrupt there? So, that&#8217;s really interesting. So, did you have to take each of the Core blocks one at a time, and provide some engineering in the background that made it so that that block was available to be editable in a Multicollab setup? So you had to do the paragraph block, and then the heading block and then, okay, aspects of the group block, which might break something else, we had to deal with that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you had to do that first. And then, because all the third party vendors who&#8217;ve got the blocks and the block suites and, you know, there&#8217;s a lot of those now. You&#8217;re having to tackle those because they don&#8217;t necessarily work. So immediately my head is this multiplying problem of, how do we reign that back in? How do we get it so that everything is engineered, so that it will be collaborative? So let me just ask that question again. Did you have to do the blocks one at a time, is basically what I&#8217;m asking?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:51] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> So the approach that we took, first, we actually, instead of blocks, we were focusing on the type of content. So whether it&#8217;s a text, whether it&#8217;s media, you know, or whether it&#8217;s a dynamic content. Dynamic content is, you know, where you are not typing it in, but it&#8217;s just pulling in from, let&#8217;s say, from the database, and pulling in like featured post, right? Or let&#8217;s say testimonials. So you don&#8217;t type in and it&#8217;s already coming in from somewhere else like, you know, and then you just curating that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we kind of started that like, okay, how should we actually treat a text? And it doesn&#8217;t matter whether it&#8217;s a custom block, native block, or someone else&#8217;s block. As long as there is a text in that, how we should treat that. If there is a media, how we should treat that. We kind of started that. And that was our phase one. So it doesn&#8217;t matter what block you have, as long as you have text media and like couple of things, it will work.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Later on, once we achieved that, the second phase was how we make sure that we don&#8217;t have to edit anything in the code, but still our inline commenting works for whatever the blocks are. Our developer observed that, if blocks are custom blocks, are designed and developed based on following the Gutenberg&#8217;s guideline then our plugin was working. But if they don&#8217;t follow the Gutenberg guideline, if you just kind of, you know, do on your own thing, that&#8217;s where our inline commenting, and some of the things that we were doing was not functioning.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So now in our phase three. So right now we have, as long as your Gutenberg blocks is following, custom blocks, they&#8217;re following Gutenberg guideline, doesn&#8217;t matter what kind of blocks you have, it will work. And we also did an approach where, if for some reason your block is very complex, then instead of the content inside the block, you can highlight the entire block.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that&#8217;s where we started with like, okay, we can&#8217;t actually do much about what is in the block, but you can still give a comment on entire block. It&#8217;s working, like most of the blocks where we doesn&#8217;t support, you can still select the entire block, and leave a comment on the block. Like, hey, there&#8217;s something needs to look in there. But they will not be able to select a particular text, or image inside the block and highlight that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In our phase three, that is where we are working on. Doesn&#8217;t matter what blocks you have, but how we can manipulate the HTML DOM model. So it&#8217;s called Document Object Model, right? So the entire page is basically a DOM structure. So now we are working on how we can use the DOM JavaScript and HTML manipulation, so that you don&#8217;t need to worry about any block compatibility, it will automatically work with all the blocks. That&#8217;s our phase three.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It does sound like there is going to be a lot of work for the Core WordPress team, to tackle this from some of the experiences that you&#8217;ve just highlighted. It is very much an iterative approach. And I guess time will tell how they decide to tackle that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you have any intuition on the, backend I guess is the wrong word. But there are some people who are able to afford really complicated server setups and, you know, they&#8217;ve got powerful hosting and all of that. And you kind of get the impression that a lot of this is going to be calling back and forth to the server, constantly. Because if you imagine that there&#8217;s seven people editing a document at once, that&#8217;s seven bits of information that needs to be flying, more or less in real time, the entire time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whilst that might be possible to have, if you&#8217;ve got an expensive hosting set up, which is configured for this. Do you have any intuitions that if you&#8217;re on more affordable hosting, like a shared host and you&#8217;ve just got a basic plan, do you see this becoming a problem, because of the amount of data that&#8217;s going to be flying back and forth, and the power of that computer, acting as a server? What do you think?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:21] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> So when it comes to collaboration, and as we talked about, inline commenting, suggestions, like any edits that you make becomes suggestion, and then the real time editing. So I feel like these three are the big pillars of collaboration. Now when we launched Multicollab, you know, we launched with inline commenting, and then we launched suggestion mode, and now recently we launched the real time editing. The third piece of the collaboration.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>First two piece, inline commenting and suggestion mode. So that&#8217;s something that we tested, and we found that it doesn&#8217;t require any fancy server configuration. Whatever server or hosting that you&#8217;re using right now, that will be sufficient. Because in that we are not using any peer to peer connection, because we haven&#8217;t introduced the real time editing yet. As long as you&#8217;re using those two features for the collaboration, you&#8217;ll be good with pretty much whatever server you have right now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the moment you introduce real time editing, that is where the server and the whole performance thing actually becomes very critical. And that&#8217;s where the challenge with the WordPress is, that all other content creation apps, and the platform, they are cloud. They&#8217;re hosted in cloud, so they have a control on the computing power, and the cloud infrastructure. They can scale the cloud infrastructure because everyone sign in and access the same cloud. One other way, they don&#8217;t go and take a piece of source code and install and use it on their own server, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So for that, especially this real time editing, where multiple users simultaneously can edit, and all those things that we talked about. That you highlight the cursor where other users are in the post, and if they make any changes, the changes also sync with the other people who are editing, or working on right now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is where a server comes into the picture, and our team actually put together a server requirement. Like, what&#8217;s the minimum level of server configuration that we need in order for real time editing to work? And that is actually a challenge that we are still working on, and finding a way to see that, what are those major hosting companies, like managed hosting, the big hosting companies. And if their current server infrastructure meets the realtime editing or not.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that&#8217;s why we launched the realtime editing, at this moment. But it&#8217;s still on a beta and it&#8217;s by default off. One way we are handling this problem, is we are giving them an option like, hey, if you want to use the realtime editing, it requires certain level of server performance and power. If you have it, then here is the instruction that you can follow, and then you can use the real time editing. If you don&#8217;t have it, then you can use our server. So we have created our own server, you know, a massive server where all these async communication happens. The data is encrypted and all of that, but yes, we are giving the choice that, hey, if your server doesn&#8217;t support it, then you can use our server. So it&#8217;s kind of like cloud, so we have created our own little cloud, which they can use for this async communication.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:30:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So, is that a fairly seamless experience? So firstly, that answer is fascinating. So there is a roadblock, there is a server configuration, at least in your experience, which renders the whole enterprise of synchronous editing painful, impossible, perhaps. And if you are prepared to read the documentation, and get yourself onto a server which you have determined is suitable, then it&#8217;ll work. Otherwise, here&#8217;s a button for you to press.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is it as straightforward as that? You just sort of click a button and you are taking over that heavy lifting on the server. But it&#8217;s purely just for those sync transactions. It&#8217;s not for anything else. It&#8217;s not for keeping the content of the post, it&#8217;s just the bits and pieces that are firing to do the synchronous work, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:31:00] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> That&#8217;s very true, yeah. So the way we have done is, right now, if you download multi collab, it&#8217;s default, set it to our server, because we want to have them try it and test it. And then they can change it like, no, I don&#8217;t want to use your server, I want to, let&#8217;s say, configure my own server. Then you just turn that feature off, and you can take over.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if you want to use our server, you don&#8217;t have to do anything. It&#8217;s just built in, and it&#8217;s already all the server variables, and everything we have already put into the plugin. So when you go, you just turn on the real time editing, and you can start using the real time editing without making any changes in your server.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:31:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s kind of an interesting idea because, on the one hand, it creates a marketplace for people such as yourself to offer that service. You know, if you want to have synchronous editing for a hundred people, and for it to be absolutely bulletproof, here&#8217;s a plugin which connects to a service, which will give you the horsepower in order to do that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But at the same time, the way that it&#8217;s been described, phase three feels like the enterprise is to get this working for everybody, out of the box. And from what you are saying, obviously, you know, maybe technology will improve, and browser capabilities will improve, and all sorts of things will improve. Maybe this will be possible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it does feel like the offering is, this is going to be available to everybody. And it would be strange for a Core feature like that to have some kind of paywall attached to it. Now, I know that we&#8217;ve got examples throughout the ecosystem of obviously extra things that you can add in. But if it&#8217;s going to be available in Core, it seems odd to then be saying, well actually, your version of Core on that server isn&#8217;t going to cut it. I&#8217;m sorry, you&#8217;re going to have to part with some money.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That feels almost like straying away from what the promise of it is. Do you understand what I&#8217;m trying to say? It feels odd to offer something in Core, which then you have to pay for because your server doesn&#8217;t live up to it. But then again, that&#8217;s just the way it might have to be, I suppose.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:57] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> Yeah. I think that&#8217;s where I&#8217;m also curious to see how WordPress Core is going to address this problem. Because, based on our research, for last one and a half year we have been working on async and real time editing. We tried WebSocket, WebRTC, pretty much like bunch of different, all of the protocols, we tested it out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And one thing that we are seeing repeatedly is that, yeah, the server plays a very, very big role, hosting, specifically plays a big role. And the WebSocket needs to be enabled, and also depending on how many requests, and all of that. So there are like a lot of things that needs to be happen, before even you can turn on and use the real time editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And if WordPress Core is targeting that it will work seamlessly out of the box as you install the plugin. And especially like, you know, if you don&#8217;t have all this WebRTC, WebSocket, or whatever the server infrastructure is required. It&#8217;s a big question for me, how they&#8217;re going to tackle that problem, because at this moment we don&#8217;t have a solution.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that&#8217;s why we created this. Like we bought this massive server computing power so that it can support that. The people who are using our plugin, they&#8217;re paying for that services, and they&#8217;re aware about it. But WordPress Core, I think the goal is to kind of like have that for free, so that you can use and install it. And I&#8217;m not sure how they&#8217;re going to solve this problem.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:34:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah and, what does graceful failure look like in that scenario? So if a modest server can cope with one or two people, what happens when you reach the limit of that? So you&#8217;ve added in another five people, and suddenly everything&#8217;s under strain, it&#8217;s no longer working. How do you inform, or how do you encourage the user to do things differently?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because the last thing you want to do is lock people out of the editor, or something goes wrong in the editor, and it all becomes a problem, I can no longer publish things. Three of us are locked out, and now we can no longer get back in, or we couldn&#8217;t collaborate in the way that we thought we could. It was working better yesterday than it&#8217;s working today. Those kind of things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that seems an almost insurmountable technical challenge to at the moment anyway. We&#8217;re recording this at the end of 2023. It seems like an almost insurmountable challenge to be able to do that and provide it for everybody out of the box, even on the most straightforward, modest hosting package. So, yeah, I guess only time will tell.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Are there any other things that you&#8217;ve had to tackle, trying to get this done, that you would like to share? Is there any technical challenges that you&#8217;ve faced, or quirky experiences that you&#8217;ve had and things that you didn&#8217;t anticipate on the road that you now look back and think, oh, oh boy, I wish we&#8217;d thought of that in advance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:35:32] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> Yeah, I think the big piece, what I see is the inline commenting, suggestion, and real time editing like beside this server configuration for the real time editing. I think one is, it&#8217;s whole new learning curve. You know, so let&#8217;s say when you&#8217;re using the WordPress and now when you introduce all these features, there is a learning curve for the content creators.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not a technical challenge, but I think it&#8217;s more like adaptation challenge. And one thing that I think we did good and it was a decision, like a very deliberate decision that we want to keep the interface as close to Google Doc. Because Google Doc, I believe, is something that has already set a bar, you know. So when people are very familiar with like how to use the share button, how to invite someone, and leave the inline commenting. And if you kind of like try to introduce completely new interface for the collaboration, then that will also be a big learning curve.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that&#8217;s kind of like feedback that we got initially, when we try to be a little bit more innovative, like, let&#8217;s try to, you know, provide the best collaboration interface. It didn&#8217;t go well. We were like no, we want Google Doc. We want Google Doc style and that kind of like become our roadmap.. So if you are using MultiCollab right now, using the share button, the sidebar activities, inline commenting, suggestion mode, pretty much like all those features works very similar to how you use the Google Doc.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you will not see that big difference when you come to WordPress, that you will feel like it&#8217;s Google doc style interface. And challenge for us was to build that on the top of Gutenberg. I think that was a big, both technical, as well as a UI and user experience challenge.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:37:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Given that this is coming down the road and, let&#8217;s imagine a future where everything works and the team that are behind this managed to pull everything off, and it&#8217;s absolutely perfectly working and everything&#8217;s fine. How did you decide that you wanted to get into this business?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because before we hit record, I asked you that question. I said, did you decide to have this business knowing that it was coming into Core? And if that&#8217;s the case, why did you do that? Because it seems almost like you&#8217;re setting yourself up to have a business which is going to be replaced by something that&#8217;s free.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But you&#8217;ve got intuitions around that. I guess it&#8217;s around what you can package, which may exceed what the endeavor of Core is. We&#8217;ve been assuming that it would try to do everything all at once for everybody, and of course that may not be the case. It may be a very, a slim implementation. So just talk us through that. How anxious are you about phase three eating your company&#8217;s lunch?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:38:11] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> So when we started working on MultiCollab, I already was aware the phase three was already announced. They already mentioned that we are going to focus on collaboration. So it wasn&#8217;t a surprise in the beginning. The way I saw that as an opportunity, I feel like even where we know that when WordPress Core built or design anything, they try to focus on the 48% of the web. You know, it&#8217;s like a lot of small, medium businesses, bloggers. So basically they have to kind of like put it to together, something that&#8217;s targeting for a very wide audience.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other side, we focus, a lot of our features, like real time editing, inline commenting, these are all free, so you don&#8217;t have to pay for using those features. There are some pro level features while custom roles and permissions is concerned, Slack integration. So some of our publishers who use collaboration, they also like integrate that with their Slack and some enterprise tools they use.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that&#8217;s where we see an opportunity that we can provide the tailored, custom solutions, to this 20, 30% of the pro users who wants things a little bit differently and more customizations.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also by design, you know, the WordPress Core is going to be slow because, you know, everything they have to build, they have to do. It&#8217;s a massive force. And on the other side, like we have only one thing, this is the only project that we have. We don&#8217;t have like bunch of other phases that we have to worry about. So, that&#8217;s something that we, in last two years, we had made a new release every month. You know, so every month we have a new release, fix a bunch of different things, improve different things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I think that turn around is something that we were able to do much faster than probably WordPress Core can do. And the support is something that I feel like that is the only focus that we have. And I think we have seen that again and again in the WordPress and all other economy where, we have so many page builders, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like still they&#8217;re thriving, despite Gutenberg is free. It&#8217;s in built and all that, but still, Elementor. And same goes for the bunch of other features like commenting for example. There are like bunch of different commenting solutions because what WordPress offer, post commenting is not enough, or not the way other people wants it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:40:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I think it&#8217;s really interesting, and my guess is that the conversation in the WordPress space for the next 18 months at least will be highly focused on this topic. And the fact that people are talking about it, and the fact that you&#8217;ve already done a lot of work inside that space. Actually, when I think about it a little bit more, maybe it puts you in a kind of a pole position to have those conversations.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And also you can build on top of what Core produces. And it may be that there&#8217;s parts of the code that you&#8217;ve already written that can be removed or replaced by what&#8217;s in Core, and you can build on top of that. So yeah, that&#8217;s an interesting approach, and WordPress&#8217; history does show that, doesn&#8217;t it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the page builder example is perfect. There isn&#8217;t just space for one. The audience inside the WordPress community is so vast that you can have myriad different solutions to the same problem. And although WordPress might be tackling collaboration in some form, it may be that other people wish to have a different form of collaboration, or an extended feature set in the collaboration space. So yeah, that&#8217;s a nice answer and it, certainly implies that you&#8217;ll be around for the foreseeable future.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anil, before we wrap it up, I just want to give you an opportunity to tell us where people can find you if they want to reach out to you, where would be the best place to do that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:41:41] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> For me personally, I have a newsletter slash blog, where I write a lot about different things that I&#8217;m experimenting, and talk a lot about my businesses and podcast and all that. So that place would be my blog, that is anilg.substack.com. But for MultiCollab, it&#8217;s very simple, we have actually very good advantage if you search for WordPress collaboration or just multi collab, you&#8217;ll see a lot of resources that we have published and our website comes because we don&#8217;t have a competition at this moment.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:42:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Google is your best friend, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. So Anil, thank you so much for sharing your insights into multi collaboration in the WordPress space. We&#8217;ll see how this all develops, but thank you so much for chatting to me today, I really appreciate it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:42:24] <strong>Anil Gupta:</strong> Thanks for having me. And uh, yeah, it was a blast.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://anilg.substack.com/">Anil Gupta</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anil is the CEO and co-founder of <a href="https://www.multidots.com/">Multidots</a>, <a href="https://www.multicollab.com/">Multicollab</a>, and <a href="https://www.thedotstore.com/">DotStore</a>. His companies serve a wide range of customers, from large publishers and news companies to WordPress users.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of specific interest to this episode of the podcast is Multicollab, which offers a WordPress plugin that allows for Google Doc-style collaboration, including commenting, suggestions, and real-time editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Google Docs was first brought to the market, it was a pretty big deal. Perhaps not the first to offer a real time collaborative interface, it was certainly the first to gain widespread adoption. Fast forward to today and it’s more or less inconceivable that you’d create documents which were not editable by multiple people at the same time. Most modern online software ships with this built in. The extraordinary became the norm, and the expectation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>By what about WordPress? As the largest CMS, WordPress still lacks this functionality, but hopefully not for long. Phase 3 of the Gutenberg project, the phase that we are in at the moment, aims to make it possible for many users to amend content at the same time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The beguiling simplicity of the Google Docs interface makes it seem that this would be a trivial feature to add into WordPress, but this is not the case. Unlike proprietary software in which the vendor owns and manages the whole stack, WordPress is used by many different people, in many different ways. They might have a shared server, or a range of plugins, and this all complicates the picture.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anil talks about how his team decided to tackle this problem for their own plugin, and he explains some of the hurdles they’ve experienced along the way. They’ve taken a cautious approach, developing different features one at a time, working through the technical challenges with commenting, before moving onto real time editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anil paints a picture of a bright future for WordPress, once this new feature set is completed, but it’s also interesting to see how many challenges the developers will need to overcome before it can be shipped in a future WordPress update.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you’re interested in finding out about the future of editing content in WordPress, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://www.peacefulgrowth.com/">Peaceful Growth podcast</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://anilg.substack.com/">Anil&#8217;s blog</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://www.multidots.com/">Multidots</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://www.multicollab.com/">Multicollab</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://www.thedotstore.com/">DotStore</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 17 Jan 2024 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:19;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"Do The Woo Community: Gutenberg, the Beginning to the Present with Tammie and Jonathan";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=78854";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:52:"https://dothewoo.io/gutenberg-present-to-beginnings/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:371:"<p>Hosts Jonathan and Tammie reflect on their experiences with the Gutenberg project in WordPress. </p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a href="https://dothewoo.io/gutenberg-present-to-beginnings/">Gutenberg, the Beginning to the Present with Tammie and Jonathan</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce and WordPress Builder Podcast</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 17 Jan 2024 09:23:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:20;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:89:"HeroPress: With WordPress Another Life Is Possible – Con WordPress otra vida es posible";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=6397";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:152:"https://heropress.com/essays/with-wordpress-another-life-is-possible/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=with-wordpress-another-life-is-possible";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:19748:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/011624.webp" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: I came for the software and stayed for the people." /><p><a href="https://heropress.com/feed/#espanol">Este ensayo también está disponible en español.</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>December 11, 2023, Palacio Neptuno (Madrid). I am sitting, surrounded by many people, we are all looking towards a stage with a screen that reads &#8220;State of the Word 2023&#8221;. I look at the clock, it reads 16:05, and two thoughts come to my mind: the first one is &#8220;It seems that Matt is late&#8221;; the second one is caused by having seen the date that read &#8220;11 Dec&#8221;, my brain wants to remind me something&#8230; &#8220;Holy moly! It was 15 years ago today that I read my doctoral thesis in neuroscience&#8221;.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hope this resource of starting &#8220;in media res&#8221; has caught your attention and you have some interest in knowing how I got there.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_494ea8-e7 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>My life before WordPress</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I have always been a curious person and a career in biology seemed like a good candidate where I could apply that trait. During my college years I got pretty good grades that allowed me to apply for a fellowship to develop a doctoral thesis.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the years I spent on that thesis, among other things, I became an expert in the molecular mechanisms involved in programmed cell death in cerebral ischemia. You didn&#8217;t think you were going to read that combination of words in a post related to WordPress, did you? And I didn&#8217;t want to use more technical words like &#8220;apoptosis&#8221;, which is the &#8220;cool&#8221; way we scientists refer to programmed cell death.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>After submitting the thesis (yes, indeed, on December 11, 2008, I like you to keep your attention) I continued researching neurodegenerative diseases in several postdocs. My trajectory was not aiming for Nobel (nor was it my intention), but I was &#8220;progressing adequately&#8221; within the &#8220;scientific career&#8221;.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what happened, Nahuai?&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What went wrong to make you stop practicing as a scientist and start building websites with WordPress?</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_b4c5cc-21 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Looking for a kinder lifestyle</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>What happened is that I had an unpleasant work experience in the postdoc I was doing in a research center in Italy (back in 2014).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason is not as important as the reflection it forced me to make. I realized that, although I loved doing research, the researcher&#8217;s lifestyle was not aligned with how I wanted to live.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thus began another investigation, one in which I intended to find a job that would allow me to have more freedom of schedule and location.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_7be7c0-c5 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Finding WordPress</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>You can imagine that the start of that new research, which meant putting aside around 15 years of training as a neuroscientist, was not easy.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The general concept was to be a freelance and work on something online. Indeed, it was very general, but it fulfilled the requirements to achieve the freedom I was looking for. Luckily, WordPress came fairly early into the equation (in the same 2014) and I immediately felt comfortable with the tool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I started training myself in the CMS. I created a technology website and a travel website to apply what I was learning. I did part of this process while I was still working as a scientist and another with unemployment benefits and the support of my partner.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Years later, when I felt able to create websites for clients and I managed to shake off the &#8220;imposter syndrome&#8221;, I started to offer my services on my personal website (created with WordPress, logically). The first clients were &#8220;friends, fools and family&#8221; and then I started to get clients thanks to the articles about WordPress and photography that I wrote in my blog.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_8c1ba5-d6 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Discovering the community (&#8220;the secret ingredient&#8221; of WordPress)</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>When I was in Italy I started following WordPress news, mainly through podcasts, and I was surprised to hear how many events were taking place in Spain. So, as soon as I returned to Spain I started attending Meetups in and around Barcelona.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was followed by several WordCamps around the peninsula and by the time I realized it I was totally in love with the community. I soon realized that it was the &#8220;secret ingredient&#8221; behind the popularity of WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Taking advantage of the &#8220;falling in love phase&#8221;, I started participating in the community by giving talks, volunteering and later creating a WordPress Meetup in Terrassa, the city where I live now, and where I will soon celebrate 5 years as an organizer.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>At WordCamp Barcelona 2018 I met Esther Solà, a web developer I was following online (because she had a fantastic blog about WordPress) and we quickly made friends. A few months later we launched the podcast <a href="https://freelandev.com/">Freelandev</a>, where we have been telling for almost 5 years how we make a living as WordPress developers (and many more things). The podcast served as an incubator to launch another common project, <a href="https://osompress.com/">OsomPress</a>, where we have been creating plugins and themes for WordPress for more than 3 years.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once I realized my love for the Spanish WordPress community, I also wanted to get to know the international community better (part of which I read and listened to), and that&#8217;s why I went to WordCamp Europe 2019 as a volunteer. The experience was so good that since then it&#8217;s an annual appointment that I don&#8217;t miss (conditions permitting).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I could go on for hours writing about the goodness of the community, but if I had to sum it up, I would say that it has given me many intangible things, but others that are tangible:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Friends (and good ones)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A network of professionals to trust</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Clients</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The creation of a podcast</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The creation of a plugin and theme development company</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Aligning my work with my life purpose</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I think this sentiment, with personal variations, is shared by quite a few members of the WordPress community. There&#8217;s a phrase that gets repeated quite a bit, with different variations, but it goes something like &#8220;I came for the software and stayed for the people.&#8221;&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_ec1e50-72 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Towards a way of life more aligned with my principles</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Once I proved to myself that I could make a living as a freelance WordPress developer, I put the focus on how I could contribute to &#8220;a better world&#8221;, within my modest means, of course.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the one hand, I started to be more selective with the projects I accepted, prioritizing those that were going to have a positive impact, and on the other hand I started to create content about web sustainability.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I owe the inspiration for the latter to <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2019/09/22/roberto-vazquez-desarrollo-sostenible/">a talk by Roberto Vazquez at WordCamp Pontevedra 2019</a>, in which he talked about the environmental impact of websites. Another example of the &#8220;snowball&#8221; effect that comes driven by being part of the community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And speaking of snowballs. Thanks to meeting Hannah Smith at WordCamp Europe 2019, I discovered the Green Web Foundation fellowship I got last year. Thanks to it I was able to create the limited series podcast <a href="https://sustainwp.com/">Sustain WP</a>, which is all about digital sustainability and WordPress, which allowed me to interview a lot of interesting people in the community.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah was also involved in the creation of the WordPress sustainability initiative which months later became the official Sustainability Team. If you&#8217;re interested in learning more about the process and what we&#8217;re doing on the team I invite you to listen to <a href="https://sustainwp.com/podcast/episode-7-wordpress-sustainability-team/">the episode where we explain it in detail</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a culmination of 2023, I was honored to be elected, along with 3 other fantastic colleagues, as a representative of the Sustainability Team.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_c911a5-a5 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Disclaimer</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>These types of articles are always difficult for me to write (I don&#8217;t do it often either). The intention is to inspire others, but I am also aware that we all start from different circumstances. In that sense, I feel privileged and can&#8217;t help but worry that the small personal &#8220;successes&#8221; I share will have the opposite effect to the one I&#8217;m looking for.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maybe it&#8217;s an unfounded fear and I&#8217;ve managed to convey my enthusiasm for life in general and the WordPress community in particular. Hopefully it inspires you to apply it in your own way.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether I&#8217;ve achieved one thing or the other, I&#8217;ll be happy to read you in the comments. :)</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />\n\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n\n\n<h1 id="espanol" class="kt-adv-heading6397_5884c3-b1 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading">Con WordPress otra vida es posible</h1>\n\n\n\n<p>11 de diciembre de 2023, Palacio Neptuno (Madrid). Estoy sentado, rodeado de mucha gente, todos estamos mirando hacia un escenario con una pantalla donde se lee &#8220;State of the Word 2023&#8221;. Miro el reloj, marca las 16:05, y me vienen dos pensamientos a la cabeza: el primero es &#8220;Parece que Matt llega tarde&#8221;; el segundo viene provocado por haber visto la fecha que indicaba &#8220;11 dic&#8221;,&nbsp; mi cerebro quiere recordarme algo&#8230; &#8220;¡Leche! Que hoy hace justo 15 años que leí mi tesis doctoral en neurociencia&#8221;.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Espero que este recurso de empezar &#8220;in media res&#8221; haya captado tu atención y tengas cierto interés en saber cómo he llegado hasta ahí.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_fea921-46 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Mi vida antes de WordPress</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Siempre he sido una persona curiosa y la carrera de biología me pareció una buena candidata donde poder aplicar ese rasgo. Durante los años de universidad obtuve calificaciones bastante buenas que me permitieron optar a una beca para desarrollar una tesis doctoral.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Durante los años que dediqué a esa tesis, entre otras cosas, me convertí en un experto en los mecanismos moleculares implicados en la muerte celular programada en la isquemia cerebral. ¿A que no pensabas que ibas a leer esa combinación de palabras en un post relacionado con WordPress, eh? Y eso que no he querido usar palabras más técnicas como &#8220;apoptosis&#8221;, que es la forma &#8220;cool&#8221; con la que nos referimos los científicos a la muerte celular programada.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Después de presentar la tesis (sí, efectivamente, el 11 de diciembre de 2008, me gusta que mantengas la atención) continué investigando enfermedades neurodegenerativas en varios postdocs. Mi trayectoria no apuntaba al Nobel (ni era mi intención), pero sí &#8220;progresaba adecuadamente&#8221; dentro de la &#8220;carrera científica&#8221;.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Entonces ¿qué pasó, Nahuai?&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>¿Qué se torció para que dejaras de ejercer como científico y empezaras a montar webs con WordPress?</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_0ae430-d4 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Buscando un modo de vida más amable</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Lo que ocurrió es que tuve una experiencia laboral desagradable en el postdoc que estaba realizando en un centro de investigación en Italia (allá por 2014).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>El motivo no es tan importante como lo es la reflexión que me obligó a realizar. Me di cuenta de que, aunque me encantaba investigar, el modo de vida del investigador no estaba alineado con cómo quería vivir.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Así empezó otra investigación, una en la que pretendía encontrar un trabajo que me permitiera tener más libertad de horario y ubicación.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_e0c3be-03 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Encontrando WordPress</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Te puedes imaginar que el comienzo de esa nueva investigación, que suponía dejar de lado unos 15 años de formación como neurocientífico, no fue fácil.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>El concepto general era hacerme freelance y trabajar en algo online. Efectivamente, era muy general, pero cumplía los requisitos para ganar esa libertad que buscaba. Por suerte, WordPress apareció bastante pronto en la ecuación (el mismo 2014) y en seguida me sentí cómodo con la herramienta.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Empecé a formarme en el CMS. Creé una web de tecnología y otra de viajes para aplicar lo que iba aprendiendo. Parte de este proceso lo hice mientras seguía trabajando como científico y otro con la prestación de desempleo y el apoyo de mi pareja.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Años más tarde, cuando me sentí capaz de crear webs para clientes y conseguí sacudirme un poco el &#8220;síndrome del impostor&#8221;, empecé a ofrecer mis servicios en mi web personal (creada con WordPress, lógicamente). Los primeros clientes fueron &#8220;friends, fools and family&#8221; y después me empezaron a llegar clientes gracias a los artículos sobre WordPress y fotografía que escribía en mi blog.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_577274-80 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Descubriendo la comunidad (&#8220;el ingrediente secreto&#8221; de WordPress)</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Cuando estaba en Italia empecé a seguir noticias sobre WordPress, principalmente a través de podcasts, y me sorprendía escuchar la cantidad de eventos que tenían lugar en España. Por eso, en cuanto regresé a España empecé a acudir a las Meetups de Barcelona y sus alrededores.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A eso le siguieron varias WordCamps por la península y para cuando me quise dar cuenta ya estaba totalmente enamorado de la comunidad. Pronto me di cuenta de que era el &#8220;ingrediente secreto&#8221; detrás de la popularidad de WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Aprovechando la &#8220;fase de enamoramiento&#8221;, empecé a participar en la comunidad dando ponencias, acudiendo como voluntario y más adelante creando la Meetup Terrassa, cuidad donde resido ahora, y donde pronto cumpliré 5 años como organizador.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>En la WordCamp Barcelona de 2018 conocí a Esther Solà, una desarrolladora web que seguía online (porque tenía un fantástico blog sobre WordPress) y rápidamente hicimos migas. Pocos meses después lanzamos el podcast <a href="https://freelandev.com/">Freelandev</a>, en el que llevamos casi 5 años contando cómo nos ganamos la vida como desarrolladores WordPress (y muchas más cosas). El podcast sirvió de incubadora para sacar otro proyecto común, <a href="https://osompress.com/">OsomPress</a>, donde creamos plugins y temas para WordPress desde hace más de 3 años.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Una vez constatado mi amor por la comunidad española de WordPress, quise conocer mejor también a la comunidad internacional (parte de la cual leía y escuchaba), y por eso fui a la WordCamp Europe 2019 como voluntario. La experiencia fue tan buena que desde entonces es una cita anual que no me pierdo (siempre que las condiciones lo permitan).</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Podría, seguir durante horas escribiendo sobre las bondades de la comunidad, pero&nbsp;si tuviera que resumirlo diría que me ha aportado muchas cosas intangibles, pero otras que sí lo son:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Amigos (y de los buenos)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Una red de profesionales en los que confiar</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Clientes</li>\n\n\n\n<li>La creación de un podcast</li>\n\n\n\n<li>La creación de un empresa de desarrollo de plugins y temas</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Alinear mi trabajo con mi propósito vital</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Creo que este sentimiento, con variaciones personales, lo comparten bastantes miembros de la comunidad de WordPress. Hay una frase que se repite bastante, con distintas variaciones, pero dice algo así como &#8220;Llegué por el software y me quedé por la gente&#8221;.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_dcbc41-c7 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Hacia un modo de vida más alineado con mis principios</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Una vez que me demostré a mí mismo que podía ganarme la vida como desarrollador WordPress freelance, puse el foco en cómo podía contribuir a &#8220;un mundo mejor&#8221;, dentro de mis modestas posibilidades, claro.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Por un lado, empecé a ser más selectivo con los proyectos que aceptaba, priorizando los que iban a tener un impacto positivo, y por otro empecé a crear contenido sobre sostenibilidad web.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>La inspiración de esto último se lo debo a <a href="https://wordpress.tv/2019/09/22/roberto-vazquez-desarrollo-sostenible/">una charla de Roberto Vazquez en la WordCamp de Pontevedra 2019</a>, en la que habló del impacto medioambiental de las páginas web. Otro ejemplo del efecto &#8220;bola de nieve&#8221; que viene impulsada por ser parte de la comunidad.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Y hablando de bolas de nieve. Gracias a haber conocido a Hannah Smith en la WordCamp Europe 2019, descubrí la beca de Green Web Foundation que obtuve el año pasado. Gracias a ella pude crear el podcast de serie limitada <a href="https://sustainwp.com/">Sustain WP</a>, que trata sobre sostenibilidad digital y WordPress, el cual me permitió entrevistar a un montón de personas interesantes de la comunidad.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hannah también estuvo involucrada en la creación de la iniciativa de sostenibilidad de WordPress que meses más tarde se convirtió en el equipo oficial de sostenibilidad. Si estás interesado en conocer más sobre el proceso y lo que estamos haciendo en el equipo te invito a escuchar <a href="https://sustainwp.com/podcast/episode-7-wordpress-sustainability-team/">el episodio donde lo explicamos con detalle.</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p>Como colofón de 2023, tuve el honor de ser elegido, junto a otros 3 fantásticos compañeros, como representante del equipo de sostenibilidad. &nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6397_ffe359-dd wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><strong>Disclaimer</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Este tipo de artículos siempre me resultan difíciles de escribir (tampoco lo hago a menudo). La intención es inspirar a otras personas, pero también soy consciente de que todos partimos de circunstancias distintas. En ese sentido, me siento un privilegiado y no puedo evitar preocuparme de que los pequeños &#8220;éxitos&#8221; personales que comparto tengan el efecto contrario al que busco.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Igual es un temor infundado y he conseguido trasmitir mi entusiasmo por la vida en general y la comunidad WordPress en particular. Ojalá te inspire para aplicarlo a tu manera.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tanto si he conseguido una cosa como otra, estaré encantado de leerte en los comentarios. :)</p>\n<p>The post <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/with-wordpress-another-life-is-possible/">With WordPress Another Life Is Possible &#8211; Con WordPress otra vida es posible</a> appeared first on <a href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 17 Jan 2024 08:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nahuai Badiola";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:21;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"BuddyPress: BuddyPress 12.1.1 Maintenance &amp; Security release";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://buddypress.org/?p=332779";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://buddypress.org/2024/01/buddypress-12-1-1-maintenance-security-release/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2603:"<p><a href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.12.1.1.zip">BuddyPress 12.1.1</a> is now available. This is a security and maintenance release. <strong>Please update your BuddyPress as soon as possible</strong>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 12.1.1 release addresses the following minor security issue:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Using the Cover Image group&#8217;s REST API Endpoints, it was possible to a non member of private/hidden group to get the corresponding group Cover Image URL. Discovered by <a href="https://au.linkedin.com/in/colin-xu-31a547134" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Colin Xu</a>.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>This vulnerability was reported privately to the BuddyPress team, in accordance with&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/testing/reporting-security-vulnerabilities/">WordPress’s security policies</a>. Our thanks to the reporter for practicing coordinated disclosure.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>BuddyPress 12.1.1 also fixes 10 bugs. For complete details, visit the <a href="https://codex.buddypress.org/releases/version-12.1.1/">12.1.1 changelog</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-buttons is-horizontal is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-1 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex">\n<div class="wp-block-button is-style-outline"><a class="wp-block-button__link has-white-background-color has-text-color has-background no-border-radius wp-element-button" href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.12.1.1.zip">Get BuddyPress 12.1.1</a></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>\n\n\n\n<p>You can get the latest version by clicking on the above button, downloading it from the&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress/">WordPress.org plugin directory</a>&nbsp;or checking it out from our&nbsp;<a href="https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/branches/11.0">Subversion repository.</a></p>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="many-thanks-to-11-1-0-contributors">Many thanks to 12.1.1 contributors <span class="dashicons dashicons-heart"></span></h2>\n\n\n\n<p> <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sabernhardt">sabernhardt</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/emaralive">emaralive</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/shawfactor">shawfactor</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/strategio">strategio</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/vapvarun/">vapvarun</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/perchenet">perchenet</a> &amp; <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/imath/">imath</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 16 Jan 2024 23:43:59 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Mathieu Viet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:22;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:93:"WordCamp Central: WPBeginner joins the WordPress global community sponsorship program in 2024";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:39:"https://central.wordcamp.org/?p=5109967";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:118:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2024/01/wpbeginner-joins-the-wordpress-global-community-sponsorship-program-in-2024/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:3704:"<p>Please join us in welcoming WPBeginner to the <a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/sponsor-multiple-wordcamps/">2024 WordPress global community sponsorship program</a>! WPBeginner’s pledge to sponsor all official WordPress community events (WordCamps, Meetups, and more) all around the world provides support and stability to our hardworking crew of volunteer event organizers. Thanks for everything, WPBeginner!</p>\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-image">\n<a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2024/01/wpbeginner-logo-wpcentral.png"><img width="900" height="312" src="https://central.wordcamp.org/files/2024/01/wpbeginner-logo-wpcentral.png" alt="" class="wp-image-5109968" /></a>WPBeginner logo</div>\n\n\n<p>At <a href="https://www.wpbeginner.com/">WPBeginner</a>, we provide cutting-edge, helpful WordPress tutorials that are easy to understand for small businesses, bloggers, and non-techy WordPress website owners. Since 2009, our <a href="https://videos.wpbeginner.com/">free WordPress video courses</a> and tutorials are watched by over 56 millions WordPress users worldwide.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether you&#8217;re looking to learn how to build a WordPress website, decide which WordPress plugins to pick, or just learn the WordPress best practices to grow your website, WPBeginner&#8217;s free resources can help:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://www.wpbeginner.com/blog/">WPBeginner Blog</a> – The central place for all our WordPress tutorials.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://www.wpbeginner.com/solutions/">WPBeginner Solution Center</a> – Detailed reviews of recommended WordPress plugins, tools, themes, agencies, and more curated by our WordPress experts.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://www.wpbeginner.com/glossary/">WPBeginner Dictionary</a> – WordPress lingo and terminology explained in plain english for non-techy users.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://videos.wpbeginner.com/">WPBeginner Videos</a> – Learn from our free WordPress video courses including <a href="https://videos.wpbeginner.com/courses/wordpress-101/">WordPress 101</a>, <a href="https://videos.wpbeginner.com/courses/wordpress-seo-for-beginners/">WordPress SEO for Beginners</a>, and hundreds more.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://www.wpbeginner.com/deals/">WPBeginner Deals</a> – Exclusive discounts on WordPress products and services for WPBeginner users.&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://www.wpbeginner.com/tools/">WPBeginner Tools</a> &#8211; Free business tools created by the WPBeginner team for small business owners.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the last 14 years working closely with WordPress users and listening to their feedback, we have also created some of the most popular WordPress plugins including <a href="https://wpforms.com/">WPForms</a>, <a href="https://aioseo.com/">AIOSEO</a> (All in One SEO for WordPress), <a href="https://optinmonster.com/">OptinMonster</a>, <a href="https://www.monsterinsights.com/">MonsterInsights</a>, and dozens more. 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The latest version of WordPress comes pre-installed with exclusive themes, plugins, and tools to get you up and running quickly, with automated backups, updates, and malware removal so our Pros can spend less time on monotonous maintenance, and more time building their businesses.GoDaddy Pro works tirelessly to foster an active, nurturing community, with initiatives including the sponsorship of WordCamps globally, weekly <a href="https://events.godaddy.com/godaddy-pro-online?utm_source=wcglobal_2023_sponsorship&utm_medium=events&utm_campaign=en-us_events_prg_awa_partners_part_wcsponsordesc_001">GoDaddy Pro Meetups</a>, our free <a href="https://www.godaddy.com/pro/academy?utm_source=wcglobal_2023_sponsorship&utm_medium=events&utm_campaign=en-us_events_prg_awa_partners_part_wcsponsordesc_001">GoDaddy Pro Academy</a> courses, and our <a href="https://community.godaddy.com/s/group/0F93t000000I7EfCAK/godaddy-pro?utm_source=wcglobal_2023_sponsorship&utm_medium=events&utm_campaign=en-us_events_prg_awa_partners_part_wcsponsordesc_001">GoDaddy Pro Discussions Group</a>. We’re proud to be a partner of the WordPress community and look forward to witnessing all the individual greatness that our efforts help support.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 15 Jan 2024 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6:"Isotta";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:25;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:94:"Gutenberg Times: Quick Tip: How to use a classic menu in the navigation block of a block theme";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=27030";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:104:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/quick-tip-how-to-use-a-classic-menu-in-the-navigation-block-of-a-block-theme/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1883:"<p>There was a question in the forums, if one needs to rebuild all the menus when switching from a classic theme to a block theme. In other words, how can you add an existing menu to the Navigation block. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>If there is only one classic menu, it will be displayed in the navigation block. But if there are multiple classic menus on the site, it doesn&#8217;t automatically convert it to a navigation block. In that case, it takes a manual step after you switched the theme, but you don&#8217;t have to recreate the menus. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are the steps to follow along with a separate test environment. </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Open a new website via <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?theme=twentytwentyone">WordPress Playground and included the Twenty-Twenty-One Theme. </a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Unit_Test" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Imported the theme test data file</a>&nbsp;(more specifically,&nbsp;<a href="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WPTT/theme-unit-test/master/themeunittestdata.wordpress.xml" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">this</a>)</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Set Display Location of imported menu to Primary Menu to ensure Twenty Twenty One has a menu on top of the landing page</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Switch to Twenty Twenty-Four</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The menu disappeared, only the social link menu showed. </li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Now the steps on how to get the classic menu back into the template? </p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Click on the Template header, </li>\n\n\n\n<li>Click on the Navigation block</li>\n\n\n\n<li>The sidebar with the setting for the navigation block should open. </li>\n\n\n\n<li>Use the 3-dot menu to select the classic menu &#8220;All pages&#8221; </li>\n\n\n\n<li>Click on the Save button. </li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>And here is the video of the whole process: </p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p><em>Thank you to JuanMa Garrido for the testing instructions. </em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 15 Jan 2024 12:13:59 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:26;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:122:"Gutenberg Times: Call for testing WordPress 6.5, page builders yes or no, Data Liberation and more — Weekend Edition 280";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=26964";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:127:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/call-for-testing-wordpress-6-5-page-builders-yes-or-no-data-liberation-and-more-weekend-edition-280/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13922:"<p>Howdy, </p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are 31 days away from WordPress 6.5 Beta 1, the version that closes the new version for new features. In so far it&#8217;s early, lots of work can still go into the next major upgrade. On the other hand, we are only three Gutenberg plugin versions away from WordPress beta 1.  Gutenberg 17.5 RC is available for testing. If you have some time, it would be wonderful if you can use <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong>&#8216;s instructions to take <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2024/01/13/early-opportunities-to-test-wordpress-6-5/">early opportunities to test WordPress 6.5</a>. If you would rather not set up a local test site, you can also use the <a href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json">Gutenberg Nightly via WordPress playground</a> for your early test. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Munich is again powered by snow and it freezing once more. Hubby and I are getting used to it; somewhat. Definitely longing for warmer weather. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hope you stay warm and have a joyful weekend! </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p>PS: If you intend to go to WordCamp Asia, I again <a href="https://calendly.com/pauli-haack/wcasia"><strong>opened up my calendar so we can schedule a 1:1 meeting</strong></a>, to chat about your products, what you need to be successful as a developer or how to contribute to WordPress or just catch up on life. And if you are not going to make it to WordCamp Asia, we can always get together at WordCamp Europe in June. 🤗</p>\n\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">\n<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-p">Page builders discussions</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </a></li></ul></div>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>WordPress co-founder, <strong>Matt Mullenweg</strong>, elaborated on the WordPress blog the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2024/01/data-liberation-in-2024/"><strong>Data Liberation in 2024</strong></a> project, he announced during State of the Word in Madrid. &#8220;Migrating your site to WordPress, or exporting all your content from WordPress, should be possible in one click. I want WordPress’ export format to become the lingua franca of CMSs, whether coming to WordPress or moving within WordPress. &#8220;, he wrote. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> has again compiles the list of changes in Core and Gutenberg in <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/01/10/whats-new-for-developers-january-2024/"><strong>What’s new for developers? (January 2024)</strong></a>. &#8220;It’s a new year and time for exciting new things happening in the WordPress world. Catch the latest monthly roundup aimed at extenders.&#8221; he wrote. It&#8217;s a list of updates interesting for plugin, and theme authors as well as freelance and agency developers. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p class="has-accent-color has-light-background-background-color has-text-color has-background has-link-color wp-elements-b21294d93d10468b5f9c6136fdd74073">🎙️ Latest episode:  <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-94-state-of-the-word-gutenberg-17-2-17-3-and-17-4-wordpress-6-5-migrating-from-classic-theme-to-block-theme/">Gutenberg Changelog #94 – State of the Word, Gutenberg 17.2, 17.3 and 17.4, WordPress 6.5, Migrating from Classic Theme to Block Theme</a> with Sarah Norris</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Joen Asmussen</strong>, summarize the work of the WordPress design team in his post: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2024/01/02/design-share-dec-1-dec-29/"><strong>Design Share: Dec 1-Dec 29</strong></a>. The team worked on</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>WP.org Data Liberation</li>\n\n\n\n<li>WP.org: Learning Pathways</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Thumbnail design</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Missing Fonts</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Safari Text-Selection Fix</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Responsive tables for Openverse’s source page</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="1-p">Page builders discussions</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/karks88">Eric Karkovack</a></strong> wondered in his post <strong><a href="https://thewpminute.com/can-gutenberg-and-wordpress-page-builders-coexist/">Can Gutenberg and WordPress Page Builders Coexist?</a></strong> </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/mattmedeiros">Matt Medeiros</a></strong> asks: <a href="https://thewpminute.com/is-2024-the-year-of-page-builders/"><strong>Is 2024 the Year of Page Builders?</strong></a> on the WPMinute episode 198. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p>In his post, <a href="https://geary.co/wordpress-block-editor-first-look/"><strong>I Tried Building a Layout With the WordPress Block Editor And it Didn’t Go Very Well,</strong></a> <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/thekevingeary">Kevin Geary</a></strong> walks us through his learnings, trying the site editor for the first time. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>On YouTube, <a href="https://geary.co/wordpress-block-editor-first-look/#comment-593"><strong>Anne McCarth</strong>y</a> and <a href="https://geary.co/wordpress-block-editor-first-look/#comment-590"><strong>Riad Benguella</strong></a>, Gutenberg Core Developer,  chimed in with additional links and information</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p>Using Geary&#8217;s video and post as inspiration, <strong>Brian Coords</strong> walks us through how he would solve the layout problem Geary struggled with. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCWUaLc7gvM&t=5s">Building an example layout in Gutenberg (response video)</a>. He covers this &#8220;demo layout using core blocks and a few lines of CSS (via register_block_style). Along the way, I discuss alignments and widths in Gutenberg, semantic elements, flex box tools for layout, custom CSS, and whether the block editor is a &#8220;page builder&#8221;.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jamie Marsland</strong>, PootlePress, created a tutorial to help Beginners understand  the core concept around  WordPress Block Themes:  <a href="https://www.pootlepress.com/2024/01/mastering-wordpress-block-themes-3-key-principles-for-beginners/"><strong>Three Key Principles for Beginners</strong></a>. &#8220;WordPress block themes revolutionize the way websites are built and designed, simplifying the process down to three core elements: <strong>Blocks Templates and Styles</strong>.&#8221; he wrote. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="2-word-press-6-0-1-and-6-1-scheduled">Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>For the WordPress themes team, Justin Tadlock updated the community of contributors on <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2024/01/11/new-block-focused-theme-handbook-docs-and-whats-coming-in-2024/">New Block-Focused Theme Handbook Docs and What’s Coming in 2024</a>.</strong> After the revamp of the theme handbook, and publishing five new chapters, with eight still in draft. The next steps are the documentation of Patterns, Advanced topics and Classic Themes. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jacob Martella</strong> has some sound advice when you are on the quest of Converting<a href="https://crosswindsframework.com/blog/2023/12/18/converting-your-website-to-the-block-editor/"><strong> Your Website to the Block Editor</strong></a>. &#8220;The biggest thing is that the site editor gives you so much control over how your website looks. You can customize the fonts and colors, change how your header and footer look and edit any template you want right from your dashboard. You don’t need to know CSS or PHP or have to worry about editing any files to do it&#8221; he wrote. </p>\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong> <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2022&#8221;</a> </strong><br />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. Updated by yours truly.  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/"><em>The index 2020 is here</em></a></p>\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Reminder! You are invited to the January <strong>Developers Hours for January 16th, 2024 at 15:00 UTC (10 am EDT)</strong> to <strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/298191982/">Build your first WordPress block</a></strong>. In this online event, you’ll be on a walk-through <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/getting-started/tutorial/">the new tutorial in the Block editor handbook</a>, and you will also learn more about the<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/block-development-examples"> block development examples</a> on GitHub.</p>\n\n\n\n<a href="https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/298191982/"><img width="600" height="338" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/build-your-first-block.webp?resize=600%2C338&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-26925" /></a>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p>The page in the Block Editor Handbook experienced a rewrite: &#8220;<a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/getting-started/fundamentals/static-dynamic-rendering/"><strong>Static or Dynamic rendering of a block</strong></a>&#8221; With the help of diagrams and new code examples, developers learn the main differences, advantages, and disadvantages of each approach of block development.</p>\n\n\n\n<img width="652" height="379" src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/static-rendering.webp?resize=652%2C379&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-27006" />\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> released a new version  of his <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-query-loop/"><strong>Advance Query Loop</strong></a> plugin. Now ACF developer will see their meta keys in the auto-complete list for Post Meta queries. </p>\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>\n\n\n\n\n<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size"><em>Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? Don&#8217;t hesitate to send <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">them via email</a> or send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph</em>. </p>\n\n\n\n<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size">For questions to be answered on the <a href="http://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast">Gutenberg Changelog</a>, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a></p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n\n<p>Featured Image: Building blocks game. Free public domain CC0 image.</p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>\n\n\n\n<form class="wp-block-newsletterglue-form ngl-form ngl-portrait" action="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/" method="post"><div class="ngl-form-container"><div class="ngl-form-field"><label class="ngl-form-label" for="ngl_email"><br />Type in your Email address to subscribe.</label><div class="ngl-form-input"><input type="email" class="ngl-form-input-text" name="ngl_email" id="ngl_email" /></div></div><button type="submit" class="ngl-form-button">Subscribe</button><p class="ngl-form-text">We hate spam, too, and won&#8217;t give your email address to anyone except Mailchimp to send out our Weekend Edition</p></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay"><div class="ngl-message-svg-wrap"></div><div class="ngl-message-overlay-text">Thanks for subscribing.</div></div><input type="hidden" name="ngl_list_id" id="ngl_list_id" value="26f81bd8ae" /><input type="hidden" name="ngl_double_optin" id="ngl_double_optin" value="yes" /></form>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-css-opacity is-style-wide" />";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 13 Jan 2024 13:00:38 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:27;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:43:"WordPress.org blog: Data Liberation in 2024";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=16736";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:59:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/01/data-liberation-in-2024/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2883:"<p>Imagine a more open web where people can switch between any platform of their choosing. A web where being locked into a system is a thing of the past. This is the web I’ve always wanted to see. That’s why I announced a new initiative called <a href="https://wordpress.org/data-liberation/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Data Liberation</a> for 2024. Migrating your site to WordPress, or exporting all your content from WordPress, should be possible in one click. I want WordPress’ export format to become the lingua franca of CMSes, whether coming to WordPress or moving within WordPress. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>I often hear about folks across the WordPress community duplicating efforts when creating scripts and workflows to move users to WordPress. Imagine if we shared those resources instead and built community-owned plugins that anyone could use! </p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it should be more than plugins; workflows, tutorials, and helper scripts should be shared, too. I want this resource to have space to include moving from social networks, moving from a page builder to core blocks, switching from classic to blocks, and improving WordPress current canonical plugins for importing. </p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">You can help!</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, the heart of any open source project is the community that shows up to build it. My hope is that this marks the start of a new contribution pathway, separate from core teams, that allows folks to contribute what they’ve learned and what they’ve created to help others move to WordPress. I expect this emphasis on migration will also influence future development, both in core and with recommended community or canonical plugins.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are a few things that I think will be key to making this project a success:</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>A dedicated landing page on WordPress.org following a WordPress.org/and/[platform-name] format.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A forum used for non-review user feedback and general discussion.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>A dedicated Slack channel.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Moderation within hours rather than days.</li>\n\n\n\n<li>Listed on <a href="https://github.com/WordPress">WordPress GitHub</a> with syncing for individual commits to SVN for history in both places.</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>By complementing the community’s existing efforts—the <a href="https://wordpress.org/five-for-the-future/">Five for the Future program</a>, the <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn WordPress initiative</a>, a focus on internationalization, etc.—my hope is that this will help even more people see themselves in the WordPress project, providing fresh momentum for <a href="https://events.wordpress.org/">WordCamps and meetups</a>. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>It’s never been more crucial to champion openness on the web. Bringing focused attention to improved portability will untether users and increase their freedom like never before.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 12 Jan 2024 16:58:53 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Matt Mullenweg";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:28;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:11:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:1:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:42:"HeroPress: Foundational Pillars From Tokyo";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:29:"https://heropress.com/?p=6380";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:129:"https://heropress.com/foundational-pillars-from-tokyo/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=foundational-pillars-from-tokyo";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11551:"<img width="1024" height="768" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/90465a09dc845c615.66816362-1024x768.jpeg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Floral delight with a scenic snowy Annapurna panorama" /><div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id6380_650854-0a alignnone kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-1-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">\n\n<div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column6380_445699-93 inner-column-1"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6380_f58919-63 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><a href="https://nomad.blog/2023/12/26/what-parts-of-wordpress-would-you-like-to-explore-more-if-you-could/">What parts of WordPress would you like to explore more if you could?</a></h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default">\n<a href="https://nomad.blog/2023/12/26/what-parts-of-wordpress-would-you-like-to-explore-more-if-you-could/"><img width="300" height="199" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/pexels-photo-296324-300x199.jpeg" alt="Old time lightbulb" class="wp-image-6382" /></a></div>\n\n\n\n<p>HeroPresser <a href="https://heropress.com/contributors/anne-mccarthy/">Anne McCarthy</a> wrote an excellent <a href="https://nomad.blog/2023/12/26/what-parts-of-wordpress-would-you-like-to-explore-more-if-you-could/">article</a> pointing out how much is different in WordPress these days, and asks the question above.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;s your answer?</p>\n</div></div>\n\n</div></div>\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-6380_e8718e-f3"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>\n\n\n<div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id6380_82bd3f-6e alignnone kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-1-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">\n\n<div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column6380_f9eb45-43 inner-column-1"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6380_656922-69 wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><a href="https://heropress.com/">HeroPress.com</a> &#8211; <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/reflecting-on-my-3-foundational-pillars/">Reflecting on My 3 Foundational Pillars</a></h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default">\n<a href="https://heropress.com/essays/reflecting-on-my-3-foundational-pillars/"><img width="300" height="300" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Destiny-Fox-Kanno-scaled-1-300x300.jpg" alt="Destiny Kanno" class="wp-image-5035" /></a></div>\n\n\n\n<p>Destiny Kanno is from Tokyo, Japan, and works in Education about WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>As a Community Education Manager I work to break down perceived barriers for folks who want to contribute to the Make WordPress Training Team’s goals, and work as a close partner with the Training Team Representatives and members to empower them to excel in their leadership, goals, and strategy.</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p>Destiny&#8217;s essay is <a href="https://heropress.com/essays/reflecting-on-my-3-foundational-pillars/">available</a> on <a href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress.com</a>.</p>\n</div></div>\n\n</div></div>\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-6380_ed362f-f9"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>\n\n\n<div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id6380_9e53fd-e2 alignnone kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-1-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">\n\n<div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column6380_1b8a39-b9 inner-column-1"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">\n<h2 class="kt-adv-heading6380_108792-6f wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><a href="https://wppodcasts.com">WP Podcasts</a></h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<a href="https://wppodcasts.com"><img src="https://heropressnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/pocket_casts_single_315.png" alt="Pocket Casts image" class="wp-image-4316" /></a>\n\n\n\n\n<p>There were <em>twenty-three</em> WordPress podcast episodes released this week!</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://potencia.pro/274-como-mejorar-la-seguridad-de-wordpress-con-cloudflare/#new_tab">Potencia Pro 274: Cómo mejorar la seguridad de WordPress con CloudFlare</a> from <a href="https://wppodcasts.com/podcast/potencia-pro-wordpress-y-cozas/">Potencia Pro, WordPress y cozas</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://dothewoo.io/make-wordpress-happy/#new_tab">Make. WordPress. Happy.</a> from <a href="https://wppodcasts.com/podcast/do-the-woo-a-woocommerce-podcast/">Do the Woo &#8211; A WooCommerce Podcast</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://share.transistor.fm/s/94234c51#new_tab">3 Predictions for WordPress in 2024</a> from <a href="https://wppodcasts.com/podcast/the-wp-minute/">The WP Minute</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://accessibilitycraft.com/048#new_tab">$2 Million Settlement Against Web Developer for Failing to Deliver Accessible Website | Surely Sparkling Rose</a> from <a href="https://wppodcasts.com/podcast/accessibility-craft/">Accessibility Craft</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://wpbuilds.com/2024/01/11/356-whats-the-state-of-teams-in-the-wordpress-space/#new_tab">356 – What’s the state of teams in the WordPress space?</a> from <a href="https://wppodcasts.com/podcast/wp-builds/">WP Builds</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://share.transistor.fm/s/64cca4dd#new_tab">Is 2024 the Year of Page Builders?</a> from <a href="https://wppodcasts.com/podcast/the-wp-minute/">The WP Minute</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p>There are new episodes every single day, so be sure to stop by <a href="https://wppodcasts.com">WPPodcasts.com</a> and search for things that interest you!</p>\n</div></div>\n\n</div></div>\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-6380_1b11d4-1a"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>\n\n\n<div class="kb-row-layout-wrap kb-row-layout-id6380_053b78-6f alignnone kt-row-has-bg wp-block-kadence-rowlayout"><div class="kt-row-column-wrap kt-has-1-columns kt-row-layout-equal kt-tab-layout-inherit kt-mobile-layout-row kt-row-valign-top kb-theme-content-width">\n\n<div class="wp-block-kadence-column kadence-column6380_7faa55-92 inner-column-1"><div class="kt-inside-inner-col">\n<h2 id="wpphotos" class="kt-adv-heading6380_59bee3-ee wp-block-kadence-advancedheading"><a href="https://wordpress.org/photos">WP Photos</a></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are some of the great photos submitted to the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos">WPPhotos</a> project this week!</p>\n\n\n\n\n<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/35865a105148eab35.43520179-scaled.jpg"><img width="1024" height="683" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/35865a105148eab35.43520179-1024x683.jpg" alt="Old house at nuwakot, an ancient house sits nestled in the middle of rolling hills, its timeworn facade telling tales of years gone by. Surrounded by nature''s embrace, the old structure exudes a quiet charm, standing as a silent witness to the passage of time." class="wp-image-6383" /></a><a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/35865a1051/">photo</a> by <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/author/theanupambista/">Anupam Bista</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.\n\n\n\n<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/48965a0bad9c44bc9.64532989-scaled.jpg"><img width="683" height="1024" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/48965a0bad9c44bc9.64532989-683x1024.jpg" alt="Green leafs" class="wp-image-6384" /></a><a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/48965a0bad/">photo</a> by <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/author/sharankrishna/">Sharankrishna VP</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.\n\n\n\n<a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/63065a0d26/"><img width="1024" height="768" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/63065a0d2692a7860.59169135-1024x768.jpg" alt="Crocodile in royal chitwan national park, Nepal" class="wp-image-6385" /></a><a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/63065a0d26/">photo</a> by <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/author/keshavsamarpan/">keshavsamarpan</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.\n\n\n\n<a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/91765a001e/"><img width="1024" height="768" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/91765a001ef1ac553.14603097-1024x768.jpeg" alt="A wide angle shot from the very top of Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, Greece." class="wp-image-6386" /></a><a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/91765a001e/">photo</a> by <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/author/desrosj/">Jonathan Desrosiers</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.\n\n\n\n<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/97659fc0c4dac781.13250590-scaled.jpeg"><img width="1024" height="803" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/97659fc0c4dac781.13250590-1024x803.jpeg" alt="Black dog napping in the morning sun with snowy mountains as a backdrop!" class="wp-image-6387" /></a><a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/97659fc0c4/">photo</a> by <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/author/bhuwanroka/">Bhuwan Bdr. Rokaha</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.\n\n\n\n<a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/894659fd7e/"><img width="683" height="1024" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/894659fd7e22ee227.42435147-683x1024.jpg" alt="Beautiful yellow blossom" class="wp-image-6388" /></a><a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/894659fd7e/">photo</a> by <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/author/sharankrishna/">Sharankrishna VP</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.\n\n\n\n\n<p>Be sure to check out the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">hundreds of other great photos</a>!</p>\n</div></div>\n\n</div></div>\n\n\n<p></p>\n\n\n\n<p>The header photo for this post is a <a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/">CC0</a> licensed <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/90465a09dc/">photo</a> by <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/author/bhuwanroka/">Bhuwan Bdr. Rokaha</a> from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s it for this week! If you&#8217;d like to get this post in your email every week, <a href="https://heropressnetwork.com/newsletter">make sure you sign up</a>!</p>\n\n<p>The post <a href="https://heropress.com/foundational-pillars-from-tokyo/">Foundational Pillars From Tokyo</a> appeared first on <a href="https://heropress.com">HeroPress</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 12 Jan 2024 16:39:25 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:29;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Matt: Forty!";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=110348";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://ma.tt/2024/01/forty/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5122:"<p>Birthdays are so great because they&#8217;re about generosity.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The act of giving, helping, is so generative.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s what we can all do for ourselves and each other.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But accepting is really hard, too! Gosh! Let it in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sometimes we don&#8217;t let the gifts in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Approaching forty has felt impossibly light and heavy at the same time for me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s so cool to be typing this into something <strong>we made together</strong>. I want you to <em>really</em> think about that. Ponder the enormity of all that came before that allowed you to be here today, and I want you to get a little bit excited, in that sacred hidden part of your heart that yearns for more.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s keep doing that. And let&#8217;s make it better and share it so everyone can enjoy it. We make the world.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve been enjoying <a href="https://ma.tt/2024/01/birthday-gift/">so much all the posts coming in for the birthday gift</a>. I&#8217;m reading them as fast as I can.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Specifically, my failure mode is I share too much. I&#8217;m too generous. I like to err on the side of open. <em>Here&#8217;s some amazing code I wrote that you have a legal license to use however you like</em>. If you ask those closest to me how I mess up, it&#8217;s that I over-extend myself and try to do too much.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ve never shared this publicly, but when the Bay Lights wasn&#8217;t going to make it the first time, I mortgaged my apartment and used that money to get it over the line. My personal finances were messy for years after that. I think a lot about being <a href="https://www.thefouragreements.com/the-first-agreement-be-impeccable-with-your-word/">impeccable with my word</a>. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>I want people <a href="https://crowdfundr.com/TheBayLights360">to give the smallest $10 donation to the Bay Lights</a> and encourage others to do the same so that we can all share in feeling that together, we can build things. And every time you see the light or bridge or think of San Francisco, you&#8217;ll think of that sacred hidden part of your heart that yearns for more, wants to leave everything better than you found it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Add some light.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let the gift in.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the part where the sounds come in and you hear <em>it&#8217;s the remix</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I find myself returning, again and again, to the <a href="https://automattic.com/creed/">Automattic Creed</a>, especially the first line:</p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">\n<p>I will never stop learning. I won’t just work on things that are assigned to me. I know there’s no such thing as a status quo. I will build our business sustainably through passionate and loyal customers. I will never pass up an opportunity to help out a colleague, and I’ll remember the days before I knew everything. I am more motivated by impact than money, and I know that Open Source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation. I will communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company. I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. Given time, there is no problem that’s&nbsp;insurmountable.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m having the most amazing day reading everything that people are sharing. I want to re-share the quote I shared on <a href="https://tim.blog/2023/12/29/matt-mullenweg-2/">Tim&#8217;s podcast</a> from Will Durant: </p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">\n<p>Health lies in action, and so it graces youth. To be busy is the secret of grace, and half the secret of content. Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>All birthday posts: <a href="https://ma.tt/2003/01/bday/">19</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2004/01/so-im-20/">20</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2005/01/hot-barely-legal-matt/">21</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2006/01/matt-22/">22</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2007/01/twenty-three/">23</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2008/01/twenty-four/">24</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2009/01/twenty-five/">25</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2010/01/twenty-six/">26</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2011/01/twenty-seven/">27</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2012/01/twenty-eight/">28</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2013/01/twenty-nine/">29</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2014/01/matt-3-0/">30</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2015/01/thirty-one/">31</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2016/01/thirty-two/">32</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2017/01/thirty-three/">33</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2018/01/thirty-four/">34</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2019/01/thirty-five/">35</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2020/01/thirty-six/">36</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2021/01/thirty-seven/">37</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2022/01/thirty-eight/">38</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2023/01/thirty-nine/">39</a>, <a href="https://ma.tt/2024/01/forty/">40</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 11 Jan 2024 21:57:31 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:30;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:90:"Do The Woo Community: Share Your Do the Woo Experience with a Guest Post on the BobWP Blog";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=78794";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:89:"https://dothewoo.io/share-your-do-the-woo-experience-with-a-guest-post-on-the-bobwp-blog/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:438:"<p>If you have been a past sponsor, guest or guest host on our shows, consider a follow-up guest blog post on BobWP.com blog.</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a href="https://dothewoo.io/share-your-do-the-woo-experience-with-a-guest-post-on-the-bobwp-blog/">Share Your Do the Woo Experience with a Guest Post on the BobWP Blog</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce and WordPress Builder Podcast</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 11 Jan 2024 10:28:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:31;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:70:"Akismet: The Top Six CAPTCHA Alternatives That Won’t Frustrate Users";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"http://akismet.com/?p=283673";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"https://akismet.com/blog/the-top-six-captcha-alternatives-that-wont-frustrate-users/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:16458:"<p>You know the drill. You’re super excited about a new purchase, commenting on a thrilling discussion in a forum, or providing feedback to an organization. You spend your time completing forms, writing thoughtful comments, or customizing your order only to find yourself trying to “check all the boxes with a stoplight in them” before actually submitting your&nbsp;information.</p>\n\n<p>Everyone hates CAPTCHA puzzles, yet businesses continue to use them to filter out spam. Today, we’re going to explore the six best alternatives to CAPTCHA, all of which can protect you from spam activities without frustrating your prospects and customers. Finally, we’ll show you how <a href="https://akismet.com/features/">Akismet</a> uses machine learning to get progressively smarter about permanent spam&nbsp;removal.</p>\n\n\n<span id="more-283673"></span>\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The downsides of CAPTCHA and why alternatives are&nbsp;needed</h2>\n\n<p>For years, users have been patient with CAPTCHA, which was one of the first solutions that helped pave the way to spam&#8209;free websites. It stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” But like all solutions, there’s always room for improvement, and in today’s day and age, we need to find a better way to fight&nbsp;spam.</p>\n\n<p>First, CAPTCHA puzzles are problematic for those with visual impairments, requiring not only the ability to see the CAPTCHA challenge but often to decipher extremely nuanced details within the images. Tests that require the user to type a string of characters can be difficult for dyslexic individuals, and some may be unfamiliar with cultural icons or graphics in visual&nbsp;ones.</p>\n\n\n<p>Second, with so many technologies focused on enhancing user experience, frustrations like the inability to solve a CAPTCHA puzzle will stand out more, negatively affecting your conversion and engagement rates. Typically, CAPTCHA puzzles can take ten seconds or more to solve and interrupt your user at a critical point in their engagement journey — right before they check out, submit a comment, or request more information.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>One <a href="https://moz.com/blog/captchas-affect-on-conversion-rates" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study by SEO software company, Moz</a>, found that many users abandon forms when they encounter a CAPTCHA —&nbsp;resulting in an overall conversion rate drop of three percent. Another <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/burszstein_2010_captcha.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">study by Stanford</a> found that only 71 percent of users even attempt to solve a CAPTCHA before abandoning the page altogether.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If that’s not enough, a CAPTCHA may incorrectly identify a real human being as a bot, blocking further interaction with a site, while allowing more sophisticated, advanced bots through.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>Researchers at the University of California in Irvine recently conducted <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12108" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a study testing both humans and bots</a> on popular CAPTCHA puzzles. The study found that bots solved distorted&#8209;text CAPTCHA tests almost perfectly in less than a second, while human beings had an accuracy rate of between 50 percent and 84 percent, spending up to 15 seconds per&nbsp;puzzle.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, it takes some significant computing power for CAPTCHAs to work properly, slowing down load times for web pages and adding to user&nbsp;frustration.</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, efforts to improve CAPTCHA puzzles are still lacking. Audio versions were supposed to be a solid solution, but <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5504799" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">analysis</a> shows that they’re more time intensive and significantly more difficult for certain users depending on their native language. <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/burszstein_2010_captcha.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Another study</a> noted a 50 percent failure rate with audio&nbsp;options.</p>\n\n\n<p>Forcing people to complete any kind of test is simply not the best option if you want to maximize engagement and conversions.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What to look for in bot and spam&nbsp;protection</h2>\n\n<p>Before jumping into the six alternatives to CAPTCHA puzzles, here are some key things you’ll want to look for when choosing your bot&#8209;detecting&nbsp;solution.</p>\n\n<p>First, you’ll want to be sure that your solution can successfully block bots and spam while allowing prospects and customers easy access to your site and offerings. Unfortunately, a static software solution won’t work, as bad actors are continuously trying to up their game with more sophisticated, human&#8209;like bots all the time. Be sure your selected alternative can stay ahead of the bot&nbsp;creators.</p>\n\n<p>Second, be sure your alternative is either much easier to complete, or, better yet, invisible to your prospects, customers, and visitors. Your goal is to reduce or eliminate friction to create a more positive overall user&nbsp;experience.</p>\n\n\n<p>Along the same lines, look for a cloud-based solution so that your page load times are unaffected by the bot-catching activities.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, you must ensure that your solution complies with global and local government data privacy rules and regulations. Remember that CAPTCHA alternatives cannot protect your site alone; instead, they must be one component of an <a href="https://jetpack.com/features/security/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">overall security program</a> to protect your site from malicious activity and threats.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What are the best alternatives to&nbsp;CAPTCHA?</h2>\n\n<p>Fortunately, several alternatives to CAPTCHA are available on the market today, working to block spam effectively, without negatively affecting your user experience. Here are the top six to&nbsp;consider:</p>\n\n\n<img width="1600" height="733" src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/image.png" alt="" class="wp-image-283675" />\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">1. <a href="https://akismet.com/">Akismet</a></h3>\n\n\n<p>Founded in 2005, Akismet has been on a mission to rid the world of spam for nearly two decades. Its solution is different from CAPTCHA, primarily because it works completely in the background of a website and does not rely on user input to identify bot or spam attacks. As a result, it protects sites from unwanted bot activity without relying on prospects, customers, or visitors to prove they’re&nbsp;human.</p>\n\n<p>More than 100 million <a href="https://akismet.com/blog/convertkit-customerstory/">customer websites</a> rely on Akismet, which has successfully removed more than 500 billion pieces of online spam from the web. Used by both WordPress sites and others, Akismet has generated one of the largest databases of spam activity in the&nbsp;world.</p>\n\n<p>In addition, the solution relies on advanced machine learning technology to continuously improve, staying ahead of the bad actors who are always looking for new ways to break through site&nbsp;protections.</p>\n\n<p>Self&#8209;hosted spam&#8209;fighting solutions can negatively affect the performance of the site itself, slowing down page load speeds. Akismet is a cloud&#8209;based solution, removing the operating activity from your site while delivering the protection you&nbsp;desire.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">2. A&nbsp;honeypot</h3>\n\n<p>A honeypot anti&#8209;spam trap is designed to trick harmful bots and spam generation programs into identifying themselves as spam. Like a real honeypot that attracts various people, animals, and insects, a honeypot anti&#8209;spam trap lures bots and spam programs with something that’s not visible to human&nbsp;beings.</p>\n\n<p>One of the most common honeypot anti&#8209;spam traps is to incorporate a field within the code that is not required or even seen by a human completing the real contact, order, or comment form. A bot, however, will scan that field and complete it, revealing its identity as a robot&nbsp;spammer.</p>\n\n<p>The honeypot then filters out and deletes that submission. While this method of spam detection can be effective for some basic bots, the honeypot anti&#8209;spam trap can be circumvented by more sophisticated spam&nbsp;efforts.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">3. Time&#8209;based form&nbsp;submissions</h3>\n\n<p>Another CAPTCHA alternative is time&#8209;based form submissions. The idea is that humans will take a certain amount of time to complete a form, submit an order, or write a comment, while bots typically submit spam responses much&nbsp;faster.</p>\n\n<p>Although time&#8209;based form submissions can work in theory to weed out the most basic bots, bad actors who are set on spam attacks can easily program a bot to slow down its activity. So companies that use this method are hoping that spammers targeting their site will be too unsophisticated to slow down their bot submissions and will just move on to other targets. This is, frankly, a fairly weak form of&nbsp;protection.</p>\n\n\n<img width="1600" height="744" src="https://akismet455732288.files.wordpress.com/2024/01/image-1.png" alt="Google reCAPTCHA landing page" class="wp-image-283677" />\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">4. reCAPTCHA&nbsp;v3</h3>\n\n<p>reCAPTCHA v3 is a more advanced bot detection solution, helping site owners identify spam activity on their website and customize the level of protection to suit their risk&nbsp;tolerance.</p>\n\n\n<p>Like the other CAPTCHA alternatives, version three doesn’t rely on user interaction to make the bot or spam determination, but works in the background of a website. It uses adaptive risk analysis to alert site owners of suspicious behaviors and should be placed on multiple pages so that patterns of abusive activities are more accurate.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>While this sounds pretty lovely, there are a fair number of downsides to using reCAPTCHA v3. First, though it allows for more customized control by site owners, it also requires advanced setup and integration with Google’s API, which could be difficult for the average site&nbsp;owner.</p>\n\n<p>There’s some <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90369697/googles-new-recaptcha-has-a-dark-side" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pushback around privacy</a>, as it provides Google with <em>a lot</em> of data, and it can also prevent the functioning of certain positive bots, like SEO&nbsp;crawlers.</p>\n\n\n<p>And while it’s good at detecting spammers, it’s known to falsely label real user interactions as spam without providing recourse for these individuals.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">5. Reimagined CAPTCHA&nbsp;puzzles</h3>\n\n<p>With reducing friction is the number one reason businesses want to find a CAPTCHA alternative, there have been developments in simplifying the puzzles themselves. For example, instead of presenting blurry pictures and asking users to identify some random item in each of them, organizations have added a field at the end of their form asking for the solution to a simple math&nbsp;problem.</p>\n\n<p>Similar solutions require checking a box to indicate that visitors are human, using a slider bar before completing the submission, or playing a short drag&#8209;and&#8209;drop game to&nbsp;continue.</p>\n\n\n<p>All of these function very much like popular CAPTCHA puzzles, but may be less frustrating for the user. Unfortunately, more sophisticated bots may be able to find ways to complete these tasks as easily or better than human beings. And any barrier, even if it’s quick to get through, will deter some positive activity.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">6. General web security&nbsp;protections</h3>\n\n<p>If you run a site, you already know the importance of site security and probably have some general protections like <a href="https://jetpack.com/features/security/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">firewalls</a>, <a href="https://jetpack.com/features/security/secure-authentication/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multifactor authentication</a>, and <a href="https://jetpack.com/upgrade/scan/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">malware detection</a> in place.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>While these can protect your site from a wide variety of cybersecurity threats and may prevent some spammy behavior in the process, they aren’t really designed to specifically address spam.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n<p>It’s important for every website to find a solution for this specific problem to keep your comment sections, form submissions, and order process free from spam and bot&nbsp;activity.</p>\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Why Akismet is the best CAPTCHA&nbsp;alternative</h2>\n\n<p>Whether you’re a WordPress user or rely on another website platform, Akismet is the best alternative to CAPTCHA. First and foremost, its ability to work completely behind the scenes means that your website visitors are released from the task of solving time&#8209;consuming, frustrating puzzles before completing an order, leaving a comment, or filling out a&nbsp;form.</p>\n\n<p>This fact alone means that you’ll improve your user experience, reduce friction in engaging with your organization, and increase conversions. All of those benefits ultimately lead to higher profits and long&#8209;term&nbsp;success.</p>\n\n<p>In addition, because Akismet has been on a mission to remove spam from the web for nearly 20 years, it has amassed a significant database of spam information and taken advantage of machine learning technology to stay ahead of spam creators. This experience and massive database means that Akismet is incredibly effective at identifying spam and is continuously improving its&nbsp;performance.</p>\n\n<p>With 99.9% accuracy, though, it’s already at the top of the&nbsp;game.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, Akismet doesn’t negatively affect the performance of your website because it operates in the cloud. This means that page load times don’t decrease, even as Akismet is busy protecting your organization from bot attacks and&nbsp;spam.</p>\n\n<p>To learn more about how <a href="https://akismet.com/enterprise/">Akismet can protect your business</a>, reach out&nbsp;today.</p>\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Frequently asked&nbsp;questions</h2>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What is&nbsp;CAPTCHA?</h3>\n\n<p>A CAPTCHA is a computer&#8209;generated test used to differentiate humans from bots. It became a popular way to block spam attacks automatically in the early 2000s. CAPTCHA tests may include checking a box, typing a series of characters, or solving a visual puzzle before comments, forms, or orders are&nbsp;submitted.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Why is there a need to find alternatives to&nbsp;CAPTCHA?</h3>\n\n<p>CAPTCHA tasks can be extremely frustrating to users, especially when they’re difficult to solve or incorrectly identify a human as a bot. They create a poor user experience, reduce conversions, and can leave a negative brand impression. They also limit engagement with visually impaired&nbsp;visitors.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Is it possible to stop spam without&nbsp;CAPTCHA?</h3>\n\n<p>Yes, fortunately, there are alternatives to fight spam effectively without using CAPTCHA puzzles. The most effective is <a href="https://akismet.com/pricing/">Akismet</a>, which not only successfully removes and blocks spam from websites, but continuously improves its performance through machine&nbsp;learning.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What is&nbsp;Akismet?</h3>\n\n<p>Akismet is a cloud&#8209;based, spam&#8209;fighting solution that works completely in the background to rid your site of malicious activity. It requires no interaction from your users, which means no added friction in your user experience. Akismet has successfully removed more than 500 billion pieces of spam from the&nbsp;web.</p>\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Why is Akismet the best alternative to&nbsp;CAPTCHA?</h3>\n\n<p>Akismet is the best alternative to CAPTCHA because it successfully blocks spam by working behind the scenes, freeing your visitors from frustrating puzzles. With nearly two decades of experience, Akismet has one of the largest spam databases available and continues to improve its detection capabilities through machine learning&nbsp;technology.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 10 Jan 2024 15:16:59 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:11:"Jen Swisher";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:32;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"WPTavern: #105 – Pascal Birchler on Revolutionizing Image and Video Processing Within WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://wptavern.com/?post_type=podcast&p=152160";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:111:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/105-pascal-birchler-on-revolutionizing-image-and-video-processing-within-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:45214:"Transcript<div>\n<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, new ways to interact with your media within WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So on the podcast today, we have Pascal Birchler. Pascal is a longstanding WordPress community member, and Core committer, with a focus on internationalization, WP-CLI, and performance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He&#8217;s been working on a project for the past six months to enhance the media capabilities of the WordPress block editor. His work includes client side image optimization, image compression, video enhancements, and speech to text features such as subtitle generation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s unlike anything that I&#8217;ve ever seen, you upload media into the block editor and it&#8217;s manipulated right there inside the editor, by the browser, not by some remote server.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is all achieved by harnessing the power of WebAssembly, and we discover what Pascal has managed to achieve thus far, and how he thinks that there&#8217;s going to be so much more to come.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We talk about how you can change images from legacy formats, like JPEG and GIF, into other, more modern formats, such as WebP and AVIF. Pascal explains how this is actually achieved, and why the new format so desirable. It&#8217;s all about reducing file sizes, server resource consumption, and the speed boost your site will gain as a result.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also get into the conversion of animated GIFs into videos, and creating videos with transcripts on the fly. And remember, this is all done in the block editor, with the browser itself as the workhorse.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pascal seems to be onto something here, and it&#8217;s really compelling listening to him argue that something like his plugin might be worthy of inclusion into WordPress Core at some point.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He explained some other projects, which he&#8217;s been working on inspired by the high volume of feedback he received after releasing his plugin.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you&#8217;re interested in pushing the boundaries of user experience, performance optimization, and compliance with evolving web standards this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other episodes as well. And so without further delay, I bring you Pascal Birchler.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Pascal Birchler. Hello, Pascal.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:42] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Hello. Hi there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Very, very nice to have you with us. We&#8217;re going to talk today, well, I think it&#8217;s broadly, we&#8217;re going to be talking about images. But there&#8217;s an awful lot of different technologies that Pascal has been working on over the, well, I don&#8217;t know how long. But I&#8217;ve only recently caught sight of the projects that you&#8217;ve been working on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pascal, just before we begin that, would you just tell us a little bit about yourself? Perhaps what your day job is, what your relationship is with WordPress, and so on. Just a little bio time really.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:10] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Sure, yeah. So my name is Pascal, and I&#8217;ve been a WordPress community member for, I don&#8217;t know, 15 years now or so. So I&#8217;ve been doing a lot of contributions around internationalisation, so like anything multilingual. But recently also performance, and day-to-day, that&#8217;s really what I&#8217;m focusing on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I started as a WordPress contributor. Then I joined Google, as part of a team that is trying to make the web faster, that includes making WordPress faster.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, the performance team have been doing great work over the last, well, I&#8217;m going to say about 18 months it feels like they&#8217;ve been in existence. But WordPress itself has been made significantly quicker, over the various iterations of the project recently.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I know that the browsers themselves have become better at doing an awful lot of things. And so I think what we&#8217;re going to talk about today will probably involve conversations around what the browsers can handle, and things like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it&#8217;s very rare, Pascal, that I watch something online to do with WordPress, or technology, and I am actually having to lift my jaw away from the floor. But a little video that Pascal posted onto Twitter, not that long ago, maybe 10 days ago or something like that, really did make my jaw hit the floor. Because you were showing things that you&#8217;ve been working on that I had never seen before.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not just that, I had no intuition that it was even possible. It&#8217;s going to make your WordPress life much better in the future, let&#8217;s hope.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you want to tell us a little bit about the project that you&#8217;ve been working on? And then we&#8217;ll get into the weeds of all of the different things that it can do, and yeah, just tell us how long you&#8217;ve been working on it, and what it really does.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:42] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Sure. Absolutely. First of all, that&#8217;s exactly the reaction that I hoped to get from people, as I&#8217;ve been working on this project, or these media experiments, how I would like to call them, for maybe half a year or so. Like I occasionally started working on it and didn&#8217;t stop, and start again.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s basically a collection of things that enhance the media capabilities of WordPress, or specifically the block editor. Most of the things are around like client side image optimisation, image compression. But also anything related to videos or speech to text, like subtitle generation.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So you just swept it to one side, really, how impressive it is. But the key component there, that was so amazing to me, was the fact that it&#8217;s all done client side. So perhaps, dear listener, the best thing to do would be to pause this episode, go and search for it over on WP Tavern, and watch from the links, the two little Twitter videos that Pascal put together, and you&#8217;ll be in a much better position.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what you&#8217;re going to see is truly remarkable. So it&#8217;s block editor based, so you&#8217;re in the Gutenberg editor. I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;ll work in any other scenario of WordPress, with page builders or what have you. But that&#8217;s the paradigm that we&#8217;re talking about.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And Pascal is sitting there, and he decides that he wants to have an image which is currently a jpeg, and he doesn&#8217;t want it to be a jpeg. He wants to reduce the size of it, so that it consumes less resources on the server, but also can be served up to the end user. He wants to pass Core Web Vitals, because he&#8217;s a good Googler.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so he throws it into Gutenberg, and Gutenberg seemingly converts it. Now I&#8217;m obviously doing it injustice. Please tell me what&#8217;s happening, because I haven&#8217;t the faintest idea how you&#8217;ve achieved this. So you put an image directly onto the Gutenberg canvas, and it&#8217;s no longer a jpeg. It&#8217;s been converted in some way, in the background, disconnected from the internet. This could be on a computer, completely disconnected from the internet. So it&#8217;s happening in the browser. How is it happening?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:07:40] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> So first of all, browsers are extremely capable of doing image compression, or even image conversion. But they&#8217;re also a little bit limited in like to what extent they can do that. So to overcome those limits, I&#8217;m using a technology called WebAssembly. Which allows basically like regular software that you would otherwise install on a computer, and bring that to the browser.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And in this case, this is an image processing library that I&#8217;m using. For example, I&#8217;m using the VIPS, or libvips image library. And using WebAssembly I can do all sorts of image rotation, thumbnail generation, directly in the browser. And then from there I will upload it to WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So is this, therefore a plugin, that you have pre-installed into the version of WordPress that you were using for the demo there. So this is a plugin that you&#8217;ve built, you&#8217;ve installed it, and I don&#8217;t if there are any settings in there. But even if you just activate it, as soon as you begin throwing images, there is the option to convert them to different formats, right out of the box. You don&#8217;t have to do anything else.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:08:42] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Correct. It&#8217;s a plugin that I started. It works without any additional configuration, but of course, if you prefer not changing the image format, but just want to compress images. Or if you prefer, let&#8217;s say WebP or AVIF over jpeg, you can say so as well. And there are a few more settings that I added, but mostly for like testing and like, trying different things out.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:09:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. I mean, it&#8217;s a first run at this project, so maybe we&#8217;ll see some things in the future. We&#8217;re recording this at the end of 2023, so it&#8217;s still really hot off the press.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But just to digress a little bit, and move away from the technology. Why have you done this? What is the purpose of it? Now I&#8217;m guessing that there&#8217;s maybe some sort of environmental impact here. There&#8217;s the cost of storage, and all of those kind of things. What&#8217;s the point? Why would you even want to convert images from one format to another? After all, it looks the same, broadly, once you&#8217;re viewing it. What&#8217;s the purpose?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:09:36] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Doing this has many advantages. So one is that if you want to do this, but you&#8217;re limited in server resources, now this allows anyone to use this technology and compress their images. And compressing images, or using a different file format, as you say, has like good impact on file size. Which means less bandwidth used, has a nice side effect of like images loading faster on your website, which is great for passing all these Core Web Vitals.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But it&#8217;s also a user experience benefit. Your visitors will see the images faster. And I think that&#8217;s the nice thing about this project, is that it has some performance aspects, but in the end it&#8217;s a lot about user experience.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:10:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So the modern versions of image formats, it may be that some of the listeners aren&#8217;t really familiar with those. I&#8217;m pretty sure that if you&#8217;ve been on the internet for any length of time, you&#8217;re familiar with jpegs, and pngs, and GIFs, or GIFs, however you wish to pronounce it. But you&#8217;re trying, well, in the video at least, you are converting them into an image format, which maybe people haven&#8217;t heard of before.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s called AVIF, but also I think you mentioned WebP as well. I know it&#8217;s maybe not in your wheelhouse directly, but can you just give us an idea of what&#8217;s going on there? What kind of reduction could we have? Let&#8217;s say if we took a, I don&#8217;t know, a two megabyte jpeg and pushed it through to be an AVIF. Roughly speaking, and I know it&#8217;s dependent upon what is in the image, but broadly speaking, what kind of benefits can you get in terms of percentages that are cut away?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:04] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Oh, that&#8217;s a great question. I think in my test video, I saw a reduction of like maybe 40% or so in file size.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:11] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Good grief. Right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:12] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> And there was like no noticeable differences to the eye. But there are like quality settings that you can change. Depending on the level of quality that you like for your use case, you can get it even further down.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:11:24] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So really significant amounts of data. You know, if your website is image heavy, then doing this, and there&#8217;s no noticeable loss to the viewer. Perhaps there is some sort of degradation, if you were to expand it, and you were a professional photographer, who knows? But something in the region of a 40% decrease.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you know if, at this point, so again we&#8217;re in December 2023. Is it possible for all browsers to be able to show these images back to us? So it&#8217;d be fabulous to be able to use AVIFs, but then obviously if a significant proportion of the internet out there can&#8217;t actually see them, because their browsers don&#8217;t support that, that would be troublesome. So do you have any inclination as to what the compatibility is with browsers, displaying WebPs and AVIFs?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:12:08] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> I think last I checked, WebP is supported by all browsers. So that includes Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and so on. And AVIF is not currently supported by default in Edge. All the other browsers support it. And in Edge, it needs to be enabled with a flag.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:12:25] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Oh, so there is support, it just merely isn&#8217;t enabled. So if you&#8217;re an Edge user, you can make it available.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So really there&#8217;s no reason not to do this if pretty much every browser is able to support this, why wouldn&#8217;t you do this? And I guess the beauty of your system that you&#8217;ve built, is that there&#8217;s no, there&#8217;s literally no thing to do. You just put the image onto the page, or the post, or whatever it may be, in the same way that you would always do, and it just happens on the fly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is there a little bit of a wait there? So let&#8217;s say, again, my image of two megabytes, something like that, jpeg uploaded. Is this happening more or less instantly in a typical modern computer, or do I have to sit there and twiddle my thumbs for a little while, as I might have done in the past if I was using a server side technology to do this?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:13:13] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> It&#8217;s pretty much instantly, but only because you don&#8217;t see what&#8217;s going on in the background. So when you drop the image in the editor, you can already see it, you can already, you know, add some gradients in the block editor, or continue writing your post. And in the background, the image is compressed, and all the thumbnails are being generated, and finally uploaded to WordPress. But you can already continue editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:13:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. So really you can just carry on with your day, keep editing as normal, and in the background this will happen.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what&#8217;s the flow in terms of where this is getting saved? So, again, we&#8217;ll use my example, I&#8217;m using a jpeg. Will the jpeg be saved in the media library, ultimately, as well? Or will just the converted image get kept? Because I know that a lot of the other server side solutions, some commercial solutions and what have you, which compress images, they have loads of options and many of them are, for example, keep the original. We&#8217;ll convert it for you, we&#8217;ll compress it for you, but we&#8217;ll also keep the original. And it may not be that that&#8217;s what your plugin does. So how does it handle the original? Where does it put that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:15] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Right now it keeps uploading the original to WordPress, in case you want to restore that or use that for, I don&#8217;t know, downloads or something. But this can be made optional, because everyone has different needs. For example, photographers prefer to have the full size images available, just in case, maybe for their clients. But this can be turned off if you prefer to save resources.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. So that, I guess, brings me to the next question. What are the settings that you have at the moment? So, you&#8217;ve mentioned that you know, you can keep the original, or delete the original, or what have you. Are you able to specify, okay, every time I upload a jpeg, turn it into an AVIF, every time I upload a WebP, turn it into an AVIF? Are there different settings in the backend there that I can configure, so that it just meets my exact requirements?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:14:58] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> You pretty much nailed it. Right now the setting is limited, like you can choose your preferred format, and it uses that. But the next step is to provide a setting per file type, so that you can really specify what you want to be for every type of file that you upload.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The settings are really fine grained in that regard. I hope them to be fine grained. There are also more settings, for example, for thumbnail generation. You can choose whether the thumbnail should be generated on the server, or in the browser as well, which is the default.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the third option is to have the client side thumbnail generation, but make it smarter. So for example, if you have a photo of a person somewhere, right now WordPress just crops like these 150 by 150 thumbnails from the center of the image. But with the smart option, it will focus on the person&#8217;s face to be in the center, just so much more useful.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:15:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Wait, it makes a decision about what to crop, based upon the content of the picture. So it&#8217;s intelligent enough to know that there&#8217;s an object over here which is of significance, crop around that. That&#8217;s great.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>How would that work for other things? This is going to go off in a strange direction. Let&#8217;s say I had a, I don&#8217;t know, a cat or something like that in the picture, but there was nothing else. There was just this singular cat, and it was top right. Is it able to intuit that there&#8217;s an object in this picture which needs focus?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:16:16] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Yeah, so the image library that I&#8217;m using tries to detect the most prominent object in a photo. So there could be an animal, or something else. Of course it&#8217;s not perfect when it&#8217;s, I don&#8217;t know, a photo of like a group of people or something, but it&#8217;s better than nothing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:16:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it has to make a decision about which person is more important in that picture. But again, just to emphasise, if you&#8217;re listening to this, we&#8217;re not talking about this data leaving your computer, getting crunched on somebody else&#8217;s machine, and then being sent back. This is all happening inside the browser, right before your eyes, or not before your eyes. It&#8217;s really just happening, and the result comes out before your eyes.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You may not know the answer to this, I hope that you do. But, why do browsers have all of this technology baked into them? What&#8217;s the reason for that? I mean, I could guess what some of the reasons would be, but I&#8217;m interested to know if you&#8217;ve got more concrete data on that. Why would a browser ship with all of these image conversion, formatting options, all the other things you&#8217;ve described?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:17:14] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Well, as I said, the browser does have some image formatting or conversion options, but they&#8217;re limited. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m able to use external libraries, through Web Assembly. And the reason that Web Assembly is a thing is it just, it makes the web so much more powerful. It allows things like Photoshop to run on the web, which previously wasn&#8217;t possible. I think for the web to still matter in years to come, browsers and websites and web technologies need to evolve, support use cases like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:17:41] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, I have this intuition, I could be wrong. But I have this intuition that in a decade from now, more and more of the things that I&#8217;m still holding out on my computer at home, will have gone over to the browser. And it feels like video and images are still in the domain of the desktop computer often, just because of, well, the amount of data that has to fly around for a start.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But also, if you&#8217;ve got an hour long video and you&#8217;re trying to edit little bits, it does seem that online solutions don&#8217;t quite make the grade yet boy, it&#8217;s changing quickly. And if we stare into our crystal ball, a year into the future, two years, five years, I feel that a lot of this will have been taken over by online tools.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we talked about the fact that you can upload an image, but it goes a lot further than that, because you can take a bunch of images. Now I don&#8217;t know how much you&#8217;ve battle tested this, whether or not you&#8217;ve put in 500, 1,000, 10,000 images. But in the example you used, I think you put three images in, and it did the same thing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So if you were a photographer, or you had a post that was heavy with images, this can all be done. You don&#8217;t have to do one at a time, wait for it to happen. It&#8217;ll just put them all into a queue, I&#8217;m guessing, and tackle them one at a time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:18:43] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> That&#8217;s exactly right. Yeah, I have this sort of queuing system that I built. It can do multiple images at a time, or only one. That depends on a lot of factors. For example, like how many CPU cores that you have on your machine.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The good thing is that everything happens in the background in so-called Web Workers. And these are separate threads from the main website, which means even if you throw more than one image at it, it will be separate from the main thread, so you&#8217;re not blocked from writing any more content. I don&#8217;t have 10,000 images on my computer to test it with, but maybe I should.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:15] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But it will cue them, and so we&#8217;re expecting it to work in the normal way. But certainly for a normal amount of images, it&#8217;s going to handle it correctly. Let&#8217;s say though, that I did throw 100 images at it, which is going to consume a little bit of time. I&#8217;m imagining, you know, there would be some human noticeable amount of time for that to happen.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then I was to stray away from that post. Close it down, for example, or go to a different screen inside a WordPress. Does the browser continue that operation? What is the connection? How is it bound? Does the post need to be open for all of this to happen? And also, what about just failure? If something fails to happen, do we get a notification to say, whoops, it didn&#8217;t do what it was anticipating to do?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:19:55] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> So yes, you definitely need to stay in the editor while the upload is in progress. There will be a warning if you try to navigate away. Of course, if this were like a single page application, where you&#8217;re not actually like changing origins, going to another website that could continue to upload. But for the upload to finish, you need to stay in the editor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If an upload errors, there will be notifications of course. Thanks to this queuing system, it&#8217;s even possible to change your mind and cancel uploads, if you prefer. For example, if you notice, oh dang, I uploaded wrong image. You don&#8217;t have to wait for the upload to finish to fix that mistake, so you can just cancel it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:20:29] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, that&#8217;s great. Now, it&#8217;s not just images though, it will handle a whole load of other things. And there&#8217;s a couple that you demonstrate. The first one is something which is, obviously something that irritates you a little bit. Animated GIFs or GIFs, however you wish to pronounce them. You&#8217;d rather that they were made into videos, and so it will do that as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you were to throw an animated GIF into it, it will recycle that as an actual image, with a play and stop button, so that you&#8217;ve got some agency about what&#8217;s actually happening on the screen there. Again, so that&#8217;s presumably just for GIFs. I can&#8217;t think of any other image format off the top of my head, which has that animation possibility. But that will create a video of the same dimensions or, what&#8217;s it doing there?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:21:11] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> So yeah, animated GIFs or GIFs are painful. WebP also supports animation, but it&#8217;s not that common. But for animated GIFs, they&#8217;re really bad for, not just performance, but also user experience, because you can&#8217;t stop them. They just autoplay, they&#8217;re super heavy in file size usually. And if you, for example, prefer reduced motion, which is like a setting in most operating systems and browsers. A GIF won&#8217;t stop. But a video can be stopped, but it can also be preloaded, can have a poster image. So it&#8217;s just way better from a user experience.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the plugin converts GIF or GIF to a video with the same size. Creates a poster image as well. So if the video is stopped, or still being loaded, you will see a preview image as well. You can have either the controls to play, pause, or it just loops and autoplays, like a GIF. You don&#8217;t see the difference.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:21:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s what we need. Agency over animated GIFs, that&#8217;s for sure. And it just all happens seamlessly. But again, another jaw off the floor moment was when I saw that you were creating video content inside the post editor. So, you know, imagine, dear listener, that you are in a post, you&#8217;ve clicked add new post, and there you are.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Shoot video from the webcam, or I&#8217;m guessing any camera that might be attached to the machine. Shoot it, save it into the media library inside the post. As if that wasn&#8217;t enough, also transcribe it in real time. Now, I don&#8217;t know if that transcription gets burned onto the video, or if it&#8217;s just something that&#8217;s happening as you are watching it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that&#8217;s truly remarkable as well. And it leads me to all sorts of thoughts about being able to, I don&#8217;t know, communicate with other people, with synchronous video, a bit like we have with Zoom, or something like that, inside of a post. I&#8217;m not entirely sure why you would wish to do that, but those kind of possibilities becoming available. How did you do that? How does that work?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:23:05] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> You bring something interesting up, because there&#8217;s like this collaboration feature being worked on in the block editor. So just imagine having a video call, and maybe saving that video afterwards, who knows?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So for this particular feature I&#8217;m again, using the powers of Web Assembly to use the FFmpeg video library in the browser. So FFmpeg is a really powerful tool set. It can do video conversion, all sort of things. And I use that in a browser to basically record the video, or take the recorded video and convert it to like a MP4, whatever is a good format for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And for the subtitles, I&#8217;m using a different solution, which is based on an open source machine learning models, that do transcription, like speech to text. And that generates a vtt captions file. Similar to srt, it&#8217;s a separate file, it&#8217;s not burned into the video. And you can use other tools to then edit the captions, or you could even build a caption editor directly in WordPress.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:24:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Most video solutions allow you to upload and combine the two, don&#8217;t they? So it&#8217;s got timestamping in, so it knows when a particular word is about to appear on the screen. And so it can handle all of that. But it creates that file on the fly. So it not only creates the video file, stores that into the media library, but if you have the option set for the vtt file, it will also save that. And presumably, because of the time that they were saved, there&#8217;s a very high probability they&#8217;ll end up right next to each other in the media library. So you could associate the two.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is truly impressive. I can only imagine what could be possible with that. Because all you are doing is showing that it can be done, and it can be saved right there. But yeah, I kind of feel that once that gets out into the wild, other developers will have intuitions as to what to do with that, aside from you, and may well wish to do something.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But you&#8217;re right, you know, can you imagine a scenario where, I don&#8217;t know, a graphic designer wants to talk to another graphic designer about a particular post, or a particular page that they&#8217;re working on and, well, let&#8217;s just hop in, and actually work on it together whilst we&#8217;re in the page. We don&#8217;t need another third party solution. I don&#8217;t know, maybe that&#8217;s a bit extreme. But absolutely fascinating how you&#8217;ve managed to pull all of this off.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You mentioned the libraries that you were using there to do the video transcoding. Again, is all of that bundled in with the plugin, or is any of this going out of our computer, out of our browser somewhere, and getting converted, and then being sent back? Or is it all happening on our machine?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:27] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> It&#8217;s all happening on your machine. I know it&#8217;s sometimes crazy to believe, but yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:25:32] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I mean, really, truly crazy. One thing that you own that I don&#8217;t own is you have an iPhone, which it turns out also has an unusual, well not unusual because there&#8217;s a lot of iPhones out there. But it&#8217;s not a web friendly image format. I didn&#8217;t even know what it was called until you showed it on the screen, it&#8217;s HEIC or HEIF. And it&#8217;s simply for Apple devices.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I&#8217;m guessing if you&#8217;ve got a Mac or an iPhone, it will show it just fine. But if you&#8217;re trying to upload that to the media library, you&#8217;re going to have a problem. So conversion has to happen there. And you&#8217;ve got a nice, another nice little option there. If you throw that in, that will also get converted, again to your preferred one. So it could be, I don&#8217;t know, AVIF or WebP, whatever you&#8217;d like.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:13] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Yeah. So it&#8217;s a super annoying format to use on the web. Right now, it will convert to WebP or AVIF, whatever you have set. The file format itself also supports like multiple frames, because on iPhone, you have this feature called live photos, where the photo is sort of like a video. So you could technically even convert this image to a video when you upload it. So you have this live photo effect also on the web.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:26:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> But it&#8217;ll do all of that out of the box. So all of that is absolutely fascinating, and we&#8217;ll get to something else that you showed in a slightly different video in a moment. The purpose of this, obviously, you&#8217;re scratching your own itch, you&#8217;ve done something which will definitely be helpful in the future. It does strike me that a lot of this is definitely within the scope of being put into core.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, I know that an awful lot of stuff comes through the news outlets each and every week about amazing WordPress products, and some of it clearly is really out of the scope of core. But do you have an intuition that some of this really could be baked into core, would be useful in core? Is that something you are going to be trying to push for in 2024?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:19] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Well based on the reactions of people to the demos I&#8217;ve shared, there&#8217;s definitely interest. Seems to be useful for many people. Be that the HEIC conversion or the thumbnail generation. So I definitely see potential for this to be in core, and it&#8217;s something that I want to strive for in the next year. But it will be definitely limited in scope. Like, you won&#8217;t see fancy video recording or something in core, I would say. So I would want to start small, focus on like an M.V.P. solution, and bring that into core and then we can go from there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:27:51] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. That&#8217;ll be an interesting thing to see. One last thing, just before we move on to your upload an image with your friend idea. Another thing which you do is, and this is curious because we had a chat about this before we clicked record. If you upload an image and that image is going to take a few moments, an opaque, hazy version of the image is shown. And it almost looks like you&#8217;re squinting your eye or something, you know, it&#8217;s gone a little bit blurred.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the technical side of how you&#8217;ve done that is really interesting, because I was anticipating it was just another image, but it&#8217;s not, there&#8217;s some really interesting work going in the background there, and gradients and CSS. Just explain what&#8217;s going on whilst we have the image load. You show us something, which kind of looks like a faded out version of the image. What&#8217;s happening?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:28:33] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> So the itch that I wanted to scratch there, is that the experience when you have to wait for images to load is really not great. Let&#8217;s say if you&#8217;re on a 3G connection on a train, or something. So what I wanted to do is have like a blurred version of the image showing. So as soon as you open the page you immediately see something. You know, oh, there&#8217;s an image that might be loaded here, and it looks interesting.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And what I&#8217;m using for that is a technology, or an algorithm called BlurHash, which generates these blurry placeholders. And usually to display that placeholder on the website, you would need JavaScript. But I&#8217;m converting this blurriness to simple CSS gradients instead. So that when you load the page, you&#8217;re not seeing another image while the main image is loaded, it&#8217;s just all CSS gradients.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:29:18] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So no JavaScript in sight, it&#8217;s just CSS, which obviously has its benefits. So upon successful completion of that image, what are you doing with the CSS that you&#8217;ve created there? Where is that data going when it&#8217;s no longer needed? Do you just expunge it and get rid of it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:29:33] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Well, you will still need it for like the next page load, right? So it&#8217;s always there, it&#8217;s always in the database. And it&#8217;s super small, like even for a larger image. The amount of gradients is not that big, so it doesn&#8217;t really impact performance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:29:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah it&#8217;s a really nice experience, because it just gives you, well, you&#8217;ve all been there where an image hasn&#8217;t even begun to load, and you get all this cumulative layout shift where things are being pushed around, and buttons go further down and everything moves. It kind of gets rid of that, because right away you get this block, which is going to be the same size and shape as the image, which will eventually load.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think in most cases these days, certainly in the part of the world where I live, we&#8217;re really not faced with those problems too much these days. But as you said, if you&#8217;re in a place where there&#8217;s a slower network or a, let&#8217;s say a 3G network or something like that, then having that as an option is great. So yeah, fascinating solution to that problem, I really like that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, I think you probably got a little bit of interest, and I don&#8217;t know if the second Twitter video came along after the first one that I saw. So we&#8217;ve just discussed what I believe is probably the first one, and we&#8217;ll discuss the second one. And I&#8217;m hoping, Pascal, in the days and weeks to come, we&#8217;ve got Christmas in the way, I realise that. But in the days and weeks to come we&#8217;re going to see many more such videos.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;ve got this really interesting idea of being able to upload images into a post, with a link, or a QR code, which I guess is a link of a different kind. But you could send it to a friend, who could then upload an image into a post, without being logged into the WordPress website. Where did that need arise? What was the scenario that you were thinking, okay, I need people to upload images into my posts, which they don&#8217;t have access to edit, and so on? What&#8217;s going on there? It&#8217;s fascinating.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:31:13] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> I have to admit, I did not come up with this idea actually. So after I published the first demo on Twitter, John Blackburn, I actually opened an issue on GitHub and he was like, hey, you know, on apps like eBay or online banking apps, for example. There&#8217;s the option to upload your receipts or something from your phone. So why not make that possible in WordPress? And I was like, oh, that&#8217;s interesting. So I built it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s really cool because, I think the scenario is, you&#8217;re editing a blog post, you want to add this nice picture and you realise, oh, it&#8217;s on the phone. Maybe it&#8217;s on your friend&#8217;s phone, or like colleague&#8217;s phone. So you can scan the QR code, or send the link for that code to someone else. And then they&#8217;re able to upload the image to WordPress. And after that is done, and you&#8217;re still in the editor, so once they&#8217;re done uploading the image, you&#8217;ll immediately see the image in your editor, you can continue editing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:32:04] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So you wouldn&#8217;t need to refresh that post and come back to it, it would just appear. So let&#8217;s say, for example, that I send you that link, and I&#8217;ve got my post, it&#8217;s half completed, but I just know that I need that image to finish it off. And I know that you, Pascal, have got your hands on it. I could send you the link. You click on the link, select the image in question, and there it is, right inside my post, immediately without a need for a refresh or anything.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s so great. That&#8217;s just such a curious thing. But now I get the point, and I guess the idea of being able to send it to somebody else is quite interesting. But the idea, certainly for me, you are right, there&#8217;s a lot which is held on my phone, there&#8217;s a lot which is held on other computers. I have a detachable hard disc over there, and quite often the computer that it&#8217;s attached to is, you know, in no way connected to this one. So being able to send myself another link over there, that&#8217;s really curious.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>It feels to me, Pascal, as if you are just getting your feet wet here. You&#8217;ve just got yourself all excited about images and what you can do with them inside of WordPress. So that&#8217;s the next question. Do you have any intuition as to what&#8217;s coming next? What fun projects you might work on.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:33:09] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Well, you know, just talking about this with you, gives me a lot of ideas. And sharing these demos with people also sparks ideas in them. And you mentioned that holidays are coming up, so maybe, I don&#8217;t know, over the holidays I&#8217;ll build something new. We&#8217;ll see.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:33:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, I would very much like to see the outcome of your endeavors. Yeah, I&#8217;ve definitely got a few ideas of what I would like. For example, being able to record a podcast directly inside the editor. I know that, obviously, video and audio are very similar, it may well already be possible with everything that you&#8217;ve done.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the ability to do things like that inside the post editor, and not have to save it elsewhere, would be kind of interesting. You know, what we&#8217;re doing right now, we&#8217;re using a third party SaaS app to record this. I can&#8217;t see any reason why all of this couldn&#8217;t potentially happen inside the block editor as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway, exciting times. And Pascal, I do thank you for piquing my curiosity. It really was quite a moment when I saw that video.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If anybody wants to contact you, if anybody has been intrigued by what you&#8217;ve said, and they want to reach out, where are the best places? We know that you&#8217;re on Twitter, but tell us what your handle is, and where else we can find you.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:34:10] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> So my Twitter handle, or WordPress.org, everywhere else is swissspidy with three S&#8217;s in the middle. That&#8217;s the best place to reach me.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:34:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Alright. Well, thank you so much. And Pascal, I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and chatting to us today. Thank you so much.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:34:25] <strong>Pascal Birchler:</strong> Thanks for having me.</p>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://twitter.com/swissspidy/">Pascal Birchler</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pascal is a long-standing WordPress community member and Core committer, with a focus on internationalisation, WP-CLI, and performance.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He’s been working on a project for the past six months to enhance the media capabilities of the WordPress block editor. His work includes client-side image optimisation, image compression, video enhancements, and speech-to-text features, such as subtitle generation. It’s unlike anything that I’ve ever seen. You upload media into the block editor, and it’s manipulated right there, inside the editor, by the browser, not by some remote server.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is all achieved by harnessing the power of WebAssembly, and we discover what Pascal has managed to achieve thus far, and how he thinks that there’s going to be so much more to come.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We talk about how you can change images from legacy formats like jpg and gif, into other, more modern formats such as WebP and Avif. Pascal explains how this is actually achieved, and why the new formats are desirable. It’s all about reducing file sizes, server resource consumption, and the speed boost your site will gain as a result.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also get into the conversion of animated Gifs into videos, and creating videos with transcripts on-the-fly, and remember, this is all done in the block editor with the browser itself as the workhorse.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pascal seems to be onto something here, and it’s really compelling listening to him argue that something like his plugin might be worthy of inclusion into WordPress Core at some point.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>He explains some other projects which he’s been working on, inspired by the high volume of feedback he received after releasing his plugin.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you’re interested in pushing the boundaries of user experience, performance optimisation, and compliance with evolving web standards, this episode is for you.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Useful links</h2>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://twitter.com/swissspidy/status/1733138082591912154">Pascal&#8217;s Twitter video #1</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://twitter.com/swissspidy/status/1735019049686368342">Pascal&#8217;s Twitter video #2</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://webassembly.org/">WebAssembly website</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://github.com/libvips/libvips">libvips on GitHub</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://ffmpeg.org/">FFmpeg website</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://blurha.sh/">BlurHash website</a></p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://twitter.com/swissspidy/">Pascal&#8217;s Twitter</a></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 10 Jan 2024 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:33;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"Matt: Sonos Tip";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:23:"https://ma.tt/?p=110280";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://ma.tt/2024/01/sonos-tip/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1204:"<p>If you&#8217;re obsessed with <a href="https://www.sonos.com/">Sonos</a> like I am, a nice MacOS utility is the <a href="https://mbc-for-sonos.app/">Menu Bar Controller</a>. <cite>Hat tip to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/miketatum/">Mike Tatum</a></cite>, who happened to be the gentleman who convinced my parents it was okay for me to drop out of college and move to San Francisco to take a job at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNET">CNET</a>. Mike&#8217;s now at Sonos and in October arranged for some top execs at <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> to go to Santa Barbara to meet with their peers at Sonos, and <a href="https://twitter.com/Patrick_Spence">Patrick Spence</a> and I did a joint CEO town hall that was broadcast to both of our companies. It was I think fascinating for both sides because of a shared passion for craft, design, culture, and execution, but our companies are in no way competitive, so it allowed for a lot of transparency. I learned a ton, and I think that kind of sharing is what increases the mimetic evolutionary speed of companies. </p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://atoms.com/">Atoms</a> are hard! I think I&#8217;ll stick mostly to bits.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 10 Jan 2024 01:50:34 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:34;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:86:"Do The Woo Community: Do the Woo is a Sponsor and Media Partner for WordCamp Asia 2024";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:28:"https://dothewoo.io/?p=78784";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:65:"https://dothewoo.io/sponsor-and-media-partner-wordcamp-asia-2024/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:402:"<p>We are returning to WordCamp Asia again, and proud to be a Media Partner again as well as a sponsor for the event.</p>\n<p>&gt;&gt; The post <a href="https://dothewoo.io/sponsor-and-media-partner-wordcamp-asia-2024/">Do the Woo is a Sponsor and Media Partner for WordCamp Asia 2024</a> appeared first on <a href="https://dothewoo.io">Do the Woo - a WooCommerce and WordPress Builder Podcast</a>	.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Tue, 09 Jan 2024 08:09:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:5:"BobWP";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 70: A Look Ahead at WordPress in 2024";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=16677";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:80:"https://wordpress.org/news/2024/01/episode-70-a-look-ahead-at-wordpress-in-2024/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:8348:"<p>Curious about WordPress&#8217;s big-picture items for 2024? Phase 3, Data Liberation, new meetups, and more, get the spotlight in this episode. Join Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy for all this, plus a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks.</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Credits</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Host:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a><br />Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a><br />Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/javiarce/">Javier Arce</a><br />Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/bjmcsherry/">Brett McSherry</a><br />Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Show Notes</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/07/03/real-time-collaboration/">Real-Time Collaboration</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Make WordPress Core</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/data-liberation/">Data Liberation</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/">Make WordPress Plugins</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://events.wordpress.org/">WordCamp Events</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Small List of Big Things</strong>\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2023/12/12/overflow-questions-from-state-of-the-word-2023/">Overflow Questions from State of the Word 2023 in Madrid, Spain</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/11/17/announcing-the-2023-annual-meetup-survey/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Annual Meetup Survey</a>&nbsp;&#8211; This is the final chance to share your feedback on WordPress meetups for 2024 and how we can improve the program in the future.&nbsp;</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Transcripts</h2>\n\n\n\n<span id="more-16677"></span>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project, some insight into the community that supports it, and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:28] (Intro music)&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:00:40] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Hello, my dears, and welcome to 2024. I hope you&#8217;ve had a lovely break. At the top of the year, I like to look around and gather the projects that the community is interested in. We can&#8217;t always commit to everything, and sometimes even the things we plan to do can&#8217;t make it across the finish line. In the next few weeks, I&#8217;ll be publishing kind of the big picture goals for the year, but I wanted to share a little bit about what I&#8217;ve collected so far.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:01:05] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Firstly, we&#8217;ve got Phase 3. This has been called a few things over the years: collaborative editing, multiplayer, co-editing. But whatever it&#8217;s been called, the biggest changes to writing and design workflows are likely to happen in this phase. A redesigned workflow can be a bit of a shock. But fortunately, we already have a prototype out there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;ll include a link to some resources in the show notes, or of course, you can always stop by make.WordPress.org/core for some insights. But I would encourage you to, at the very least, get your hands on that prototype to see what it looks like is coming in Phase 3 so that you can be aware and provide your feedback.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The next thing on our list is Data Liberation. This is a new-to-us project that was introduced at State of the Word. Fortunately, though, it&#8217;s not a new concept overall. Data Liberation is actually one of the earliest ideas that sold me on WordPress. The idea that you could set up a site for a client, or yourself, and that hard work wasn&#8217;t lost if something went wrong, was really important to me. It&#8217;s been a long time since we put any effort into our importers and exporters, and I think this will be a good focus for the year.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:02:14] <strong>Josepha:</strong> The next thing that I&#8217;ve picked up, kind of a list of three things, but there are three mid-sized areas that I want us to pay attention to this year: plugins, old tickets, and new meetups.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Plugins, because they really have turned a corner on where they ended 2023. A lot of work has been done to make sure that they&#8217;ve streamlined some efforts, gotten some better onboarding for folks as they&#8217;re going in, and we could really use a hand to keep that momentum going.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Old tickets, because it&#8217;s something that we hope for year after year when we&#8217;re talking to people about what they want in new releases. So often, part of what they say is some way to work through all of these old things that have been around forever, some with patches. And why not, after all?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then new meetups, because I really still think that meetups are the best intro to WordPress. No matter whether you&#8217;re wanting to become a developer eventually or, like, the community-building aspect is the thing that hooks you forever. Meetups are the place to encourage those and discover those.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:03:20] <strong>Josepha:</strong> The next thing on my list is also two things. It&#8217;s two things, but kind of a guess at the moment. There are two summit items that I want us to try to consider this year.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the first one is contributor recognition. Acknowledgment and recognition, I think, are two different things, and there was an entire series of sessions at the summit where we talked about it. And so I think that it&#8217;s worth us digging in on that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other thing from the summit that I would really like us to all kind of dig in on is accessibility, how we do it, how we confirm it, what we think we should do versus what we actually do, and see what we can move on the needle there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the last thing is sort of a personal wish. I think it&#8217;s about time that we take a look at the way that we kind of manage ourselves as a project, the way that we do our meetings and report on our successes, things like that. And I realize that this is a big thing, and it might be a little bit scary. But, I mean, we&#8217;ve been doing this for a really long time, and it&#8217;s probably as good a time as any, frankly, to look at what we&#8217;re doing by habit or tradition and see if it still suits us.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, that&#8217;s my back of the napkin set of notes so far. Keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks for the annual Big Picture post so you can get some context, notes, and discussion opportunities. And, of course, anything that has shown up that&#8217;s a bit bigger, a bit more final will be in there as well.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But first, our small list of big things. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:04:52] (Music interlude)&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:00] <strong>Josepha:</strong> Firstly, State of the Word had nearly 200 questions submitted, and Matt has been answering the overflow on make.WordPress.org/project. So, I&#8217;ll include a link, but head on over there to that post if you would like to catch up on those.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And then the second item, and last item, is that you&#8217;ve got a few more days left to give us feedback on WordPress meetups in 2023, and give us an idea of what we can do to improve those. I believe those close on January 14th. I really love my local meetup, and I hope that we can get some of that same sort of feeling going in all of yours, too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:05:33] <strong>Josepha:</strong> And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don&#8217;t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You&#8217;ll get a friendly reminder whenever there&#8217;s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser, or if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at wpbriefing@WordPress.org.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks again for tuning in for the WordPress Briefing, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>[00:06:02] (Music outro)&nbsp;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 08 Jan 2024 13:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Brett McSherry";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:36;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:153:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #94 – State of the Word, Gutenberg 17.2, 17.3 and 17.4, WordPress 6.5, Migrating from Classic Theme to Block Theme";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=26968";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:163:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-94-state-of-the-word-gutenberg-17-2-17-3-and-17-4-wordpress-6-5-migrating-from-classic-theme-to-block-theme/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:61310:"<p>In this episode, Sarah Norris and Birgit discuss State of the Word, Gutenberg 17.2, 17.3 and 17.4. They take a sneak peek at the WordPress 6.5 roadmap, and they discuss steps on migrating from a classic theme to a block theme.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-94-state-of-the-word-gutenberg-17-2-17-3-and-17-4-wordpress-6-5-migrating-from-classic-theme-to-block-theme/#shownotes">Show Notes</a> / <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-69-gutenberg-releases-wordpress-6-0-1-the-create-block-theme/#transcript">Transcript</a></p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Music:&nbsp;<a href="https://soundcloud.com/xirclebox">Homer Gaines</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/">Sandy Reed</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://markuraine.com/">Mark Uraine</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://icodeforapurpose.com">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class="has-larger-font-size" id="shownotes"><strong>Show Notes</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Special Guest:&nbsp;<strong>Sarah Norris</strong></h2>\n\n\n\n<p>JavaScript Developer 6.4 editor tech co-lead</p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mikachan/">WordPress Profile @mikachan</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://sekai.co.uk/">Personal website: sekai.co.uk</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://twitter.com/mikachan_">Twitter: @mikachan_</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">State of the Word</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/state-of-the-word-redesign-developer-resources-block-theme-updates-weekend-edition-278/">State of the Word, (and more) — Weekend Edition 278</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/data-liberation/">Data Liberation</a> </strong>&#8211; <a href="https://github.com/wordpress/data-liberation">GitHub repository</a>&nbsp;| Slack channel: <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C069AKUBPHB" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">#data-liberation</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://events.wordpress.org/">New WordPress events page</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.5 </h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/12/07/roadmap-to-6-5/">Roadmap to 6.5</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Tracking issues of features already in Gutenberg plugin and ready for testing\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/55277">Font Library</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/53705">Syncing specific blocks and attributes of patterns</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/55083">New data views for templates, template parts, and patterns in the Site Editor</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/55776">Robust revisions</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/54336">background image support for the Group block</a>,</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/52632#top">aligning page edit features in Site Editor and Post Editor</a></li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg plugin releases</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/12/06/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-2-6-december/">What’s new in Gutenberg 17.2? (6 December)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2023/12/20/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-3-20-december/">What’s new in Gutenberg 17.3? (20 December)</a></li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2024/01/04/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-4-03-january/">What’s new in Gutenberg 17.4? (03 January)</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Migrate classic to block theme</h2>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/health-check/">Health Check &amp; Troubleshooting</a>&nbsp;</li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/create-block-theme/">Create a Block Theme</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n<p class="has-large-font-size">Stay in Touch</p>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-group"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">\n<ul>\n<li>Did you like this episode? <a href="https://lovethepodcast.com/gutenbergchangelog"><strong>Please write us a review </strong></a></li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ping us on Twitter or send DMs with questions. <a href="https://twitter.com/gutenbergtimes">@gutenbergtimes </a>and <a href="https://twitter.com/bph">@bph</a>.</li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>If you have questions or suggestions, or news you want us to include, send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. </em></li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Please write us a review on iTunes! <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/itunes/">(Click here to learn how)</a></em></li>\n</ul>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n<p class="has-large-font-size" id="transcript"><strong>Transcript</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Hello, and welcome to our 94th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog Podcast and a happy New Year, dear listeners. I hope you all had a great time off during the holidays and a great start to the year 2024. I like the year 2024. 2023 wasn&#8217;t so good, but 2024 was good. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about State of the Word, Gutenberg 17.2, 3 and 4, and we take a sneak peek at the 6.5 WordPress roadmap, and we also discuss steps on migrating from a classic theme to a block theme.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m your host, Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and a full-time core contributor for WordPress open source project sponsored by Automattic&#8217;s Five for the Future program. And I&#8217;m thrilled to have as a guest today, Sarah Norris, JavaScript developer, theme builder and core contributor and editor core tech lead for WordPress 6.4, also sponsored by Automattic. Happy New Year to you too, Sarah. How are you today?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Happy New Year. I&#8217;m really good, thank you. I&#8217;m very ready to talk about all the work that&#8217;s been happening over the last few weeks, especially as we lead up to a fast approaching 6.5.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes, it&#8217;s fast approaching and we are going to talk about that. But yeah, catching up on everything. The year-end vacation kind of always puts a little bit of a dent in being up-to-date with Gutenberg and the block editor and this is your chance to catch up on it. We have a big show, so it might go over the hour limit, but I hope we can get it brief.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Announcements &#8211; State of the Word</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So State of the Word, there was a lot of celebration around 2023 in the State of the Word and brought it to the WordPress community. And if you haven&#8217;t watched the keynote yet, there is a YouTube video. There&#8217;s also a YouTube video about the Q&amp;A afterwards and I&#8217;ll share the link to the Weekend Edition 228. That&#8217;s the last one on Good Work Times where I shared a ton of links, so this will be in the show notes, but it was the first State of the Word outside of US, a huge success with livestream on multiple channels. And is there anything that stood out for you, Sarah?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yes. Yeah, so much fun. It was such a good State of the Word. So it was discussed how many&#8230; the number of WordCamps that&#8217;s increased. So I think we&#8217;ve doubled the number of WordCamps and Meetups, and that has to come in more and more countries as well. I attended the first UK WordCamp, so the first UK WordCamp since the pandemic last September. It was so much fun. It was held in Whitley Bay, which is in the northeast of England, and I&#8217;d just love for everyone in the WordPress community to experience this, and as the number of meets and word camps grow, I hope everyone is able to attend. It&#8217;s almost like&#8230; unable to put it into words how good it is attending local events and being part of your local community as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, it&#8217;s the live, the person-to-person interaction. It&#8217;s kind of how relationships are built and it&#8217;s such a richer experience than just doing it online. And I just happened to think of it, but there is a new page on wordpress.org, it&#8217;s called Events, it&#8217;s <a href="https://events.wordpress.org/">wordpress.org/events</a> and it has a big map with all the events happening and a list and you can filter down to location or what type of events. And so you learn about all the local Meetups, so if there isn&#8217;t one near you, there is the chance that you could actually start one. Yeah, it&#8217;s a lot of work and it&#8217;s a ton of fun. For about four years, I organized the meetup in Florida when I was still living there and I had so much fun with the local community, and I was always up-to-date on WordPress because I had to do a little intro every time and&#8230; Great speakers. So it&#8217;s a ton of fun.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So if you want to do that, the make.community&#8230; No, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/">make.wordpress.org/community</a>, that&#8217;s a handbook for meetup organizers and work group organizers, and out of the small cell of a local meetup will grow the bigger one. That&#8217;s the WordCamp. Yeah, thank you for letting me rant on about this. I&#8217;m by heart a community organizer, so I&#8217;m kind of really happy about&#8230; That those come back. Although we doubled the number of WordCamps, there is still a lot of work to be done to get on the level of pre-pandemic. So 2018 and &#8217;19, we had about 140 WordCamps around the world, which is double the number that we had last year. So we are on the way because it&#8217;s going to be maybe a hockey stick growth rate there with all the local Meetups coming back. All right, so back to State of the Word, what else stood out for you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: I&#8217;d also like to give Playground a shout-out. It&#8217;s become one of my absolute favorite tools to use when developing and testing for Gutenberg and also when building themes and plugins. I&#8217;m just so excited for what the future holds for this tool and just well done to everyone involved in building such an amazing tool as well. Yeah, I&#8217;d recommend everyone check it out if you haven&#8217;t already.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, check it out. WordPress Playground. It&#8217;s actually WordPress in a browser. You don&#8217;t need a local server and you can have a plugin, can use it for demos as can themes, but it&#8217;s also&#8230; Some of the tutorial educational content will have some Playground links as well so you can see how it actually works and&#8230; Without having you setting up all your local development and all that, so it&#8217;s really cool. Yeah. I think they&#8217;re also working on a VS Code extension, so you get a little WordPress button in your left taskbar and then you click on it, and then from the directory you can call up the Playground instance. So that would be really cool. It&#8217;s still in the works, but I think that&#8217;s the goal for it, yeah. Anything else that stood out from State of the Word?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yes. Yeah, I&#8217;m also excited about the admin redesign, so yeah, I&#8217;m just looking forward to&#8230; I think this is another maybe long anticipated feature. Yeah, like anything, any big redesign of any long-standing tool is always exciting and I think this is&#8230; Yeah, it&#8217;s just going to be incredible.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, it is. Yeah. And that&#8217;s the unification of all the list views on&#8230; List of posts, list of pages, list of categories that I haven&#8217;t tackled yet, but the list of templates. So it&#8217;s all a unified kind of system. So I really excited about that too. And it looks so modern. It looks so&#8230; Like, &#8220;Oh, this is from the 21st century.&#8221; Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Exactly.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, what stood out for me was kind of a little bit a higher level thing from State of the Word. There was a data liberation project that Matt Mullenweg announced. That&#8217;s a community initiative to bring all the tools that agencies and hosting companies put together for migration in and out of WordPress. So in and out of&#8230; From Wix to WordPress, from Squarespace to WordPress, from Google Docs to WordPress and all that. And I think that is a really good step forward to the open web, that a user or a site owner can take a hold of their own data and they&#8217;re not beholden to a centralized kind of system that doesn&#8217;t let you get out of it once you have signed up for it because the switching costs are too high or not possible at all and you have to start all over again.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I think that is a really good initiative. We&#8217;ll see how it plays out in the next year of course, but there are some&#8230; So I&#8217;ll share a few links in the show notes about that. And the other thing that stood out for me was everybody was waiting for the date of WordCamp US, which is September 20&#8230; No, what is it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: September 17th to September 20th. Yeah, September next&#8230; This year.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: September was good. So September 17th through the 20th, and if you count the dates right, there are two days&#8230; Contributor day and two-day conference. So this is kind of a new format and I&#8217;m excited to see that and how that plays out. So that&#8217;s it from the State of the Word. Anything else?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: No, I think that&#8217;s it from the State of the Word.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Of course, we also have a lot of recap posts if you&#8217;re not into video watching, it&#8217;s also on the link then.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">WordPress 6.5</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>So next up, WordPress 6.5, that&#8217;s the release coming now and it&#8217;s fast approaching. We have a schedule, so Beta 1 is scheduled for February 13th, 2024. That is feature freeze kind of thing. And I did a calculation, 38 days from today, and today&#8217;s January 5th. And the last Gutenberg release that&#8217;s going to make it new, feature-wise, will be 17.7, which is actually only three Gutenberg releases away. It&#8217;s fast approaching. After Beta 1 comes weekly Beta 2 and Beta 3 with bug fixes after testing and then brings us to release candidate one for March 5th, though in exactly two months, March 5th, 2024. That is the deadline for string freeze and also for developer notes to be published and collected in the field guide that accompanies every major release release candidate is actually right before WordCamp Asia, which takes place on March 7th through ninth.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So this is great timing because everybody who wants to go to WordCamp Asia already has a release candidate. Whoever is on the release squad can&#8230; Oh, release candidate&#8217;s done. So the major work for the release is probably done by that time and that&#8217;s a good thing. You don&#8217;t want to be on a WordCamp and have to deal with releases at all. Yeah. Final release is scheduled for March 26th, 2024. So here is your schedule for that. That seems to be a pretty good schedule in terms of spacing out the betas and release candidate, that&#8217;s some kind of tradition with WordPress release. You were on 6.4. How is the weekly kind of updates and what goes into next beta and all that? Is it particularly important?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah, yeah, the dates are important. It&#8217;s almost like time&#8230; If you didn&#8217;t think time went quick enough already, being part of a WordPress release. Yeah, I think one of my ways to deal with the release dates is usually I have a deadline for myself that&#8217;s just ahead of the important dates. So usually the Friday before a date, but also that reduces the time, because I don&#8217;t know if I&#8217;m stressing myself out more. No, it&#8217;s all good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> No, it&#8217;s all good. I think you need the Monday to do all the backboards and then&#8230; The beta releases and release candidates are all on Tuesdays because Wednesday is too late, and if you want to move it, you could move it to Wednesdays, but you don&#8217;t want to release anything on Thursday or Friday because then the whole weekend is kind of full with anxiety and communication and feedback, kind of that.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Roadmap 6.5</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah, so early December, Anne McCarthy has published the roadmap for 6.4, and it&#8217;s a very long post and we are certainly not going to&#8230; We would need to have another two-hour show to go through it in detail, but let&#8217;s look at the highlights for it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it has four major topics from the editor part, that&#8217;s design tools, that&#8217;s adoption pathways, the foundational experience, which is some of the redesign, and new APIs. And I think the first three are really interesting for users and those who build interfaces for others but not&#8230; Or do site builders that are no-code. So the fonts library, we are waiting for that for quite a while now, but I think it&#8217;s coming into 6.5 eventually, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yes. Yeah, a long anticipated feature coming to core. Yeah, so this brings font management directly to core, allowing users to edit and remove custom fonts all within the editor. It has been available from Gutenberg 16.7, so there&#8217;s some underlying changes currently going on, but if you do want to test it, you can already test it using the Gutenberg plugin. But yes, a brand new redesigned API and the UI will be coming to 6.5 and yes, it&#8217;s extremely exciting. I know I&#8217;ve spoken to so many users who are looking forward to this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And the waiting was really hard on those users that are looking forward to them because it got pulled from the 6.4 release at pretty much last minute, like Beta 2 or something like that, because it wasn&#8217;t ready for the REST API kind of thing. What&#8217;s also coming is sync specific blocks and patterns. We have sync patterns, but it&#8217;s the partially synced patterns where you can change layout and styling of a pattern, but not the content. Right now, synced patterns are when you change something on the pattern and it changes through all the instances that it was synced, but if you have partially synced, you can kind of have a little bit&#8230; You have a granular control on what should be synced, a role of the pattern instance that it was used, and what shouldn&#8217;t, and I think that is pretty much, as of this week, ready for testing. We probably need to wait for 17.5 to get it into Gutenberg plugin, but look out for that release to start testing on this.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the third item in the design tools was the section specific theme.json and Colorways. So you have multiple palettes that introduce some of the sections that you use in your theme and have a different color palette that you can style it with. I think that&#8217;s the idea there. I think the work is on the Group Block right now.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah, that&#8217;s right. Yeah, it&#8217;s like sectioning off the theme.json&#8230; Well, specifically at the moment just for colors, but I think this will be great. It&#8217;s kind of like a great gateway into expanding the design tools, especially for theme builders. And like you say, this is only going to apply to the Group Block, but it&#8217;s a good example, for instance, of a theme author being able to provide colors that work well together, but in a specific instance, so just for the Group Block. So you could make sure that text is accessible in that specific instance. I think it plays a really exciting future for splitting up theme.json, also because theme.json can get really long as well and that file can get big. So yeah, I think it&#8217;s heading in the right direction with this as well, to splitting it all.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I think it also bridges the gaps between&#8230; I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s part of it, I need to test it out, but when you have styling for certain blocks or block styles, those don&#8217;t have the design tools to further style them later on. And I think this will be one that&#8217;s built out, not just for the group log or for a certain instance, it could help with the additional styles that theme developers offer their users to also give additional styling to them.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right. And then on the roadmap, there&#8217;s a section adoption pathways, and that is to make certain features available for classic themes or make them easier to handle support for appearance tools and classic themes. So I think we have one of the change log items that we discussed further is about colors and dual tone and color settings, and then also improved pattern management for classic themes. Yeah. You wanted to say?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: I was just saying yes to the features that are coming up in the Gutenberg releases we&#8217;re talking about. Yeah, I noticed there was a lot in relation to the appearance but also the classic themes. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And then for the foundational experience, that&#8217;s the part where the data views come in on the roadmap and they will come in for templates, template parts and patterns in the site editor. At least that&#8217;s on the roadmap, but they are also&#8230; You can already test those, but you need to open up the experiments tab for that to switch them on and then you can see them for pages, you can see them for&#8230; Patterns? No, not patterns. Patterns is the only one that doesn&#8217;t work yet, but for templates and template parts, and definitely a feature that needs feedback, that needs definitely testing and bug fixing, especially for backwards compatibility for the previous versions. That&#8217;s definitely something, if you want to dive into how things are going. The next one, it&#8217;s called robust revisions. Do you know what that is about, Sarah?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: So this is improving revisions but across multiple places. So I think we&#8217;ve started templates and template parts, so they&#8217;ll now show revisions alongside style revisions and you can also compare this revision side-by-side as well, which I think is brand new. And we&#8217;ve also added pagination. So yeah, a whole ton of improvements for revisions.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right. Yeah, definitely.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: We&#8217;re also integrated with the style book now. This may be coming up as well, I think in the change log, but yeah, we integrated with the style book.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s definitely something you need to test, you want to test and it&#8217;s a part of the bigger project also to have revisions for any post metadata, which hasn&#8217;t happened in WordPress before. So a lot of plugins probably will be happy to use those revisions screen when they&#8217;re ready and available for extensions as well. And then one thing I&#8217;m pretty excited about, but it has also seemed to be quite a complex issue to actually have a customizable Navigation Block for mobile headings or navigation, the little hamburger, what goes in and what goes out because it&#8217;s never going&#8230;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of the time it&#8217;s not one-to-one with the normal site navigation, but there will be an overlay that you can switch in and out, but it seems to be quite complicated. I looked at some of the issues, one of the issues exactly, and it has a long discussion on which way to go on it. So it&#8217;s still in the design phase, I believe. Not sure if it&#8217;s going to make it to 6.5, but maybe it&#8217;s easy once the design questions are all answered to then dive into the development. But yeah, computers are involved, so nothing is really easy. I don&#8217;t know how you see that, if you have some insight into that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: I know it&#8217;s a lot. So I think on the face of it, especially because it sounds like it&#8217;s a section of the Navigation Block, but I think when if&#8230; Anyone who&#8217;s built a responsive navigation knows it&#8217;s not simple, so then as soon as you start trying to do it, to cater for so many of the people to be able to build this kind of tool. Yeah, it&#8217;s pretty complicated, but there&#8217;s some really good work going into this, some good conversations. Yeah, we&#8217;ll get there. And I think all the discussions and a long design discussion, it always ends up with a good first pass.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And then there are three new APIs coming with different outlooks, kind of, or goals. The Interactivity API we have been talking about for about a year now, and some of the Core Blocks are using it in a private API, but for 6.5 it&#8217;s coming out of experimental and will be a public API for everybody who develops blocks to be able to use the custom fields API and binding API, I&#8217;m not quite sure how far along they are. They haven&#8217;t been released yet in a private API kind of setting. I&#8217;m not sure they&#8217;re actually going to make it. There will be underlying&#8230; They will support some of the new features but in a private API to see if they all work as they&#8217;re supposed to be working. I think that&#8217;s pretty much the high level idea about that. And then lastly there will be some&#8230; There&#8217;s PHB compatibility work.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s a rollback between plugin and themes, updates with automatic updates. That has been testing also for quite a few months and is supposed to come also a better handling of plugin dependencies. And of course, the performance team does a fantastic job in going after all those performance improvements that are possible with WordPress, be it for the block editor or for PHP or for the backend as well. So those are also coming to 6.5. But as Matias and Matt said, just because we say phase two is done, doesn&#8217;t mean the work is done. So there will be UX iterations and quite a few listview background image support for Group Block, some of it is already there. Then revisiting template versus content editing modes. That kind of confuses a lot of people. &#8220;Are we adding a template or am I adding a page or what am I doing here?&#8221;</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those questions come up with testing quite a bit. And then what has been progressed quite a while is to align the edit features that are available in the site editor and the post editor. So it can be reused is pretty much&#8230; That&#8217;s one thing. And users, the advantage of it is that users don&#8217;t have to relearn what&#8217;s available in which editor because they&#8230; Maybe that&#8217;s also part of the confusion that we have on, are we editing templates or content. And so the background image support and the aligning the features are ready for testing. I think there has been some great progress made in the Gutenberg releases. And then the last point is adding box shadow component. There is box shadow support, but I think it&#8217;s only made available for theme.json level but not for user interfaces. Is that right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah, that&#8217;s right. Yeah. So the work for 6.5 will expose this to the UI as well, so end users can use the box shadow component as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. We&#8217;ll see how that all&#8230; And then the last thing that&#8217;s on the roadmap is that the minimum version for MySQL is going to be raised from 5.0 to 5.5.5. Very specific, but look out for it and talk to your hosting company to make sure that there is an upgrade path if you&#8217;re still on an older MySQL version. All right, so anything else about the roadmap that you want to add?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: No, I think that was everything. It&#8217;s a very long roadmap.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s ambitious. Yeah. Roadmaps are always quite ambitious. And then you see on Gutenberg 17.6, we&#8217;ll see how we wiggle down that ambition a little bit and kind of what&#8217;s realistic and then we&#8217;ll see what&#8217;s coming into 17.7. Yeah, that&#8217;s the last one.&nbsp;</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s Released &#8211; Gutenberg 17.2</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>All right, so let&#8217;s go into the weeds. And we start with Gutenberg 17.2, it was released on December 6th. Wow, that&#8217;s a month ago. And there were a few things that stand out and one was the data views, and that added extra context to&#8230; So the data views are the ones that are in the admin section, the list of things, list of properties or entities or whatever you call it, I call them things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so there are quite a few features in the old admin screen that needed to come in a better way into the new admin screen. And there was kind of a filter row, the table header pagination and there&#8217;s extra&#8230; You can now scroll down and have the larger data sets. You don&#8217;t have to scroll up and down. So there&#8217;s a sticky table header that&#8217;s really good. That wasn&#8217;t available in the old one. So that&#8217;s the first&#8230; Yay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s very helpful, especially when the scroll bar is really long, so you don&#8217;t have to remember&#8230; The pagination is also sticky as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh yeah, that&#8217;s great.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Same with that, you don&#8217;t have to scroll&#8230; Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Good. And then one of the things is that drag and drop is now a little bit more refined. There was a problem to drag and drop to the beginning of a post or page and to the end, and contributors have figured out how to make this better and actually functioning. And so it kind of virtually enlarges the area. It was really irritating that you could do it in the second one. You can drag into between the first one and the second one, and then you had to move it up if you wanted to get a block to the beginning of something. So it&#8217;s really good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah, yeah, it was really finicky. It was like you were fighting with the top on the blocks. It was just like it wants to drag you into this, but yeah, and now you don&#8217;t have to fight.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, yeah. I also think that the drop zones are better marked now than at the previous versions of the block editor. So I&#8217;m really grateful for that. I just it saw, that the list view&#8230; You can also now drag into a collapse block in the list view, which is really cool. So you don&#8217;t have to just first expand a block to put additional blocks into a Group Block or a Columns Block or something like that. So you can just drag it there. Of course, the order of that, that&#8217;s random. But yeah, once you get them in, you can organize it.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah, that&#8217;s cool. It&#8217;s less clicks, it should be less clicks.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Do you want to take the next one?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah, what else have we got? So we&#8217;ve also got the adding the toolbar for distraction free mode. So distraction free mode removes all of the UI? All the UI. So you are only looking at your content and you&#8217;re only&#8230; So you can write a long blog post hopefully. The problem with this is that it could be hard to format some of the content. So this brings in the toolbar when you mouse over the top of the editor, it&#8217;ll bring in toolbar when you&#8217;re in distraction free mode. So yeah, I recommend checking that out as well, if you haven&#8217;t checked that distraction free one.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, I really like it. And it should be actually a default setting for the writers of the users that still like the white box from the old classic block editor that&#8230; And there is no distraction, every time you move the mouse or you move the keyword, there&#8217;s something popping up and coming down and you don&#8217;t remember where it was and what it was and it kind of totally gets you out of the flow for your writing session. So distraction free mode is a really&#8230; Extension there, and refinement definitely helps with all the writing tools in the block editor.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So the Gallery Block now has styled scroll bars for the image captions, which is really an additional design tool because the image captions were always a little bit randomly placed on the Gallery Block. Yeah. The Interactivity API, they add&#8230; Luis Herranz, I think, did the proposal to have the Interactivity API use modals instead of scripts on the front end, which kind of makes it native JavaScript&#8230; A little bit closer to native JavaScript. So I think that&#8217;s for the developers amongst us to check out. And do you have any thoughts about that?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: I&#8217;m really excited about the Interactivity API going out into the world. I think it really opens up&#8230; Well, so I&#8217;m from a front-end development background, so if I wasn&#8217;t already working at Gutenberg and I was building WordPress sites, I would be really excited about this. I&#8217;d be looking forward to using it so much. Yeah, it&#8217;s basically&#8230; I don&#8217;t want to say it&#8217;s React and you can look under the hood, what it actually is, but yeah, it basically surfaces so much functionality to the WordPress front end.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: There wasn&#8217;t before.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Especially you&#8217;re building custom block.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So check it out as it&#8217;s coming to 6.5 as a public API, so let&#8217;s definitely start checking it out. There are efforts to bring introductions to the Interactivity API as well as case studies to the developer blog. I&#8217;m not quite sure they will be ready by March, but definitely subscribe to the WordPress developer blog on developer.org&#8230; <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/">wordpress.org/news</a>. So you get notifications when there&#8217;s a new post coming up, and it actually has some great additional tutorials in there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Talking about documentation, there was an initiative to put the fundamentals of block development, rewrite some of that or put it in a different order. So when you&#8217;re trying to learn more about block development, that the official documentation in the block editor handbook helps you get started and learn all the concepts about the file structure, registration of a block, the block wrapper, working with JavaScript and the block, what block.json can do for you, landing and first pages and the landing pages and all. And they&#8217;re all kind of getting a revamp.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the same time, Riad, I think it&#8217;s mainly Riad Benguella who is also writing the documentation for using Gutenberg as a framework, as a platform outside the WordPress context. It hasn&#8217;t been published yet, but if you fork the Gutenberg repo and you can start reading it. And he has some great tutorials on attributes, definitions, transform pages and blocks, and also the block supports for the framework, which is a little bit&#8230; Works a little bit differently than in the WordPress context, of course. So this is pretty new on the&#8230; And then, of course, there&#8217;s always some work to be done on the documentation with the new components, theme.json, and also template names and web pack options and all that. So this is highly technical and I would suggest you read the change log on the documentation part, if you&#8217;re interested in that and learning about new things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I think, yeah, it&#8217;s also the Create Block scaffolding. I don&#8217;t know if you have used it, Sarah, but I&#8217;m a big fan of that scaffolding tool since the beginning because I don&#8217;t have to remember all the things I need for a plugin that has a block. And you can also use an interactive template that makes the new block ready-to-use Interactivity API. And because there&#8217;s a new Store API for the Interactivity API, the Create Block scaffolding tool has already been updated to use that. So this is pretty cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s very cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Very cool. And I think that&#8217;s it from Gutenberg 17.2, and we go right headfirst into 17.3. Do you want to start us off?</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 17.3</h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah, sure. So this also included many improvements to the revision changes like we highlighted before 6.5. So 17.3 included adding a brief summary of the revision changes to global styles. So when you view the revisions in global styles and you click on the dates, it&#8217;ll now give you a brief summary of the blocks that would change and the styles&#8230; Yeah, the blocks that would change with the style changes. Yeah, it&#8217;s very good.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, that&#8217;s excellent. And there&#8217;s also enhancement of the social icons that is now using or adding the Gravatar service and it&#8217;s also updated. Well, sometimes I&#8217;m really cool. I&#8217;m really excited when I see consistency be applied to all the controls. So the default typography controls are now consistent across all the blocks, because different contributors write the different pieces of it, and then once you have the pieces you kind of need to see, okay, how can it make this a little bit more consistent, because then it&#8217;s easier on the eye end. You don&#8217;t have to worry, why is that distance longer than the other one, or whatever. So that is really good work. It&#8217;s God&#8217;s work, but it&#8217;s not always appreciated or seen that much. So I wanted to point that out. The same is also&#8230; Or the color dimensions of the List items Block, I think that&#8217;s new. That&#8217;s an enhancement for the List Block. So you can do the margins and the padding around list items. You can also have controls over it. It&#8217;s really cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: The preference is modal as well. It&#8217;s also had a nice update, maybe something you wouldn&#8217;t expect to see updates for, but in 17.3, it&#8217;s had an organization update with the introduction of some new panels for appearance and accessibility settings.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, that&#8217;s really cool.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Nice UX enhancement.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh yeah, there were also some updates to the external&#8230; Have you ever noticed the external images panel in the Post publish sidebar?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yes. Yeah, right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That&#8217;s such a cool feature. So what does it do? And it kind of seems to be unnoticed, but it helps you. So if you copy paste from a different webpage or from Google Docs into your block editor canvas, out of the box or automatically, it links the images from the original space. So once you publish it and you delete the Google doc where&#8230; Yeah, all of a sudden your images go away or if you migrated from a different webpage, those external images don&#8217;t come automatically over. So each of the images in the toolbar has an upload to your own media library. But if you have 10 images, you don&#8217;t want to do it one at a time. And when you publish the post, the pre-published view has kind of thumbnails of all the images that are external and gives you a button to upload them all at once into your media library before you publish your post. I think that&#8217;s genius.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: It is.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Because in the preview you see the images because the original place still has them, and all of a sudden the post goes away. We actually have met the developer blog quite a bit when&#8230; So it&#8217;s a really cool feature.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah, it is. It&#8217;s something that&#8217;s maybe easily forgotten about as well because like you say, if you&#8217;re copying and pasting, like a lot of people do, and then you&#8217;re just like, &#8220;Yeah, they&#8217;re showing, they&#8217;re fine,&#8221; and you can just easily forget about them. Yeah, so really good feature.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, really good. Well done, Ella. So was that all that we had? I think there wasn&#8217;t a whole lot of&#8230; In that release, but I like all the accessibility improvements that are listed in there and the performance as well. There&#8217;s quite a few performance improvements, just because improving the code quality and having not so many calls to the same feature or same store kind of reduces that load times and the reloading of things. The experiments, I&#8217;m pretty much done with that. Are we? 17.3?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: I think there&#8217;s one about the update for matching the front-end layout class names between the editor and the front end. So it&#8217;s a minor change, but I think anyone who&#8217;s working with CSS, especially with WordPress, will appreciate any updates like this where the generated layout class name in the editor will now match to the front end.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: So yeah, it&#8217;s a nice little enhancement.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So those who have dealt with that before, they need to revisit the code to not&#8230; Are there compatibility issues with that or&#8230;?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: No, I don&#8217;t think so. I think just going forward the class names will match. So I guess previously there would be a lot more work involved, so things should be more simple going forward. So I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s any backwards compatibility.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Good, good, good. Yeah, sometimes I wonder when CSS changes come. And we had a few hiccups with releases there as well. Yeah. All right, well, we are really good.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Gutenberg 17.4</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>We are through 17.3, and then this week Gutenberg 17.4 was released and also had a few highlights, and definitely the unification between site and post editor has progressed rapidly. So now we have Page Attributes panel, post taxonomies panel, the view link thing, panel. Discussion panel and feature image panels are now available also in the site editor. And that&#8217;s really good. So when you create pages and edit pages, you have all the tools that you need there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Next one, there&#8217;s so many improvements to the DataViews as well with this release. So we&#8217;ve stabilized the experience of the template screen, making it available outside the experiments flag and without the additional views options, but templates have been marked as stable. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So DataViews testing is now on. If you install, you can use the plugin also on the test site or on Playground and install it there and test those template pages. So the DataViews of that is really&#8230; You can start now. For the design tools, the 17.4 has the first iteration of support background image in the Group&#8230; Well, we had background image in the Group Block before, but now it also has some tools, controls for the background size and also for tiling or repeat feature on the background image. So there&#8217;s a cover option there that means it covers the whole size of the Group Block, or you could have a contains option that it contains the aspect ratio and the Group Block can display something on top or below. But with that you can also enable the repeat feature and then it would only repeat in one dimension.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So if the block is longer than the image, then it would repeat in the height of it and if the Group Block is wider than the background image, then it would tile it in the width of it. And then there&#8217;s a custom size. So you can say, &#8220;Okay, use that background image but only in the size of 200 width and then repeat it.&#8221; And then it gives you the repetition over the full set of the Group Block. Did I explain this right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, expanding the background image options to include cover and contain, and then with all those options you just described. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And I think that&#8217;s pretty cool because then you can have some great&#8230; Well, some people say it reminds them of GeoCities, but that&#8217;s not a bad thing. Giving more controls to the user and to designers to make some interesting layouts and interesting designs for the websites.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: And I think anything that reminds me of GeoCities can only be a good thing. Maybe that&#8217;s just my age showing.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Or mine. I love it. Played quite a bit of a part. The next step?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: We&#8217;ve also got some updates&#8230; Yeah, the global Styles revision. So we mentioned these as part of the 6.5 roadmap, but as part of 17.4 we&#8217;ve got some updates to the revisions for adding pagination and the integration into the Style Book. So global Styles revisions, you can now navigate between lots of different revisions over multiple pages of revisions and you can also see them from the Style Book itself as well. And I think that that really highlights the Style Book as such a useful tool as well, especially for styling. It&#8217;s in the name, Style Book, but especially for styling many blocks, many blocks at a different&#8230; Sorry, at the same time, rather than&#8230; I don&#8217;t know if maybe some people who are new to the editor may feel that they have to edit certain sections in different places because things feel new and they&#8217;re all over the place. If you start with the style book and you can see all the blocks in one place, I think it may help understand how they all interact with the different styling and how they interact with each other as well.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And the Style Book is actually something that I, at the beginning of the block editor when I was trying to figure out if they&#8230; In 2018 actually, trying to figure out if we should enable the block editor for certain websites, and I was putting all the blocks in one post and then make them available for that particular site. And then we were able to look through it, how do the blocks behave? Whereas the styles need to be adjusted so they actually show the cover block and all that. And the Style Book is really replacing that totally. But it&#8217;s really helpful for&#8230; As you said, you have so many places where you can change the appearance of a block, of an element, more of a&#8230; That, or of a section, that it&#8230; Or in a post or globally on the style IU, you sometimes have a hard time figuring out, &#8220;Where did I change that or where is that red line coming from?&#8221; So the Style Book really helps you with that, to kind of track that down.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: We&#8217;ve also got the right-click for blocks. So yeah. So in the list view, yeah. So you can now right-click blocks in the list view, so on the left-hand side when you&#8217;re in the editor, and it&#8217;ll open the block settings panel for that block. And I think this is super cool because it makes Gutenberg feel a lot more like an app. It already feels like an app. And then we&#8217;ve got the admin redesign coming as well, and now we&#8217;re going to have right-click menus. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, right-click menus. Yay.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Right, yeah. Right-click menus, yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And that&#8217;s the block settings menu that will come up. That&#8217;s where you have add, before and after, copy things, create patterns. Those are the menu items that are in the block settings menu that shows up when you right-click on a block in the list view. It also makes you streamline the whole process quite a bit because you only have one list view and you don&#8217;t have to scroll up and down the canvas, you can just kind of collapse and expand on the list view and do some fine-tuning there. What&#8217;s also quite interesting here is in 17.4, all the performance enhancements or improvements that people are working on as well, most of them, again, also store subscriptions and improvements that take down the load times and the reload times. So that is definitely yay to the performance improvements. There are quite&#8230; I don&#8217;t know, I haven&#8217;t counted them, but it might be 40 or so items that are concerning the data view.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So that experiment is really progressing quite a bit. So even if that&#8217;s the template part, you can enable the experiment and then get all the other data views as well to test things. Yeah, list view, the sync patterns is kind of working. Yeah, the documentation updates, one is that there is a new build your first block tutorial in the Getting Started section of the block editor handbook. And I&#8217;m not quite sure how finished that is, but it&#8217;s definitely something to keep an eye out for that, as it made the start of your block development experience easier than before. At least, that&#8217;s the hope. And if it doesn&#8217;t, yell at us. It&#8217;s good to get your frustrations out because that&#8217;s how we learn, we&#8217;ve got to get over it, then we need to get back to it. I did one of the courses, the data layer introduction course on <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">learn.wordpress.org</a>, and I&#8217;ve really found it quite interesting to go through that.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I learned so much about using the components also for plugin outside the block editor context and a plugin settings page, and also how to interact with the WordPress data. And I shared my enthusiasm for that course on Twitter. And then someone who also went through that said, &#8220;Well, it&#8217;s not always quite clear which code examples need to be changed to get to the next step.&#8221; And I said, &#8220;Yeah, you&#8217;re not alone.&#8221; And I definitely have a set of notes for that, for the faculty member who created the course, but I also found it quite satisfying that I actually figured out what needs to happen. And that&#8217;s part of the learning piece, that you cement the learning so much better when you figure it out yourself than somebody spoon feeding that to you. So I&#8217;m in two minds about that. But yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: You can fall into the trap of just copying and pasting everything, if everything is there. But I also understand examples are amazing to be in docs. So yeah, we need a good balance of just enough examples to get people to figure out the next thing on their own so they feel like they&#8217;ve learned something too.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And I think it&#8217;s also&#8230; It might be the experience of a web developer that we had to figure out so much before on our own that it&#8217;s kind of part of the habit, too. &#8220;Yeah, it&#8217;s not working the first time.&#8221; That expectation is not there, so we always have to figure it out. Same with using different scripts and all that. As I said, computers are involved, easy is not always easy as it seems. But if you are on the developer path and you&#8217;re listening and want to learn something, they have some great courses on the learn.wordpress.org site, and they&#8217;re relatively fast to get through. Not always easy, as we said, but yeah. And speaking of which, the easy part, I think we are through with Gutenberg 17.4, right? So this time you got it, three Gutenberg releases in one hour, just about.</p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What’s in Active Development or Discussed <strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah. But I sat down on a quest during the holidays&#8230; Or between the holidays or between the year, as we say in Germany, between the year, I sat on a quest to migrate the Gutenberg Times to block theme, and I now take the opportunity to have discussed that with Sarah, who&#8217;s the professional theme developer and builder of tools, to see if I&#8217;m on the right track. So I migrated Gutenberg Times off to a different hosting to Pressable. They&#8217;re very impressive. It&#8217;s a really great hosting company, but that was the first part of it. So now I wanted to scope out what needs to change visibly, and I thought, &#8220;Okay, how can I look at 2024 without changing my front end and without getting all my site door mixed up?&#8221; And I remembered there is this site health and troubleshooting plugin from the WordPress community where you can kind of switch to a different theme for the admin, but the front end stays the same.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The visitor sees what they see and you don&#8217;t change it. So I enabled the 2024 and the necessary plugins that I needed for content, like the plugin&#8230; The podcast plugin or the blocks that I have from a different plugin. I use the Post Grid block from the Genesis Blocks for a long time. So I needed to enable that. And then I navigated the site like I was the visitor and took notes. I have a list of to-do items, and so I get the scope for that. And now, but how do I execute that? So I was thinking, and I wanted to check with you, Sarah, if that&#8217;s the right approach or if there&#8217;s a better way to do this. So I would create a clone of my site, then install the Create Block Theme plugin, which is in the repository. Then I would activate for real the 2024 theme and then make the changes to the template, create new templates, change the styles of things, and then, what? I export the new theme and then upload it to the live site? Would that be a good place? Good way to do it?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Yes, I think so. A really good shout out to the Site Health plugin as well, I never would&#8217;ve thought of it. Yeah, it&#8217;s a good starting point. Yes, I think&#8230; So you&#8217;ve already created a clone of the site, so you&#8217;ve isolated a copy of your site, you&#8217;re working on that as a separate theme and then you&#8217;re going to export that as the new theme in order to activate it on your live site. So yeah, I think that sounds like a perfect workflow. The only other option I was thinking was that&#8230; But I don&#8217;t think in your specific case&#8230; I&#8217;m not sure how much it&#8217;d help, but just to put another option out there, Create Block Theme also has the option to start from scratch, so create a blank theme rather than starting with an existing theme.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I definitely would recommend starting with 2024, but I know that some people, especially if you&#8217;re used to designing from scratch or a blank canvas, some people might like to start from a blank theme and you do have that option with Create Block Theme. So yeah, you&#8217;ll get completely empty templates, empty pages, but it will be a block theme starting point, so you don&#8217;t have to figure out how to actually get started.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, good. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: In the theme technical terms. But yeah, you&#8217;re ready to start inserting things into the page templates and creating new menus. So yeah, probably if you&#8217;ve got an existing site. I guess it depends on the layout, and you could also choose another existing block theme that maybe matches the current classic theme more closely. But yeah, so it depends on your use case. I guess the biggest thing to decide is where your starting point is going to be, whether it&#8217;s an existing theme, a default theme, or the blank theme that comes with Create Block Theme. But yeah, the approach you suggested sounds perfect. Yeah, export a new theme and then you can upload it somewhere. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay. Yeah. All right. Okay. Yeah, so I&#8217;m not missing any step and then be surprised, like, &#8220;Oh no, that doesn&#8217;t work.&#8221; And start from scratch again. No, I think I want to start from an existing theme. So with the step on the Site Health and troubleshooting plugin, you could install&#8230; Or before you enable the troubleshooting mode on the plugin, install other plug themes. So I would think maybe Brian Gardner has some&#8230; Two block themes, the Frost and the Powder. Then Ellen Bauer has two great themes. One is the AinoBlock and the other of the Aino theme, but I think it was an earlier block theme. And then the latest one is MOOC, which is actually for magazine sites, which I am going to review again to see if that matches up. It&#8217;s quite a nice theme. And then my classic theme is Excel from&#8230; And there&#8217;s Norén, who also has quite a few block themes, and is actually an early adopter of block themes. And he has, I think, four or five block themes in there.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I&#8217;m not yet quite sure on my decision on the 2024 theme, but Eat Your Own Dog Food is probably&#8230; That&#8217;s where I&#8217;m going to end up. But I like exploring the different themes. And the troubleshooting mode on the plugin, SiteHealth plugin, is definitely helping quite easily because you don&#8217;t have to set up a new site and all that to just test out some of the themes. And of course I could do Playground&#8230; No, I can&#8217;t. Well, there are ideas around Playground to actually create a copy of your site and then you can test things out. But I think that&#8217;s not that far yet. But keep out, watch out for Playground, it can really help you with things.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: At the moment, with Playground, you could install the Create Block Theme plugin in a Playground instance and then build a theme in that instance and then export it from there. So again, maybe not a hundred percent for your use case, but just to know there&#8217;s another option, yet another option out there. It&#8217;s good for isolating the WordPress instance, and you don&#8217;t have to worry about all the other things that come with it, like hosting and setting up WordPress, obviously all the benefits of Playground. So you can just start from Create Block Theme, basically.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That&#8217;s so true. So any designer could just use Playground, click on one button on the Playground site and then install the plugin. And then once you&#8230; The Create Block Theme and then create from scratch or use the 2024 one and then export it and use it on any other site. But it goes away, right? Playground goes away again, when you close the browser, right?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: You can now change the option so it will persist. So yeah, there are other options. So if you&#8217;re looking for these options, they&#8217;re in the top right when you visit the Playground site. But yeah, so not everything disappears now when you close the Playground, you can persist it in the browser, in the browser history.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Wow, that&#8217;s fantastic. You don&#8217;t even need anything, any websites. Yeah, you can just use Playground to persist it. All right, well, this has been such a great show to talk to you about and chat about. Thank you so much, Sarah. So when people want to reach you, where do they find you?</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: I am mikachan or mikachan underscore. Someone else has already taken my username on everywhere, basically, on wordpress.org and Twitter and yeah. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Please reach out. Yeah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And I will share the contact information in the show notes so you can follow up with them. Well, this was the first show of 2024. Thank you so much, Sarah, for being here and being my&#8230; Keep me straight on the straight and narrow here. And as always, the show notes will be published on the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/">gutenbergtimes.com/podcast</a>. This is episode 94, and if you have questions or suggestions or news, just send them to <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. That&#8217;s <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. So thank you all for listening. Hope you all have a great 2024, and until the next time. Bye. Bye, Sarah.</p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Sarah Norris</em>: Bye.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 08 Jan 2024 11:48:16 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:37;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n	\n";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:119:"Gutenberg Times: Happy New Year, WordPress Enterprise, Developer Hours and an Interactive Game –  Weekend Edition 279";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=26820";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/happy-new-year-wordpress-enterprise-weekend-edition-279/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:21801:"<p>Howdy, </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wishing you and yours a prosperous, happy and healthy 2024, with a lot of success, lots of laughter and a lot of love. &nbsp;🤗 </p>\n\n\n\n<p>After two weeks of vacation, it&#8217;s been inspiring to catch up. Many developers, freelancers, and site builders use the downtime around the holidays to work on their side projects or sit down to write about their learnings. What was your side or writing project? I want to know! </p>\n\n\n\n<p>For me, it meant moving the Gutenberg Times to a new hosting space.  I feared it to be difficult going from a very opinionated hosting environment to <a href="https://pressable.com/">Pressable</a>. I was pleasantly surprised how, with the help of customer service, we got it done in a matter of minutes. What took the longest was the propagation of the DNS server changes over the Internet, that took roughly an hour. The main reasons for the switch was that using <a href="https://wordpress.github.io/wordpress-playground/">WordPress Playground</a> with <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Gutenberg Nightly</a> didn&#8217;t work at the old host. After testing various configuration also on other hosting spaces, I am excited that it worked out of the box on Pressable.  </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, let&#8217;s see what others published in the WordPress editor space in the past three weeks. </p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>\n\n\n\n<p>PS: The sixth anniversary of the start of Gutenberg Times is coming up this week, and I just wanted to say, it has been a great pleasure curating all the things around Gutenberg for you. So glad you are here with me. </p>\n\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow">\n<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-gutenberg-plugin-releases">Gutenberg plugin releases </a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-p">Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-building-themes-for-fse-and-word-press">Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor. </a></li></ul></div>\n</div></div>\n\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Updates on Gutenberg Times</strong></p>\n\n\n\n<p>🆕  As mentioned above, you can now use the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/"><strong>Gutenberg Nightly</strong></a> plugin built with WordPress Playground and land right in the site editor screen. If you are interested in the blueprint, <a href="https://150387569.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow">it&#8217;s available here</a></p>\n\n\n\n<div class="wp-block-buttons is-layout-flex wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex">\n<div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link has-text-align-center wp-element-button" href="https://playground.wordpress.net/?blueprint-url=https://gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/playnightly.json" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Click to launch WordPress Playground</a></div>\n</div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="0-word-press-release-information">Developing Gutenberg and WordPress</h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Anne McCarthy invites you to <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2023/12/leap-into-2024-with-these-site-editor-tools/"><strong>Leap into 2024 with these&nbsp;Site Editor&nbsp;Tools</strong></a> and gives you a list of features and tools, that might have slipped your mind, or you haven&#8217;t had a chance to explore. This is an excellent run-down of use cases and update on the current state of the site editor.  Learn more about the Command Palette, the Style Book, styling short-cuts, Distraction-free mode, Patterns,  and the List view. </p>\n\n\n\n<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide" />\n\n\n\n<p>Once you are ready to dive deeper into any of the topics, the WordPress Developer Blog covered quite a few topics this year. <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> published <strong><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/2024/01/05/2023-year-in-review/">2023 Year in Review</a>,</strong> citing some numbers and listing all the articles in a sorted way. It&#8217;s the best way to catch-up on things you might have missed. And if you don&#8217;t want to miss any more articles on the Developer blog, it&#8217;s time to subscribe  to it. Scroll down on any post of page and enter your email address 🙂 Or <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/news/feed/">sub