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";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:16:"WordPress Planet";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:"http://planet.wordpress.org/";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:8:"language";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:2:"en";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:47:"WordPress Planet - http://planet.wordpress.org/";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:"item";a:50:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:79:"WPTavern: #9 – Tara King on Encouraging Developers Towards a Gutenberg Future";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=125126";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:201:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/9-tara-king-on-encouraging-developers-towards-a-gutenberg-future?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=9-tara-king-on-encouraging-developers-towards-a-gutenberg-future";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:61675:"<h2 id="about-this-episode">About this episode.</h2>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sparklingrobots/">Tara King</a>.</p>



<p>Tara has recently begun working for Automattic in the developer relations role. Tara will lead a newly formed team who will get out and about; trying to understand the pain points which people are having with the new Block Editor and Full Site Editing. They will then report their findings back to the developer and contributor teams, and hopefully establish a feedback loop to make the editor better.</p>



<p>They are also creating blogs, podcasts, courses and many other types of content to help people get up to speed with the Block Editor.</p>



<p>It&rsquo;s no secret that whilst there are many people who love the Block Editor, there are many who remain unconvinced. Unconvinced might not be a strong enough word, but you get the idea. I wanted to hear about the purpose of this new team and how it&rsquo;s going to be working. Will it have a real impact upon the future of the Block Editor? What will they be offering? How can they be reached? Who is deciding what&rsquo;s included and what&rsquo;s left out? What motivations are behind all these decisions?</p>



<p>We also get into a chat about the fact that WordPress is changing; moving away from a legacy of easy-to-understand PHP code and moving towards a JavaScript and React based future. Is the pain of learning these new skills going to be worth it, and is there going to be any support to help people get there?</p>



<p>It&rsquo;s a wide-ranging discussion at an important moment in WordPress&rsquo; history.</p>



<p>Time will tell if Tara&rsquo;s team can win the hearts and minds of unconvinced developers.</p>



<p>Have a listen to the podcast and leave a comment below.</p>



<h2 id="useful-links">Useful links.</h2>



<p>Tara&rsquo;s email address: tara.king [at] automattic [dot] com</p>



<p><a href="https://www.thedigitalnomad.io/job/automattic-developer-relations-wordpress/">Automattic: Developer Relations Job Description</a></p>


Transcript<div><div class="chat-transcript"><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:00:00]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Welcome to the ninth edition of the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress, the people, events, plugins, themes, blocks, and in this case developers and Gutenberg. Each month we&rsquo;re bringing you someone from that community to discuss a topic of current interest.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>If you liked the podcast, please share it with your friends. You might also like to think about subscribing so that you&rsquo;ll get all of the episodes in your podcast player automatically, and you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player, or by going to WP Tavern dot com forward slash feed forward slash podcast.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>You can also play the podcast episodes on the WP Tavern website if you prefer that. If you have any thoughts about the podcast, perhaps a suggestion of a guest or an interesting subject, then please head over to WP Tavern dot com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the contact form there. We would certainly welcome your input.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>Okay, so on the podcast today we have Tara King. Tara has recently begun working for Automattic, in developer relations, and it&rsquo;s an important role within the WordPress community. Tara will be leading a newly formed team who will be getting out and about, trying to understand the pain points which people are having with the new block editor and with full site editing. They will then report this back to the developer and contributor teams and hopefully establish a feedback loop to make the editor better. They are also creating blogs, podcasts, courses, and all sorts of other content to help people get up to speed, and perhaps begin using, or better understanding, the block editor.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>It&rsquo;s no secret that whilst there are many people who love the block editor, there are many who remain unconvinced. Unconvinced might not be a strong enough word, but you get the idea.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>I wanted to hear about the purpose of this new team and how it&rsquo;s going to be working. Will it have a real impact upon the future of the block editor? What will they be offering? How can they be reached and who is making the decisions about what&rsquo;s included and what&rsquo;s left out? And what motivations are behind all of these decisions?</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>We also get into a chat about the fact that WordPress is changing. It&rsquo;s moving away from a legacy of easy to understand PHP code and moving towards a JavaScript and React based future. Is the pain of learning these new skills going to be worth it? And is there going to be any support to help people get there?</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>It&rsquo;s a wide ranging discussion at an important moment in WordPress&rsquo;s history. Time will tell if Tara&rsquo;s team are able to win the hearts and minds of unconvinced developers.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>If any of the points raised in this podcast, resonate with you, be sure to head over and find the post at WP Tavern dot com forward slash podcast, and leave a comment there. And so without further delay, I bring you Tara King.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>I am joined today on the podcast by Tara King. Hello, Tara.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:03:54]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Hello. Thanks for having me.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:03:55]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>You are very welcome. It is an absolute pleasure. We&rsquo;ve spent the last couple of minutes just getting to know one another. We haven&rsquo;t ever spoken before, so this&rsquo;ll be a really interesting chat. We&rsquo;ve got a lot of ground to cover. And first of all, I&rsquo;d like to congratulate you on your brand new, shiny new job over at Automattic. I wonder if you might spend the first couple of minutes telling us what your new job is and what your title is and what you do.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:04:22]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Yeah. So I&rsquo;ll give you the short version first, which is that my job is to lead a team that is basically going out into the community to hear where people are struggling with Gutenberg, struggling with full site editing. Bring that context back into the development teams and the contributor teams that are building the product and then make it better. And in addition to that feedback cycle part of things, we&rsquo;re also creating content, courses, blogs, podcasts, all kinds of things to help people get up to speed with where Gutenberg is right now, where it&rsquo;s going to go next and how to make the leap over from the Classic Editor.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:05:04]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>That&rsquo;s really interesting. I did actually read the job description that was posted on the website. I don&rsquo;t know obviously what the final job description entails, but I was really fascinated to see that it was very much bolted on to the Gutenberg project as opposed to something a bit wider. And that is fascinating. It does feel at this moment in time, we&rsquo;re recording it towards the latter end of 2021. And it does feel at this time that there&rsquo;s quite a lot of, disagreement shall we say about how the WordPress project is being taken forward? And a lot of that disagreement is centering around Gutenberg and it seems that a few new roles, not just your role, but some others have been created particularly to handle the way that the community interact and the way that they feel and the way that they&rsquo;re receiving knowledge about it. Have I got that right? Are Automattic putting jobs out there for people to do exactly that.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:06:06]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Yeah, I think my team especially it came out of the 5.0 retrospective. So when Gutenberg came out and it was pushed out into the community, I think anybody who was around at that time of the WordPress community was aware of the pushback and the unhappiness in the community, around some of the things that happened.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>And looking at that, I was not part of the project in a serious way, at that point, I was actually doing support, so I was hearing all of the people who are unhappy tell us how can I change away from Gutenberg? How can I fix this? So that was my role in it at the time was just living through person by person with the impact of it.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>What I&rsquo;ve heard is basically they looked at the 5.0 release and said we need to communicate better, first of all right, but it&rsquo;s not just pushing information out, it&rsquo;s also, we need to listen better. We need to be aware of what people are feeling earlier so that when we&rsquo;re trying to make this work, it&rsquo;s not only perceived as, but I think experienced as a one-way street kind of thing, because I don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;s ever been the spirit of the WordPress project, and I don&rsquo;t think Gutenberg actually was meant to change that feeling, if that makes sense. But it did so for some people it really did. And so my team especially is really about listening and trying to engage more people, bring more people into the room to be part of those discussions, to be part of those decisions, because I don&rsquo;t think anybody wants Gutenberg to succeed just for Gutenberg&rsquo;s sake.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>I think it&rsquo;s a really good tool. And so we&rsquo;re trying to make sure that everyone can be involved. So that&rsquo;s my team in particular, but I think in general, there is a sense that Gutenberg is still struggling to be understood. It&rsquo;s a really big change for the community on a technical level. And so we just need to be putting more energy and more attention to helping people bridge the gap between where they are now and where they need to be for Gutenberg.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:07:55]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Just dwelling on the team for a moment you may be allowed, you may not be allowed I don&rsquo;t know, to describe how big that team is and what the specifics are about how it&rsquo;s going to be implementing that. I&rsquo;m just wondering if you can give us some insight, because it would be interesting, certainly from my part, it would be interesting to know how many people are on the ground now, doing that kind of work specifically in your team.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:08:16]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Yeah, there are four people aside from myself, so five people in total. We have people doing specific programs. Anne McCarthy has been doing amazing work around the full site editing outreach program. So that&rsquo;s been part of this team before I started, they were doing that work. And then we have other folks doing courses and meet up presentations. Daisy Olson has been doing those also for a while. We have two new teammates, so Birgit from Gutenberg Times, which is a very amazing connection to have, is going to keep doing that. We&rsquo;re basically supporting Birgit to do more and more Gutenberg Times as much as she&rsquo;s willing to do. And then we have Ryan Welcher, a new hire from TenUp, who is helping on the sort of more technical side.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>So we have four people which means each person is responsible for, I think, 10 and a half percent of the internet. So it&rsquo;s quite a big job, I would say.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:09:09]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>That&rsquo;s a fascinating way of actually thinking about it. Forgive me, I&rsquo;m going to quote from the Automattic job description that came to you. This is the thing that you applied for. And again, please forgive me if this has now morphed in some way, but it basically says &ldquo;We&rsquo;re looking for someone to join our Automattic team dedicated to aiding the WordPress open source systems effort, specifically around developer relations. Your focus will be communicating with community developers about WordPress, Gutenberg and the surrounding ecosystem to build a positive and sustainable relationship with WordPress developers and reduce barriers to Gutenberg adoption&rdquo;. And then there&rsquo;s a bullet point list of what the ideal candidate will have, which presumably you met admirably. Congratulations. The thing that jumps out for me, there is the word developer is used multiple times. And is that where your efforts are going to lie? You&rsquo;re reaching out to developers as opposed say to end users or perhaps people that are new in the community who are unfamiliar with how Gutenberg and WordPress works.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:10:10]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Yeah. So we are one month in. So we&rsquo;re still working out the details, but very much focused on developers. I think I&rsquo;ll say for myself, I am actually from the Drupal project, I&rsquo;ve been in WordPress for a long time, but I have a much deeper kind of contributor history in Drupal actually. And in the Drupal project, it&rsquo;s always like developers first. Basically it&rsquo;s not official, but it&rsquo;s very focused on the developer experience and, coming to WordPress, I was always looking around&hellip; who&rsquo;s talking about developers and WordPress, where are they meeting? Where are they talking? So it&rsquo;s a very natural thing to focus on developers for me. But I do think it&rsquo;s a little bit new in the WordPress project. Certainly not developer first. I think the user is still always, maybe even the visitor is always going to be first, but the user of WordPress is always going to be the primary audience. But I think Gutenberg is really a product, a tool for the user, but in order to get it out there, I think developers really need to adopt it. Especially anybody who&rsquo;s extending WordPress. We need them to understand how to make Gutenberg work with that. Because that really does, I am blown away every time I use Gutenberg, and I know that&rsquo;s my job to say that, but it&rsquo;s actually also true. It&rsquo;s part of why I took the job. I think it&rsquo;s such a fantastic tool when you&rsquo;re giving somebody a site and they&rsquo;re going to be managing it. Without any code, they can do really advanced things in terms of layout and display.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>We need all the developers in the community to get on board and make it available via their various extensions. So we really are focused on developers and that goes everywhere from, so there&rsquo;s the theory of care in the WordPress community? I don&rsquo;t know if you&rsquo;re familiar. It&rsquo;s there&rsquo;s the leadership. There&rsquo;s the contributors. There&rsquo;s the extenders. Users and visitors, I&rsquo;m kind of sticking with that model. There&rsquo;s developers all the way down to the user level. People who are not writing a lot of new code necessarily, but maybe a little bit here and there. So we&rsquo;re talking to those folks. We&rsquo;re talking definitely to the extender group. So people who are writing plugins and themes, people who are running hosting companies or agencies, large universities, anybody kind of working with WordPress at a larger scale. And then of course the contributors who are literally developing the project. So it doesn&rsquo;t sound very focused when I say it like that, because that&rsquo;s a lot of people, but it&rsquo;s everybody who&rsquo;s writing code to support WordPress, whether that&rsquo;s for one site or for all of WordPress.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:12:33]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>I am really interested by the fact that this role in this team now exists. As far as I&rsquo;m aware it&rsquo;s the first time that your role has existed. That&rsquo;s right, isn&rsquo;t it? You are the first person to.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:12:46]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>That is correct.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:12:47]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Okay. So that speaks to me that the team over at Automattic, as you said, they&rsquo;ve listened and they&rsquo;ve realized that this team needs to exist. WordPress is growing and fortunately Automattic have the capability to put this together. I suppose later on in the podcast, we&rsquo;ll get into the problems that people are experiencing and some of the things that presumably you&rsquo;re going to be addressing, but I am also keen to understand how people will be interacting with you.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>So in the future, how are they going to be getting their concerns in front of you and your team. Is it all about outreach from you or is it doors open, you can email me. How are people going to make contact with you and your team and express what it is that they need to express?</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:13:32]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Yeah, that&rsquo;s a great question. Going back to the 10.5% of the internet per person. It&rsquo;s a really hard problem to solve. We can&rsquo;t be everywhere at once. As much as I would like to have someone who&rsquo;s on every WordPress related Stack Overflow or Stack Exchange, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, I could keep going with where we might go to listen to the community.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>We&rsquo;re still working that out in terms of the details. We&rsquo;re in Make Slack all the time, but I know Make Slack isn&rsquo;t always terribly welcoming. It&rsquo;s welcoming, nobody&rsquo;s mean, but it&rsquo;s a bit confusing, I think when you&rsquo;re new to the community or new to that space, there&rsquo;s always meetings happening. I know I personally have had the experience of, I don&rsquo;t know when I&rsquo;m supposed to talk with, if I&rsquo;m interrupting a meeting.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>You know, there are places that we definitely are. I think my email is going to, I assume it&rsquo;ll be in the podcast notes, it&rsquo;s tara dot king at automattic dot com. I am happy to hear from folks. I may regret saying that I don&rsquo;t know how many emails I&rsquo;ll get, but I think for me right now, especially because I am transitioning from having one foot in both Drupal and WordPress into being more WordPress focused, I&rsquo;m really looking to meet people and genuinely hear what folks are struggling with because it&rsquo;s wide. So my mandate is Gutenberg focused, but, that&rsquo;s not the only thing that causes problems. You might be also struggling with some particular part of Core that isn&rsquo;t Gutenberg. Like it&rsquo;s a very tangled knot in terms of when you&rsquo;re having issues with WordPress. So I like to hear about it because maybe right now the radar is focused on Gutenberg, but we&rsquo;re not going to be focused on Gutenberg forever. We can expand out from that narrow focus.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>So long story long, I wish I had a super simple answer other than to email myself personally. We are listening as much as we can or going to events, camps, and meetups and things. We are listening on Twitter. We&rsquo;re listening on Post Status. We are trying to be in all the major places, but feel free to reach out to myself or anyone else on the team that you feel comfortable with.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>There&rsquo;s a lot of people out there for a very small team, but we are trying to listen. One other thing I&rsquo;ll say before I finish on this topic, is there are very specific calls for testing that we&rsquo;re doing. So if you want to be more involved in the full site editing development before it happens, right? So a lot of people have a very reactive approach, which is, it comes out and they&rsquo;re unhappy, but actually there are pathways to be involved sooner. And this was one of the easiest ones. You can go to the Make Slack, there&rsquo;s a channel called F S E dash outreach. And if you join that channel, you will be presented with calls for testing that are, in my opinion, I hope that other people find this to be true as well, fairly clearly outlined. You know, step-by-step how to do the test in question. And then where to give your feedback. This is helping with everything from how a navigation block works from how widgets work. There&rsquo;s been some open-ended ones around what themers, theme builders needs. So that&rsquo;s one way to get a very specific kind of feedback, right? It&rsquo;s not general, but it&rsquo;s very effective to get specific feedback.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:16:29]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>I sometimes feel that despite the fact that those channels are publicly available and anybody can hop in, I do sometimes wonder if things like the Make Slack and Github and so on, I do wonder if there&rsquo;s room for improvement there. And I don&rsquo;t mean throw the baby out with the bath water, but they can be quite intimidating. It is difficult to backtrack and figure out where the conversation began that&rsquo;s currently going on. The interface for Slack is excellent if you&rsquo;re a part of a team and your daily grind is to be in a particular Slack channel, and you&rsquo;re constantly checking in and you see where the conversation has flowed from and where the conversation is right now. But I feel it&rsquo;s difficult for people who are just hopping in to make almost any sense of those conversations at all. And so of course, the easy thing to do is to glance in open the door at a tiny bit, stare through the crack and then just run away in fear and continue to feel annoyed.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:17:25]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Yeah, I totally agree. I think, here I am barging in kinda new to the community. It was lots of opinions. I&rsquo;ve been feeling very much like the Make Slack and the Make blogs are more welcoming to people who are contributing because they&rsquo;re in it every day. It&rsquo;s easy for them to understand what&rsquo;s happening. Whereas I don&rsquo;t actually feel like we have a great location for developers at large. We have documentation. We have the Github for Gutenberg, but again, they&rsquo;re very contributor focused. There are people who just need to know how to build a plugin. How to build a block pattern on WordPress in general. And I don&rsquo;t feel like we have a great place for those discussions to happen right now. I don&rsquo;t know what we&rsquo;re going to land on, but that&rsquo;s one thing that this team is working on, trying to figure out what would be the right way to consolidate conversations for that community. Because right now it does feel like if you&rsquo;re a developer who has a WordPress problem, you shout into the void and you hope somebody hears. That might happen on Twitter. It might happen at a WordCamp. There are ways to be heard, but they&rsquo;re hard to find. I think we need much better pathways. To have those conversations.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:18:28]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>I am not committing you to any particular platform or any particular piece of software, but it&rsquo;s just, it is nice to hear though, that you have that, on the radar, you&rsquo;re thinking about that because I think that&rsquo;s really important. Many of us are used to different platforms, probably more social in nature that seem to work in inverted commas, better, but that&rsquo;s fascinating, thank you.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>Okay. Let&rsquo;s get stuck into the side of Gutenberg where people are concerned. Feeling disgruntled. Now I do want to definitively spell out at this point that you are not responsible for the way that Gutenburg is right now. I really want to make that very clear. So anybody listening to the podcast, it is not your fault, but people have concerns.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>I think right now we seem to be seeing more concern than ever before. I&rsquo;ve been using WordPress for about, I&rsquo;m going to go for nine years, that feels more or less, right. Prior to that I was using a piece of software, which you just mentioned, Drupal. And I was extremely happy with Drupal. Drupal did everything that I wanted to do. It really was fabulous. In fact, if you could rewind the clock, I was telling my clients that Drupal was probably going to overtake WordPress in its use. How wrong could I have been? But there came a moment in time where that community became something that I no longer was part of. And it was because of the fact that Drupal deals with point releases, so from five to six to seven. There is a real line drawn in the sand. Drupal five doesn&rsquo;t sit well with Drupal six and six doesn&rsquo;t sit well with seven and so on. And I left at the point where there was one of these moments. It was from Drupal seven to Drupal eight, and I couldn&rsquo;t cope with the fact that I was going to have to do an enormous amount of work, just to keep things that had already built, up and running. Now the parallels that are there are fairly major I think, WordPress has done an unbelievably good job of being backwards compatible, but now we have what feels like, I&rsquo;m going to call it a Drupal moment. Where we are at an inflection point, something radical has changed in WordPress, and it really is bifurcating the path. Some users extremely happy, giving it a go, getting involved, loving it, other people, disliking it, not wanting to be a part of it and ultimately, just stopping being part of the community and not using WordPress at all. So I hope my analogy there with Drupal sits and you understand what I&rsquo;m saying?</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:20:53]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Yeah, it does. Yep. I was in the community of the Drupal community when that happened as well. It is very interesting. I think for a long time, I&rsquo;ve talked to people in both communities, I&rsquo;ve talked to people using both software. And one of the differences, when people ask what&rsquo;s the difference is that WordPress is backwards compatible and Drupal&rsquo;s not. And the seven to eight was Drupal becoming object oriented, was the main change. And so people were used to writing procedural PHP, and now they had to write object oriented and they weren&rsquo;t used to it. And, not only were they not used to it, it was just unbelievable amount of work to update all of the extensions and make everything work. And then there&rsquo;s no migration path that&rsquo;s very clean between seven to eight in Drupal. Having lived through that, the Drupal project forked at that point, there&rsquo;s now a separate fork of the project called Backdrop. It was a very painful time. It was honestly a very painful time for me personally. I&rsquo;m sure it was painful for other people as well, but it was painful for me because I had gotten into Drupal in Drupal six and I was essentially a solo shop. I was building sites by myself, occasionally getting in a contractor and I could make sites pretty cheaply and pretty easily for lots and lots of people on Drupal. And like you said, loved, I just loved the software. I loved it so much. And the switch to Drupal eight felt very personal, like we don&rsquo;t care about people like you Tara. Obviously, no one&rsquo;s said that to me, but that&rsquo;s what it felt like. It felt like I don&rsquo;t have the resources to make this kind of a change for my clients. And I think ultimately it led me to stop freelancing and start working for agencies because they did have the resources. So it actually did change my career trajectory. So it&rsquo;s very serious for people. These kinds of changes in a software project, it seems kind technical or niche, but it&rsquo;s not, it&rsquo;s people&rsquo;s livelihoods and it&rsquo;s people&rsquo;s entire way of being in the world. Like you&rsquo;re changing how someone is working, you&rsquo;re changing, what kind of work they&rsquo;re able to do.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>So I think it&rsquo;s a really relevant parallel to draw to Gutenberg because I think a lot of people are feeling that same way now, and it&rsquo;s no surprise that they&rsquo;re going to have very strong reactions when their livelihood is threatened. I don&rsquo;t play a single person for having that struggle. The reason I took when I was talking about the job and interviewing and things like that, it definitely feels like we&rsquo;re starting a little bit behind because the community is already upset. It would have been nice if we could&rsquo;ve started before we Gutenberg came out and built those relationships earlier, but hindsight&rsquo;s 2020.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>And I thought to myself, there&rsquo;s so many people doing so many cool things with WordPress right now. I think Gutenberg is a really powerful tool. And if we can help people make that bridge. Not have to build the bridge to becoming a Gutenberg developer themselves, but have one provided. If we can help people feel heard and welcomed and important again. Cause I think that&rsquo;s why we come to these communities as we feel that way, we feel like we&rsquo;re important and we have somewhere to matter. So anyway, for me, long story short, it&rsquo;s very emotional and I really want to honor and respect people and meet them where they&rsquo;re at because I&rsquo;ve been there in the Drupal project.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:23:53]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>A couple of quotes. I should say that I reached out to a few of my friends. I am going to name no names. They didn&rsquo;t ask me to not to name names, but I won&rsquo;t. Just a few little things just to give you an indication of where people are at. So this is from somebody who creates WordPress websites for a living. I don&rsquo;t think they would describe themselves as a developer, but they say, &ldquo;Push and you get push back. If Gutenberg had been developed as an add-on plugin, for example, which was optional, where folks could opt in, then it would have become something that they could choose. And that for me is what made WordPress so successful&rdquo;.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>So that was from one person, and then from another person who is involved in themes shall we say, &ldquo;To every new feature or whatnot, which is added to Gutenberg, there&rsquo;s a but to go with it. And those things are never addressed. All in all, that is why I&rsquo;m losing passion for WordPress&rdquo;.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>It&rsquo;s those kinds of feelings I think, I could probably have put in some stronger ones, and certainly there were some ones which were less strong than that, but it gives you an indication. This is really, like I said, bifurcating the community and it really isn&rsquo;t a case of people just tutting a bit and being a little bit annoyed and then just shrugging it off and getting over it. This is genuinely people who&rsquo;ve been doing things for a long time, are dedicated to WordPress, commit to WordPress, use it every day, promote it. And they&rsquo;re thinking of walking away are, like I did with Drupal.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:25:14]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Yeah. Yeah. It&rsquo;s really hard to hear quotes like that, but it&rsquo;s also just so important. Honestly, I find that the WordPress community has been very patient. Gutenberg came out now, I think three years ago. And obviously some people were not patient, some people took off. But I do feel like people have been pretty patient. And whereas in Drupal before Drupal eight even came out, people were like, I made a fork. I&rsquo;m leaving. Here&rsquo;s my talk at DrupalCon about how Drupal&rsquo;s terrible. I really hope, I&rsquo;m not here to try to save people.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>Everybody has to make their own decisions about what software project is the right for them. I think in general, this is about people&rsquo;s passions, whatever that might be, it&rsquo;s not necessarily about WordPress. They want to be able to do what they need to do. I&rsquo;m not trying to save every last person, but I do think it&rsquo;s important to hear when people are having these reactions and to really hear it right, to let it sink in.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>I hope if my team can&rsquo;t counteract some of these feelings about the software being pushed onto people about development, ignoring the feedback that&rsquo;s coming in, I think we will have failed. I am very optimistic at this time, one month in, to say that I think we have some really good people who are really passionate and very deep in the community who know what people need. They&rsquo;re on the other side too, they&rsquo;re also developers. We&rsquo;re not hiring marketing people, no offense to marketing people, but that&rsquo;s not what this team is. We sit inside the product team. We&rsquo;re talking to the developers of the product. We&rsquo;re talking to developers in the community. And like I said, there&rsquo;s four of us, 42% of the web. Can&rsquo;t really hear everyone, but I&rsquo;m hopeful that as we listen. One person who stands up and says, I&rsquo;m losing passion for WordPress because of this, represents a hundred people who didn&rsquo;t or a thousand people who didn&rsquo;t, I don&rsquo;t know what the numbers actually are, but if we can address these people, one-to-one with personal caring, with strong, clear feedback to the product teams that are working on WordPress. I am hopeful that we can make this feel more like a collaboration, more like you&rsquo;re opting in, and it&rsquo;s your choice to use this cool tool instead of, oh, I have to. So that&rsquo;s the goal for the team.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:27:23]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>The two things that keep coming up in the conversations that I have on this side of the fence are that it was pushed into Core without the sort of necessary time for it to be examined and the entire community to have their say on it.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>And the other one seems to revolve around the fact that it&rsquo;s now been going on for such a long time, and it feels like almost like a public beta that&rsquo;s been going on for two, nearly three years where we are asked to use a piece of software, which is still very much in development. And so concerns around those. And I&rsquo;m interested, you may know, you may not know what the decision-making processes were in the past for how that happened. You may be able to talk about that again, you may not, but I&rsquo;m wondering if you have any thoughts on whether the decision-making process for how things are going to be implemented, are going to change. Is there going to be more openness about what&rsquo;s coming up? Are we able to communicate directly with the people who are making these changes? I think the feeling is it&rsquo;s top down. That a few people who make very big decisions and they make them, and the rest of us have to go along with that. And I think people would like to understand whether that governance model is up for debate. That&rsquo;s my question really.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:28:37]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>I don&rsquo;t know if it&rsquo;s up for debate, to be honest, in terms of the very highest levels of the project. I don&rsquo;t think it is. I think that we have Matt, we have Josepha and they&rsquo;re the leaders. And I think almost every major open source project has one or two people, typically one person in that position.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>And I&rsquo;m not in the room for those discussions. I should say there&rsquo;s anything that&rsquo;s it is going to change there. I don&rsquo;t know about it. That said, I think it&rsquo;s very clear to me, I actually have not yet spoken with Matt, but I spoken with Josepha who&rsquo;s in dot org. Like we work together very pretty closely. And I can tell that Joseph is really listening. It&rsquo;s obviously hard for someone who&rsquo;s not seeing her regularly to know that. I fully understand why people think that it&rsquo;s very top-down, but that is part of this team is to go out and to try to listen and to help people understand how their feedback can come in.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>That&rsquo;s why I feel kind terrible that I can&rsquo;t say to you, this is exactly how you can give us your feedback, but that&rsquo;s absolutely the top list of priorities. Hopefully by the end of this year, we can have something clearer. There&rsquo;s the obvious ways of you can go in and contribute. But it&rsquo;s a pretty high barrier to entry.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>And I think what most people actually want is just to be able to give a little feedback. They don&rsquo;t want to write new code to fix something, they want to be able to say, oh, this didn&rsquo;t work for me because X, so that&rsquo;s what my team is going to be doing. And maybe it&rsquo;s not fair to call it a beta, I don&rsquo;t think, but it is ongoing development in public because that&rsquo;s the open-source way. But it&rsquo;s very challenging, having come from the Drupal community where people are making these big changes all the time, it feels, yeah, that&rsquo;s what we do. But I know in WordPress that hasn&rsquo;t been the case. What we are trying to do very specifically with my team is, get ahead of the release. So 5.9 is coming out in December. We are working right now on documenting exactly what is and is not going in. Is there any kind of breaking change? Those are pretty rare still, but if there is anything like that, we want to get ahead of that. We want to know, is there education that needs to happen around a certain technology to make this a success.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>And we&rsquo;re trying to push that out, to, I think right now we&rsquo;re going to try to push it out to things like large agencies, universities, big groups that can then disseminate it internally just for purposes of scaling. Not because we don&rsquo;t care about individuals, it&rsquo;s just hard to reach them. So we&rsquo;re trying to work that process, get that smoothed out. While that is getting refined, also building ways for individual developers of any kind to opt into that kind of information. So it is very much an experimental piece of software at this point. It&rsquo;s production ready to, it&rsquo;s both. It&rsquo;s very interesting to be in this middle, the middle of it all. And I know it feels like it&rsquo;s been going on for a long time and I know it feels like it&rsquo;s never going to end, but it actually is going to end.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>And as somebody whose mandate is to work on it, there&rsquo;s even almost a little bit of not dread, but existential sort of conundrum when Gutenberg ends. What do I do then? So as much as it feels like it&rsquo;s never going to end it. It is, it will be done, it will finish.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:31:46]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Moving the debate ever so slightly, but more or less the same wheelhouse really, there seems to be this under current, and in a sense, it feels a little bit, I&rsquo;m going to say conspiratorial. Seems to be a lot of people who are equating the Gutenberg project with, so the dot org side of things with the dot com side of things, almost as if the people on the dot org side are the Guinea pigs, for want of a better word that, is probably entirely the wrong word, but you get the idea, for the project and that the dot com side obviously has a financial model, which the dot org side doesn&rsquo;t. And I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that, whether those concerns could be assuaged as well, whether there is in fact a problem there or not.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:32:30]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>You know, I don&rsquo;t see. I have only been there a month, I don&rsquo;t have this sort of deep WordPress roots that other folks do. So I&rsquo;m like new, I guess I&rsquo;m an outsider still a little bit. And so I was concerned, I&rsquo;m not going to, when I took the job, I was a little concerned about that because when I&rsquo;m not working, before I worked at Automattic, I was constantly, oh, it&rsquo;s so annoying that there&rsquo;s a dot org and a dot com. It&rsquo;s so confusing. It&rsquo;s so annoying. So coming from the outside of the company and from like a fairly commercial place, honestly, from my interactions with WordPress, I don&rsquo;t see it. I have not met anybody from the dot com side. And I mean that literally like the entire non.org side I&rsquo;ve met one person because she lives in my hometown. We had coffee, that&rsquo;s it? So, no one has told me anything from the dot com side needs to be implemented on our side. If anything, I almost feel like it&rsquo;s inverted, which is that, I would guess if you talk to folks who work on dot com, they are just maybe not just as frustrated, but close to as frustrated as folks outside the company, as they&rsquo;re waiting to ingest information from dot org, I&rsquo;ve heard that from folks like we need training, we need to be able to, to train dot com customers. So there&rsquo;s frustrations there too. So I hear the conspiracy. I see where that comes from and why it exists. My experience has been completely not that way.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:33:51]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Okay. It&rsquo;s definitely something which gets raised from time to time. So I thought it was worth bringing up. But again, the caveats that we mentioned at the top of the podcast, that you&rsquo;ve just begun in your line of work and so.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:34:01]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Exactly, I&rsquo;m very new. And the thing about conspiracy theories is you can&rsquo;t really prove them wrong. Most of the time, they&rsquo;re unable to be proven wrong. So I can&rsquo;t prove it. I just don&rsquo;t see it.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:34:11]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>One of the things that I guess you are going to have repeatedly over the next year or so is the chatter about the move into new technologies in WordPress?</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>So React, increased reliance on JavaScript and the move away from PHP. And this also speaks to the debate about people moving away and getting alarmed that their websites that they&rsquo;ve already built and their capability to build things and have a business that&rsquo;s easy for them to manage in the future, is going to be difficult. And I wonder what you thought about those horizons. I wonder if you&rsquo;ve got any words of comfort for people who have those concerns. And a related question, I wondered if there was possible responsibility, that again maybe too strong, a word, but I&rsquo;m going to use it, a responsibility on Automattic to provide guidance, training, materials, whatever would be needed to help people cross that bridge and to ease the burden of learning these new things.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:35:15]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Yeah. So I&rsquo;m a PHP developer, I taught myself PHP and I always held JavaScript at arms length, right? It was like, nope, that is too far. I will not do it. When JavaScript started becoming more and more popular, I just was like, nope, I don&rsquo;t have to, I know PHP. So I feel very much the pain of why do I have to learn JavaScript again?</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>I think the concerns I&rsquo;m hearing, and again, I said my email, I&rsquo;ll say it again at the end of the podcast, but the concerns I&rsquo;m hearing and the concerns I&rsquo;ve had are, yeah, it&rsquo;s just, I don&rsquo;t want to learn JavaScript because I don&rsquo;t need to, why do I need to? There&rsquo;s a build step, right? There&rsquo;s often a more, a slightly more complicated kind of environment needed to Gutenberg development versus just straight PHP. You just write it, hit save and I&rsquo;ll see if it works. So there&rsquo;s additional complications of writing Gutenberg code. Not every host necessarily well, set up if you wanted to do that remotely or something like that. For some of us, I thought we stopped compiling things. I have to compile things. It feels a little, old. So I hear all of that and I&rsquo;m sure there&rsquo;s other objections people have. The things that I&rsquo;m excited about with it, now that I&rsquo;m having to do more of it, I&rsquo;m realizing JavaScript&rsquo;s not that hard. We&rsquo;re all going to be okay. It&rsquo;s not that hard. And it opens up so much in terms of greater web technologies.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>And again, this feels very parallel to Drupal seven, to Drupal eight, which was moving to object oriented programming actually made me a better developer. I was a fine PHP procedural programmer. I was a reasonable developer and then having to learn it, which I know it&rsquo;s frustrating when you have to learn something, but I don&rsquo;t regret having done it. It made it easier actually for me to get into Gutenberg development, it&rsquo;s made my whole development life much easier. I don&rsquo;t think JavaScript is going away on the web in general. I think if anything, it&rsquo;s going to continue to eat the web. As an individual, it&rsquo;s powerful to have that tool in your toolbox as an agency, it&rsquo;s powerful to be able to sell that work. Talk to people, have a more diverse kind of set of skills on the team. I&rsquo;m pro learning in general, right? It&rsquo;s I think something that helps every open source project grow. I think the backwards compatibility with WordPress, I hesitate to say it, but it feels like it&rsquo;s gone a little bit too far. At some point, if you maintain backwards compatibility, the software can&rsquo;t move forward because the old stuff is pulling it back.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>I think it&rsquo;s a wonderful model and Drupal is moving more towards it. It&rsquo;s kind interesting to see the two communities converge there, but this might just be a case where there&rsquo;s going to be a few pain points. Every web developer, no matter what tool they&rsquo;re working with is going to have pain points where they have to learn something new.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>I think it&rsquo;s useful on an individual level. And then in terms of offering support for the transition, that is absolutely something that I think needs to happen. Whether or not it&rsquo;s Auttomatic&rsquo;s responsibility. I think it&rsquo;s best when these things are community-wide efforts. I would love to see WordCamps and meetups offer, people volunteering to run&hellip; hey, this is how I got started. That happened a lot in Drupal. I have a friend who ran a talk about how Pokemon can teach you object oriented programming. Very accessible. And so I think, it&rsquo;s not necessarily Automattic&rsquo;s responsibility, but that said it is something that my team is actively working on right now is what kind of materials are needs to help people get over there. Is it, we need to help people understand how to make, build environment, that dev environment that can do the build steps for React, or is it just general JavaScript knowledge? So we&rsquo;re actually, this week, looking at what options are currently out there. What&rsquo;s up to date. There were, when Gutenberg launched, there were a number of products and educational things that came out from the community that were great, but have not been updated. And people are still being directed to stuff that&rsquo;s two years old, and doesn&rsquo;t help them now? So my team is actively working on this.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>How can we help people do this? Because like I said, it&rsquo;s actually not that hard, but we don&rsquo;t give the tools people need. I tried to build a Gutenberg plugin recently entirely just from wordpress dot org documentation. I was like, no blog posts, no outside resources, just wordpress dot org. And it was not easy. So whether or not it&rsquo;s Automattic&rsquo;s responsibility, it&rsquo;s something that we&rsquo;re taking on, because it needs the community does need it. So look for something better in that space, soonish.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:39:44]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Thank you. Encouraging, just to hear that the flag has been raised and the concern has been written down and it does sound to me like you are actually planning to bring something to the table and it&rsquo;s been thought about, so that&rsquo;s really encouraging. Thank you for that.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"> <div class="chat-text"><p>It feels like we&rsquo;ve been bashing for a long time, we&rsquo;ve probably spent half an hour dissecting all the bad. So before we draw to a close let&rsquo;s flip that entirely. Let&rsquo;s turn it to the good. And I just want to offer you a platform to say why it is you&rsquo;ve taken this job with Gutenberg as the sole focus. What is it about Gutenberg that you feel is better? Why do you think it&rsquo;s the future? In other words, what I&rsquo;m saying is, here&rsquo;s a crowd of naysayers, here&rsquo;s a crowd of people in front of you, they&rsquo;ve got their pitchforks out, they are furious about the way that things are going, you&rsquo;ve got an opportunity now to just address that crowd and see if you can turn some heads.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:40:38]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Oh, I wish I had practiced. WordPress has always been about freedom and empowerment of people, of individuals. This is my personal take on it, this is not the Automattic take on it necessarily, it&rsquo;s just how I feel. When I was building small sites, I used to run a consultancy for artists, artists are famously, not necessarily wealthy. Don&rsquo;t have a lot of money to put into these things. And they&rsquo;re also a very do it yourself kind of group. So I was making websites for artists. And if I could just get them started, give them a little push, install, some WordPress on a server, maybe pick out a theme for them. They could do it. People who almost refuse to touch computers because they&rsquo;re just busy off making their art could come back and use WordPress and share their work, talk about it, sell it, do really cool things.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>And I think I&rsquo;ve always been very passionate about that kind of end user being able to make their own website. I am personally just so not interested in having to go to a developer to say I need to post my new blog post. I need to add a little widget here with my new event. It&rsquo;s feels so old fashioned to me, and it&rsquo;s so disempowers, like I said, the user of the website. And so when I was looking at this job, thinking to myself, self, nobody, like everybody&rsquo;s mad about Gutenberg. Do you really want to talk about it and try to make them like it, what it really came down to was a genuine feeling, when I was interviewing and talking to people at Automattic, genuine feeling that they wanted this to be a collaborative experience, that they wanted it to be in conversation with the entire community, which is really where my passion derives from. And then Gutenberg itself as a tool is just incredible. I wouldn&rsquo;t have taken it if I didn&rsquo;t think the tool was worth it. If it was like, oh, there&rsquo;s this like terrible piece of software, but it&rsquo;s okay. I&rsquo;m getting a salary. I&rsquo;m not going to work 40 hours a week on something like that. So the tool allows people to do really powerful things and really control stuff that I haven&rsquo;t seen in other CMS&rsquo;s. I&rsquo;ve built sites for clients in Wix and Weebly and Squarespace and Drupal and WordPress and other more niche platforms. And I just see my clients over and over again, bumping up against, oh, I just want to put two pictures next to each other. And they can&rsquo;t because they don&rsquo;t know HTML or they don&rsquo;t know how to make a table.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"> <div class="chat-text"><p>I just want to be able to make all my pictures, have a little, like a header cover image with some text on it and they have to call me and I have to code that in and put it up there. And obviously Gutenberg doesn&rsquo;t have every kind of block and every kind of pattern that you might imagine. But having now built several sites, just with vanilla WordPress, I haven&rsquo;t installed any themes or anything like that, and just a couple of block packages that are out there, you can get pretty far, I think much farther. Yesterday I was watching a video on YouTube about, it was 10 minutes to a block theme, and it was like, make these five files and now you can put a block widget as your header, which means the users can make their own headers. And I don&rsquo;t have to go in and do all of those little things for them all the time. I think that&rsquo;s scary for some folks because they rely on that work. They rely on it being difficult. But ultimately, it&rsquo;s really empowering. It makes more people able to make more websites. Like it really grows the size of the pie if you will. Drupal&rsquo;s like jealous of it and there&rsquo;s a Gutenberg port to Drupal and it&rsquo;s really very cool. It&rsquo;s very powerful. And I think, the community can really benefit from it. We just need to be able to actually speak to each other and hear each other and work together. And that&rsquo;s the part that my team is really trying to build that bridge and to make that a reality, obviously we can&rsquo;t fix everything for everybody, but we can fix more things than we have been fixing.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:44:35]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>That, I feel is a really excellent place to call it a day. You mentioned just before we finish, you did mention earlier that you were going to drop your email in once more. It may be that people have heard it and haven&rsquo;t written it down. Can I encourage you to do that once again?</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-2"><div class="chat-author chat-author-taraking vcard"><cite class="fn">Tara King</cite> [00:44:51]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Absolutely. My email is t a r a dot k i n g at automattic dot com. And there are two T&rsquo;s on the end of that. So it&rsquo;s a u t o m a t t i c dot com. I&rsquo;m also sparklingrobots on Twitter. Like I said, R I P my inbox let&rsquo;s see how this goes. But I, I believe my DMs are open on Twitter or you can just tweet at me because I am actively looking to have conversations in the community. One-on-one conversations actually move things forward quite a bit. So I&rsquo;m excited to have those.</p>
</div></div><div class="chat-stanza chat-row chat-speaker-1"><div class="chat-author chat-author-nathanwrigley vcard"><cite class="fn">Nathan Wrigley</cite> [00:45:25]</div> <div class="chat-text"><p>Tara thank you very much for coming on the podcast today.</p>
</div></div></div></div>";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, 03 Nov 2021 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: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:1;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:"HeroPress: Grief, Stuff and Netflix – Rouw, Spullen en Netflix";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=4227";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:168:"https://heropress.com/essays/grief-stuff-and-netflix-rouw-spullen-en-netflix/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=grief-stuff-and-netflix-rouw-spullen-en-netflix";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:9696:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/110121-min.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: Stuff is worthless, people are valuable." /><p><a href="https://heropress.com/feed/#dutch">Dit essay is ook beschikbaar in het Nederlands.</a></p>
<p>This post is not about web accessibility, it’s about mental health. About trying to cope with grief and burnout.</p>
<p>I’m not the first within the WordPress community who lost someone they love. People within the community lost a spouse, a sibling, a parent, a child. People that cannot be missed but died anyway. Life and death happens to all of us. And everyone copes in a different way. How can you help them? And how can you help yourself? I don’t have all the answers, but I’d like to share some of my experiences.</p>
<h3>My story</h3>
<p>I remember WordCamp Helsinki 2019 as the last WordCamp where things were normal. I was in a good place, at home with my husband and son and in my career, working in a job I like.</p>
<p>Shortly after that my mother was diagnosed with cancer and my husband Marc died of a heart attack. My father had to move to a nursing home because of his Parkinsons. In the middle of the first lockdown my mother died, just at the same time my kitchen was being renovated. At that point I burned out.</p>
<p>What did grief do to me? It drained all of my energy and made me feel lonely, overwhelmed and in a constant state of panic. Marc and I were together for 35 years, I had no idea how to live without him. Suddenly there were a ton of things to do and to decide. Decisions I had to make alone, important decisions we used to make together. Mortgage, pension, stuff, the leaking roof and for God’s sake that bloody new kitchen.</p>
<p>I spent a lot of evenings on the couch watching Netflix. Shutting down my brain. Re-watching all the SciFi they offer. And yes, I love Michael “Let’s fly” Burnham.</p>
<h3>What can you do for someone who grieves?</h3>
<p>Just listen and ask questions. Don’t force decisions on them, just listen. In the conversation you may discover how to also help in a practical way. Like Job, who bottled Marc’s last batch of home brew beer. Monique, who took me to an exposition of cat paintings to cheer me up. Or colleagues who gave a hug when I returned to work, and friends who just called out of the blue to ask how I was doing.</p>
<h3>What not to do?</h3>
<p>Taking over the conversation and telling about your sister-in-law’s brother’s neighbour who had cancer too and blablablabla. I don’t have the energy for that and besides, what’s the point?</p>
<p>Assuming things, like the advice to stop working for a while. I burned out, not from my work, but from all the stuff I needed to do at home while being tired and sad as fuck. Work was actually a relief, a way to escape. I could not work as much, but I needed to be there to feel my old self again.</p>
<h3>What can you do for yourself?</h3>
<p>What worked for me? Professional counseling. Really. Get a professional, not some mumbo jumbo alternative therapy. A wonderful psychologist taught me to live in the moment, reduce the stress in my body and take care of myself. To accept that healing takes time. And she helped me to properly say goodbye to Marc and my mother and to not feel guilty about my dad being in a nursing home.</p>
<h3>Stuff is worthless</h3>
<p>Last year I had to sort out the things of Marc, my mother and my father. Stuff is worthless. It may sound cliche and very Marie Kondo, but a lot of items went through my hands. I thanked them and brought them to the charity shop. And yes, thanking helps. It felt disrespectful to throw things away without giving them a proper goodbye. Getting rid of so much stuff gave me a different perspective on what is important and what brings me real joy.</p>
<p>The Dutch poet Lucebert wrote: “Alles van waarde is weerloos”. That translates as “Everything of value is defenceless”. Stuff is worthless, people are valuable. Colleagues, friends, family, the memories of holidays, important events in life, having dinner or just hanging out at some WordCamp and talking about WordPress or make-up. People are indispensable, even though they are fragile.</p>
<h3>So how am I now?</h3>
<p>I’m ok-ish. My energy is still not 100%. I get tired easily and need to listen to my body. Healing takes frustratingly longer than I want, but I’m getting there.</p>
<p>I am blessed to be part of 2 communities, the WordPress and the Accessibility community. Both showed up at Marc’s funeral and looked after me during the time after.</p>
<p>And I’m very thankful to <a href="https://twitter.com/taekereijenga?s=20">Taeke</a>, my CEO, for giving me the time to heal.</p>
<h1 id="dutch">Rouw, Spullen en Netflix</h1>
<p>Dit artikel gaat niet over webtoegankelijkheid, het gaat over mentale gezondheid. Over het proberen om te gaan met rouw en burn-out.</p>
<p>Ik ben niet de eerste binnen de WordPress-community die iemand verloor van wie ze houden. Mensen binnen de community verloren een partner, een broer of zus, een ouder, een kind. Mensen die niet gemist kunnen worden, maar toch stierven. Leven en dood overkomt ons allemaal. Maar iedereen gaat er op een andere manier mee om.</p>
<p>Hoe kun je helpen? En hoe kun je jezelf helpen? Ik heb niet voor alles een oplossing, maar ik wil graag mijn ervaringen met je delen.</p>
<h3>Mijn verhaal</h3>
<p>Ik herinner me WordCamp Helsinki 2019 als de laatste WordCamp waarop alles normaal was. Ik was gelukkig, thuis bij mijn man en zoon en in mijn carrière, met een leuke baan.</p>
<p>Kort daarna kreeg mijn moeder kanker en stierf mijn man Marc aan een hartaanval. Mijn vader moest vanwege zijn Parkinson verhuizen naar een verpleeghuis. Midden in de eerste lockdown stierf mijn moeder, op hetzelfde moment dat mijn keuken werd gerenoveerd. Op dat moment stortte ik in.</p>
<p>Wat deed verdriet met mij? Het putte me volkomen uit, ik voelde me eenzaam, overweldigd, in een constante paniek. Marc en ik waren 35 jaar samen, ik had geen idee hoe ik zonder hem moest leven. Plotseling waren er een heleboel dingen om te doen en te beslissen. Beslissingen die ik alleen moest nemen, belangrijke beslissingen die we vroeger altijd samen namen. Hypotheek, pensioen, spullen, het lekkende dak en sodeju, die verdomde nieuwe keuken.</p>
<p>Ik heb vele avonden op de bank naar Netflix zitten kijken. Om mijn piekerende hoofd stil te zetten door alle SciFi te kijken die ze hebben. En ja, ik hou van Michael &#8220;Let&#8217;s fly&#8221; Burnham.</p>
<h3>Wat kun je doen voor iemand die rouwt?</h3>
<p>Gewoon luisteren en vragen stellen. Druk geen veronderstellingen door, luister gewoon. Tijdens het gesprek ontdek je misschien hoe je ook praktisch kunt helpen. Zoals Job, die Marc’s laatste batch zelfgebrouwen bier bottelde. Monique, die me meenam naar een tentoonstelling van kunst over katten, om me op te vrolijken. Collega&#8217;s die me een knuffel gaven toen ik weer aan het werk ging en vrienden die zomaar opbelden om te vragen hoe het met me ging.</p>
<h3>Wat je niet moet doen?</h3>
<p>Het gesprek overnemen en vertellen over de buurman van de broer van je schoonzus die ook kanker had en blablablabla. Daar heb ik echt de energie niet voor en bovendien, wat heeft het voor zin?</p>
<p>Dingen veronderstellen, zoals het advies om even te stoppen met werken. Ik kreeg geen een burn-out van mijn werk, maar van alle dingen die ik thuis moest doen terwijl ik moe en verdrietig was. Werk was eigenlijk een verademing, een manier om te ontsnappen. Ik kon niet zoveel werken, maar ik wilde er wel zijn om me weer een beetje de oude te voelen.</p>
<h3>Wat kun je voor jezelf doen?</h3>
<p>Wat werkte voor mij? Professionele begeleiding. Echt, zoek een professional en geen een of andere vage alternatieve therapie. Een goede psycholoog leerde me om in het nu te leven, de stress in mijn lichaam te verminderen en beter voor mezelf te zorgen. Ze leerde me accepteren dat genezing tijd kost. Ze heeft me geholpen om fatsoenlijk afscheid te nemen van Marc en mijn moeder en me niet schuldig te voelen omdat mijn vader in een verpleeghuis zit.</p>
<h3>Spullen zijn onbelangrijk</h3>
<p>Vorig jaar moest ik de bezittingen uitzoeken van Marc, mijn moeder en mijn vader. Spullen hebben geen waarde. Het klinkt misschien cliché en heel Marie Kondo, maar er zijn veel spullen door mijn handen gegaan. Ik bedankte ze en bracht ze naar de kringloopwinkel. En ja, bedanken helpt echt. Het voelt respectloos om dingen weg te gooien zonder ze een goed afscheid te geven. Het uitzoeken en wegdoen van zoveel spullen gaf me een ander perspectief op wat belangrijk is en waar ik gelukkig van word.</p>
<p>De Nederlandse dichter Lucebert schreef: “Alles van waarde is weerloos”. Spullen zijn onbelangrijk, mensen zijn waardevol. Collega&#8217;s, vrienden, familie, de herinneringen aan vakanties, belangrijke gebeurtenissen in het leven, samen eten of gewoon rondhangen bij een WordCamp en praten over WordPress of make-up. Mensen zijn onmisbaar, ook al zijn ze kwetsbaar.</p>
<h3>Hoe gaat het nu met mij?</h3>
<p>Ik ben een soort van oké. Mijn energie is nog steeds geen 100%. Ik word snel moe en moet goed naar mijn lijf luisteren. Beter worden duurt frustrerend langer dan ik wil, maar ik kom er wel.</p>
<p>Ik ben bevoorrecht deel uit te maken van twee communities, de WordPress en de Accessibility-community. Beiden kwamen naar de uitvaart van Marc en beiden keken naar me om, in de tijd daarna. En ik ben <a href="https://twitter.com/taekereijenga?s=20">Taeke</a>, mijn CEO, erg dankbaar dat hij me de tijd geeft om te genezen.</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, 03 Nov 2021 06:00:48 +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:13:"Rian Rietveld";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:79:"WPTavern: Ona by DeoThemes Just Raised the Bar for WordPress Block Theme Design";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=125092";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:203:"https://wptavern.com/ona-by-deothemes-just-raised-the-bar-for-wordpress-block-theme-design?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ona-by-deothemes-just-raised-the-bar-for-wordpress-block-theme-design";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:5033:"<img />



<p class="has-drop-cap">No sooner than I said the <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-wordpress-block-theme-revolution-is-quietly-picking-up-momentum">floodgates of block theme development</a> would be open, a couple of more <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/full-site-editing/">FSE-capable themes</a> landed in the WordPress.org directory. I checked the review system, and three more were queued up.</p>



<p>It took mere days for me to find another favorite: <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/ona/">Ona by DeoThemes</a>. When the author mentioned it, I checked the source code to ensure it was a 100% block theme. It was hard to believe at first glance.</p>



<p>The theme has been approved for the directory, but it has not yet been set live. It should be available soon, but anyone can grab the <a href="https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/107617#comment:9">ZIP file from its ticket</a> if they want to give it a spin.</p>



<p>We are now at a point where the block system can nearly match traditional theming in features. There are still some kinks to work out and a few missing pieces, but Ona embraces block templating and global styles like few have before. It is modern, almost minimalist, yet packed with potential for a site owner who wants to share their content in style.</p>



<p>Of the free block themes available, less than a handful could be named its equal. But let&rsquo;s give it a few weeks and see what else lands. I could be eating my own words shortly.</p>



<p>Ona&rsquo;s design leans heavily toward modern-day fashion, lifestyle, and travel blogs. However, that is not a hard requirement. It is balanced enough for use on a range of sites. It works well as a blog, but small businesses could get a lot out of it with block-built landing pages. It does lend itself well to storytelling with a mix of large, in-content images.</p>



<img />Single post view.



<p>The change that users will need to make out of the gates is with the site branding. The default <code>18px</code> of letter-spacing for the site title does not work well for more than a few characters. This is easy to adjust in the site editor.</p>



<p>Ona does not have a lot of patterns, but it makes up for it with a well-rounded set. It ships with two headers, one footer, and five for general usage. Most of them are in use on the <a href="https://ona.deothemes.com/">demo&rsquo;s homepage</a>.</p>



<img />Inserting Ona&rsquo;s &ldquo;Promo Boxes&rdquo; pattern.



<p>Looking through the theme&rsquo;s source code, I noticed a couple of additional registered pattern categories titled &ldquo;Ona Pages&rdquo; and &ldquo;Ona Posts.&rdquo; There are no block patterns defined for them, so they do not appear in the inserter. The author may have forgotten to remove them or has plans for a more extensive set in the future.</p>



<p>Instead of putting everything into patterns, the theme also offers extra About and Contact page templates. Such custom templates were commonplace in traditional theming, but their usefulness was impeded by the lack of a standard editing interface. That is a non-issue with block themes.</p>



<img />Contact page template.



<p>With the template and site editors, Ona showcases how custom page templates could see a resurgence. I still lean toward block patterns as the primary way to offer custom layouts, but having full-page designs ready to go through the templating system is much nicer than in the classic era.</p>



<p>The problem with templates is that it can be hard to judge where structure and layout end and the content begins. For an About or Contact template, this is usually not a problem. Those two are likely to only be used once on a site. However, when you get into templates meant for use with multiple pages, there should be a clear separation of the two. Patterns are going to make a lot more sense for the content.</p>



<p>I rarely judge a theme entirely by its fancier features. What I truly want to know is whether its typography makes for comfortable long-form reading, and Ona does well in that department. I am not a fan of the oversized default blockquote design, but that can be easily adjusted.</p>



<p>The biggest issues I had with the theme were the font and color slugs. However, this is more of a personal grievance about nonexistent standards. Right now, slug naming is a free-for-all affair for block themes, and I do not see that changing any time soon.</p>



<p>Users will also encounter 404 errors from the theme&rsquo;s default images. Again, this is not specific to Ona; it is a WordPress/Gutenberg issue. A fix only <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/33217">landed in the development version</a> of the Gutenberg plugin five days ago. Maybe when the theme&rsquo;s next update rolls around, it will be able to make use of it.</p>



<p>If this is the quality we are seeing at this stage, I cannot wait to see what the rest of the theme design community has in store. DeoThemes just raised the bar.</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, 02 Nov 2021 22:48:24 +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:"Justin Tadlock";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:"WPTavern: WordPress’ Gutenberg Demo Page Is Getting a Redesign";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=125010";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:167:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-gutenberg-demo-page-is-getting-a-redesign?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordpress-gutenberg-demo-page-is-getting-a-redesign";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:2825:"<p>The official <a href="https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/">Gutenberg demo page</a> on WordPress.org may soon be getting an update that better reflects the editor&rsquo;s capabilities and showcases the design creativity available through patterns.</p>



<p>Automattic-sponsored designers Beatriz Fialho and Kelly Hoffman have <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2021/10/29/redesign-of-the-gutenberg-page/">submitted a prototype</a> for consideration with explorations of both light and dark modes and three different variations for typography.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><img /></div>



<p>&ldquo;Now that&nbsp;Gutenberg&nbsp;has been a part of WordPress for a few years, it makes sense to update it, shifting the message from what used to be the new post editor to the editor that can power all parts of your site,&rdquo; Fialho said.</p>



<p>Practically speaking, this works out to a more polished landing page with less focus on the demo being a playground that can be manipulated by visitors. Headings like &ldquo;Say Hello to the New Editor&rdquo; are now outdated, as the editor is no longer new. It has been nearly three years since Gutenberg was introduced in WordPress 5.0.</p>



<p>Since the time the demo page was first launched, the use of pattens has become a centerpiece in designing pages with Gutenberg. The updated demo will highlight blocks and patterns and will add a new section dedicated to helping new users get connected to resources for learning WordPress.</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><img /></div>



<p>&ldquo;It is intentional that the page looks more like a landing page rather than an open canvas &lsquo;playground&rsquo; page,&rdquo; Fialho said. &ldquo;While it can still be interactive, allowing people to click around and explore, it shows what is possible to achieve with the editor, remaining ultimately informative.&rdquo;</p>



<p>A few contributors have commented on the post to offer critical feedback. Some refinements in wording on the page may be necessary to be appropriate for newer audiences. Dan Soschin, an Automattic-sponsored marketing team member, suggests rephrasing terms like &ldquo;WordPress Editor&rdquo; and &ldquo;blocks&rdquo; and &ldquo;patterns,&rdquo; so that understanding them is not a requirement for choosing WordPress as a CMS. </p>



<p>Soschin also suggested the design include more variety of visuals for showing different types of websites, such as e-commerce, media portfolios, and news sites, to demonstrate the flexibility of the platform beyond just blogging.</p>



<p>Feedback on the proposal will be open through November 5 before the next iteration. Contributors are also welcome to jump in on the Meta Trac <a href="https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5600">ticket</a> where previous discussions have been held.</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, 02 Nov 2021 19:18:00 +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:13:"Sarah Gooding";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:61:"WPTavern: NaNoWriMo? NaBloPoMo? A Month of Writing Challenges";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=125086";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://wptavern.com/nanowrimo-nablopomo-a-month-of-writing-challenges?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nanowrimo-nablopomo-a-month-of-writing-challenges";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:4503:"<p class="has-drop-cap">It is November, and that only means one thing. It is <a href="https://nanowrimo.org/dashboard">National Novel Writing Month</a> &mdash; NaNoWriMo for short.</p>



<p>Autumn is my favorite time of year. Football is in full swing. Warm mugs of coffee replace the cold brew. Eggnog cartons line supermarket fridges. There are weekend hayrides, face paintings, corn mazes, ring-toss games, and more as fall festivals and fairs are underway. Local farmers&rsquo; markets are selling off the last of the summer crop. Many of us can begin switching our thermostats over to heating mode &mdash; anything below 60&deg; in my home state of Alabama is jeans and jacket weather. Walks around the neighborhood or park are ablaze with reds, browns, and oranges as the yearly cycles start to wind down. It is always a magical time that offers one last explosion of life before winter comes.</p>



<p>November is smack in the middle of it all. While it can be a busy month for many, it is always the ideal time for writing. The changing season creates moments worth capturing and stories to savor.</p>



<p>Between the hustle and bustle of autumn activities and upcoming holidays, the season also has those quiet moments that allow us to reflect on the world around us. There is a calmness in the cooling air for those who slow down and simply observe.</p>



<p>This is the season where I get the itch to write fiction. While I enjoy the work I do here at the Tavern, I am a novelist at heart. If I am fortunate, I will one day publish a novel. Until then, there is this worldwide movement known as NaNoWriMo. It is an event where 1,000s of people attempt to write a 50,000-word first draft.</p>



<p>There is also a massive community around the challenge. It is sort of like group therapy for those crazy enough to attempt it.</p>



<p>It is a wild ride that is only driven by grit and coffee. There are no guaranteed publishing deals or trophies at the end of the road. The reward is a printable certificate, self-pride, and a month of household chores you likely skipped out on. You may bask in the glory of an achievement few others have accomplished. Many crash and burn by the end of Week #1.</p>



<p>But, if you are a writer, the techniques and lessons you learn along the way are well worth it.</p>



<p>I have a B.A. in English and am a published tech book author. Nothing has taught me more practical writing skills than my participation and victory in NaNoWriMo 2018. School gave me the foundation, but NaNoWriMo taught me about word sprints and how to disable my inner editor.</p>



<p>I will once again participate in NaNoWriMo. I was unable to do so over the past couple of years because of preexisting obligations. But I have that itch again and need to see this thing through.</p>



<p>While NaNoWriMo is not directly related to WordPress (though many participants blog their journey via the platform), there is a spin-off of the event for bloggers:</p>



<p><em>National Blog Posting Month.</em></p>



<p>NaBloPoMo does not roll off the tongue quite as well, and it has never reached the global success of NaNoWriMo. There is not even an official website dedicated to the month-long blogging challenge. However, it was once popular enough that WordPress.com <a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/tag/nablopomo/">hyped it for several years</a>. The last announcement seems to be <a href="https://wordpress.com/blog/2014/10/24/the-namos-are-coming-the-namos-are-coming/">from 2014</a>.</p>



<p>In 2006, blogger Eden Kennedy began NaBloPoMo in response to the NaNoWriMo mania. Not everyone has the time or desire to write 50,000 words in a month, but many want to up their writing game. Instead of averaging 1,667 words per day, the challenge is merely to blog something &mdash; anything &mdash; every day throughout November.</p>



<p>Our frenemies over at <a href="https://poststatus.com/">Post Status</a> have also been running a similar event called #ClickPublish throughout the year via Slack. Today is the start of a new month-long challenge in which WordPress professionals might participate. <em>Side note: &ldquo;Click Publish&rdquo; is much better branding than NaBloPoMo.</em></p>



<p>If you are looking for an excuse to wipe the dust off your WordPress blog, what better reason than a 30-day publishing challenge?</p>



<p>Any of our readers up for it? Feel free to let us know in the comments, and share your articles if you jump on the bandwagon.</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, 01 Nov 2021 22:22:48 +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:"Justin Tadlock";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:69:"Akismet: Introducing New Self-serve Options for Enterprise Plus Plans";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:31:"http://blog.akismet.com/?p=2134";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:97:"https://blog.akismet.com/2021/11/01/introducing-new-self-serve-options-for-enterprise-plus-plans/";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:3329:"<p>We’re all about making it easy to keep spam off your site, from the initial signup process to the protection we provide for years to come.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Last year, we introduced Enterprise Plus plans, designed for businesses that have over 60K API calls each month. But until now, you had to contact our sales team to register. </p>



<p>Don’t get us wrong, our sales team is pretty awesome. But time is money and the sooner you’re registered, the sooner you’re protected.</p>



<p>So, we’ve made signing up for an Enterprise Plus plan easier than ever.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Three new Enterprise Plus plans</h2>



<p>The three tiers are based on monthly API calls. We define an API call as any time a request is made to our servers – basically when&nbsp;we check your content for spam. The larger your site and the more visitors, comments, and form submissions you have, the more API calls you’ll use.</p>



<p>And now, customers with less than two million per month can now sign up automatically.&nbsp;</p>



<p></p>



<img />



<h3>60K – 350K API calls per month&nbsp;</h3>



<p>This tier costs $250 per month. Simply choose the plan, agree to our terms and conditions, and you can check out right away.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And there’s a bonus: Sign up for an annual subscription and you’ll get a 16% discount — $500 back in your pocket!&nbsp;</p>



<h3>350K – 2 million API calls per month&nbsp;</h3>



<p>Woah —&nbsp;that’s a lot of spam-fighting power!&nbsp;</p>



<p>This plan is $1,250 per month. Sign up for a year and save $2,500 with the 16% discount.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>2+ million API calls per month&nbsp;</h3>



<p>If you expect more than two million monthly API calls, you should speak to one of our spam-fighting experts to get a custom plan. Just <a href="https://akismet.com/signup/#enterprise-plus">let us know</a>.</p>



<h2>Exceeding API call limits&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Sometimes it’s hard to accurately predict your exact needs. Plus, things outside of your control can temporarily impact the number of API calls you use.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That’s why, if you exceed your plan’s limit for a couple of months, there’s no reason to worry. We’ll continue to fight spam while we see if your usage normalizes. However, if you exceed the limit for more than three consecutive months, future requests in excess of the monthly limit will be denied until you upgrade your plan.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Remember: the number of API calls is tracked based on the calendar month,&nbsp;not the date you registered or renewed. You can monitor your API usage by going to the bottom of your account page, clicking the prompt that says, “<strong>click here for account-wide spam stats</strong>,” and checking the <strong>Total API Calls </strong>column.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://docs.akismet.com/akismet-api-usage-limits/">Learn more about API limits and reducing API calls</a>.</p>



<h2>Get started with Enterprise Plus&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Our new self-serve options for less than two million API calls mean one less barrier to great spam-fighting power.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Less talking, less spam, more time.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Pretty great, right?&nbsp;</p>



<p>Get started with an <a href="https://akismet.com/signup/#enterprise-plus">Enterprise Plus plan</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<p></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, 01 Nov 2021 16:28:29 +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:15:"David Schwister";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:68:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 19: The People of 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:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=11368";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:70:"https://wordpress.org/news/2021/11/episode-19-the-people-of-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:8205:"<p>In this nineteenth episode, WordPress&#8217;s Executive director, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, discusses and expresses gratitude for the inspiration behind the People of WordPress series, HeroPress.</p>



<p><em><strong>Have a question you&#8217;d like answered? You can submit them to <a href="mailto:wpbriefing@wordpress.org">wpbriefing@wordpress.org</a>, either written or as a voice recording.</strong></em></p>



<h2>Credits</h2>



<ul><li>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a></li><li>Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/beafialho/">Beatriz Fialho</a></li><li>Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/">Chloé Bringmann</a></li><li>Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod</li></ul>



<h2>References </h2>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/category/interviews/">People of WordPress series</a></p>



<p><a href="https://heropress.com/">HeroPress</a></p>



<p><a href="https://heropressnetwork.com/">HeroPress Network</a></p>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/5-9/">WordPress 5.9 Development Cycle</a></p>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2021/10/22/team-rep-nominations/">Call for Team Rep Nomination</a></p>



<h2>Transcript</h2>



<span id="more-11368"></span>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>00:11</p>



<p>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!</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>00:29</p>



<p>The month of November includes the Thanksgiving holiday in my part of the world and in my familial traditions. And one of the things that November always brings up for me is the concept of gratitude. I have a gratitude practice that lasts throughout the year. But this time of year always kind of lets me look outside what makes me feel routinely grateful and explore areas that I don&#8217;t always notice.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>01:05</p>



<p>This year, I&#8217;m taking some time to do that in the context of the WordPress project, and it&#8217;s reminded me of one of the foundational things I talk about a lot that may be a little harder for folks to see. I am routinely grateful, of course, for the people who show up to maintain WordPress, the people who keep the back office work going, the contributors who contribute directly to the WordPress CMS and project, the folks who routinely go out and tell other people about WordPress and make sure others know how to use it.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>01:35</p>



<p>But there&#8217;s another group that I talk about a lot that is a little harder to grasp. And that&#8217;s this conceptual group of people whose lives have been changed by WordPress. I used to run into people like this all the time when I was organizing WordCamps. And the small but meaningful successes that they share year after year made me realize that my small contribution of organizing these events was really quite valuable; valuable to them, and I assumed also valuable to just other people in the WordPress project.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>02:09</p>



<p>Now, if you&#8217;re contributing in a way that doesn&#8217;t let you have contact with the same users consistently over time, or if contributing doesn&#8217;t quite balance out in your ledger at the moment, it can be hard to put names to faces in a way that lets you see how your contributions are making an impact. To help with that, a few years ago, the WordPress project partnered with the community Marketing team and the HeroPress team to share the People of WordPress series which you can find monthly on wordpress.org/news. For me, this series provides a glimpse into the humanity of the people who use WordPress, and for me, that&#8217;s enough. If all the series ever did was to remind us that WordPress was made for people whose needs matter, that would be enough to continue to have that series forever. But fortunately, the series does quite a bit more than that.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>03:04</p>



<p>The People of WordPress series also lifts up the stories of people who we don&#8217;t always hear from in technology. It highlights the wide array of origin stories that lead people to WordPress. It reminds us of the global nature of what we&#8217;re doing. It reconnects us to the hopefulness of our own first WordPress successes. And it draws a direct line to why we should care about refreshing the commons of this open ecosystem. I&#8217;m sure that there are more things that do as well. But those are just the things off the top of my head, we draw all of the people of WordPress stories that are inside that series directly from the HeroPress essays that have been submitted by users. And I was gonna say users like you in a kind of Reading Rainbow way. But I actually don&#8217;t know if any of you are everyday users who are also using WordPress but maybe not contributing yet. If you are then like I&#8217;m talking to you. And if you&#8217;re not, I&#8217;m probably still talking to you. Because all of these stories that go to HeroPress are very valuable and very important for us to know. Anyway, I digress.</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>04:14</p>



<p><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/topher1kenobe/">Topher DeRosia</a>, who founded HeroPress, is among the first people I met in the community lo these many years ago. And I think the impact that HeroPress has on the WordPress community as a whole is not always well recognized. So in the spirit of expanding the scope of my gratitude, and in the context of refreshing the commons, I would encourage you to head over to HeroPress.com and their newly launched HeroPress Network and see if there&#8217;s any little way that you can contribute to their commons, submitting your story donating to their network offering a small bit of volunteer time if you happen to have any spare time lying around. I know that the team would be delighted to hear from you.</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>05:01</p>



<p>That leads us now to our small list of big things. We are about a week away from the feature freeze for WordPress 5.9, the final release of the year. Feature freeze caused a little confusion last time. So I just want to clarify there won&#8217;t be a package released with this milestone. But no more enhancements or features will be worked on at that point. And bug fixing will become the primary focus. That will be on November 9, which I believe is next Tuesday. It&#8217;s definitely next week whenever the calendar turns to nine of November 2021. That&#8217;s the day that we&#8217;re going into feature freeze.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>05:38</p>



<p>The second big thing in our small list of big things is that team rep nomination season is upon us. If you are a team rep or want to learn more about being one, now is the time to kind of look at what&#8217;s going on and how to keep everything moving in that way. I&#8217;ll include a link to the announcement post of that in the notes below.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>05:57</p>



<p>And finally, Daylight Saving Time movements are also upon us. Some parts of the world are ending Daylight Saving Time others are starting it and some have already started or stopped that already. So no matter where you are, don&#8217;t forget to check and double-check the timing of things across time zones for the next few weeks.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>06:21</p>



<p>And that is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks.</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, 01 Nov 2021 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:15:"Chloe Bringmann";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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: Changelog #54 – Gutenberg 11.8-Navigation Block, Full-site Editing and the Plugin Machine";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=19499";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:63:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/changelog-54-gutenberg-11-8/";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:55578:"<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack and Grzegorz (Greg) Ziolkowski &nbsp;discuss this week&#8217;s Gutenberg 11.8 release, WordPress 5.9, the Navigation Block, Full-site Editing and the Plugin Machine. </p>



<ul><li>Music:&nbsp;<a href="https://soundcloud.com/xirclebox">Homer Gaines</a></li><li>Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandy-reed/">Sandy Reed</a></li><li>Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://markuraine.com/">Mark Uraine</a></li><li>Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://paulisystems.net/wordpress-consulting">Pauli Systems</a></li></ul>



<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/changelog-54-gutenberg-11-8#shownotes">Show Notes </a>/ <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/changelog-54-gutenberg-11-8#transcript">Transcript</a></p>



<span id="more-19499"></span>



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<p class="has-large-font-size" id="shownotes"><strong>Show Notes </strong></p>



<h2>Announcements</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://json.schemastore.org/theme-v1.json">Theme.json</a> and <a href="https://json.schemastore.org/block.json">block.json</a> now available through <a href="https://schemastore.org/">SchemaStore.org</a></li><li>GitHub Issue: <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/35927">Create a Schemas Package</a></li></ul>



<h2>Community Contributions</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://kinsta.com/blog/gutenberg-blocks/">Building Custom Gutenberg Blocks: The Definitive Block Development Tutorial</a> by Carlo Daniele from Kinsta</li><li>Updated: <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg-examples">Gutenberg Example Blocks</a></li><li><a href="https://pluginmachine.com/how-it-works/">Plugin Machine</a> by Josh Pollock</li><li>Video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u4R9zIMoU8">Live Q &amp; A Converting classic widgets to blocks </a>with Mathieu Viet, Varun Dubey and David Cavins from the BuddyPress team</li></ul>



<h2>Gutenberg 11.8 is a massive release!</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/10/28/whats-new-in-gutenberg-11-8-0-27-october/">What’s new in Gutenberg 11.8.0? (27 October)</a></li><li><a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-11-8-adds-dozens-of-features-including-featured-patterns-and-automatically-generated-heading-anchors">Gutenberg 11.8 Adds Dozens of Features, Including Featured Patterns and Automatically-Generated Heading Anchors</a></li></ul>



<h2>What&#8217;s discussed or in active development</h2>



<p>New Gallery Block will come out of experimental for 11.9 (<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/34979">#34979</a>)</p>



<p>Audit of experimental APIs is on the way (<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/35920">#35970</a>)</p>



<p>The Template Parts are almost there (<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/33926">#33926</a>)</p>



<p class="has-large-font-size">Stay in Touch</p>



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<h2>Transcript</h2>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Hello, and welcome to our 54th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. We are recording this on October 29 in 2021. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about Gutenberg 11.8, navigation block, full-site editing and the plugin machine. I&#8217;m Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and developer advocate for WordPress at Automattic. And I&#8217;m here with my co-host, co-worker fellow European and friend Grzegorz Ziolkowski, JavaScript developer at Automattic and WordPress core contributor. Howdy howdy Grzegorz, how are you doing today?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Howdy, howdy Birgit? I&#8217;m great today. Oh, that&#8217;s a good way to begin that. Today I met with my co-workers from Poland; we met in a co-working space, that was really nice to meet them again about, I guess two years. That&#8217;s a lot of time and a lot has changed. So we had spent a lot of time catching up, and meet some new co-workers. So very exciting. And yeah, I&#8217;m ready to talk about what&#8217;s happening in the Gutenberg world. And how are you today Birgit?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, I&#8217;m excited. My new pixel six pro phone will be delivered this weekend, and I&#8217;m looking forward to sunset-setting my old phone that&#8217;s from 2018. And it seems like it&#8217;s too long, although it&#8217;s only four years, right? Yeah. So I will plan to test the new camera features over the weekend. And it&#8217;s a good excuse to get out on a photo tour downtown or around town. Yeah. So&#8230; yeah.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: I&#8217;m looking forward to see some footage from your walks in Florida.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes. So maybe I need to start a little photo blog and not put them all on Instagram. Yeah-</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: That&#8217;s a good way to use Gutenberg and create a gallery using the gallery blog. That&#8217;s going to be in using inner blocks.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right. Yeah, but it&#8217;s still not as easy. And I like WordPress to be as easy as Instagram, but it&#8217;s not yet with the photos. So maybe I should switch teams.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah, maybe to the mobile team that is working on the Gutenberg app and they have some features that will help with that in the future. I hope so.</p>



<h3><strong>Announcements</strong></h3>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I will try that out, definitely, yeah. So we have a few announcements that theme.json and block.json are now available through the schemastore.org. And you can add the location, the URL of the schema on the top of your JSON file, and then your code editor supports this with your suggestions for the keys and values. You don&#8217;t have to look up exact syntax, and can avoid missing commas and end quotes. Grzegorz, you and Marcus are working on the canonical version for the Gutenberg ripple to integrate. So how does that work?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Birgit, we are still discussing how to approach that, because at the moment we are using an external project, that has a URL that could change one day for whatever reason. And WordPress prefers to have control over everything. Also, if we have it stored locally, then we will be able to integrate that in the process. So when there is a change in a core block, we can validate that and ensure that it&#8217;s always up to date. And you already count a few issues with existing blocks, which is a good testament that the tooling is really solid. And yeah, so probably one of the ways we could approach that, and Marcus discovered that Microsoft is using this approach, that we could just create a redirect to a URL, that would be like something in the wp.org domain, I don&#8217;t know, it&#8217;s something that we will find out. But I&#8217;m really excited about that, because this will help a lot, especially with the theme.JSON, which is a huge file to maintain. And it also shows hints, so if you provide&#8230; There are descriptions, so it explains what the given properties about, what values are available there. So also people will be able to contribute to that, and improve the hints, so this is really exciting.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So I&#8217;m glad we talked about this here quite there, early in the process. So whoever, if you want to use it more and you want to contribute, yeah. Grzegorz and Marcus are the person to-</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski:</em> Yeah. So just to be clear, so the credit should go to Alex Lender from Automattic, he originally submitted the first version of schema for theme.json file. And then the follow up was for the blog.json. So great work on that, and the idea was excellent.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And Alex Lender, there&#8217;s also the developer who did the whole duotone feature, right?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yes, that&#8217;s him.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay. So, but WordPress 5.9 is coming up fast, FeatureFreeze is November 9th, that&#8217;s less than two weeks. And Gutenberg 11.9, which is the same date, November 9th.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: What a coincidence.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Will be the last version with features to get into core. The release candidate has been rescheduled for the plugin, has been rescheduled for November 5th instead of November 3rd. But the final release will be after FeatureFreeze on November 10th, but the release candidate is the version that will get into core, for the first FeatureFreeze kind of. Then between November first and ninth, the team will be working on merging all the packages and code with core for the 5.9 release. Are you going to do it before that, like a dry run too? Or you&#8217;re just going to use this, the whole thing in one scoop into one core?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski:</em> Oh, so I don&#8217;t know about this one. I didn&#8217;t follow that so closely, because I&#8217;m working on another project. I&#8217;m working on new version of the comments, query loop block, which is going to be responsible for displaying comments and comments form. But from my experience, it might be a few comments on the WordPress core site, because it&#8217;s quite complex, it&#8217;s&#8230; So the packages that update only JavaScript, but there is a lot of features that require PHP changes, which is more complex to tackle. I don&#8217;t know, I guess it will take a few days, hopefully they have enough boundaries to finish that on time. But also FeatureFreeze, it&#8217;s mostly about making a cut that this is what we provide for the release. And I wouldn&#8217;t be so worried if the merging is delayed a little bit, because what matters here, is the date for Beta one, which is November 16, right? So there will be a couple of days to make sure that everything is solid enough.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So as you said, Beta on November 16th, and then the final release of WordPress 5.9 will be on December 14th, 2021. All right, so we got that out of the way.&nbsp;</p>



<h3><strong>Community Contributions</strong></h3>



<p>If you want to start now building blocks and need kind of a rundown, what all needs to be there. Of course there is a developer handbook, but Carlo Daniele from Kinsta has actually published a great tutorial, building custom Gutenberg blocks for definitive block development tutorial, and we will share the link and the show notes. So he walks us through all the prerequisites, and then all the tooling, and then also get into one block, an example block.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s a more complex block than the one that is provided in the official block development tutorial in the block editor handbook. And it&#8217;s also really is collected in one article that you can just process, and it provides a different option. So it&#8217;s not that step by step, but you have options in every step that you can take. For instance, you can use WPN for building your WordPress local environment, but you could also use the other option that as provided, I don&#8217;t remember what exactly.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, Kinsta has their own local development tool, and then there is local as well. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Recently the WordPress repository of the Gutenberg examples has been updated. Ryan Welcher went through all the examples and updated them to the newest APIs, and make them work. I think you also have found one, a few that are a little bit more complicated than the &#8216;hello world&#8217; examples. So it&#8217;s definitely now another repository to go to, to have examples that work, and you can learn from in your journey to developing the blocks.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. So, he did that, most of the work he did live streaming on Twitch, which is also recorded on his YouTube account. And it&#8217;s really a great way to see the steps he does to update everything. And the nice thing about that is also that the examples use up to the syntax, the latest APIs, and the most correct recommendations from the Gutenberg core team. So he did exciting work, very great work there, but also he is now looking and integrating some tooling that helps developers like code formatting, code linking. So, there are now integrations with IDEs, so everything is much simpler than before, and he is even looking and integrating very basic end to end test, using the same tools that Gutenberg uses. So that&#8217;s very helpful for someone that wants to explore block development.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes. Yeah. So Ryan has actually settled on Thursdays 10:30 Eastern, which is 4:30 UTC PM to do his Twitch live streaming and live coding session. So if you want to put this on your calendar, Thursdays at 10:30 on Twitch, and his&#8230;. We have the links and the show notes. His username is Ryanwelchercodes, all one word. And yeah, for those who listen and will not just keep it in memory.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Now, yesterday, a whole new tool popped up on my radar and that is by Josh Pollock. It&#8217;s an electronic app for plugin developers to get a head start on boilerplate on. He wrote, &#8220;It can create plugins with blocks, editor sidebar, custom admin pages, remote updater, common actions and filters, custom content, post types, local development, tests, GitHub actions, and any other things.” So it&#8217;s more like an all encompassing tool. “The UI for creating plugins, managing features, modifying generated files, and downloading development versions of the plugin, is nearly done.&#8221; He wrote on his new site, &#8220;And I&#8217;m also making good progress on the CLI, I&#8217;m almost ready to start early access.&#8221; That was Josh Pollock on his websites. I signed up for the early access and I&#8217;m excited for Josh&#8217;s new app, because Josh pollock was one of the early JavaScript educators in WordPress community together with you Grzegorz, Zack and Brian Richards at WordCamp Miami in 2018, which was in spring 2018.</p>



<p>And Josh Pollock is also the original creator of Caldera forms that he sold in 2020 to Ninja Forms. And that plugin will reach end of life at the end of the year. It&#8217;s a shame that because it was one of the few form builders who actually offered a lot of features beyond creating forms for the end user, because other plugin developers could connect with it and create processes, for the submitted form data. So, Josh certainly knows what a plugin developer might be looking for, so will keep an eye out for this new tool that comes on the website. He also said, of course, this tool can come for free, but it&#8217;s also going to increase your or improve plug-in developer&#8217;s processes. So especially in agencies, so it definitely will be worth its investment.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: It sounds very intriguing. I hear for the first time about that, but I believe that Josh did great work, because he has all the necessary knowledge to do that. And he was one of the early adopters and educators in the space. So, he&#8217;s definitely someone that has credit to do this type of work. And also, it sounds really interesting to have an app that you can install on your machine. I guess it will work with Mac and with Windows, and then you will just install that and does all the job for you. Sounds very exciting.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes, it is. Yes. Also exciting, we had a very good conversation yesterday. A lot of things happened yesterday, with Mathieu Viet, Varun Dubey and David Cavins from the BuddyPress team, when we discussed how they were converting their classic widgets to blocks and what the advantages are now, and what they learned, when they were using blocks. And one thing stood out, and I didn&#8217;t know why I wasn&#8217;t zeroing in on that, but Mathieu Viet, he mentions that he likes programming just a little block, a one unit kind of content unit. And if you stay within your own lane, you only do what this block does, and you&#8217;re not messing with everything else, like the post content or the sidebar, or any other place on the WordPress, it&#8217;s very isolated, but you can also focus on it. And I think it wasn&#8217;t really that clear to me until you said it, but that see atomic nature of the blocks.</p>



<p>And he&#8217;s also said that it&#8217;s so much easier now setting up a BuddyPress site for end users, because they see, they just drag the blocks over and it just works. Yeah. And they don&#8217;t have to learn short codes or widgets and all that, because&#8230; Yeah, I think David said that widgets are very hard for end users to grasp the concept of that and to apply it to their site building. So it was an interesting conversation. We will have the YouTube video, the recording available in the show notes, and also some of the tools and the resources that they mentioned, how they got into it and what helped them to move forward with the blocks. Yeah, and now we come to Gutenberg 11.8.</p>



<h3><strong>What’s Released &#8211; Gutenberg 11.8</strong></h3>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yes, the last one that goes into WordPress 5.9 release.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes, the second last.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yes, second last.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, Vincente Canales has managed to release for this version and highlights plenty of great features in the release post on the make blog. And it had 166 PRs merged, excluding all the mobile version PRs that were released, and it has 80 enhancements. We are not going to talk about all of them.</p>



<h3><strong>Enhancements</strong></h3>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah, 80, it&#8217;s an impressive number. And it&#8217;s for real. And a lot of those enhancements are really great, so we should start right away.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So the&#8230; go ahead.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. You probably wanted to say something there, it&#8217;s like there&#8217;s a lot of integration with global styles and this product evolves so fast, and it really gives a lot of power to block developers, because you just need to provide one entry in the JSON file, and suddenly you have this feature enabled. So this way is like, now you can add spacing controls to all heading blocks, which is pretty interesting that you can now control the margin or padding depending on your needs. So it&#8217;s under the dimension section in the sidebar of your block.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah. Well, that&#8217;s one that was missing for a long time for the spacing part. I think the most used block was actually the spacer block, to make up for the missing pieces there. But now many blocks have actually the space controls and blocks like the buttons block, where you have inner blocks, as you have the buttons block outside, and then you have multiple buttons inside the block. You also have a vertical margin support and the gap. So you can, and we also saw that last version 11.7, the columns had that as well. So this is going to be rolled out also to the feature image and block, and those other blocks.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah, in general, the idea is that most of the blocks to occupy the full role, they need to have some ways to declare spacing. So you don&#8217;t have to use the spacer block anymore. And that&#8217;s the most important change. And I think at the time of the release, we also have the space gap. However, the name which will stick at the end of take this gap, will be also in all blocks that group other blocks.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So the category block got an enhancement by supporting now only top level categories. So when you use the categories you can change that, the column block has now this specification that you can actually have specifications for the blocks within the columns. So which we&#8217;re allowed and which are not, and all that. And also how they are placed into the columns, there&#8217;s a common content block that now has typography color and pattern support. And then there were quite a few changes to the cover block, and it has now the allowed blocks and template block attributes for the cover blocks. So you, as a developer and theme developer can now determine what the cover block can entail. That&#8217;s through the block.json right from the cover block, or is it through theme or both?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: I guess this is from through the block attribute, so you can define that. So for instance, when you are using a block pattern, then you can encode that, and you can set a lock now for the block, so once that is like combined together, the user won&#8217;t have a way to change that, so you have a very nice control on how those block will behave after they&#8217;re inserted.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I just looked at the PR and it&#8217;s through the blocks register block type area there. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, that&#8217;s something that a lot of theme developers and plugin developers are really worried about, is how they can control and block things down, especially when you do development for a larger editor team. So they are guided through their editing experience there.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah, I think those APIs will major soon because we have so many use cases for that these days, and those features are added. And as soon as we have enough blocks to make a good decision, then this API will be improved, and this is how it all happens in the block editor.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right, right.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. So for the features, we now also have a new embed integration is for Pinterest, that was missing as it looks.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And it was also added to core, so the embed provider is also available for classic editor, not only the block for the block editor, it&#8217;s a new variation on the embed block. I just want to go back just a little bit to the cover block, there were also so a few changes and gradual changes to the opacity for background colors. So now you could have a background color, or a background image, and then the opacity of that, you are really in control of it. There are dim ratios and they have controls over that. And that&#8217;s really good way when you create more creative block patterns. What we have seen for instance from Tammie Lister, she has a few block patterns, the pattern inspiration, and this is a place where I go when I need a little bit inspiration, is she had a background and then an image on it, and then a duotone attached to it, and made that a block pattern.</p>



<p>And it&#8217;s really fascinating, what you can do with those tools already, in terms of your visual layouts on your post or pages. So yeah, just saying that, yeah. It&#8217;s now in the plugin available now. So feature image got more spacing controls for the image block, and also the heading while we talked about this, but what I missed talking about the heading, was that it also now auto generates heading anchors. So you can, when you create subheaders, you can get a link to those subheaders that you can use, not only to drive people to end and say, okay, check out this little header there, or section of my blog post, or of my page, it also enables the finishing the table of content block that has been in process.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: On hold.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: &#8230; on hold for quite a while, until that feature is actually available. And I read a little bit through the PR, and if it is already at anchor, it will not override it. So in your existing pages and posts, don&#8217;t worry that some automation is now making your work redundant or make your work more, it only creates new anchors and not override existing anchors.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski:</em> Yeah, it&#8217;s just to ensure that every heading has an anchor, that is already rendered on the front end. So you can use as URLs, but also you can provide your own name, I guess so.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</em> Yeah, you can.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: The last version I saw it was working this way, so it&#8217;s very flexible.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And I really love that, but sometimes you have longer blog posts, but then you only want to kind of have share one paragraph of it or one quote or yeah, kind of put a heading on it, and you get an auto generated anchor for it.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. It&#8217;s also, sometimes you have to write a very long heading and then just autogenerate writes out of the text, how the heading is, the anchor how it&#8217;s named. So it&#8217;s also very good experience for the user because they don&#8217;t have to type almost the same name again.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right, yeah. So there are some other things I wanted to just point out, the post comment author, now add link settings, and to the block support as well as the comment dates, those are also link&#8230; I always like links, yeah. It&#8217;s kind of….</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Because you can link both, right?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: For the author that links to the website that is provided in the user&#8217;s profile, and for the date, that&#8217;s just getting through to the comment.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And to the comments of that date, yeah. And then there&#8217;s some&#8230; Now we come to the more theme-related blocks, the site. Well, the comment author and data already important for the theme, the site logo received some improvements. And now there is a basic example in the site logo block. And there was some interesting back and forth on the reset button and the replace, the menu drop down, and then back and forth. But it works now really nicely, all this back and forth had the benefit that everybody who worked on it now has a better hands on how the site logo works, and how it can be added to the navigation block or to the head up block and head on template part. All right.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: And there are also changes to the social links or social icons. I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s the name, but the titles use both versions. And so the change there is that you can now set the top and bottom margin for those icons, and the other change, there is some changes to the styling. So when you have only logos, you don&#8217;t display any texture, then it looks better than before.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. It got a Polish.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Polish, a Polish slack.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: A Polish slack. It&#8217;s not in polish. No, of course we are making a pun here from Polish and polish, it&#8217;s a polish logo style. But sometimes when you travel in multiple languages, these things kind of pop up at you at very different times.</p>



<p>So the global styles, and they&#8217;re now called styles. So yeah in language, in 5.9, you will see that everybody&#8217;s only talking about site styles, not the global styles, but the big change is now that the child theme, JSON file will be merged with a parent theme, JSON file. And that is important because a lot of people think about&#8230; yeah. So when you always have to build a child theme, so when the parent theme gets an update, things are not overwritten, and you can change some of the settings in the same JSON file in your child&#8217;s name.</p>



<p>So it applies to styles on top of those from the parent theme. And you can&#8230; so the parent space is maintained. If no theme.JSON file is present as child theme, all the parents standards are applied, or the other way around, because you can actually use the theme.JSON file and classic themes. So it works, yeah. If you have a classic theme, you can create a child theme and then put a theme.JSON file in it to configure all the settings for the block editor. So that&#8217;s a very good enhancement, and I&#8217;m glad that it will make it into 5.9.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. Because theme.JSON file is about the styling, and to specify that a given theme is a block theme, you need to provide templates in a special folder. That&#8217;s the distinction. It might be a bit confusing, even for me wrapping a head around that is a bit hard.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I don&#8217;t think that is the last word yet spoken in on the parent theme, the child theme, because we really need to consider that this is the first version where a block theme is actually in core or as a default theme in core, and the handling of a block theme will be in core with 5.9, but it&#8217;s the first version. And as you listeners probably have already noticed, there&#8217;s always the minimal and a first version to get the functionality right, and then iterate fast on it. And what&#8217;s going to happen also with the block themes, and the handling of it in terms of extensibility and all backwards compatibility. So, always through the….</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: We can move to&#8230; you know we are not done yet. We can move to patterns and a big change there, that there is now a new category which feature patterns that come from the pattern directory that is hosted on wordpress.org. So, that&#8217;s a big change because now the patterns that are submitted by the community, they are somehow, I don&#8217;t know, selected to the special category, and every website that is using the block editor will be able to show them on the list, and user will be able to insert them directly from the editor.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: From the inserter, yes. And there&#8217;s also a change in the query loop block, where the number of items per page for the default block has actually increased. So it&#8217;s not only six, but you can change that as well. The query loop block pattern. It&#8217;s one of my most favorite block patterns, because that&#8217;s where you show your….</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski:</em> The query loop.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. It&#8217;s so extensible and it&#8217;s&#8230; well, so flexible that you can really make a lot of different pages out of it and showcase your content. So the block editor also got animations for the insertion point and drop zones and other elements. So the drag and drop improvements have been merged there. I didn&#8217;t see anything, well, the template editor itself, it comes totally&#8230; it&#8217;s out of experimentation for this third version, I think. And you get a lot of different updates there, as one of them is to now handle template areas with the template inspector, and have more options for them. And the other one is there for just some cosmetic items, and now it uses a dark background, but though if you have a light background on your theme, yeah, you hardly see it.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s going to be a&#8230; the background of the editor is not white, it&#8217;s actually black. I don&#8217;t know if it makes a difference. And then the components, there were quite a few update on the story book. That&#8217;s a place where you can look up components, and see the attributes and how they change, and you can kind of copy and paste code from there. So that&#8217;s as good that there are some nice updates there.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. And I also notice that change in the navigation block, that is going out of experimental phase. So, on the mobile screen, if you use that block, you would see the hamburger icon. So now, the changes that you can also enforce then on the desktop or the wider screens, you can also always show this hamburger. It&#8217;s something that, for instance, some Twenty Twenty family of themes, they use that feature very often. So that&#8217;s interesting change that user can use now.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Absolutely, yeah. And then there are some, the great block package, got some changes and one of them is really helpful for people using that to create blocks, as it allows now local directory to pass to a template as a relative path. So, you don&#8217;t have to submit your template to NPM to actually use it in your grade block. You can just have it in a particular directory on your own machine, and reuse it for the next one of your grade block features here. And the pascal case, you can now have a Pascal case slug on your template strings as well.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: So that changes mostly for using PHP classes. So it follows the conversion. So you can just use that to start your class name, and then provide the rest of the class name if you are using a PHP file in your templates. So those two features are related to each other. If you are using those templates and you can build local folder with templates that generates PHP files. And I think there&#8217;s one more thing I wanted to mention. So the one is, last time we talked that for the navigation block, there was a change that allowed using a slash inserter.</p>



<p>So you need to make inserting a certain type of blocks easier in the navigation menu. And this feature was extended now for the heading list and core blocks. So, for the heading it looks quite funny because if you are using H2, then the font is big, but you are able quickly to insert a different block from that as well. So, sometimes it could be useful to do this type of operation. Maybe in the future, the slash insert might support a different type of action. So, I saw some explorations that could use machine learning. So it could like for instance, Siri or Cortana just to understand what you want to say. And like you could start typing, like insert heading with, find me a pattern with certain characteristics. So I&#8217;m looking forward to how the slash inserter will evolve now that it can be used in more places.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. The slash inserter was actually the&#8230; it has been around since the beginning of Gutenberg, and it has a few nice for the post editor, but I didn&#8217;t realize that you actually have to enable it also for the other screens. And I saw that PR in the list and I didn&#8217;t highlight it, because it&#8230; hmm, I didn&#8217;t understand it quite what the significance was this time around, but now thank you for explaining it to me. I also know that some of the tools that deal with the second brain editing, like Roam Research or Logseq, they use the slash command also to add a to do list item, or to add a to do list to a certain date, or just kind of reference date. So there&#8217;s a lot that can be done with slash insert, the slash commands.</p>



<p>And for the heading, if you use it in your post, just a little secret from the treasure chest of your Birgit’s secrets, if you say slash H3, it actually gives you a heading three. So you don&#8217;t have to control the heading through the block tool or H5. Yeah, you can do that as well. But now we going back to our changelog here.&nbsp;</p>



<h3><strong>Bug Fixes</strong></h3>



<p>Then there were 42 bug fixes in that release, and I&#8217;m pretty sure there are quite a few coming up also in the next release. There was actually none that really stand out where I said, okay, that took a long time to fix, or that makes it now much easier or something like that.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s definitely in recent releases, we have so many new features and enhancements that show up, that is really hard to find a bug fix that stands out. And those are small things or some something that is a bit of improvement, it&#8217;s not like sometimes it&#8217;s hard to classify. And many of them are related to how it displayed visually inside the editor, because with so many the features you sometimes miss something less important.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I think in total they make a real improvement on the quality of life, of the experience, kind of the workflow. But when you isolate them to just one line item, then it&#8217;s not that clear how the improvement really affects a normal user in the block editor. But I&#8217;m always looking out for those items that are kind of significant in that area, but I didn&#8217;t see one in this one in that regard.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah, just in the meantime. So during the Go/No-Go Meeting that was held two weeks ago, Helen Hou-Sandi she mentioned that the biggest difference for her is that, the editor that was a couple months back, feels less buggy, like the experience overall has improved, not because something significantly changed, but because those small interaction has been improved a lot. And the difference between what you see in the block editor and on the front end doesn&#8217;t differ so much, and that&#8217;s the biggest change. This is where those little bug fixes come from, and as you pointed out in isolation, they don&#8217;t seem significant, but the amount of work done is really important, because it improves the first impression for the user.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Absolutely, yeah. Thank you for pointing it out. I heard Helen saying that as well, also in the discussion that we had with her, and Mark Jaquith and Riad Benguella, that the block editor has come such a long way now, that the underlying structure, as well as the look and feel and the usage.&nbsp;</p>



<h3><strong>Documentation</strong></h3>



<p>So we come to a documentation, there are 21 changes in documentation. Of course, some of the things with new features comes new documentation, and there&#8217;s now a section on how to use this theme in JSON schema, that we mentioned above, and also update the block categories and the clarifying documentation about the inner blocks orientation prop, and what else? So, there&#8217;s some package documentation updated, and quite a few components didn&#8217;t have any read-me files. And that made it hard to have the automated documentation flow that goes from the GitHub repo into the WordPress meta site on the make block a little harder. And when the information is not in the code, it can&#8217;t be in the documentation either. So there&#8217;s, well, quite a few efforts there to bring the information out of the components into the documentation there.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah, to fill the missing gaps, because there are still a few, however, it has improved significantly in the last few weeks.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Mm-hmm. And that also covers the grade block documentation that has been updated with the new features.</p>



<h3><strong>Code Quality</strong></h3>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: And there were also code quality related changes, and there are 17 of that, and it&#8217;s related to maintenance and to bring some libraries up to date, or replace some libraries. So one of the works is to replace tiny color libraries, color D, which is more up to date and is a better fit for the project. And also part of the change to the color picker, that had some refactorings and it looks a bit different than before.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Do you know why the color picker was changed? Was it&#8230; I think we discussed it, that we both were kind of….</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski:</em> I still know.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Accessibility.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski:</em> But yes, and performance, and also flexibility of the new library.</p>



<h3><strong>Tools</strong></h3>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Okay. And then there were some 11 changes to the tooling or for tools. And these are way over my head anyway, but then I only marvel at the nice naming there, which is now we have flaky test.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Flaky test.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Which kind of isn&#8217;t funny.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: There is a tool, so maybe not tool. So when end to end tests fail, there is a special script that processes those failures. And it tries the test, if the test succeeds on the second or third attempt, then there is an issue opened called flaky tests, and it just reports what went wrong. So someone could look at that and try to fix the failure, or decide that is not an issue and close that one. So that&#8217;s the backstory for that.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Mm-hmm. Well, that&#8217;s very interesting, yes. Well, thank you for that.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. I think we reached to the end of the list, and we can now talk about what&#8217;s in active development, or discussed in the community.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right. And they have….</p>



<h3><strong>What’s in Active Development or Discussed</strong></h3>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: And I think he wanted to talk about project APTA is that, people shared on the core editor meeting on Wednesday, which is very related to the upcoming FeatureFreeze.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right. And first this was about the navigation block and navigation editor. You might remember the listeners that the navigation editor screen won&#8217;t make it into 5.8, and the navigation block has been scaled down a bit for that. And the architecture of the navigation block has changed a little bit, because now it will be saved as a&#8230; the storage of it has been changed. And there are some&#8230; it&#8217;s underlying architecture, and it&#8217;s interesting that it&#8217;s very late in the process for these to come in, but the team feels quite confident to get this, get through it.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: So are you talking about the idea to use a new post type or WP_template? WP_navigation to solve the navigation issues.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, that PR has already been merged, so it&#8217;s not in this version, but it&#8217;s in the next version, so it can go get into 5.9, and it allows the same navigation items to be used in multiple places on a site, but with a potential to have each different visual presentation. So the that&#8217;s kind of how they approach it. So you could have a menu in your header and footer, but if you use it on the sub-site, and just want to point it out, you can style it differently, but you use the same links. You only have one place to edit that. And then with it comes also the facilitation of the WP navigation area as a part of the facilitating that from the classic menus. So it preserves its nature on theme switch, that&#8217;s one of the hard things that are now in the work that theme switching should not make you have to redo your menus and your navigation from the website, and that&#8217;s part of the feature parity with the existing one. And then here have some transforms on the links, and they split up the URL and the text in the link. So it can have a rich preview as well. So that was for the navigation editor reports. Do you want to talk about the template editor or the styles?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: For the template editor?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Mm-hmm.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: So, I think that the template editor is a template part editor is the thing that had a lot of iterations, like the focus mode, which displays this template part inside, like removes everything that is not the template part from the view, so you can focus on that. And yeah, it seems like it&#8217;s almost there, and it will be moved out of the experimental phase, and you&#8217;ll launch in WordPress 5.9.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Did I miss anything there?</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: No, there was a tracking issue, that&#8217;s actually what is linked there to the template focus mode by Matias, and he had quite a few issues from the design issues that need to be merged, before it all comes together. And it&#8217;s still pretty hard to have the template editor, template part editing should work. And the overview issue has also been closed. So all the things that were in the works have actually been merged, and this overview issue has been closed.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. When we talked about improvements to the template part editor last time, it looked pretty solid for me. So, I&#8217;m not surprised that it has been closed since then. And also it&#8217;s very interesting that this navigation will have its own post type, the same applies for the template part. In some ways they could use this template far for navigation, but I think it&#8217;s conceptually different, that&#8217;s why they decided that should be a different post type.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I think so, that it&#8217;s a single purpose of concern, I think it&#8217;s a better approach than mixing things, just because they&#8217;re technically similar, it doesn&#8217;t have to be that they are same. We have a similar discussion actually between reusable blocks, block patterns, and template parts. And to figure out the differences and what&#8217;s the same, because the end users will have that question as well. And there is a big discussion on how to rename the reusable blocks, and to what name, but it&#8217;s not&#8230; I don&#8217;t think it has come to an end yet, so we can&#8217;t link it in the show notes, I think it&#8217;s ongoing right now for two weeks, but yeah, any opinion is welcome, and every reasoning is welcome, in terms of how this should be called. But what I also learned about in that discussion was that there is definitely quite confusion, or it&#8217;s not particularly clear the purpose of each of them.</p>



<p>So reading through that has quite a bit of that. That can be&#8230; oh, that&#8217;s why epiphany is in there. So, I think I also read another discussion somewhere, I forgot, that&#8217;s my life now, I read something and then I forget where I have, and when I read it, I bookmark it, but then I still, if I don&#8217;t know where the bookmarks are, I&#8217;m at the same place. So, I have not yet found a solution to it, but I will navy through.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Jorge posted an update on their global styles in the meeting. And they have a PR that actually propose a new color palette editor. So it makes multiple color palettes from different sources available to the user. And that&#8217;s actually also something that came out of the Go/No Go Meeting, when the team in there was thinking about how can this be improved or what&#8217;s the next step for it, when they showed the color sidebar for a template editing screen. I think it was something that Matt Mullenweg just had loaded outside. Oh, isn&#8217;t there a website out there like color palette.com where you can select different color palettes? And wouldn&#8217;t it be cool if we could get it in? So I&#8217;m definitely looking through those PRs and see how they&#8217;re progressing there or what they suggest in there.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yes. Similar cases for the patterns, explorer, and a new way to browse them, it would be in the modal. So the exploration that is in very advanced phase now, just provides an icon that you can click in the sidebar, and it just moves all the patterns to the modal and you have almost full screen to see them, and so that should help to pick your pattern, like spend more time and have better preview of them, not limited by the very narrow space that the sidebar gives you.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh yeah, you&#8217;re right, that&#8217;s a big underscore exploration now, because most page builders have that, third party page builders, and also early layout block plugins collections had some of the full model Windows to select full page patterns. When you come to full page patterns, you need a bigger space to display than the&#8230; Sidebar preview is definitely not going to be enough. Well, that&#8217;s in the discussion, what else do we have? One of preparing for the WordPress 5.9, the technical leads for the editor release leads, Robert Anderson and George Mamadashvili, are conducting an audit of experimental APIs of the various Gutenberg packages that need to come out of experimental to be merged with core. And they have a one issue list that&#8217;s 35920 is the issue number. And it&#8217;s a list of quite a few experimental methods and APIs, but only a few of them. And I know there are a few developers who actually created the features, are already preparing those to come out of experiment. They&#8217;re working on that. This is just the issue list with all the experimental methods, and when you go through the comments, you&#8217;ll see which one are already work in progress to be bring out of experiment.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. Just wanted to explain what this experimental status means for those methods. So, as long as they&#8217;re experimental, then there is no guarantee that this method will have the same signatures. So, plugin developers, or theme developers, they use it and at their own risk, it happens, but those&#8230; I know that people who use that, they pay attention to ensure that, as long as it&#8217;s stabilized, they update their codes. So it still works as they should. And yeah, so the idea is that as soon as you change the name and remove this underscore experimental prefix, the method gets integrated with the block editor handbook and all the like method name, description, patterns, they get included there so people can easily find them later. So it&#8217;s just a way to ensure that the Gutenberg plugin can move very fast, and check out if given API makes sense, and use that with core, usually with the block editor or with the block library for core blocks, and it worked pretty nice. However, the list of experiments has grown over time, and probably it would be a good idea to soon take step back and clarify what the future of some of those APIs.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Will be, yeah, absolutely. Speaking, coming out of experimental, the new gallery block will come out of experimental for 11.9. It was a little bit delayed because when found that there was a problem with the mobile app, if you have a lower mobile app than 18.2, there was some content loss there. So now there is a little notification on the gallery block placeholder, that if you have a different mobile version, make sure that you don&#8217;t use it, so you&#8217;re not encountering any content loss. That&#8217;s the only&#8230; it is from the developers, is the estimation that by the time 6.0 comes around, the people that are on lower mobile apps have upgraded by then, and it&#8217;s not an issue anymore, but it&#8217;s just for this release, but it definitely will come to 11.9 for everybody else. And so I&#8217;m really looking forward to that, because having image blocks within your gallery, is so much easier to handle so much better concept than having images that don&#8217;t have all the features like it has now.</p>



<p>And they also have&#8230; so the developers, Glen Davis, mostly spearheaded that effort, he took care of quite a few backwards compatibility issues that happened with existing galleries, that are normally not touched, but when you open up the post again, it will be automatically changed. And we have not finished our outreach to the plugin developers yet, to alert them to that change. But most of them that we have contacted, about 15 of them, 80% actually knew about it and had already adopted their gallery extensions. All right.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: That&#8217;s great to hear that people are following the progress on their blog.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I think a big part is they&#8217;re listening to our podcast. I&#8217;m just saying that now.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So yeah. And that is pretty much the end of our show. I don&#8217;t have anything else that I wanted to talk about, do you have anything Grzegorz?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: No, and other than usual stuff like, we are waiting for reviews and send us your comments, what do you like about the show? What you don&#8217;t like? So we could improve, that would be always appreciated, and you can also contact us on Twitter, like tweet us or DM us. My Twitter handle is @gziolo and yours Birgit&#8217;s is @bph, it&#8217;s very short and sweet. How did you manage to find this one? So short.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, I signed up in 2008, so very early. But I get a lot of street cred from the young-ins that I have a three digit Twitter handle.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So we also have an email address where you can send your questions and suggestions, and the news, it&#8217;s <a href="mailto:changelog@gutenbergtimes.com">changelog@gutenbergtimes.com</a>. And this is it for me. I wish you all a great weekend. And next week, when you listen to that, we are all looking forward to WordPress 5.9 testing, and yeah, this is it until the next time, bye-bye.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yes, that was a great one. Thank you Birgit, and thank you our listeners, see you.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Bye.</p>



<p> </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:"Sat, 30 Oct 2021 19:15:54 +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:8;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:76:"WordPress Foundation: The WordPress Foundation publishes its 2020 financials";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:41:"https://wordpressfoundation.org/?p=201436";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://wordpressfoundation.org/2021/the-wordpress-foundation-publishes-its-2020-financials/";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:4205:"<p class="has-drop-cap">We are glad to announce that WordPress Foundation has published its financials for the year 2020. </p>



<p>In 2020, the WordPress Foundation and its subsidiary B-Corp (WordPress Community Support, PBC) provided support and guidance for a total of 33<a href="http://central.wordcamp.org/">&nbsp;WordCamps</a>&nbsp;and hundreds of<a href="http://www.meetup.com/pro/wordpress/">&nbsp;Meetup groups</a>, organized by volunteers in communities all over the world. </p>



<p>WordPress Foundation’s total revenue in 2020 was $10,787, with donations making up all of this amount. Expenses for the WordPress Foundation totaled $3,438. Major 2020 expenses include:</p>



<ul><li>do_action charity hackathon grants $1,650</li><li>Dues &amp; Subscriptions $759</li></ul>



<p>You can read about our finances in detail in our <a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/2020-financials/">2020 financials page</a>: </p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/2020-financials/">2020 Financials</a></blockquote>
</div>



<h2>Support the WordPress Foundation</h2>



<p>As you all may know, the WordPress Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that pursues a charter to educate the public about WordPress and related open source software. We regularly host educational programs like&nbsp;<a href="https://doaction.org/">charity hackathons</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/tag/intro-to-open-source/">open source educational events</a>. These programs are made possible through the help of generous donations from<a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/donors/">&nbsp;our donors</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote><p>If WordPress has helped you in any way,&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/donate/">kindly consider donating to the WordPress Foundation</a>.</p></blockquote>



<p>Money raised by the WordPress Foundation will be used to ensure free access to&nbsp;<a href="http://wordpressfoundation.org/projects/">supported software projects</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/trademark-policy/">protect the WordPress trademark</a>, and fund various programs. 2022 will be an exciting year for the WordPress Foundation, as we have a plethora of exciting plans in mind, including a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2021/09/01/proposal-centralized-global-do_action-charity-hackathons/">potential global charity hackathon program</a> along with a host of novel educational initiatives through <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">learn.wordpress.org</a>.</p>



<h3>In short – your donations will go a long way in sustaining and growing the WordPress project. </h3>



<p><em>Every</em> penny you contribute will help us build and grow our charitable programs that will in turn empower individuals and communities with the help of the WordPress open source software. </p>



<p>You can either&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/donate/">make a one-time donation or choose to donate annually</a>. If you sign up for any one of the four annual subscription plans, you will be featured on our&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/donors/">Donors page</a>&nbsp;– as a token of our gratitude for supporting education programs about WordPress and open source.&nbsp;A big thank you to <a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/donors/">all our donors</a> for supporting us in our journey so far!</p>



<p>Check out our donations page for more information: </p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/donate/">Donate</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p class="has-background">Show your support for WordPress by taking part in the <a href="https://wwwp5k.run/"><strong>Worldwide WordPress 5K run</strong></a> from wherever you are! You can also support the WordPress Foundation by donating to us directly <a href="https://wwwp5k.run/donate/">through their website</a>. Hurry up! The event concludes on October 31!</p>



<p>Thank you so much, for all that you do, to support our goal of serving the public good through our myriad initiatives. </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:"Sat, 30 Oct 2021 18:52:16 +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:12:"Hari Shanker";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:54:"WordPress.org blog: People of WordPress: Ronald Gijsel";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=11370";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:79:"https://wordpress.org/news/2021/10/people-of-wordpress-ecommerce-ronald-gijsel/";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:10396:"<p>In this series, we share some of the inspiring stories of how WordPress and its global network of contributors can change people&#8217;s lives for the better. This month we feature a WordPress e-commerce specialist on the difference it makes.</p>



<h2>Empowered to make a change</h2>



<p><strong>For WordPress contributor Ronald Gijsel, open source is a lifeline and a perfect place for people with creative minds. It led him on a transformational journey from chef to WordPress e-commerce specialist. Originally from the Netherlands, where he trained in hospitality, he was to find a restorative and energizing power within the WordPress local and global community. </strong></p>



<p>Ten years ago, life took a sad turn for Ronald and his wife Nihan when their baby daughter passed away only a few days after she was born. At that time, Ronald was a restaurant owner in the UK, working hard in a challenging economic environment.&nbsp;Discovering open source was in many ways his lifeline and helped him and his wife through their considerable heartache. Through this community, a journey to understand the opportunities of the web and new career paths began.</p>



<img src="https://i0.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2021/10/ronaldgijsel2-1.jpg?w=632&ssl=1" alt="Portrait picture of Ronald Gijsel" class="wp-image-11403" />



<p>Ronald believes that working together in WordPress and other open source communities can lead to massive benefits for a large number of users. Not least, an online presence has been essential to the survival of many businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic.&nbsp;</p>



<p>During recent years, he has visited open source events worldwide as a partnership manager at a WordPress e-commerce plugin company and community supporter. His enthusiasm for WordPress has steered him to being part of local support, solutions and collaboration as a co-organizer of <a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/">WordCamp</a> Bristol, the <a href="https://www.meetup.com/Cheltenham-WordPress-Meetup/">WordPress Cheltenham Meetup</a> and more.</p>



<h2>Moving forward&nbsp;</h2>



<p>When Nihan enrolled in the UK&#8217;s Open University to complete her computer science degree, Ronald found her course materials stirring his own interest. He started to follow the lectures with her and even attempted some of the course work for himself &#8211; all whilst he continued to work as a chef in various local pubs.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Through this, he discovered how to generate affiliate commission earnings through blogging on different platforms. “Creating websites was slowly becoming a passion. In these first few years, I enjoyed every part of the steep learning curve, from tackling the basics to more advanced coding and designs,” said Ronald.</p>



<h2>The Start of a Web Career</h2>



<p>Ronald reduced his hours as a chef and devoted more time to online courses learning coding, e-commerce, SEO, and online marketing. Yet when he applied for a job as a WordPress designer, he had only heard of the platform in the context of blogging. This was all to change when an online tutor on one of the training sites revealed the many functions available with WordPress. It was the start of a new career and life journey. This tutor was Topher DeRosia, who went on to create <a href="https://heropress.com/">HeroPress</a>.</p>



<img width="632" height="467" src="https://i2.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2021/10/with-topher.jpg?resize=632%2C467&ssl=1" alt="Ronald Gijsel and Topher De Rosia at 
a WordCamp" class="wp-image-11398" />Ronald with Topher at WordCamp London in 2019



<p>To learn WordPress, Ronald ‘binge-watched’ webinars on various development topics and over time he became more familiar with it. Securing a job as a designer was only the beginning of his journey into the WordPress ecosystem.</p>



<p>A year later in 2015, after landing the job as a WordPress designer, Ronald&#8217;s boss asked him to consider taking on the business and its clients. With his wife, Ronald decided to take on the firm and to expand their work in WordPress e-commerce and online marketing.</p>



<p>As an advocate for learning new skills and practicing them, Ronald encourages others to continue to expand their knowledge through study, attending talks at Meetups and WordCamps, and using the new <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">Learn WordPress resource</a>. </p>



<p>“WordPress has evolved in so many branches that require different skills. There are hundreds of areas of expertise, roles, and jobs that complement WordPress to make it what it is.”</p>



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile"><img width="528" height="652" src="https://i2.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2021/10/meetup3-1.jpg?resize=528%2C652&ssl=1" alt="Ronald talking about WordPress and e-commerce solutions" class="wp-image-11414 size-full" /><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p class="has-large-font-size">“WordPress is an essential tool in my box.”<br /><em><strong>Ronald Gijsel</strong></em></p>
</div></div>



<p>Ronald believes WordPress thrives on diversity, with many <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/">contributor opportunities</a> and jobs in the ecosystem that require a wide range of skills.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“A big part of this is that each person’s personal background complements their skill sets. Who you are and what you do is influenced by what you have done and learned. We need to cherish this. These things also add to our culture, language, experience, and knowledge,” he said.<br /></p>



<h2>A journey into WordPress e-commerce</h2>



<img src="https://i2.wp.com/wordpress.org/news/files/2021/10/meetup2.jpg?resize=632%2C442&ssl=1" alt="Ronald presenting on WordPress and e-commerce at an event" class="wp-image-11400" width="632" height="442" />Ronald shares his enthusiasm for building WordPress and e-commerce websites at WordCamp London in 2019



<p>Ronald initially extended his interest in the&nbsp;WordPress ecosystem through representing a plugin company at WordCamps in the UK. He became hooked and went on to attend events in many different countries.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In 2018, he realized he could do more with his connections and create meaningful partnerships. Within a few weeks, he had crafted his dream job and sent a proposal to the CEO of a WordPress e-commerce firm.</p>



<p>But pitching to strangers wasn’t an easy task, as he did not know if they would understand his vision. </p>



<p>Ronald said: “The doubts went through my head for months. ‘Do I give up my business and work for the benefit of another company? What if I don’t get on? What do I do with my customers?’ But I decided to take the leap.&#8221; His pitch proved successful, joining his current firm in 2019.<br /><br />In the firm’s CEO, Ronald found a mentor, supporter, and a friend. He explained: “Nando Pappalardo never tells me what to do, but instead, he asks questions to make me realize what is achievable, or could be even better. He simply makes suggestions that I read something and reach my own conclusions.”</p>



<h2>Looking back at the journey&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Taking risks or changing directions in mid-career often involves a giant leap. In Ronald&#8217;s view, through WordPress, you don&#8217;t need to be alone. He believes its community can offer support and help to process thinking.</p>



<p>Ronald said: “I often think back to the moment my daughter passed away. She only lived for a few days. Every day, I wonder how events would have unfolded if she had survived. Maybe her memory lives on in every decision I make and the paths I decide to take.”</p>



<p>From his experience, he found that&nbsp;changing a career can sometimes take a few years and have a period of transition. He said: “Only looking back do I realize that each small step slowly made a difference in my life.”</p>



<blockquote><p>“It was WordPress that made the online world easier to navigate and empowered me to make a change”&nbsp;</p><cite>Ronald Gijsel</cite></blockquote>



<p>He added: “Feeling welcomed into the WordPress community through Meetups and WordCamps added a human dimension and confidence that I can do ‘this’ too.”</p>



<p>Ronald’s wish is that his story will offer support to others who may have experienced tragedy in their lives. “I hope that I can give you the hope and strength to try and put your energy into something else that can lead to more significant changes in your life. Try to take it as one positive decision at a time.”</p>



<h2>Share the stories</h2>



<p>Help us share these stories of open source contributors and continue to grow the community.&nbsp;Meet more WordPressers in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/category/newsletter/interviews/">People of WordPress series.</a>&nbsp;#ContributorStory.</p>



<h2>Contributors</h2>



<p>Thank you to Abha Thakor (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/webcommsat/">@</a><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/webcommsat/">webcommsat</a>), and Surendra Thakor (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/sthakor/">@sthakor</a>) for the interviews and writing this feature, and to Ronald Gijsel (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/just2ronald/">@just2ronald</a>) for sharing his story.</p>



<p>Thanks to Meher Bala (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/meher/">@meher</a>), Chloé Bringmann (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/cbringmann/">@cbringmann</a>), Anjana Vasan (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/anjanavasan/">@anjanavasan</a>), Collieth Clarke (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/callye/">@callye</a>), and Reyes Martinez (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/rmartinezduque/">@rmartinezduque</a>) for their content contributions, and Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">chanthaboune</a>), and Topher DeRosia (<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/topher1kenobe/">@topher1kenobe</a>) for their support for the series.</p>



<p><em>This People of WordPress feature is inspired by an essay originally published on </em><a href="https://heropress.com/"><em>HeroPress.com</em></a><em>, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories might otherwise go unheard.&nbsp;</em>#HeroPress</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:"Sat, 30 Oct 2021 12:21:53 +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:28:"webcommsat AbhaNonStopNewsUK";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:120:"Gutenberg Times: Designing Block-based Child Themes, Plugin Machine, WooCommerce Blocks and more – Weekend Edition 191";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=19419";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:125:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/designing-block-based-child-themes-plugin-machine-woocommerce-blocks-and-more-weekend-edition-191/";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:19260:"<p>Howdy, howdy!</p>



<p>How was your week in the WordPress ecosystem? I hope got to enjoy the creative energy around the Gutenberg project, despite encountering the little quirks and bugs. </p>



<p>In this edition, you&#8217;ll find updates from the team working on WordPress 5.9, tutorials for the new features coming in WordPress 5.9 and tools and videos for theme and plugin developers. </p>



<p>Don&#8217;t forget to stop by at the <a href="http://patternspiration.com/">Patternspiration site by Tammie Lister </a>who added a few more beautiful patterns. Today&#8217;s creation shows a beautiful DropCap design. </p>



<p>Last week, I visited the local contemporary art museum, was fascinated by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Colescott">Robert Colescott</a>&#8216;s art. I am also a sucker for museums shop and spend some money on books. What brings joy into your life? Hit reply and let me know, please. </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br />Birgit</p>




<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-word-press-team-updates">WordPress Team updates</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-content-creators-and-the-block-editor">Content Creators and the Block Editor</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-design-and-theme-building-with-gutenberg">Design and Theme Building  with Gutenberg</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-building-blocks-for-gutenberg">Building Blocks for Gutenberg</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#4-word-press-events">WordPress Events</a></li></ul></div>




<h2 id="0-word-press-team-updates">WordPress Team updates</h2>



<p><strong>WordPress 5.9</strong> is coming up fast. <strong>Robert Anderson</strong>, editor technical release lead, posted an <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/10/25/wordpress-5-9-editor-update-26-october/">updated list of Must-Have features</a> of the block editor to be merged to core for the release. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>On the WPTavern, Sarah Gooding recounts a discussion among <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-contributors-focus-efforts-on-navigation-block-for-wordpress-5-9-navigation-editor-punted-to-future-release#comments"><strong>Gutenberg Contributors Focus Efforts on Navigation Block for WordPress 5.9, Navigation Editor Punted to Future Release</strong></a>. We discussed it before, navigation menus are super important for site owners, as they guide the site visitor through the site. WordPress&#8217; plugins are extending in many ways the menus and front end. The first version of the navigation block will not offer any additional extension and will be used in a block theme made for Full-site-Editing. It will not be part of the main navigation for classic themes. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Gutenberg 11.8 </strong>is now available in the WordPress repository. <strong>Vicente Canales</strong> published the release and <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/10/28/whats-new-in-gutenberg-11-8-0-27-october/">Make Blog post</a>: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/10/28/whats-new-in-gutenberg-11-8-0-27-october/"><strong>What’s new in Gutenberg 11.8</strong></a> You&#8217;ll find instructional short videos as demos for some features. My favorite new feature is the auto-generated Anchors for Headings and the opacity controls for background in the Cover block. Developers might be happy to learn that a child theme&#8217;s theme.json file can now be merged with the parent theme.json. There were 166 PRs merged in total, and the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/releases/tag/v11.8.0">changelog lists 80 Enhancements</a>. 🎉</p>



<p><strong>Grzegorz Ziolkowski </strong>and I  recorded the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/changelog-54-gutenberg-11-8/"><strong>Gutenberg Changelog episode #54</strong> </a>on Friday, published Saturday.  You might see it pop up in the WordPress Dashboard News section. </p>



<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> took it our for a spin and posted: <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-11-8-adds-dozens-of-features-including-featured-patterns-and-automatically-generated-heading-anchors"><strong>Gutenberg 11.8 Adds Dozens of Features, Including Featured Patterns and Automatically-Generated Heading Anchors</strong></a></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>The third round of Q &amp; A of the FSE Program yielded quite a few new questions. <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> has connected with the teams and got you the <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/10/28/fse-program-answers-from-round-three-of-questions/">Answers from Round Three of Questions</a>. </strong></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>Now that the block editor has been in the WordPress ecosystems for a few years, it&#8217;s time for a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2021/10/29/redesign-of-the-gutenberg-page/"><strong>Redesign of the Gutenberg Page</strong></a>. <strong>Beatriz Fialho</strong> has a proposal and a few first prototypes.  </p>




<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 2021&#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.  </p>




<h2 id="1-content-creators-and-the-block-editor">Content Creators and the Block Editor</h2>



<p><strong>Jamie Marsland </strong>published a tutorial on <a href="https://www.pootlepress.com/2021/10/wordpress-gutenberg-full-site-editing-for-beginners/"><strong>WordPress Gutenberg Full Site Editing for Beginners</strong></a>. He explains in short demos what new blocks come to WordPress, how Templates work and how you can control your site with Global Styles. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Courtney Robinson</strong> takes a deep dive to help you to <a href="https://www.godaddy.com/garage/navigating-wordpress-full-site-editing/"><strong>Navigate</strong></a> <a href="https://www.godaddy.com/garage/navigating-wordpress-full-site-editing/"><strong>WordPress Full Site Editing</strong></a> experience. She also provides links to tutorials on some components of Full-site-editing, like the Query block, and the template editor.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Joe Casabona</strong> asked in his post <a href="https://casabona.org/2021/10/wordpress-writing-app/"><strong>Should You Really Write in the WordPress Editor?</strong></a> The quick answer is probably not, neither in the classic editor nor the block editor. </p>



<p>Casabona uses <a href="https://ulysses.app/">Ulysses</a> as his writing app (mac only, paid) and he lists a few other writing tools.  I mostly use <a href="https://www.google.com/docs/about/">Google Doc,</a> as I often collaborate on articles, especially when working with WordPress teams on the Make blogs. Being able to access the Google Doc app from all my devices and continue where I left off, or to answer comments, is invaluable. </p>



<p>The block editor&#8217;s power feature is that you can <strong>copy/paste from almost any tool into the block editor</strong>, and it just works. I remember the times when I had to spend another hour after finishing a long form piece to format it in the classic editor. Here the block editor shines widely. (<a href="https://icodeforapurpose.com/distraction-free-writing-and-wordpress/"><em>Excerpt of a longer blog post by yours truly</em></a>)</p>



<p>If you are looking for a more distraction-free writing experience based on the editor, try <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/writers-rejoice-iceberg-delivers-distraction-free-writing-for-wordpress/">Iceberg by Rich Tabor and Jeffery Carandang. </a></p>



<p><strong>Jeff Chandler</strong> also chimed in via  WPMainline: <a href="https://wpmainline.com/2021/10/25/i-hope-this-is-all-worth-it/"><strong>I Hope This Is All Worth It</strong></a></p>



<p><em>What is your writing process like? How does the block editor fit in there, or does it? Share in the comments or send an email <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">pauli@gutenbergtimes.com</a>.</em></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Wes Theron</strong> published the workshop <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/using-the-block-widget-editor/"><strong>&#8220;Using the Block Widget Editor&#8221;</strong></a> on Learn.WordPress.org. Widgets provide a convenient means of adding content and features to a website and require no coding experience. This five-minute lesson will give an introduction to finding and including widgets on&nbsp;your website.</p>



<p>The list of workshops regarding using the Block Editor has grown quite a bit. If you are looking for tutorials to share with your clients and their editors, <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshops/?series=&topic=7&language=en_US&captions=">follow this link the page with all videos available</a></p>



<img /><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshops/?series=&topic=7&language=en_US&captions=">List of Workshops on Learn.WordPress.org about using the block editor</a>



<h2 id="2-design-and-theme-building-with-gutenberg">Design and Theme Building  with Gutenberg</h2>



<p><strong>Eric Karkovack</strong>&nbsp;posted an <strong><a href="https://speckyboy.com/introduction-wordpress-theme-json-file/">Introduction to the WordPress theme.json File</a></strong>. “Developers no longer have to settle for Gutenberg’s out-of-the-box defaults or deal with clunky workarounds.&nbsp;“ He wrote, and went on to walk you through the various settings and their purpose. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>Two weeks ago, we had <strong>Ellen Bauer</strong>, <strong>Anders Noren</strong> and <strong>Carolina Nymark</strong> on our Live Q &amp; A and here is the post on the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/discussion-going-from-creating-classic-themes-to-building-block-themes/"><strong>Discussion: Going from Creating classic themes to Building block themes</strong></a> with the recording, a ton of resources and the transcript. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> posted about his journey into the weeds of <a href="https://wptavern.com/designing-block-based-wordpress-child-themes-with-a-single-json-file"><strong>Designing Block-Based WordPress Child Themes With a Single JSON File. </strong></a></p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>“Block child themes have partially worked in the Gutenberg plugin for months. However, the feature that I was looking forward to the most was not ready until a week ago. A new patch&nbsp;<a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35459">allows a child theme to overwrite</a>&nbsp;single values of its parent’s&nbsp;<code>theme.json</code>&nbsp;file. Essentially, the two files are merged, with the child taking precedence.” </p><cite>Justin Tadlock</cite></blockquote>



<p>Take a look at the post and learn why Tadlock got all excited about this feature. </p>




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s main (trunk) 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>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total" /></p>




<h2 id="3-building-blocks-for-gutenberg">Building Blocks for Gutenberg</h2>



<p><strong>Bob Dunn</strong> and <strong>Noëlle Steegs</strong> hosted on their show <strong>Darren Either</strong>, and <strong>Gary Murray</strong>, WooCommerce, and <strong>Manos Psychogyiopoulos</strong> of SomeWhereWarm. for <strong><a href="https://dothewoo.io/a-conversation-around-woocommerce-blocks/">An Inside/Outside Conversation Around WooCommerce Blocks </a></strong>in this #105 episode of DotheWoo Podcast. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>This week, I hosted on the Gutenberg Time Live Q &amp; A, members of the BuddyPress team, <strong>Mathieu Viet</strong>, <strong>Varun Dubey</strong> and <strong>David Cavins</strong> and discussed their journey <strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u4R9zIMoU8">converting classic widgets to dynamic blocks.</a></strong> The recording is available on YouTube. The post, with resources and transcript, is in the works. </p>



<img />



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong><a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1189315667">The @wordpress/create-blocks package now supports local templates</a></strong>. <strong>Ryan Welcher </strong>took it out for a spin on this week&#8217;s Twitch stream. On GitHub, you find the corresponding <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/34547">Issue</a> and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35645">PR</a>. The <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/getting-started/create-block/">documentation </a>was updated as well. </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p>For advanced Gutenberg developers, <strong>Adam Zielinski </strong>wrote about <strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/10/29/thunks-in-gutenberg/">Thunks in Gutenberg</a>. </strong></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong><a href="https://pluginmachine.com/how-it-works/">Plugin Machine</a></strong> is the name of a new tool, <strong>Josh Pollock</strong> has been working on for a few months. It’s an Electron app for plugin developers to get a head start on the plugin development and deployment. </p>



<p>He wrote: “ It can create plugins with blocks, editor sidebars, custom admin pages, remote updater, common actions and filters, custom content types, local development, tests, GitHub actions, and many other things. The UI for creating plugins, managing features, modifying generated files and downloading development versions of the plugin is nearly done. I am also making good progress on the CLI. I am almost ready to start early access.”</p>



<p>Josh Pollock was one of the early JavaScript educators in WordPress community together with Grzegorz Ziolkowski, Zac Gordon and&nbsp; Brian Richards at <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/gutenberg-developers-workshop-at-wordcamp-miami-resources/">WordCamp Miami in 2018.</a> Pollock is also the original creator of <a href="https://calderaforms.com">Caldera Forms</a> plugin that was sold in 2020 to Ninja Forms and will be phased out by the end of this year. </p>



<p>It’s a shame as it was one of the few form builders, who offered more features beyond creating forms. Other plugins developers could connect with it and create sophisticated processors for the submitted form data and integrating other systems. &nbsp;Josh certainly knows what plugin developer might be looking for.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 id="4-word-press-events">WordPress Events</h2>



<p><strong>November 3rd, 2021 2pm EDT / 18:00 UTC<br /><a href="https://training.ithemes.com/webinar/what-is-full-site-editing-in-wordpress/">What is Full-Site Editing in WordPress?</a></strong><br />iThemes Webinar w/ Birgit Pauli-Haack </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>November 3rd, 2021</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://spain.wordcamp.org/2021/">WordCamp Spain 2021 Online</a></strong><br />Please note: all presentation will be in Spanish</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>November 4th, 2021</strong>,  <br /><a href="https://events.wpengine.com/event/965784e1-7d9f-4ca4-b5c7-3186a468e125/websitePage:5bbe0ca6-fd0c-4e77-b99b-de21baff9062"><strong>WPEngine Summit 2021</strong></a> (EMEA)<br />starts at 10 am UTC / 6am EDT</p>



<p>With many fantastic speakers, among them CEO Heather Brunner, Chris Weigman, Rob Stinson, Hashim Warren, Grace&nbsp;Erixon, and Brian Gardner</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://events.wpengine.com/event/965784e1-7d9f-4ca4-b5c7-3186a468e125/websitePage:645d57e4-75eb-4769-b2c0-f201a0bfc6ce">Schedule</a></li><li><a href="https://events.wpengine.com/event/965784e1-7d9f-4ca4-b5c7-3186a468e125/regProcessStep1">Tickets</a></li></ul>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>November 16th, 2021</strong> &#8211; 11am EST / 16:00 UTC<br /><strong><a href="https://events.godaddy.com/events/details/godaddy-events-godaddy-pro-online-presents-testing-the-latest-features-in-gutenberg/">Testing the latest features in Gutenberg</a></strong><br />GoDaddy Pro Online w/  Andy Fragen, Birgit Pauli-Haack, George Mamadashvili</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p class="has-drop-cap">On the<a href="https://wpcalendar.io/online/">&nbsp;<strong>Calendar for WordPress Online Events</strong>&nbsp;</a>site, you can browse a list of the upcoming WordPress Events, around the world, including WordCamps,  WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups.</p>




<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p class="has-text-align-center"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>



<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">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 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>



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<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/13998657@N02/18526571462" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/38744499" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/22098730@N05/3431570690">&#8220;blocks&#8221;</a>&nbsp;by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/22098730@N05" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ye auld bugga</a>&nbsp;is licensed under&nbsp;<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/?ref=openverse&atype=rich" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CC BY-NC 2.0</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:"Sat, 30 Oct 2021 05:00:00 +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: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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:77:"WPTavern: The WordPress Block Theme Revolution Is Quietly Picking Up Momentum";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124970";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:199:"https://wptavern.com/the-wordpress-block-theme-revolution-is-quietly-picking-up-momentum?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-wordpress-block-theme-revolution-is-quietly-picking-up-momentum";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:5459:"<p class="has-drop-cap">It is only a matter of time before the floodgates are flung open. Many of the block themes released in the past year have been little different than your typical starter theme. However, there is a quiet momentum building that might just surprise some folks in a few months.</p>



<p>Automattic has put out several block themes. However, its themes tend to fit into a specific mold that caters toward its WordPress.com users. Many of the company&rsquo;s employees are active in the Gutenberg project, and it has massive resources to throw at theme dev. It can push forward all it wants, and it certainly has with its <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-automattic-theme-team-announces-blockbase-its-new-block-parent-theme">Blockbase parent theme</a>. Automattic&rsquo;s Theme Team has already launched four child themes: <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/seedlet-blocks/">Seedlet (Blocks)</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/mayland-blocks/">Mayland (Blocks)</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/quadrat/">Quadrat</a>, and <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/geologist/">Geologist</a>.</p>



<p>Nevertheless, it will take other theme authors and shops to move the ball forward.</p>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/first-look-at-wordpress-upcoming-twenty-twenty-two-default-theme-the-most-flexible-default-theme-ever-created-for-wordpress">Twenty Twenty-Two is already shaping up</a> to be a beautiful default theme that will showcase the power of global styles and block patterns. Development began so late that it will take a full-speed sprint to wrap it up for the WordPress 5.9 launch in December. My primary concern with the time crunch is that some of the little details that make great designs get overlooked.</p>



<p>However, I have seen enough of the work that has gone into this theme to believe it will be one of the best default themes in years.</p>



<img />Twenty Twenty-Two homepage.



<p>For block themes to work, people must find those that they want to use on their sites. The designs must be representative of their personality or style. Or, they must offer features or layouts that match what they need.</p>



<p>That takes time, and it takes more theme authors jumping on the block bandwagon.</p>



<p>I could see a little of it with Anariel Design&rsquo;s <a href="https://wptavern.com/anariel-design-launches-naledi-a-block-based-wordpress-theme">Naledia</a> and <a href="https://wptavern.com/clove-a-showcase-of-block-patterns-by-anariel-design">Clove</a> themes earlier this year. They were beautiful designs but did not fit me.</p>



<img />Clove theme homepage.



<p>Then, Anders Nor&eacute;n <a href="https://wptavern.com/tove-a-block-based-wordpress-theme-by-anders-noren">released Tove last month</a>. It was a bit funky, eclectic. Most of all, it was something fresh. And it did not rely on any components of traditional theming. What stood out was its 40+ block patterns, which offered just a little something for everybody.</p>



<p>This is the moment where I started seeing the shift in parts of the community. Having one of its most well-known theme authors build on top of the new system shows that maybe this whole block-based theme system <em>might</em> actually be worth exploring.</p>



<img />Custom-built homepage with Tove.



<p>I still could not see myself using Tove. It is a well-built theme but not my cup of tea.</p>



<p>Earlier this week, I briefly mentioned the <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/bai/">Bai theme</a> by Seed Webs in a post about a <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-pattern-block-and-how-it-fixes-a-longstanding-issue-with-dynamic-data-in-html-templates">potential Pattern block</a>. Unlike Tove, it was far less experimental with its style &mdash; a bit more down to earth. As I browsed its <a href="https://bai.seeddemo.com/">demo</a> blog posts, I saw something of myself in it. There were things I disliked, such as the animations when scrolling down the page. However, the heavy focus on the written word and the color scheme drew me in.</p>



<p>I still dabble a bit in design and development. This helps me understand what the system is capable of in the right hands. I know that even more complex and unique designs are possible within the block framework that we have now.</p>



<p>I am also a WordPress user. Until Bai, no other theme had come along that spoke to that side of me that wants to install something and just blog.</p>



<img />Single post view of the Bai theme.



<p>It also resembled traditional themes on the outside. This is crucial because other theme authors must see something that more closely resembles what they might build.</p>



<p>This is not a dig at the pioneers who built the earliest block themes dating back to 2020, but many were not particularly eye-catching projects. The underlying technology was fun to dig through, but they were not something you could <em>sell</em> users on. The recent wave of themes is different. They show that, yes, you can build beautiful block-based designs.</p>



<p>It can be hard to put faith into a system until you see a little bit of yourself in it. As more and more theme authors begin exploring block themes, more users will find those designs that represent who they are or meet some other site design goal.</p>



<p>The block theme journey is just beginning. It is going to be a fun ride once WordPress 5.9 launches and we hit the gas pedal.</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:"Sat, 30 Oct 2021 01:28:14 +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:"Justin Tadlock";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:60:"WPTavern: Jetpack Launches New Licensing Portal for Agencies";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124870";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:165:"https://wptavern.com/jetpack-launches-new-licensing-portal-for-agencies?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jetpack-launches-new-licensing-portal-for-agencies";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:2547:"<p>Jetpack is finally formalizing its approach to <a href="https://jetpack.com/for/agencies/">agency licensing</a> with a new portal <a href="https://jetpack.com/2021/10/27/announcing-jetpack-licensing/">launched</a> this week. The program is aimed at streamlining product setup and account billing records for agencies and professionals who use Jetpack on client projects. </p>



<p>The dashboard shows partners their total licenses and costs at a glance. It also allows agencies to monitor clients&rsquo; backups, scans, and activity logs. This is an improvement over managing billing for licenses scattered across client sites. Once an agency is approved for the program, Jetpack representatives will migrate existing plans into the same account. An agency&rsquo;s clients can then all be rolled into one monthly bill. </p>



<img />



<p>&ldquo;The Jetpack licensing portal is the first solution we&rsquo;ve launched to address licensing for agencies or professionals that manage multiple sites,&rdquo; said Jesse Friedman, who manages Strategic Marketing and Partnerships for Jetpack. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve spent a lot of time focused on making it easier for customers to setup and get started with Jetpack.&nbsp;This licensing platform streamlines that setup flow specifically for agencies.&nbsp;They will be able to issue a license, and have Jetpack backing up or scanning a site in moments, by eliminating the checkout flows and reducing multiple monthly bills into one single invoice.&rdquo;</p>



<p>This is the first in a new line of products targeted at agencies and Jetpack is incentivizing signups with tiered discounts for more licenses. There was some <a href="https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/1453714014878539781">confusion about the pricing</a> but a Jetpack representative said the discounts apply to the <a href="https://cloud.jetpack.com/pricing">regular product pricing</a>. There is no cost for agencies to sign up but they are required to&nbsp;issue 5 licenses within 90 days.</p>



<p>&ldquo;Our hope is to attract agencies who use Jetpack today so we can address the needs they have right now,&rdquo; Friedman said.&nbsp;&ldquo;We wanted to create some minimal requirements to use the platform in order to ensure a positive experience.&nbsp; If an agency signs up and doesn&rsquo;t end up issuing 5 licenses within 90 days they may not benefit from the platform or the tools we are hoping to build for them and we&rsquo;d recommend they continue using the Jetpack products the same way they use them today.&rdquo;</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, 29 Oct 2021 21:56:04 +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:13:"Sarah Gooding";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:50:"WPTavern: WordCamp US Seeks New Host City for 2022";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124966";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:145:"https://wptavern.com/wordcamp-us-seeks-new-host-city-for-2022?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wordcamp-us-seeks-new-host-city-for-2022";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:2988:"<p>The <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2021/wordcamp-us-update-city-search-2022/">search for a host city</a> for WordCamp US 2022 is now underway with what WordPress community organizer Angela Jin calls &ldquo;big changes&rdquo; to the selection process. Unlike previous years where WordPress communities applied after researching venues and demonstrating activity and interest, community leadership plans to conduct its own city search.</p>



<p>&ldquo;We all felt that requesting applications from local WordPress communities today would place an undue burden on volunteers,&rdquo; Jin said. &ldquo;Risk evaluation and forecasting feasibility of an in-person flagship [event] requires a professional events management team.&rdquo;</p>



<p>WCUS lost money in deposits made for the event in 2020 after it was cancelled due to the pandemic. It was supposed to be held in St. Louis another year but the organizing team has decided to make a fresh start on the planning.</p>



<p>&ldquo;When WordCamp US 2020 was canceled, we did explore moving the venue contract in St. Louis forward,&rdquo; Jin said. &ldquo;The negotiations didn&rsquo;t lead to anything we felt was in the best interest of the WordPress community, however, so we did cancel the contract and we lost some venue deposits.&rdquo;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Jin said WordCamp US is one of the biggest venue contracts they manage and it made sense to bring in a professional events management team to negotiate with potential venues, given all the uncertainty surrounding in-person events right now. </p>



<p>&ldquo;They will be a part of the organizing team and help facilitate venue logistics,&rdquo; Jin said. &ldquo;Venue logistics at this scale tends to be difficult and invisible. Having a professional events team frees up our volunteer organizers to focus more on community-facing tasks. For now, though, the focus is finding and negotiating with the venue.&rdquo;</p>



<p>WCUS may or may not continue with hosting the event in the same city for two years, depending on the relationship with the venue.</p>



<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re asking for bids for 2022, with an option to propose for 2023,&rdquo; Jin said. &ldquo;A big part of the decision making this year is whether or not the venue will be a partner to the WCUS organizing team. For example, if we do need to cancel, we hope to see any loss minimized. On the other hand, if the situation improves, a venue that offers flexibility to help us host a larger event than we currently anticipate would be amazing.&rdquo;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Jin would not reveal which cities are under consideration for WCUS 2022 but said the team is including local communities that applied to host the event in 2020. She said many of those organizers are still interested and enthusiastic about hosting the event.</p>



<p>The community team plans to put out a call for organizers in mid-November and will extend the call to more local organizers once the host city has been chosen.</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, 29 Oct 2021 17:38:01 +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:13:"Sarah Gooding";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:"Post Status: The Legend Of The Headless Website with the WebDevStudios Team";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:31:"https://poststatus.com/?p=88480";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:90:"https://cdn.poststatus.com/the-legend-of-the-headless-website-with-the-webdevstudios-team/";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:4163:"<p>It's a haunting but educational tale with<strong> Brad Williams, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, Greg Rickaby, and Amor Kumar</strong> as they join host <strong>Cory Miller</strong> to talk about headless WordPress.</p>



<p><strong>Topics:</strong></p>



<ul><li>What is a Headless WordPress Website?</li><li>Considerations when deciding if Headless is a good approach for you.</li><li>Learn how a Headless approach can be faster, more secure, and more scalable.</li><li>Supporting advanced functionality like contact forms and user input.</li><li>Recommended tools, hosting providers, and partners.</li></ul>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div>







<p class="has-background">Every week <strong><a href="https://poststatus.com/podcast/the-excerpt/">Post Status Live</a></strong> will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/26a1.png" alt="⚡" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br />You can listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcast/the-excerpt/">past episodes</a> of <strong>Post Status Live</strong>, <a href="https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/">browse all our podcasts</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1m3xwXbe0MG5BzFVPtB0A7">Spotify</a>, Amazon Music, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://castro.fm/podcast/c53552c6-1ee0-4fc4-9de4-08ed6bf1ee4d">Castro</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://player.fm/series/wordpress-post-status-podcasts">Player.fm</a>, <a href="https://pca.st/05rR">Pocket Casts</a>, <a href="https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/">Simplecast</a>, or by <a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P">RSS</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f3a7.png" alt="🎧" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h3 id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="http://webdevstudios.com"><strong>WebDevStudios</strong></a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/WebDevStudios/nextjs-wordpress-starter">Next.js WordPress Starter</a></li><li><a href="https://wpengine.com/atlas" rel="nofollow">WP Engine Atlas</a></li><li><a href="https://wpvip.com/">WP VIP</a></li><li><a href="https://frontity.org/">Frontity</a></li><li><a href="https://www.beachbodyondemand.com/">Beach Body On Demand</a></li><li><a href="https://legend-of-the-headless-website.vercel.app/">Legend of the Headless WordPress Presentation</a></li><li><a href="https://developers.wpengine.com/podcast/9153353">Embracing Headless WordPress with Greg Rickaby</a></li><li><a href="https://poststatus.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Post Status</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/post_status">Twitter</a>)</li><li><a href="https://corymiller.com">Cory Miller</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303">Twitter</a>)</li></ul>



<h3><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> Transcript Sponsor: <a href="https://poststat.us/wpengine">WP Engine</a></h3>



<p>WP Engine is a leader in Managed WordPress hosting. They're also a new breed of technology company at the intersection of innovation and service. WP Engine provides the solutions you need to create great WordPress sites and apps to drive your business forward — and faster. WP Engine's new Atlas platform is <a href="https://wpengine.com/atlas/">fully headless WordPress</a> with support for multiple server-side environments, auto-deployments from GitHub branches, both static and dynamic headless architectures, your choice of JavaScript frameworks — React, Angular, Vue.js, or any other — and command-line that is 100% scriptable.</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, 29 Oct 2021 16:57:27 +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:"David Bisset";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:104:"Post Status: Post Status Excerpt (No. 30) — Does WordPress Need To Have A Superior Writing Experience?";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:31:"https://poststatus.com/?p=88463";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:34:"https://poststatus.com/excerpt/30/";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:4091:"<h2>&#8220;The tragedy of life is what dies inside a person while they live.&#8221; — <strong>Albert Schweitzer</strong></h2>



<p class="has-drop-cap">In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, Cory and David discuss some recent conversations in the WordPress community: Is the WordPress writing experience bad for &#8220;serious writers?&#8221; Does WordPress have to excel in this area, or is it fine to have third-party writing tools that feed into WordPress? <strong>Automattic</strong> acquired <strong>Day One</strong> for a reason. <strong>Tumblr</strong> might end up getting a WordPress.com writing-and-admin experience makeover.</p>



<p><strong>Also don't forget: </strong>Posting content on a regular basis is a good skill to practice. Cory shares how he managed to publish a post every day in October. David points out that whether it's photography, music, or creative writing — regular publishing is important (and can be vital) to you now and in the future. For one thing, it keeps your mind limber, and by &#8220;thinking out loud,&#8221; you invite unexpected, chance encounters and collaborations with other people.</p>







<p class="has-background">Every week <strong><a href="https://poststatus.com/podcast/the-excerpt/">Post Status Excerpt</a></strong> will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/26a1.png" alt="⚡" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br />You can listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcast/the-excerpt/">past episodes</a> of <strong>The Excerpt</strong>, <a href="https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/">browse all our podcasts</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1m3xwXbe0MG5BzFVPtB0A7">Spotify</a>, Amazon Music, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://castro.fm/podcast/c53552c6-1ee0-4fc4-9de4-08ed6bf1ee4d">Castro</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://player.fm/series/wordpress-post-status-podcasts">Player.fm</a>, <a href="https://pca.st/05rR">Pocket Casts</a>, <a href="https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/">Simplecast</a>, or by <a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P">RSS</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f3a7.png" alt="🎧" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h3 id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://justinferriman.com/matts-page-builder">Matt's Page Builder</a></li><li><a href="https://casabona.org/2021/10/wordpress-writing-app/">Should You Really Write in the WordPress Editor?</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/dimensionmedia" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">David Bisset (Twitter)</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cory Miller (Twitter)</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/post_status" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Post Status (Twitter)</a></li></ul>



<h3><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> Sponsor: <a href="https://poststat.us/sandhills" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener sponsored nofollow">Sandhills Development</a></h3>



<p>No matter what you're working on with your WordPress website, Sandhills Development has a tool that can help you. Sell digital products with Easy Digital Downloads. Use AffiliateWP as your affiliate marketing solution. Sugar Calendar is event management made easy. And WP Simple Pay is a lightweight Stripe payments plugin. Craft superior experiences with the ingenuity of Sandhills’ plugins.</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, 29 Oct 2021 16:18:08 +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:"David Bisset";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:84:"WPTavern: Create and Manage Frequently Asked Questions With the Flexible FAQs Plugin";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124977";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:213:"https://wptavern.com/create-and-manage-frequently-asked-questions-with-the-flexible-faqs-plugin?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=create-and-manage-frequently-asked-questions-with-the-flexible-faqs-plugin";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:5110:"<p class="has-drop-cap">David Gwyer released his <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/flexible-faqs/">Flexible FAQs</a> plugin <a href="https://wpgoplugins.com/how-to-create-faqs-on-your-site-with-ease/">a year ago</a> via his WPGO Plugins site. However, after a month of updates, the project seemed to fall off the radar, at least until earlier this week when he released a massive overhaul that integrates more with the block editor.</p>



<p>The plugin creates a custom post type for managing individual FAQ sets. This part of the plugin uses the classic editor interface instead of relying on the block system.</p>



<img />Edit/New FAQ screen.



<p>Admittedly, the experience of the classic editor is always jarring whenever I load a plugin that uses it. FAQ posts do not have a content canvas. The data is saved as meta values, so it does not necessarily need to work with the block editor. However, I would love to see a plugin such as this one move its primary interface over.</p>



<p>The management screen is the same as posts, pages, and other post types, and adding a new FAQ is straightforward. The plugin presents users with a meta box for adding question-and-answer sets, which uses the TinyMCE interface for typing.</p>



<p>There is also a FAQ Group taxonomy for categorizing FAQ posts. This should come in handy for informational sites that need tighter organization. The plugin also offers a <code>[flexible-faqs]</code> shortcode, which classic users can drop in their posts and pages. However, others will want to take advantage of its blocks.</p>



<p>The plugin ships with three blocks for outputting expandable FAQ posts:</p>



<ul><li>Text</li><li>Box</li><li>Accordion</li></ul>



<p>Each of the blocks allows end-users to select a published FAQ or a FAQ Group. They can then choose a &ldquo;theme,&rdquo; which can be customized.</p>



<img />Box-style FAQ with default theme.



<p>Users will likely need to customize the FAQ theme because the plugin&rsquo;s output has some styles that overrule theme defaults, particularly its colors.</p>



<p>The color picker used in each block&rsquo;s options is different from core and feels out of place. However, users can still select from their theme-defined colors, except for the border setting. For some reason, the border color uses an entirely different picker control. Despite that, I was still able to get the output to line up with my theme.</p>



<img />Accordion-style FAQ with customized theme.



<p>The blocks would offer a smoother user experience if they leaned on more of WordPress&rsquo;s built-in block controls and components. Using the core color and border features would be a good starting point. However, offering access to typography, full or wide-alignment, text alignment, and more would give users more flexibility with the design.</p>



<p>I am not currently a fan of the three-block approach. From my tests, I do not see a reason to separate them. Each does the same thing with slightly different styles. Instead of splitting the blocks, I would like to see a single FAQ block that focuses on design controls. The plugin could still offer the three base layouts as variations that are essentially presets of specific settings &mdash; that is what the variation system is for.</p>



<p>I would drop the &ldquo;theme&rdquo; system altogether. Then, use block styles for different default designs and add extra controls for customizing more specific features.</p>



<p>However, the <a href="https://flexiblefaqs.com/">pro version</a> relies heavily on the plugin&rsquo;s block-theming system. While the free copy offers a handful of themes, the commercial upgrade has over 100. This is not something that would be easy to backtrack at this point. Its saving grace is that user customizations are stored in the database, and they can reuse these modified themes across the site.</p>



<p>Regardless of any nit-picks I have, the version 0.5.10 update is leaps and bounds better than the earlier versions. The plugin is dead simple to get up and running. I built a few FAQ posts and dropped them into pages within minutes.</p>



<p>The plugin is also ARIA compliant and accessible. I ran into no trouble testing it from the keyboard.</p>



<p>The plugin&rsquo;s front-end scripts for opening and closing the tabs do not seem to load when using a block-based theme. I am not sure if this is an issue from the plugin or a bug with Gutenberg. It should not deter most users at this point, but it should be addressed before WordPress 5.9 launches with its support of block themes.</p>



<p>The plugin is not ideal for every situation. For those who have multiple FAQ pages or lists, it offers an easy route toward managing them. For sites with just one or two sections of questions and answers, it is likely overkill.</p>



<p>For the latter group, Jordy Meow&rsquo;s <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/faq-block/">FAQ Block</a> plugin makes a lot more sense. It allows users to build a FAQ directly in the post or page, but it does not provide a central location for managing multiple FAQs.</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, 29 Oct 2021 03:06:54 +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:"Justin Tadlock";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:88:"Gutenberg Times: Discussion: Going from Creating classic themes to Building 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:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=19327";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://gutenbergtimes.com/discussion-going-from-creating-classic-themes-to-building-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:61573:"<p>On October 7th, 2021, I had the privilege to host an amazing panel with Ellen Bauer, Andres Noren and Carolina Nymark on a Live Q &amp; A. </p>



<p>We discussed block themes and how these three theme developers made the journey from creating classic theme, to building block themes. </p>



<p>On this post you&#8217;ll find the Video recording, the resource links shared and the transcript. </p>



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<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-resources-and-links-to-learn-more">Resources and Links to learn more</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-stay-in-touch-with-the-panelists">Stay in Touch with the Panelists</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-previous-live-q-amp-as-on-block-themes-and-full-site-editing">Previous Live Q &amp; As on Block themes and Full-site Editing</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-t">Theme.json resources</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#4-block-themes-for-full-site-editing">Block Themes for Full-Site Editing</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#5-strong-tools-strong">Tools</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#6-th">Theme Team experiments </a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#6-documentation">Documentation</a></li></ul></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-transcript">The Show Transcript</a><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-introduction-of-panelists-ellen-bauer-anders-noren-and-carolina-nymark">Introduction of Panelists: Ellen Bauer, Anders Noren and Carolina Nymark</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-strong-announcement-strong">Announcement</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#6-h">How do theme developers move from building classic themes to building block themes?</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#7-q">Q: What kept you going through the transition? What excites you most about block themes?</a></li></ul></li></ul></div>



<h2 id="0-resources-and-links-to-learn-more">Resources and Links to learn more</h2>



<h3 id="1-stay-in-touch-with-the-panelists">Stay in Touch with the Panelists</h3>



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<ul><li><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/ellenbauer">Ellen Bauer </a></strong></li><li><a href="https://www.elmastudio.de/en/blog/">Elma Studio Blog</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/aino/">Aino Theme </a></li></ul>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<ul><li><a href="https://twitter.com/andersnoren"><strong>Anders Norén</strong></a></li><li><a href="https://andersnoren.se/">Website</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/tove/">Tove Theme</a></li></ul>



<p></p>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<ul><li><a href="https://twitter.com/carolinapoena"><strong>Caroline Nymark</strong></a></li><li><a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/">FullSiteEditing.com</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/tt1-blocks/">TT1 Blocks</a></li></ul>
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</div>
</div></div>



<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PZwfvtkQOM">Video Live Q &amp; A: How to make it easier to build blocks</a></p>



<h3 id="1-previous-live-q-amp-as-on-block-themes-and-full-site-editing">Previous Live Q &amp; As on Block themes and Full-site Editing</h3>



<ul><li>In<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/theme-templates-full-site-editing-experience-enrique-piqueras/"> January 2020 with Enrique Piqueras</a> who showed us some plans and early interfaces for full-site editing.<br /></li><li>Then five month, later in <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-updates-to-site-editor-fse-and-block-based-themes/">June 2020 later Kjell Reigstad, Carolina Nymark and Eileen Violini </a>showed us the various pieces of full-site editing.<br /></li><li>This year January we discussed the <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/live-q-a-updates-to-site-editor-fse-and-block-based-themes/">FSE outreach program and learning resources, with the Themes team, Carolina Nymark, Anne McCarthy and Ari Stathopoulos.</a><br /></li><li>And in June <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/theme-json-for-wordpress-theme-authors-demo-and-live-q-a-w-daisy-olson-tammie-lister-and-jeff-ong/">Jeff Ong, Daisy Olsen and Tammie Lister talked us through the Theme.json</a> file and all it ramifications ahead of WordPress 5.8.</li></ul>



<h3 id="3-t">Theme.json resources</h3>



<ul><li>Developer Handbook: <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/how-to-guides/themes/theme-json/">Global Settings &amp; Styles (theme.json)</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/06/25/introducing-theme-json-in-wordpress-5-8/">Introducing Theme.json in WordPress 5.8</a> (DevNote)</li><li><a href="https://mkaz.blog/wordpress/using-theme-json-in-a-classic-theme/">Using theme.json in a classic theme</a> (Marcus Kazmierczak)</li><li><a href="https://richtabor.com/standardizing-theme-json-colors/">Standardizing Theme.json Color Slugs in WordPress Block Themes</a> (Rich Tabor)</li><li><a href="https://wpguynews.com/configuring-theme-design-with-theme-json/">Configuring Theme Design with theme.json</a> (Jeff Ong)</li><li><a href="https://matiasventura.com/post/the-theme-json-horizon/">The theme.json horizon</a> (Matias Ventura)</li></ul>



<h3 id="4-block-themes-for-full-site-editing">Block Themes for Full-Site Editing</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/full-site-editing/">WordPress.org Theme Repository (Feature: Full-site Editing)</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/list-of-wordpress-themes-for-full-site-editing-and-resources/">List of Full Site Editing Themes</a></li></ul>



<h3 id="5-strong-tools-strong">Tools</h3>



<p><strong>SchemaStore: <a href="https://json.schemastore.org/theme-v1.json">https://json.schemastore.org/theme-v1.json</a></strong> Most IDEs or code editors use the scheme json to help developers  with labels and values </p>



<h4 id="6-th">Theme Team experiments </h4>



<p>WordPress Theme Team shares code on its <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments"><strong>theme-experiements repositor</strong>y</a> including</p>



<ul><li><code><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments/tree/master/require-gutenberg">require-gutenberg</a></code>&nbsp;0 a utility for themes to check whether the Gutenberg plugin is installed</li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/theme-experiments#generating-your-own-starter-theme">Generating your own starter theme</a> via <code>php new-empty-theme.php</code></li></ul>



<h3 id="6-documentation">Documentation</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/how-to-guides/themes/block-theme-overview/">Block Theme Overview</a></li><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/how-to-guides/themes/create-block-theme/">Tutorial: Create a block Theme</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="3-transcript">The Show Transcript</h2>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: All right. It&#8217;s being live streamed to YouTube, and I welcome you all here at the zoom in. Yeah. And of course, I was waiting for the YouTube screen to collapse. I can shut them up because now I hear myself in five minute increments. All right, so </p>



<p>Hi there and welcome to our 29th Gutenberg Times live Q&amp;A. My name is Birgit Pauli-Haack, and I&#8217;m your host and the curator of Gutenberg Times. Thank you all for watching. It&#8217;s so great to have you here. In today&#8217;s show, we will discuss with three outstanding theme developers how they went from building classic themes, to building block-based themes, geared towards Full-Site Editing, and let&#8217;s introduce the panelists. </p>



<h3 id="1-introduction-of-panelists-ellen-bauer-anders-noren-and-carolina-nymark">Introduction of Panelists: Ellen Bauer, Anders Noren and Carolina Nymark</h3>



<p>We have early morning in New Zealand, Ellen Bauer, co-founder of Elma studio and with Manuel Esposito, the co-author of the A No theme. Ellen, thank you so much for being here on the show again, it&#8217;s so good to see you.</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: Yes, it&#8217;s so good. Thank you. Thanks for having me.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Also with us and for the first time on the show, Anders Noren, theme developer from Sweden and designer of the default WordPress theme Twenty Twenty. His theme Excel, probably the last classic theme from him. Palace to Gutenberg Times. It&#8217;s a pleasure to meet you, Anders.</p>



<p>Anders Noren: Twice, super happy to be here.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: As well and finally meet Carolyn, Carolyn, Sorry, Carolina Nymark. From also from Sweden, member of the themes team, co-author of the TT one blog theme, and development lead on the Twenty Twenty-one theme. And her second Full Site Editing theme is Armando. And it&#8217;s in the WordPress directory. So glad you have your back on the show, Carolina. It&#8217;s the third time I could call you my co-host. So how are you doing today?</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: Thank you. I&#8217;m very well. I am excited to come and talk about teams. So thank you.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: So and we have people from Toronto. Hi, Robert. Hi, Jack. Hi, Pierre Maria, from Italy. Also star of the testing, Full-Site Editing outreach team because he translated many of the tests into Italian. And that&#8217;s a huge work. And thank you very much for that, Mario. And then of course, Brian Gardner. The minute I mentioned his name, Ellen just disappeared for the from the screen for a minute. Well, greetings back to Chicago. So, we are also excited. And for you joining us on zoom and on YouTube.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="2-strong-announcement-strong">Announcement</h3>



<p>And yeah, so I have an announcement while I have you all. Next week. The next Gutenberg Times live Q&amp;A will be next week with Helen Hou-Sandi, Mark J. Chris and Riad Benguella. So Helen Hou-Sandi is a commiters on WordPress. So I think this Mark and Riad. Riad is also the developer lead for Gutenberg.&nbsp; They will discuss or continue our discussion that was started on Twitter some weeks ago, on how to make it easier to build blocks. All three have explored ways on how PHP and React JS could talk together to make this a better experience for developers. It will happen next week, October 14 at 11 Eastern 15 UTC, registrations are open, and I’ll share the link in the chat window. So you can kind of if you&#8217;re interested, can register there as well. </p>



<p>Hi, Miki from Tokyo hi to Nepal. It&#8217;s good to see you all.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So, speaking of the questions for those who are watching this on YouTube and livestream, use the chat window on the right-hand side. I don&#8217;t know where it is. But Oh, and if you&#8217;re on zoom here, use the chat box, the Q&amp;A for the questions and the chat bubble for all your other thoughts. Please keep it family friendly. Even if you disagree. So, this is a family club so to speak. Alright, and hi, back to Atlanta to Sequester McKinney. It&#8217;s all so great to see you here. All right, so what&#8217;s today&#8217;s show about? </p>



<h3 id="6-h">How do theme developers move from building classic themes to building block themes?</h3>



<p>Our topic is how do theme developers move from building classic themes to building block-based themes with Full-Site Editing features that are already in WordPress 5.8 and more will come to WordPress 5.9 and WordPress 6.0.</p>



<p>Development has been going on for almost two years. And some of you might remember our previous shows here. </p>



<p>On the same spot, one in <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/theme-templates-full-site-editing-experience-enrique-piqueras/">January 2020</a> was the first one then in June. Then again this year in January, and in June was the last one with <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/theme-json-for-wordpress-theme-authors-demo-and-live-q-a-w-daisy-olson-tammie-lister-and-jeff-ong/">Jeff Ong, Daisy Olsen and Tammie Lister </a>where we talked very extensively about the theme JSON. And Jeff did a little demo there. </p>



<p>So if you want to go back in our records on YouTube to see that so with Full-Site Editing and global styles, themes are changing in architecture, as well as in functionality, they will enable much more customization for users than ever before.</p>



<p> So today, we&#8217;re having that conversation with the theme developers who already walked the path before you give us in building blocks, block by seams and put them out for users to use. So Anders first and then we&#8217;ll Ellen we will have a demo of the work and to give us an overview and then by then I would think we will have already some questions from the audience from you. So before but before we go into the weeds too deep, let&#8217;s do a round robin to a question for everyone. </p>



<h3 id="7-q">Q: What kept you going through the transition? What excites you most about block themes?</h3>



<p>When you were building the themes, you are on the cutting edge and some would say on the bleeding edge of Gutenberg development, that must have been quite stressful. So, what were the factors and situations that kept you going, and what is it that excites you so much about this new way of building themes that you kind of went through the experience, and what kept you going and jump head in first? Carolina first, then Ellen and Anders.</p>



<p><em>Carolina Nymark: </em>When I first when I started it was all about having new toys to play with right, and then we would work on the Twenty-Twenty-One and TT1 Block started did one box was a little later. And yes, it was stressful. But also a lot of fun. But again we’ve got to contribute back to Gutenberg and improve on the things that we found that weren&#8217;t got they weren&#8217;t working and also figure out what features do we need to add later? What&#8217;s our wish list? And of course what is not working now, what bugs need to be fixed.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Okay, thank you thank you for going through the bug fixing part and the testing part</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: Hello, I need your my audio.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yes, very well I can hear you</p>



<p><em>Ellen Bauer:</em> I just enjoy so Carolina was like started way longer and she did have cool Full-Site Editing website which I knew for a long time and like I knew the terms and stuff and we were kind of busy building blocks and that took up a lot of my time kind of learning getting into that part. And so it&#8217;s like back and forth switching between themes and blocks for us, which was challenging or is challenging. But the final like 5.8 the release of 5.8 was the final like straw for us and we&#8217;ve been building I know for like over a year like building kind of testing where we should go it was and it was like we felt a little bit stuck at times like what would we do.  </p>



<p>We played around with patterns a lot and we just thought like there&#8217;s something missing with our Aino theme. And we just started the project for this whole transition. So obviously, then we had this Aino theme kind of sitting around waiting to be a black theme And with 5.9, we just kind of like, okay, we go with it. We had the theme in the WordPress org repository. And yeah, it was just always meant to be for this kind of project. So 5.8 got us ready, like there&#8217;s a site editor, let&#8217;s just try it out. And I thought it&#8217;s, I thought it will maybe take me like a few days, which was a little bit naive. And then I think it ended up being three weeks, mainly. And there&#8217;s like, still huge, like work in progress. Our like, we had the theme already on, like, the WooCommerce. And I was like, eager to get WooCommerce into the block theme. I didn&#8217;t want to lose any of our work. And yeah, there&#8217;s still like things to do. But it has WooCommerce support. And it&#8217;s kind of cool that we can jump in like right from the beginning and kind of explore what we can do and what we can&#8217;t do. And then yeah, we updated the theme as a blog theme. And we were super happy that we went this way. But then there was like, oh, there&#8217;s quite a lot of Gutenberg updates, like pushed. And I remember Carolina you said this, oh, there&#8217;s a lot of Gutenberg updates do we push, like, quite like fast, you have to be on your toes. And one of them like got me like I was like, Oh, god, what are they doing? I didn&#8217;t pay attention. I was so busy. But yeah, now it&#8217;s, I think I have it a little bit better than the control, like after the first one or two update with like, as a block theme.</p>



<p>The one thing that caught me a little off guard, like transverse translating to the converting to the HTML templates, was that I didn&#8217;t realize once people use the templates, and I change something in them, that it wouldn&#8217;t change for them automatically. Because they customize them. So I and I made changes to the page templates. And so that was a little bit confusing. And I learned my lesson from that. But we have awesome. Yeah, we have awesome users. And they like I think I got it sorted out together like a lot of help. And we have a Slack channel, which is super useful. People can like shout out like, Ellen, what are you doing? I think it will be smooth. And yeah, we learn like, we learn big lessons.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Oh, good. Yeah. Thank you. Anders.</p>



<p><strong>Anders Noren:</strong> Yeah, I was gonna say that. I didn&#8217;t really feel like Trailblazer were early adopter in block teams. </p>



<p>Because by the time I actually delved deep into it, then people like Carolina with <a href="https://fullsiteediting.com">FullSiteediting.com</a> had already found the path through Full-Site Editing theme, some document that pretty much everything theme developers need to know, I feel like, actually get started with Office themes. </p>



<p>So it felt like the path was very well worn by the time I actually started working on it. Because that was the like around summer this year. Whereas Carolina has been working with it for a year plus, at this point. So I feel, like pretty much everyone who works with block based teams now owe a lot to the people who really spend time with them in the early days, because it has only gotten easier to build them up up to this point. And will hopefully get a lot easier as 5.9 gets closer as well. But I mean, I&#8217;m going to echo Carolina, as well was saying that, the thing that keeps it going is just that it&#8217;s so fun to play around with all of the toys that Full-Site Editing brings. And the really fun part is when you actually release something, and other users start to use your theme. And they actually use it in ways that you didn&#8217;t imagine at all, while you were making it. </p>



<p>I had a support request from a guy just the other day, who sent me a link to a site running my block-based theme. And at first, I thought that he had actually sent me the wrong link because I couldn&#8217;t recognize that as to my theme. Because the layouts were different. The colors were different. The typeface was different. So it just looked like an entirely different thing from mine. And I feel like that&#8217;s always the really exciting, but when you step in and do something completely unexpected with it. And I think We&#8217;re going to see more and more about them in this space overall, as 5.9 gets closer, but I think the next two months will be really, fascinating.</p>



<p><strong>Birgit Pauli-Haack</strong>: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. All right. So I don&#8217;t see any comments for our audience to get to. So I&#8217;m glad that you are. And thank you very much for saying that for about Carolina. And all those who worked so hard on it. Yeah, it&#8217;s nice of you to say and to acknowledge that.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So I think it&#8217;s a great time now to see the finished product. First Anders, as I said, and then Ellen. And dear viewers, if you do, you probably will have questions right away. And I&#8217;m asking for a little bit of a patience, then we will switch to the Q&amp;A after the demos. And a note, if you write long blog posts before you get to your question, I’d probably skip it, as it will be too long to read first for me and then aloud, and I will get you an answer after the show. Promised is Andrea Middleton wrote, Be kind be brief. So Anders, are you ready to share your screen?</p>



<p><strong>Anders Noren:</strong> Yes, let&#8217;s do it. There we go. So I thought I was gonna keep this pretty simple and just show a little bit from my block face theme, which is called tool that after the after two rounds on the finish, creator of the Roman characters, and basically give a brief overview of power block-based site running a block based team can look like. </p>



<p>But as I said earlier, it can really look like anything, which is the whole point of block-based themes in the first place. So what we have here is the demo site for the theme Tove, which is on wordpress.org. And I created this with cafe/restaurants in mind. And a lot of the patterns here on the front page, including the header pattern here, is sort of geared towards that audience. We have a little color spot on the on the top, we have the social icons, we have opening hours, and a small menu. </p>



<p>And everything on this page is thumbed completely within the site editor. So opening hours, again, here, we have one of the cafe/restaurant-oriented Block Patterns that are included in the thing with information for location and our cafe restaurant chain. We have some testimonials, a call to action for when you want to make a reservation, somewhere nice looking coffee, cafe menu, a different call to action. A very tasty looking lemon cake, I think. And then some more information about the theme itself. </p>



<p>And my plan for making this theme is that I was going to keep it as simple as possible within the constraints on Full-Site Editing, and block themes with just something I struggled with. Because I want to basically tweak and adjust everything. So when it&#8217;s something in the like core Block Editor styles that I don&#8217;t really agree with I to try to override them, which never works out well because then they need to keep up to date with the latest Gutenberg updates and so on. </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>With Full-Site Editing, what&#8217;s going to happen is as the Block Editor gets better and better with every Gutenberg update, and every WordPress release is that theme developers will actually remove CSS from their themes step by step. </p></blockquote>



<p>Because the whole idea with dropping Sr. eventually there will only need to be the theme of JSON file, which Ellen will show in our demo. Where everything that makes the theme a theme, all the colors, all the fonts, all of the layout adjustments will only have within a single JSON file which can be easily changed and adapted for other themes and so on. So hopefully CSS will be something that you can have the doesn&#8217;t need to add to make your theme look good. So I look forward to removing a lot more CSS in the future in future updates. And here you can see a brief overview of the structure of what files are included. So we want to get this where this file is the only file in the theme folder. So one day, hopefully, maybe a screenshot as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The second big component of the Theme is really all of the Block Patterns which are bundled with it as well, which are all listed out on this page. And this is really the second big puzzle piece I would say on block-based things it needs to look good and and include a few examples of how to combine the different blocks in patterns that make the styles look and work as well as possible. So that&#8217;s a very brief look at the WordPress theme. Alright, I think that&#8217;s all.</p>



<p><strong>Carolina Nymark:</strong> I can say on this that what I like most about this theme is not that this block team, but it&#8217;s so cute, just really makes you happy to look at it. Really, really cute.</p>



<p><strong>Anders Noren:</strong> I&#8217;m really, really happy to do her that. No, thank you. I have some. I mean, since the themes, the block-based themes themselves are so simple to actually make. You need to spend that time that you would otherwise spend writing a bunch of PHP on something else. So I just made illustrations for two which was a lot of fun. I mean, maybe I got a bit carried away with it as well. All right. Oh, I think your audio is muted.</p>



<p><strong>Birgit Pauli-Haack: </strong>Yep, I muted it because I entered a few comments on YouTube. And there was Marcus Kazmirczak and I need to ask him if I&#8217;m butchering his name now he says &#8220;I&#8217;m an Anders super fan. I&#8217;ve been running themes for years. So and then he loves the bright colors and the feel Yeah. And Gangoff says I did recommend the theme done who wants to learn block themes and the theme is really good looking. So these are comments and love saying thanks Carolina and Anders for the block themes and she has a question about we&#8217;re gonna go through the question just in a bit. Ellen, are you ready?</p>



<p><strong>Ellen Bauer:</strong> I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I share my screen I have to select them so um, I thought that it&#8217;s a little bit improvised because and showed kind of the front end of the themes it&#8217;s probably fun to look at at the back end so just kind of to give an overview for anyone who hasn&#8217;t looked at what we are building so this is our I know website it&#8217;s like the presentation website for our for our project, and I just opened the different pages so you kind of see what we&#8217;re building like the layout wise. So the different pages we kind of present the work that way and what our approach is with this site is that anything we put out here that&#8217;s just the block and post is always the latest version of our I know work so everything you see here you can build with our patterns and with everything we have like out in the beam and with our blocks. So I thought it&#8217;s fun like we don&#8217;t have any showcase website and stuff yet up we will add that because that&#8217;s gonna be fun. See, but you can see like what we are building you can build so I think that&#8217;s an awesome approach. So we had I know as like classic theme with just patterns in the beginning and then we converted it to block theme. So I don&#8217;t know, not everyone has started using block themes. So what happens if you use block theme instead of instead of a classic theme, you see the site editor, which is currently in beta. And actually, at the very beginning, I kind of didn&#8217;t know that is the customizer was kind of fun like for us they have it anymore. So you kind of need to work around it.</p>



<p><strong>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</strong> You were breaking up in a bit.</p>



<p><strong>Ellen Bauer:</strong> What do and what we have? Actually? Am I frozen? Yeah, a little bit.</p>



<p><strong>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</strong> Okay. Oh, no. No, we got to know the screen changed</p>



<p><strong>Ellen Bauer:</strong> My screen or the audio?</p>



<p><strong>Birgit Pauli-Haack:</strong> The audio was going on the screen finally changed to the experimental settings. And I think with the latest plugin on the site, actually. Oh, you can&#8217;t hear me. Yeah, I hear you. Okay, yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. I&#8217;m sorry.</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: Okay. it&#8217;s my internet connection. Oh, my God. Oh. Well, the site editor is?</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, I think the internet connection in conjunction with the video going back and forth. Might be a problem. So let&#8217;s no audio at all. Um, Ellen, can you hear me?</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: I can hear you. I it&#8217;s my internet connection is unstable. Should we maybe talk and then I can do the presentation and a bit later?</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, let&#8217;s do that. And we have our first. So what you wanted to show was how the site editor works with your theme. And yes. And I think there&#8217;s too much power that needs to go out of in and out on the visuals for your internet connection. So. So if you want to try things for those who don&#8217;t know it? And yes, that&#8217;s a theme JSON file with the template parts. And so the end headers and header logo header dark for the stork and for the live columns, like these all sections on the same. So do you want to stop sharing?</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: Should I try again? Oh, should I stop?</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: I would say stop sharing. Okay, because that you can we can try later. Yeah. Either later or kind of put it in a we saw your theme. Yeah, you&#8217;ve scrolled very well through it. So I really like it. And there were also some comments there. I love your design said Lobsang wangdue and then we had no audio on Wi Fi problems. Check. Yeah, it&#8217;s the internet. Yeah. When Facebook went offline for six hours. Yeah. So it&#8217;s still a little fragile. So Badlob Song had a question for how to inherit theme JSON to child theme, JSON at the moment, that doesn&#8217;t seem to work. Do you have an answer for that?</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: I do have yours. Maybe because it should work since the latest version 11.6 from last week, it should actually work. Oh, yeah, I haven&#8217;t updated Gutenberg. I suggest that you try again with the Shan theme.</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: I actually tried that out too. Am I can you hear me here? You know, I think I&#8217;m totally off</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: No. Yeah, it was just a combination. Good New Zealand. video that kind of made you</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: Yeah, I don&#8217;t. I tried that too, with the child theme and it didn&#8217;t work like just two or three weeks ago, because we actually really want to get into child themes. And there was an update. Yeah, like Carolina said, it should work a lot better now. And I think it will be worked on quite a bit like over the next two weeks.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Okay, so um, so that was the first question. And that seems to be the only question right now from the audience. So I have a question. So when you were trying to what were the concepts, going from classic to block-based theme that you had a hard time kind of connecting. You mentioned, Ellen, the HTML part of that was, what were other things that were that are totally different, but that kind of a little bit of a hurdle to get it all right.</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: From our side, it was mainly like, not the like, not the actual development, because the file template structure and stuff kind of stays the same. So you just kind of need to, you can actually go into the editor, and then switch to code mode and kind of copy paste your work. And luckily, like under said, we could look like we also looked at Carolina’s theme. And especially also the block based theme from, like Automattic is building. And that quadrat theme that really helped me just to get a first idea of what I&#8217;m actually doing. It was mostly like after we can watch it to that, like with updates, I didn&#8217;t quite understand completely understand the structure that, like once you edit anything in your template, that it becomes like a custom template. And so a theme author updates their work, the templates, it doesn&#8217;t get updated for every user automatically. That was kind of the confusing part. I because normally, as a theme author, you had complete control like of your template files, and because more things like users can customize themselves and adapt in the template files. And they use they kind of customize it. So you need to be more careful with update, like what you update or what you shouldn&#8217;t update.</p>



<p>Birgit Paui-Haack: Do you think that&#8217;s a bug?</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: That No, no, no, I think it just it was like just I didn&#8217;t quite get it. Like think the concept you kind of really have to play around with to get the concept because it&#8217;s so different. And like Anders said, like, he thinks he will kind of get rid of his CSS work. And which I think is cool. We I think that definitely true that like global styles will be there. And but I think it&#8217;s also awesome that there will be different approaches, like we will kind of have a base CSS and then work with different things to solve that. So you can use child themes for that, which is awesome. So that totally different kind of approaches going forward, which is cool. It will be cool to see like people building totally different things. And I think the global styles was pretty easy to get into the theme. json. And then also I think we need to mention that it&#8217;s the first version of the theme JSON. And it&#8217;s kind of like chaos Kartik and gets like long pretty quickly. And that will definitely change. So we have to be on our like, be on our watch to see what how the theme JSON approach will be improved, probably split up into multiple sections and stuff.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: So Anders, would you were there concepts that you found difficult to grasp? And that kind of took a while to actually figure it out?</p>



<p>Anders Noren: Yeah, I think one of the most challenging part for me was actually the design phase of making a theme. Because usually when you make a classic theme, you can design it pretty much however you want. And know that using PHP and CSS, you can recreate your design exactly, because you have full control over where all elements are, what elements are used and how you style those elements. But with the with block-based themes to really govern by what can be created in the site editor, so how users can combine the different blocks to create the layout and how you can combine different blocks to create the layout. So my initial designs for to the were pretty involved in like the header and footer areas. And I was really happy with the design and then they said about recreating those layouts in the site editor. I quickly realized that I couldn&#8217;t create them as I have designed them because The Block Editor is still somewhat limited in how you can layout the page and added scale correctly down to mobile and stuff. So thing, the approach for the signing block-based themes will rely a lot more on you actually deciding what colors you will use, what fonts you will use, and then the sign how specific blocks and block styles will look. And after you have all of those components, and basically your global styles set, you will need to go about actually building the design with the different header layouts and footer layouts in the site editor itself. And I think that would be a pretty big workflow change really, for everyone builds classic themes now and we&#8217;ll move over to block-based themes. Because I believe a lot of designers will have my experience of designing something really involved trying to build it realizing I can&#8217;t build it like this, and then basically re-evaluating the original design and try to work within the constraints of the site editor. And what you can do, as the Block Editor gets better and better. I think that was really my The biggest change I had to go through.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Understand that. So it&#8217;s more like you need, you need to know the end product, before you actually have the product. And also, there is probably the design system approach for the patterns can have that will come into much higher attention there. So we got some questions, and one is from Tim Bowen. And the theme JSON color naming. And that&#8217;s of course, one that will occupy plenty of so is there a primary, secondary, tertiary kind of naming? Or would you rather do the blue and the green at the red kind of thing? I think it would also goes into that question also goes into the theme switching problem, or changing colors later on. To get this done? Do you want to take that wants to take Carolina?</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: I switched from using slugs. slug is the code the name and the name that is visible is a different can be different, right? So I switched from using red blue to primary secondary trader because there were a lot of discussions around it. How do we make Block Patterns match when we switch themes? And then how do we make colors match when we use Block Patterns from the Block Patterns directory and so on. So you can this be red, the color can be red, but actually naming the code can be primary or secondary. That should reduce some of the problems.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: That was also your approach. Anders I think when I looked at things.</p>



<p>Anders Noren: Yeah, exactly. And that was actually the as I&#8217;m sure everyone here knows Twenty Twenty Two. The next default theme was unveiled just the other day, and looks really, really good. I think and the first thing I checked when the GitHub repository for that went live was how the naming scheme for the colors are in that theme. And they also use the primary secondary tertiary model. So I&#8217;m assuming that a lot of people will use Twenty Twenty Two as a foundation for future block-based themes. We should say that, I think the original proponent of using that structure, one of the foremost proponents at least was recover as well in a blog post. He sort of got the ball rolling on this discussion.</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: A tiny bit because when I got into it, what is actually pretty cool is that you have your general color palette for the theme. And then you can also add specific color palettes because I was got kind of like long, I thought maybe not so helpful. And so you can actually name color palettes just for specific blocks, which I think is super helpful. So you have a button block and you only want your button colors in the button block. So you have like, and like block specific color palettes as well in options in the theme JSON which I think is helpful to kind of split it up and make it more approachable.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: So another question is can I use theme JSON with a classic theme? I am using Genesis and that comes from Lapsang Wangdue. Again, and I can answer that quite fast because Marcus because music has on his blog exactly that using theme JSON on classic theme, and I will share the link in the chat window. So you can read up about it, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s actually quite nice. Have any of you use the theme JSON for classic themes?</p>



<p>Anders Noren: I haven&#8217;t tried it yet. Actually. Yeah, I want to look into it.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, what I really like is that in the classic theme, up until that point, you had to use the color or assign the color in your functions, PHP for the palette. And then in your CSS, you had to actually have a section for the background color and a section for the text color. So you were talking about the three times. So but the theme JSON, what it does, you put it, what you put in the functions, PHP, kind of similar on theme JSON and that&#8217;s it, you don&#8217;t have to do any CSS. And that&#8217;s really helpful. So I really enjoyed that when I was reading through that then trying that out. So Jonah Sander has a question. So I know includes some PHP files, but not Tov, but which is Anders’ theme, where will the journey go with or without PHP files?</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: So obviously, the function PHP will stay. I think like, but it&#8217;s just it&#8217;s like super stripped down. Yeah, you can replace a lot of things from the functions into the into the theme JSON file. Sorry. But why we have still PHP files, it&#8217;s mainly because of our WooCommerce support. We needed to keep some things in for further WooCommerce support, because some of the things are not quite yet ready. That was the only reason so we kind of like a little bit. It&#8217;s still in between theme. But I think Yeah, with without PHP files for, for us, at least. Yeah.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: You did a little introduction to your toll theme. And you made a comment about that. Your classic theme, Excel was so elaborate and had so many thousands of lines of code and CSS lines, and it was so much lightweight, so much more lightweight to do a block-based by theme.</p>



<p>Anders Noren: Yeah, yeah, there&#8217;s really no comparison in terms of your scale, or the themes. That was another thing I noticed on the Twenty Twenty Two github repository as well. You can see the GitHub stats for what type of files are included in the folder. And it&#8217;s just like, I think it&#8217;s maybe 6%, PHP, or something, and maybe 24%, JSON, and then just HTML. Because the HTML is obviously the templates and the template bots. The tool has a lot more styles right now, which I want to get down on as I can move more into the node JSON. But even with the style, the size, sort of style sheets, the comparing it to a theme like Excel, which has like seven PHP classes, like 2000 lines and functions for PHP. It&#8217;s just completely different scalable theme. And I mean, obviously, with a block-based theme, the potential for what you can do in the theme is so much greater than that classic theme. So I&#8217;ll be really interested to see how many people actually get into creating themes. Now the block-based themes become much more easy to create. Because I think a lot of people don&#8217;t have a background in development, but rather in the sign will have themes.JSON. That&#8217;s a very nice entry point to start with colors and typography, and then getting integrating patterns and so on. So if we really open up the entire theme creation process, to people with less of a technical background, and hopefully that in turn can lead to more interesting theme design. So we&#8217;re all which is something I know everyone who does this had been asking for, for years. So I really think the colors and typography will become king. In the theme development space so that&#8217;ll be really exciting, I think. Yeah.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Totally if you want to say something regarding the weight of things.</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: Yes, right now we need to use PHP to register Block Patterns, but for example the the block styles, we can do them with JavaScript if you prefer. So there will be some PHP left, but I&#8217;m looking forward to plugins catching up, so that they don&#8217;t need to have some fallbacks. Right.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Okay, so the next question was, can you sign also from Lobsang Can you assign header and footer template ports to different pages and posts. She couldn&#8217;t find it from the dashboard.</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: You can assign them but you have to open that page or post first. So there is no dashboard you have to go to the site editor. And then either replace your current header if there is a header or add a new part. Okay. You have ideas for how you would like to assign them, please do share them because this is something that&#8217;s very interesting for Gutenberg development.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, that is actually quite a good point. Yeah, this has all not been it&#8217;s not all yet in WordPress, so there&#8217;s always a chance to have different approaches or fixes after the initial rollout and 5.9 then for the next version, so it&#8217;s good to try out the plugin Gutenberg plugin on on a test site and enable a block-based theme and then play around with it. So Plum Mood has a question for Ellen please share your experience in developing WooCommerce websites what is possible and what are the restrictions?</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: So there are like it&#8217;s not ready for production yet. But I think as you just said, the good it&#8217;s super important for our for us right now to just look into it and try to make the best of it and what they&#8217;re building with whoo is they&#8217;re building woo blocks which is an extra plugin you can install at the moment so that is super helpful for anyone who has like worked with WooCommerce for a while the experience in the checkout and cart templates were not like it wasn&#8217;t really customizable a lot. So that will change tremendously because they&#8217;re also building everything in WooCommerce with blocks so at the moment you can install the woo blocks plugin and see how far they&#8217;re going and that they actually documenting it quite nicely and they asked some questions and they answered right away they have like a roadmap going but it&#8217;s a little bit behind compared to like just themes at the moment so we need to wait a little bit for them to to get it going. But yeah, we actually got WooCommerce into our theme and they I think variable pose like products are not working at the moment but it&#8217;s kind of working like it&#8217;s I wouldn&#8217;t like put it up for production sites but it&#8217;s cool to kind of go along with the development and it was module better than I thought it would be and I got into the the blocks already which is super helpful to get like a head start of what what is going on in WooCommerce if you&#8217;re developing for it so I think that was helpful and whatever wanted to mention like with the themes like where it&#8217;s going it&#8217;s so cool at the moment so I think as you said Birgit, there are so many different approaches and kind of like make your own thing out of it which we like we just fall out like teams were so established like plugin established now it&#8217;s like an open field where we can kind of our way into and I think that&#8217;s gonna be so cool to see.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Right? Yeah, you keep….</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: Oh, I had what is happening with my internet Connect, Okay, I&#8217;m gonna shut maybe, maybe someone else would take over sorry, that&#8217;s so frustrating not only our connection is quite fast.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: So Carolina shared in the chat window a link to WooCommerce roadmap in connection with blocks and Site Health. And Derek is a publisher. And he says, Okay, this is what we&#8217;re doing now, and why we are not yet ready for blocks. And this is what soon to come. And yeah, in flip chart block as well as for the checkout block. And that was the reason why they&#8217;re so behind with a few things, because some of the features that they need are some of the hooks that they need. They haven&#8217;t been in the Block Editor yet. So they block, the Gutenberg team cannot need to catch up on things, especially with the connection with the REST API. So we have another question from Tim Bowen. Thank you. What are the current best practices for theme JSON, and responsive font sizes.</p>



<p>Anders Noren: So when it comes to best practices, and this ties in into what Elon was saying, as well, the interesting thing is that best practices hadn&#8217;t really been established for a lot of stuff around block-based themes. And I think that&#8217;s sort of what people will look to Twenty Twenty Two for, for a lot of those best practice discussions to happen around the next default theme, the first block-based default theme, and have those best practices be established as part of that development. But there are, of course, a lot of different approaches to everything. Basically, indoor play seems right now, which is very exciting, very fun. It feels like it&#8217;s been a long while since people basically wrote think thesis on their blogs about the best way to do stuff and WordPress development. And we&#8217;re really seeing a resurgence of that just in the last couple of weeks, are people arguing for the different approaches. I think, I think the current Twenty Twenty Two font sizes, use this CSS protocol, message method or function called clan, to set a base font size, and then use the viewport based on size for smaller screens, to scale it down from that original font size. And I know a couple of different themes that you start as well. So maybe that would be the current answer. But it could change. Keep a lookout on the Twenty Twenty Two GitHub issues, I guess.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, it&#8217;s so I still come across a lot of websites where the font size is so large, that I barely can scroll fast enough to with my reading speed. So it&#8217;s gonna be really one of the things that I love designers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: I think just I think that it&#8217;s it&#8217;s true like under said, I think the clamp approach will be taking over. And we are also like in the works to convert our, like, kind of responsive heck in our current team, like and I know like base to clam because it&#8217;s just the smartest approach. And it&#8217;s like, we can use it now in the like most browsers I think. And Rich actually posted a blog post yesterday. Rich Tabor on his blog about it. So maybe we can link that in the woods styles. He posted about fluid typography. Oh, right, right. Yeah. Like you said, like people start sharing again. What? Yeah, it&#8217;s kind of fun. Yeah. Facebook being out and stuff. We can all blog again.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: We could blog before that. Yeah, you&#8217;re right. Oh, I got a copy link right down there. Just bring it into the chat window. And we have another question. From Jack Cannot surprise to hear and see different options to the admin panel. What do you think? The admin panel will look like in the future with blocks? Anybody wants to pick it?</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: I&#8217;m not sure which admin panel if you want to expand on that, Jack.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Jack, do you mean the site editor or the WP admin? Just answer so I can see that plugin developers could use Gutenberg components in the Login in the WP admin and I know there&#8217;s also those core CSS team is also working on streamlining the color selections on an admin, because they found that in the CSS they had they had about, I don&#8217;t know, 500 different colors. And when you want to change your color palette, then it&#8217;s really hard to actually adjust all the 500 lines of code or colors there. So the site editor is actually will mimic what the front end has and styles. So and that gets better and better. As far as I know, what was your experience with that Anders or Ellen or Carolina to get the side editor kind of match what&#8217;s on the front end? So the user has a really what you see is what you get to experience?</p>



<p>Anders Noren: Yeah, I definitely think it&#8217;s getting a lot better. I think if you stick to only using theme.JSON right now, it basically will look the same. Because they are they are very good. The Gutenberg team about mapping those values to both views, I think the more difficult part is when you have a lot of custom CSS, like Google still has that knowing what elements to target and having those elements be targeted, consistently, both in the site editor and on the front term is very difficult, especially since the borrower through all the Gutenberg styles can differ quite a bit between the two views. So I think that&#8217;s another area where the sooner we can start to move more stuff into themes.JSON, the easier it will be. Because one of the common problems even with the blog, comm block-based Content Editor is that the priority of CSS and the names of elements change from update to update. So supporting those changes, could be quite a hurdle for themes that rolled a lot of custom CSS. And I think that&#8217;s what I look forward to with moving more stuff into theme.JSON. On that I can&#8217;t be less terrified of new updates. Fedora style center core element Nice.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, yeah, I can see that there have. Have any of you watched Helen Hou-Sandi’s presentation on the White House site at the WordCamp US?</p>



<p>Anders Noren: I missed it, unfortunately.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah. So I, she also talked a little bit about it, because they have this whole header, full width header image, and then a box that kind of is on the left side on the right side, on the header, with some links to go deeper into whatever the topic of the day is right now. And she said it was a little bit harder to match up the front end with the back end, because the side bar of the Block Editor has to get into the way. Yeah, it&#8217;s not going to be full screen. And so she said, a good remedy for that would be if you have custom blocks, that you put most of the most important things that people will use all the time into the block toolbar rather than into the sidebar. And so that&#8217;s kind of a remedy for that as well, just to kind of organize your real estate there. So Jack came back and said, Carolina, you mentioned something about no pages, maybe I misunderstood. So he had the question that about what you think the admin panel will look like in the future with blocks. And then he might have misunderstood and Ellen, you showed that you didn&#8217;t have a custom tab. But I think what you might be referring to Jack is that Ellen said she doesn&#8217;t have a customizer that some of the settings will all be in the global styles sidebar, right? Yeah. And that&#8217;s definitely to come here.</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: Yeah, so the customizer disappears with the site editor with the, I think probably in 5.9. I don&#8217;t know I think Carolina you probably know more about that. So I&#8217;m actually not missing the customizer at all, so we&#8217;re fine. So we end but we always used it pretty minimal, but there are different themes out there that kind of used it heavily. And yeah, we just had to kind of rewrite a lot and I will write a blog post about that, like, how we manage without the customizer, because that&#8217;s super interesting. And yeah. We don&#8217;t have any.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: You said at all. No, we all expecting that blog post stuff.</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: Yeah, I will do that I will do it definitely. Because I just like all the transition, I thought, Oh, I have to share that, because it just makes sense to share now, like, since it&#8217;s all still in progress, and it&#8217;s more like snippets that we&#8217;ve learned along the way. And yeah, you managed better without the customizer set than you would expect. But I think yeah, just get into like, new approaches now. And I think in general, just the like, the theme JSON will replace everything that we had in the customizer for, for themes. And it will be more, I think, I think beam can be more like viewed as just like a skin, like you have skins and in the code editors and stuff. So it&#8217;s just the skin, you lay over things. And then you come in with blocks, and you come in with patterns. And you have all these, like more modular kind of ways to to add things to WordPress. And I think that&#8217;s just the smart approach, and will be a lot more user friendly. In the long run.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Sorry, Carolina, I wanted to say something about customizer. And well, Ellen thought you might say something.</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: I do not have any more information on what might or might not be in 5.9. The customizer is not being removed. But if you activate a team that has support for Full Site Editing, the menu option will not be there. Yeah, but it will stop the global styles. So for all the teams, or for new, what we call classic team to customize this will still be there until the team developer has come over this initial period, the transition as soon as they learn that it&#8217;s so much easier to work in a theme JSON than creating custom customizer options. Yeah, then the theme.JSON will take over.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yeah, but I think that it&#8217;s not gonna the customizer will not disappear from WordPress in the next three years.</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: Is not supported, right? And no one is going to remove the code or defines for the customizer, it&#8217;s actually only the menu option. That is no longer there.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Right? And you approach it with slash customizer PHP. Yes.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: There is on the ad teams page, you have the live preview. But you can still actually view a block-based team in the customizer, so it&#8217;s not gone. Yeah.</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: And also WooCommerce at the moment you use it uses it still like even with block themes, because someone asked about like WooCommerce support, they still needed. So if you have WooCommerce active with a black theme now you can still access things now.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: I think we have one last question, because we are on on the hour mark here. And so that was Timbo and again, will theme.JSON always be adding so many important references in the CSS. So I think the talks about the color palette and coming into that.</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: Until you come up with a smarter solution. Unfortunately, I mean, it is it is something that no one wants. But this is where we have ended up with because no one has been able to do it smarter.</p>



<p>Anders Noren: Yeah, I think I prefer the importance to the same class name five times in a row to increase the priority of the targeting, which has also become pretty frequent. But I totally understand that it&#8217;s a difficult problem to solve for the people who actually need to write the CSS as part of Gutenberg and core because there are so many different themes and so much different CSS to account for. So they really need to bump up that priority to a very high level to make it work. But it is a bit of an eyesore, but it&#8217;s unfortunately, necessary, I think.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: And I think that the team is very hard exploring also creating the theme JSON not in code view but to create an interface so that way you can you can then we put all the things in and then it automatically creates a theme JSON file so maybe that&#8217;s not connected to that topic completely but there&#8217;s also something people that are more comfortable with CSS have a hard time thinking Oh Do I have to write my CSS now in theme Jason I don&#8217;t like it kind of thing. So there will be a remedy for that as well.</p>



<p>So Lobsang has a question Carolina I was thinking about you can sign template parts like main template page or post from the dashboard. What your I think that&#8217;s out of context, in certain things i o that you can assign the index.</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: I almost need an image of what&#8217;s what you&#8217;re thinking about to baby 10 standard, I think.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: And Brian says, I have to leave this for another call. But I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion. And Tim, is 19 so thank you all so yes, it seems like we all that&#8217;s all the time we have today and we I have just two more questions for our panelists. So do you have an announcement or something that you couldn&#8217;t get in before and you want to have people in mind and how can they reach you if they wanted to get in touch with you?&nbsp;</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: An announcement is just sorry for the failed presentation that was maybe I can do a little I can do a little video or something like as a replacement I can share on Twitter that is a little bit sad from my side I&#8217;m sorry about that and yet just like us on twitter on our blog like comment yeah we kind of everywhere around our event even like on on the in the support forum for our blog and theme and stuff.</p>



<p>Anders Noren: Yeah, you can follow me on Twitter. I guess. It&#8217;s mostly WordPress related stuff these days. But I&#8217;m under Ashmolean at Twitter, one word.</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: No announcements, but I have enjoyed this shot. And I can be reached on the wordpresser slack. And my name is Brianna, or on Twitter at Carolina Cuyama. So one name one word.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Well, a big thank you to you all, and to our viewers for the great questions. And I also have a survey for you. So I&#8217;m gonna share that in the chat. If you want to fill that out, we are always trying to improve our shows and with your opinions. That will be great. And if you have any more questions, you can always send them to pauli@Gutenberg times.com that&#8217;s pauli@ Gutenbergtimes.com. A recording will be available in a few minutes on the YouTube channel. And we will publish the transcript and the resources. Also for the resources of the theme.JSON. You will think looking for a website. I think the earlier post to Marcus Kazmierczack you can use the theme JSON also for classic theme. I think he had a quite a few resources in his blog post as well. Yeah, thank you to Carolina, Ellen and Anders for spending time with us. It was a great joy talking to you. Be well and good bye and good luck.</p>



<p>Carolina Nymark: Good luck. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.</p>



<p>Ellen Bauer: Bye. Thank you. Bye. Have a good evening.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Yes, and that&#8217;s that&#8217;s it, you Take care and I&#8217;ll see you in the slack.</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, 28 Oct 2021 20:12:17 +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: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:18;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:"WPTavern: OptinMonster 2.6.5 Patches Multiple Security Vulnerabilities";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124913";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:185:"https://wptavern.com/optinmonster-2-6-5-patches-multiple-security-vulnerabilities?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=optinmonster-2-6-5-patches-multiple-security-vulnerabilities";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:2305:"<p>In late September, Chloe Chamberland, a researcher at Wordfence, discovered <a href="https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2021/10/1000000-sites-affected-by-optinmonster-vulnerabilities/">multiple security vulnerabilities</a> in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/optinmonster/">OptinMonster</a> plugin, which could allow unauthenticated attackers to export sensitive information and inject malicious JavaScript into vulnerable sites. </p>



<p>The OptinMonster team promptly patched the plugin and updated the plugin again after more feedback from the Wordfence team. Version 2.6.5 was released on October 7, 2021, to address these issues.</p>



<p>OptinMonster is used on more than 1 million WordPress sites to create popup campaigns, email subscription forms, sticky announcement bars, and gamified spin-a-wheel opt-in forms. The plugin relies heavily on the use of WP REST API endpoints. Chamberland identified the majority of these endpoints as &ldquo;insecurely implemented:&rdquo; </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>The most critical of the REST-API endpoints was the&nbsp;<code>/wp-json/omapp/v1/support</code>&nbsp;endpoint, which disclosed sensitive data like the site&rsquo;s full path on the server, along with the API key needed to make requests on the OptinMonster site. With access to the API key, an attacker could make changes to any campaign associated with a site&rsquo;s connected OptinMonster account and add malicious JavaScript that would execute anytime a campaign was displayed on the exploited site.</p><p>Worse yet, an attacker did not need to be authenticated to the site in order to access the API endpoint</p></blockquote>



<p>Chamberland described how any unauthenticated attacker could add malicious JavaScript to vulnerable OptinMonster sites and redirect visitors to external malicious domains, or create the opportunity for site takeover using JavaScript to inject new admin user accounts.</p>



<p>As a precaution, OptinMonster has invalidated all API keys, forcing administrators to generate new ones, in case any keys had been previously compromised. There are no sites known to have been exploited at this time, but the vulnerabilities are now public. Site owners are advised to update to the latest version of the plugin as soon as possible.</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, 28 Oct 2021 17:30:50 +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:13:"Sarah Gooding";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:121:"WPTavern: Gutenberg 11.8 Adds Dozens of Features, Including Featured Patterns and Automatically-Generated Heading Anchors";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124889";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:285:"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-11-8-adds-dozens-of-features-including-featured-patterns-and-automatically-generated-heading-anchors?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gutenberg-11-8-adds-dozens-of-features-including-featured-patterns-and-automatically-generated-heading-anchors";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:7060:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Gutenberg 11.8 was released at about 12 pm (CDT) today. However, it hit a bump in the road toward its destination, the WordPress plugin directory. A mix-up with getting the release tagged was the culprit, so it sat in limbo for around eight hours. Technically, it was available via its GitHub and SVN repositories. However, the version shown on WordPress.org was stuck on 11.7.1 for much of the day.</p>



<p>The latest release includes dozens of enhancements across the block library, theming, global styles, and more. As we inch closer to the December release of WordPress 5.9, some features are just making it under the wire of the looming feature-freeze deadline, which is set for November 9.</p>



<p>Spacing-related controls are still working their way through the block library. The <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35772">Heading, Post Title, Query Title</a>, and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35374">Social Icons</a> blocks support custom margins. <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35775">Post Featured Image</a> gets both margin and padding controls, and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/34546">buttons now have a block gap</a> (spacing) option alongside a margin setting.</p>



<p>Block child themes can now overrule parent theme values via <code>theme.json</code>. I <a href="https://wptavern.com/designing-block-based-wordpress-child-themes-with-a-single-json-file">covered this feature</a> in more detail earlier this week.</p>



<p>Block themes now automatically opt into several theme-supported features, including featured images, feed links, and more. Developers should <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35593">check the pull request</a> for things they may no longer need to register.</p>



<h2 id="cover-block-background-opacity">Cover Block Background Opacity</h2>



<p class="has-drop-cap">Since the initial Cover block launched, users have always been able to change the opacity of the background image. However, when using a background color or gradient, the option to do so would disappear.</p>



<p>With the release of Gutenberg 11.8, users can <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35065">change the transparency regardless of the background</a>.</p>



<p>This was a feature that was particularly important to me. I <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/32339">opened a ticket</a> to address this in May of this year. My primary use case was to create the effect shown in the following screenshot:</p>



<img />Layered transparent Cover blocks.



<p>Essentially, I am using two Cover blocks here. The outer instance uses a background image. However, the inner one uses a transparent gradient so that the image bleeds through. There are some workarounds I could have employed to make this happen as a developer. However, I wanted end-users to have the ability to build cool things too.</p>



<p>Because this was one of my wish list items, I want to thank Glen Davies for putting in the bulk of the work. However, many others provided feedback and performed code reviews.</p>



<p><s>There is a bug with the feature. When a user selects a theme-defined gradient background, it is added to both the outer and inner HTML elements. The transparency is correctly applied to the inner container. However, it appears to not work because the outside wrapper background is opaque.</s> <strong>Update:</strong> this issue was from a code conflict.</p>



<h2 id="automatically-generated-heading-anchors">Automatically-Generated Heading Anchors</h2>



<img />List view of Heading block anchors.



<p class="has-drop-cap">Gutenberg 11.8 now automatically generates and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/30825">adds anchors for all Heading blocks</a> inserted into the editor. These anchors appear in the block options sidebar under the &ldquo;Advanced&rdquo; tab and the list view.</p>



<p>While this feature is welcome as it is, it may serve as merely a stepping stone toward something many have been waiting on: a Table of Contents block.</p>



<p>Technically, the ToC block was <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-gutenberg-wordpress-plugin-to-introduce-a-table-of-contents-block">merged in February this year</a>, and it is still bundled within the Gutenberg plugin. However, it is hidden from usage at the moment. It needed time to mature and a way to add anchors to headings without manual input.</p>



<p>With this piece of the puzzle in place, a ToC block is much closer to reality. Maybe even by the time WordPress 6.0 lands next year.</p>



<h2 id="featured-patterns">Featured Patterns</h2>



<img />Inserting a featured pattern.



<p class="has-drop-cap">The first block patterns to appear in the inserter now come from a curated <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35115">featured list</a>.  It is currently limited to 15 patterns and is pulled from the <a href="https://wordpress.org/patterns/categories/featured/">featured category on WordPress.org</a>.</p>



<p>These are currently picked by team members working on the pattern directory.  It is unclear if there will be a more formal and detailed process for this list in the future.  Because pattern submissions are still not open to the public, there are a limited number of options to choose from.</p>



<h2 id="plain-blockquote-style">&ldquo;Plain&rdquo; Blockquote Style</h2>



<img />Plain blockquote style.



<p class="has-drop-cap">One of my biggest pet peeves is core adding custom block styles, and this extra one for the Quote block is no different. It is simply called &ldquo;Plain.&rdquo; This is in addition to Default and Large.</p>



<p>The new <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/29856">style removes any borders</a> for the quote, assuming the user&rsquo;s active theme displayed any. Because my theme&rsquo;s default blockquote output did not, the block style does nothing. I suppose I can always unregister it.</p>



<p>If anything, I want us to backtrack this new Plain style and remove the existing Large one (relegating it to typography controls). Leave the custom stuff to theme authors. In the future, we should think long and hard before registering custom styles from Gutenberg or core WordPress.  Otherwise, we are creating legacy baggage that will land on the backs of theme authors to carry.</p>



<h2 id="pinterest-oembed-support">Pinterest oEmbed Support</h2>



<img />Embedding a Pinterest pin.



<p class="has-drop-cap">Honestly, I can hardly believe that WordPress did not already support Pinterest embeds. The well-established service is over a decade old and highly popular.</p>



<p>Gutenberg contributors quickly added a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/34895">Pinterest variation</a> for the embed block following a recent <a href="https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/53448">core patch</a> that approved support. Users should be able to embed pins, boards, or user profiles.</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, 28 Oct 2021 03:45:38 +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:14:"Justin Tadlock";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:130:"WPTavern: Unredacted Antitrust Complaint Unsealed: Google Internal Documents Show AMP Pages Brought 40% Less Revenue to Publishers";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124859";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:301:"https://wptavern.com/unredacted-antitrust-complaint-unsealed-google-internal-documents-show-amp-pages-brought-40-less-revenue-to-publishers?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=unredacted-antitrust-complaint-unsealed-google-internal-documents-show-amp-pages-brought-40-less-revenue-to-publishers";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:9268:"<p>In December 2020, we <a href="https://wptavern.com/amp-under-fire-in-new-antitrust-lawsuit-against-google">reported</a> on a new antitrust lawsuit against Google that claimed AMP was created for the purpose of pushing publishers away from &ldquo;header bidding.&rdquo; This is an advertising mechanism that allows sites to route their ad inventory through several ad exchanges and sell the space to the highest bidder.&nbsp;At that time it was clear that these were troubling allegations regarding AMP&rsquo;s performance and how Google may be using it to impede header bidding, but many key parts of the complaint were redacted.</p>



<p>The full text of the newly <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903/gov.uscourts.nysd.564903.152.0_1.pdf">unredacted complaint</a>, which was unsealed by a federal judge last week, references research from internal Google documents. It states that internal Google communications identified header bidding as an &ldquo;existential threat.&rdquo; The complaint alleges that Google throttled non-AMP ads in order to give AMP a &ldquo;nice comparative boost:&rdquo;</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>After crippling AMP&rsquo;s compatibility with header bidding, Google went to market falsely telling publishers that adopting AMP would enhance page load times. But Google employees knew that AMP only improves the &ldquo;median of performance&rdquo; and AMP pages can actually load slower than other publisher speed optimization techniques. In other words, the ostensible benefits of faster load times for a Google-cached AMP version of a webpage were not true for publishers that designed their web pages for speed. Some publishers did not adopt AMP because they knew their pages actually loaded faster than AMP pages.</p><p>The speed benefits Google marketed were also at least partly a result of Google&rsquo;s throttling. <strong>Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays in order to give Google AMP a &ldquo;nice comparative boost.&rdquo;</strong> Throttling non-AMP ads slows down header bidding, which Google then uses to denigrate header bidding for being too slow. &ldquo;Header Bidding can often increase latency of web pages and create security flaws when executed incorrectly,&rdquo; Google falsely claimed. Internally, Google employees grappled with &ldquo;how to [publicly] justify [Google] making something slower.&rdquo;</p></blockquote>



<p>The unredacted filing&nbsp;also states that internal documents show that AMP pages brought 40% less revenue to publishers:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Google gave publishers a Faustian bargain: (1) publishers who used header bidding would see the traffic to their site drop precipitously from Google suppressing their ranking in search and re-directing traffic to AMP-compatible publishers; or (2) publishers could adopt AMP pages to maintain traffic flow but forgo exchange competition in header bidding, which would make them more money on an impression-by-impression basis. Either option was far inferior to the options available to publishers before Google introduced AMP. Just how inferior? <strong>According to Google&rsquo;s internal documents, 40 percent less revenue on AMP pages.</strong></p></blockquote>



<p>The complaint succinctly summarizes the reason many publishers felt under the gun to allocate developer resources for AMPing up their websites, and why Google was in the position to force the issue despite widespread criticism of the AMP project. It also describes how Google&rsquo;s anticompetitive tactics and control of the market essentially has small publishers over a barrel:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Direct evidence confirms Google&rsquo;s monopoly power in the display ad network market. GDN charges high double-digit commissions of at least 32 percent on advertising transactions, which, according to public sources, is double the &ldquo;standard rate&rdquo; elsewhere in the industry. Internally, Google acknowledges that its fees are very high and that it can demand them because of its market power. For example, in an internal 2016 conversation, Google executives commented that Google&rsquo;s ad networks make &ldquo;A LOT of money&rdquo; with its commission, and they acknowledged that they do this because, quite simply, &ldquo;we can.&rdquo; <strong>&ldquo;Smaller pubs don&rsquo;t have alternative revenue sources,&rdquo;</strong> explained one Google employee when addressing the lack of viable competing ad networks available to its customers.</p></blockquote>



<p>The suit, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and nine other state attorneys general, also exposes a number of code-named programs. Project NERA is the most insidious among these and one that publishers should know about:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Project NERA was Google&rsquo;s original plan to create a closed ecosystem out of the open internet. Google documents reveal that Google&rsquo;s motive was to &ldquo;successfully mimic a walled garden across the open web [so] we can protect our margins.&rdquo; For Google, Project NERA&rsquo;s walled garden meant two things: controlling the design of publishers&rsquo; ad space, then forcing those publishers to sell their ad space exclusively through Google&rsquo;s products. According to internal Google documents, this strategy would permit Google to extract even higher intermediation fees. A Google employee aptly described Google&rsquo;s ambition for Project NERA by acknowledging that Google wants to &ldquo;capture the benefits of tightly &lsquo;operating&rsquo; a property &hellip; without &lsquo;owning&rsquo; the property and facing the challenges of building new consumer products.&rdquo; Google&rsquo;s nickname for this walled garden plan was &ldquo;not-owned-but-operated,&rdquo; or &ldquo;NOBO&rdquo; for short.</p></blockquote>



<p>The complaint also alleges that Facebook and Google colluded to manipulate header bidding auctions, among many other anticompetitive practices. </p>



<p>Google has not yet responded to the AMP-specific allegations but has <a href="https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/response-doj/">published a response</a> to the Department of Justice, calling the complaint &ldquo;a deeply flawed lawsuit that would do nothing to help consumers.&rdquo; The post attempts to refute the DOJ&rsquo;s &ldquo;dubious complaint&rdquo; with demonstrations of how easy it is to change the default search engine on different devices. </p>



<p>Earlier this year, Google&rsquo;s Director of Economic Policy, Adam Cohen, addressed the claims that AMP was designed to hurt header bidding, saying that it was created in partnership with publishers and other tech companies to help webpages load faster and improve the experience on mobile devices.</p>



<p>&ldquo;AMP supports a range of monetization options, including&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://docs.prebid.org/formats/amp.html" target="_blank">header bidding</a>. Publishers are free to use both AMP and header bidding technologies together if they choose,&rdquo; Cohen said. &ldquo;The use of header bidding doesn&rsquo;t factor into publisher search rankings.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The AMP project has not officially responded to the allegations in the unredacted complaint. Google <a href="https://wptavern.com/amp-project-joins-openjs-foundation">transferred the project&rsquo;s governance to the OpenJS Foundation</a> in 2019, a move which skeptics hailed as &ldquo;mostly meaningless window-dressing.&rdquo;&nbsp;In August 2021, ex-AMP Advisory Committee member Jeremy Keith gave a behind-the-scenes look at the project in his <a href="https://wptavern.com/jeremy-keith-resigns-from-amp-advisory-committee-it-has-become-clear-to-me-that-amp-remains-a-google-product">resignation announcement</a>. &ldquo;It has become clear to me that AMP remains a Google product, with only a subset of pieces that could even be considered open source,&rdquo; Keith said.</p>



<p>In the beginning, AMP was not a user-friendly product. It severely encumbered publishers and and was roundly denounced by advocates of the open web. In Google&rsquo;s zealous drive to get publishers to adopt AMP, the company began investing heavily in developing&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/google/#content-plugins">WordPress plugins</a>&nbsp;that would make make its products easier to use. More than 500,000 WordPress sites are now using the official&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/">AMP plugin</a>.</p>



<p>The DOJ&rsquo;s complaint alleges that Google is exploiting the position of smaller publishers that do not have any other options for revenue. It identifies AMP as a vehicle for anticompetitive practices and exposes viperous initiatives like Project NERA that do not have publishers best interests in mind. Any project that would seek to build &ldquo;a walled garden across the open web&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t seem particularly complementary to democratizing publishing. Getting to the bottom of these concerns should be a priority for the WordPress community and should inspire more scrutiny over Google-led core projects. </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, 27 Oct 2021 19:25:37 +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:13:"Sarah Gooding";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:54:"WordCamp Central: WordCamp US Update: City Search 2022";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=3142268";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:81:"https://central.wordcamp.org/news/2021/10/27/wordcamp-us-update-city-search-2022/";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:3383:"<p>You read that correctly, this post is about Call for Cities for WordCamp US 2022! There are some big changes to how we plan to approach city selection for 2022.</p>
<p>In past years, local WordPress communities applied to be the host city of WordCamp US. Organizers were asked to gather info, such as enthusiasm for their city, local WordPress community activity, organizer interest, and even possible venue bids.</p>
<p>This is a big ask: securing a holistic bid from a convention center for +2,000 people is not something most of us do!</p>
<p>In 2020, the WCUS team hired an events management team to handle this step. Local WordPress communities still expressed why their city would be the best fit for WCUS, but the work of soliciting bids and securing a competitive quote was left to a professional. Great, right? Well, 2020 did not work out as hoped.</p>
<p><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kcristiano/">@kcristiano</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kdrewien/">@kdrewien</a>, and I, as community deputies and past lead organizers of WordCamp US, began discussing the need to secure a venue to WordCamp US. We all felt that requesting applications from local WordPress communities today would place an undue burden on volunteers. Risk evaluation and forecasting feasibility of an in-person flagship requires a professional events management team.</p>
<p>We intend to do a city search instead of a Call for Cities.</p>
<p>The events management team will send out a Request for Proposal (RFP) and negotiate with venues, and then select the City and venue that best meets the needs for WordCamp US.</p>
<p>The team is looking for a venue that can accommodate WCUS scaling up or down in size, and would allow us to cancel or postpone with minimal financial impact. There were local WordPress communities who applied to be host cities for 2020 and we are including those cities in this year&#8217;s search.</p>
<p>You may be wondering what this organizing team for WordCamp US will look like! That’s an excellent question.</p>
<p>WordCamp US 2022 will be opening Call for Organizers in mid-November, and a team of past WordCamp US organizers will review those applications. This team will include <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kcristiano/">@kcristiano</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kdrewien/">@kdrewien</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mysweetcate/">@mysweetcate</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/aaroncampbell/">@aaroncampbell</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kimwhite/">@kimwhite</a>. The plan is to bring the organizing team to the future host city. Once the city is chosen, we will look to the local community for Organizers. If the Call for Organizers has ended before the city is announced we will reopen applications for Organizers from the host city.</p>
<p>We hope to see you in-person at WordCamp US 2022! If you have any questions or thoughts, please share in the comments on this post.</p>
<p>This post was contributed to by <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/angelasjin/">@angelasjin</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kdrewien/">@kdrewien</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/kcristiano/">@kcristiano</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/mysweetcate/">@mysweetcate</a>, and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/michelleames/">@michelleames</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, 27 Oct 2021 17:09:13 +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:"Angela Jin";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:36:"HeroPress: Becoming a Global Citizen";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=4206";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://heropress.com/essays/becoming-a-global-citizen/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=becoming-a-global-citizen";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:5739:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/102521-min.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: Exposure to the global community taught me a new meaning of citizenship." /><p>I haven’t accomplished some amazing achievement, or overcome some insurmountable obstacle. I haven’t been through some extreme hardship, or dealt with a personal tragedy. In life, I have been significantly influenced by a negative voice inside me that tells me I’m an impostor and focuses on my past failures and things about myself I cannot change. In short, I don’t see myself as a hero. However, being a part of the WordPress community has taught me to not be too hard on myself and appreciate things I take for granted. This essay is a summary of the personal struggles I have had, mostly alone, in my head.</p>
<p>My family teases me that I started learning to speak after I turned four. I think they exaggerate but it fits my personality. I am slow, it’s not a big impediment, but people point it out sometimes (<a href="https://wordpress.tv/2019/12/27/ellen-mubwanda-killer-copywriting-tips-that-sell/">Like at 13:25 on this WordCamp video</a>) . I am highly sensitive both emotionally and physically to things like bright lights, strong smells, heat and cold. I easily get overwhelmed under pressure or in emotionally or socially tasking activities. As a child, I was under a lot of pressure to be normal. To wake up! Speak up! Stop crying! I carried that pressure into adulthood and spent the first 30 years of my life trying to be ‘normal’. As much as I pushed myself to be more outgoing, work harder, be stronger I only ended up an exhausted, frustrated multiple time college dropout.</p>
<h3>Finding WordPress</h3>
<p>In 2016 I started learning WordPress with the goal of becoming a web developer. In October of that year, I found out there was a new WordPress meetup in Harare and signed up to attend straight away. Before my first meetup I expected to meet a bunch of condescending tech bros who I hoped would at least tolerate me. What I found there was the total opposite, a diverse group of people who wanted to learn and share their knowledge. What topped it off was when Thabo Tswana, who founded the meetup, ended with the invitation to host meetups. His message was anyone was welcome to host or attend a meetup, whether you were a beginner, professional, blogger, business owner, or developer, everyone is welcome. I was hooked! I signed up to speak at the first WordCamp Harare, and went on to become a meetup organizer, and even lead organizer of WordCamp Harare 2019!</p>
<blockquote><p>Exposure to the global community taught me a new meaning of citizenship.</p></blockquote>
<p>Not the kind of citizenship with arbitrary borders and exclusive membership. The citizenship I learned from the WordPress community is one that accepts everyone as they come with one main condition, to genuinely want what’s best for each member and the community as a whole without necessarily needing to agree on what that means. I also learned how to deal with the tension of trying to fit in when you have traits that force you to stand out.</p>
<h3>Real Diversity</h3>
<p>The WordPress community’s acceptance of diversity doesn’t just mean accepting people as they are, but pushing them to do their best for themselves and society. I have learned from the WP community to lean into my abilities, and also find the best ways to improve on my weaknesses. As an introvert I’ve learned to cultivate my personal interactions at meetups and WordCamps and it has created many opportunities. I’ve also learned from other introverts to pace myself when I attend social events. There’s no need to shake everyone’s hand (or fist bump since the pandemic). It’s also good for me to plan ahead for a day away from the world to recharge after big social events.</p>
<p>One of my favorite hacks has come from conversations about accessibility. I discovered that using a screen reader increased my dismal reading speed from 150 words per minute to the average person’s reading speed of 250!</p>
<h3>Getting Practical</h3>
<p>Finding myself is all well and good, but I still need to make a living. I have struggled in that regard. I tried being a freelancer, and working as a web designer/developer for companies, but never found the right fit. I’ve given myself excuses like slow internet or a crappy laptop. In 2019 we had daily 13-hour electricity blackouts that disrupted life for everyone who couldn’t afford backup power during the day as electricity was only available at night. All very good excuses, but there’ll always be excuses no matter what you are doing.</p>
<blockquote><p>I’ve been asked where the money is from this “W” thing I do, and when I’ll get a proper job, and I never had a definite answer.</p></blockquote>
<p>I come from a utilitarian culture where direct input should always equal direct results. I initially tried applying the same thinking to my WP journey, but it’s not as simple as planting a seed, giving it water and fertilizer and watching it grow. That is where personal growth becomes a practical tool. There is no absolute formula to success. I have been gradually making minor personal adjustments as I go and my income has gradually grown in amount and consistency.</p>
<p>As long as my 5-year WP journey has been, I’m still at the beginning of it. For anyone looking to make it in WordPress, I can’t promise you success. But what I can promise you is that if you intentionally seek out solutions from the people who have come before you, you will gain the skills to be successful no matter where you go.</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, 27 Oct 2021 06:00:17 +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:13:"Nigel Rodgers";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:23;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:107:"WPTavern: The ‘Pattern’ Block and How It Fixes a Longstanding Issue With Dynamic Data in HTML Templates";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124830";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:247:"https://wptavern.com/the-pattern-block-and-how-it-fixes-a-longstanding-issue-with-dynamic-data-in-html-templates?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-pattern-block-and-how-it-fixes-a-longstanding-issue-with-dynamic-data-in-html-templates";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:4853:"<p class="has-drop-cap">As I was perusing the latest block themes on WordPress.org, I came across a new favorite: <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/bai/">Bai.</a> The typography was on point for those who tend to write long-form content. Plus, it has a built-in dark mode design that did not make me want to rip my eyes from their sockets. I had planned to review it, but I did not have much to say. It is simply a solid design without much in the way of extras.</p>



<p>However, in the particular test environment I had set up, one piece of it was broken. I ran into a <a href="https://wptavern.com/block-based-themes-and-the-problem-with-dynamic-data-in-html-templates">longstanding issue</a> with the block system.</p>



<p>The default &ldquo;intro&rdquo; image used on the homepage will return a 404 if WordPress is not installed in the root directory or if the <code>/wp-content</code> folder has been moved. I switched it to another test site using the default configuration to make it appear.</p>



<img />Bai theme homepage.



<p>This is not the fault of the developer. Block themes currently have no way to add dynamic values in their templates. Therefore, the only solution is to hotlink an image from a third-party site or add a static URL.</p>



<p>This is a not-so-trivial issue that has, at least in part, hampered the momentum of block theme development.</p>



<p>Ever since themes have been around, they have output data via PHP functions. When using block templates, everything is HTML and bits of JSON data. The dynamic parts are the blocks themselves. This works well enough for at least 90% (probably more) of scenarios.</p>



<p>Where theme authors run into trouble are the cases where there is no existing block or way of adding dynamic data inline. Some use cases include:</p>



<ul><li>Printing internationalized text strings.</li><li>Outputting the current year in the footer copyright section.</li><li>Adding image URLs.</li></ul>



<p>It is not so much that these things absolutely must be dynamic. Users are expected to edit the content via the site editor. However, the experience is not ideal if an image returns a 404 status when users have a different directory structure. Or when their theme has bits and pieces of English scattered throughout when using the Spanish translation. Before block themes officially land in WordPress, this must be fixed.</p>



<p>There is an <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/33217">open ticket slated for Gutenberg 11.8</a> that addresses this issue through a new Pattern block. Essentially, it would allow themes to output a pattern within templates.</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>&lt;!-- wp:pattern {"slug":"namespace/pattern-name"} /--&gt;</code></pre>



<p>The reason this works is that patterns are defined via PHP. Theme authors can use internationalization functions like <code>__()</code>, print out the date with <code>date_i18n()</code>, or output an image URL with <code>get_theme_file_uri()</code>.</p>



<p>This upcoming feature closed an earlier proposal for a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/33192">standalone i18n block</a>. It should also tackle the multiple ideas on an earlier issue for <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/20966">dynamic data in static HTML files</a>. Another one for including <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/31815">images in block templates</a>.  A proposal from 2020 for <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/21830">using patterns in templates.</a>  And, I am sure a host of other tickets.</p>



<p>The push will likely happen because the upcoming default theme, Twenty Twenty-Two, needs it. Developers currently need to figure out how to show the default <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentytwo/issues/92">flying bird image</a> on the homepage and add <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentytwo/pull/56">internationalized footer credit text</a>.</p>



<img />Twenty Twenty-Two homepage design.



<p>I like the concept here. Developers add the Pattern block within their templates. In the site editor, the pattern is shown and persists until a user makes a direct edit. Then, it behaves like any other set of blocks, and the content is no longer dynamic.</p>



<p>A side benefit of this feature is that it could also solve a duplicate code issue and allows theme authors to follow the DRY principle.</p>



<p>When creating templates or template parts, some theme authors duplicate the same content as user-selectable block patterns. Instead of having the code in two places, they can register it once as a pattern and call it within the template.</p>



<p>While the Pattern block is not officially merged yet, it looks to be the best solution to the dynamic content issue with block themes.</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, 26 Oct 2021 23:24:08 +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:"Justin Tadlock";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:24;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:11:"
	
	
	
	
	
";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:47:"HeroPress: Investing In The WordPress Community";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=4216";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:139:"https://heropress.com/investing-in-the-wordpress-community/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=investing-in-the-wordpress-community";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:1340:"<img width="1024" height="683" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/hannah-busing-Zyx1bK9mqmA-unsplash-1024x683.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="people with their hands in the middle of a circle together" /><p>Seven years ago HeroPress was started to inspire and give hope to WordPress community members, particularly those who might feel excluded from the mainstream WordPress community. It&#8217;s always been our dream to go one step further, and provide tangible resources to people at all stages of their WordPress journey.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve spent the last 9 months or so coming up with some great ideas, most of which you&#8217;ve seen us write about in recent posts. In order to give those resources the attention they need we&#8217;re asking the WordPress community to help financially support them, investing back into that very same community.</p>
<p>The resources we&#8217;ve built can help people, and we want to keep them free for everyone to use. To do that, we need financial support for the projects maintenance and growth. By sharing the effort, we can work together to change individual lives, and eventually the world.</p>
<p>To help, go to <a href="https://heropressnetwork.com/support/">the support page on the HeroPress Network</a> site.</p>
<p>Thank you for being you.</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, 26 Oct 2021 10:27:56 +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:25;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:128:"WPTavern: Gutenberg Contributors Focus Efforts on Navigation Block for WordPress 5.9, Navigation Editor Punted to Future 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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124764";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:299:"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-contributors-focus-efforts-on-navigation-block-for-wordpress-5-9-navigation-editor-punted-to-future-release?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gutenberg-contributors-focus-efforts-on-navigation-block-for-wordpress-5-9-navigation-editor-punted-to-future-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:3945:"<p>Gutenberg contributors have shifted their efforts to focus on the Navigation Block ahead of WordPress 5.9, leaving the Navigation Editor for a future release. Recent check-ins on the progress have further narrowed the scope from what Matias Ventura previously <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/08/13/preliminary-road-to-5-9/">projected</a> to include &ldquo;both the navigation block and navigation screen projects.&rdquo;</p>



<p>&ldquo;The Nav Editor will not be included in WordPress 5.9 because changes to the block are required for the editor to be a success,&rdquo; Automattic engineer and core contributor Dave Smith <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/29102#issuecomment-947554777">said</a>. &ldquo;We need to allow sufficient time to test the editor before any major release and allow for community feedback.&rdquo;</p>



<p>During a recent <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/10/15/summary-navigation-editor-and-block-hallway-hangout/">Hallway Hangout meeting</a>, contributors discussed some of the challenges they have encountered in working on the Navigation Editor. Smith said the outcome of that meeting was that &ldquo;contributor efforts will switch to the Nav block in order to resolve some of the underlying architectural issues.&rdquo; Contributors and participants in the meeting agreed that the Navigation Editor needs to be on hold until the Navigation Block has been shipped.</p>



<p>Smith summarized the scope update for block-based Navigation in WordPress 5.9 and the changes to the block that are necessary for the project to move forward:</p>



<ul><li>specifically separating the navigation&rsquo;s presentation from its data in order to make navigations reusable. This serves both the Nav Editor project and the WordPress 5.9 release in general.</li><li>The Navigation Editor will ultimately focus on manipulating the&nbsp;<em>data</em>&nbsp;of a navigation which is why the above work is a prerequisite for the project&rsquo;s success.</li><li>Work on the Nav Editor will resume after WordPress 5.9. We will continue to focus on backwards compatibility whilst looking ahead to the world of blocks.</li><li>It&rsquo;s unlikely that we will pursue a new &ldquo;Classic Menu&rdquo; block. Rather focusing on the Navigation block (or its data).</li></ul>



<p>As part of the effort to separate the navigation&rsquo;s presentation from its data, contributors are considering two important PR&rsquo;s that explore different approaches:</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35746">Save Navigation Block data to a wp_navigation post type&nbsp;#35746</a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35418">Try using a template part in the navigation block&nbsp;#35418</a></li></ul>



<p>Discussion on the the merits and detriments of both approaches will continue before contributors select one to embrace moving forward. Smith identified the following goals as being important factors for the architectural decision:</p>



<ul><li>Allow navigations to be used in different locations within the same template/site.</li><li>Allow reuse of the same navigation&nbsp;<em>data</em>&nbsp;but with different&nbsp;<em>presentational</em>&nbsp;treatments.</li><li>Retain ability to quickly build new navigations.</li><li>Separate presentation and data in order to afford editing navigation data in isolation (e.g. Nav Editor project).</li><li>Allow reuse of navigations across themes.</li></ul>



<p>Although having a complete Navigation Editor would be ideal for launching alongside WordPress 5.9&rsquo;s other full-site editing features, it makes sense that contributors are taking their time deliberating the architectural approach that will define menus in WordPress for the foreseeable future. Anyone with strong opinions on the future of Navigation in WordPress should test the PR&rsquo;s and weigh in on the discussion.</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, 26 Oct 2021 04:09:17 +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:13:"Sarah Gooding";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:"WPTavern: Designing Block-Based WordPress Child Themes With a Single JSON File";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124768";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:201:"https://wptavern.com/designing-block-based-wordpress-child-themes-with-a-single-json-file?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=designing-block-based-wordpress-child-themes-with-a-single-json-file";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:7504:"<p class="has-drop-cap">From the moment I opened my first theme shop back in 2008 to the present day as someone who merely tinkers, my plan has always been to build a single theme in the mold of <a href="http://www.csszengarden.com/">CSS Zen Garden</a>. This was a project that Dave Shea launched in the early 2000s to show how designers could manipulate a site through CSS alone. The HTML would stay the same, but the design could be anything.</p>



<p>I have achieved that goal multiple times with several projects. Technically, all I ever needed was architecturally sound markup in a WordPress theme and custom CSS in a child theme.</p>



<p>The concept was simple, but over time, my vision changed. I wanted to create something that made designing these types of child themes even easier. Therefore, I built custom systems to work around WordPress&rsquo;s lack of tools in the theme design realm. Not to boast too much, but I felt like I had created some handy methods. They allowed child theme designers to plug values into config files, such as font-family names and color codes. Most of these could also be overwritten by end-users via the customizer.</p>



<p>By 2018, I was already hard at work on what would be my magnum opus, the best WordPress theme I had ever built. I had also planned on it being my last. I had been considering getting out of the game for a while. But, this was a project that I had to see through.</p>



<p>Then, the new block editor blew everything up. I had worked with it for months before it launched, but I knew theme development would never be the same. The Gutenberg project would continue maturing and reshape WordPress&rsquo;s future.</p>



<p>I eventually launched my theme. It was one of the earliest commercial products that supported the new block system. However, I was also deflated.</p>



<p>These were the early block editor days. No one really knew what we would be looking at in three or more years, but if you were paying even a modicum of attention, you could see that theming would evolve into something far different than it was at the time. I spent over a year building a theming system that would become irrelevant in short order &mdash; granted, I thought we would have arrived at this destination much sooner.</p>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-5-9-go-no-go-update-all-proposed-features-are-moving-forward">WordPress 5.9 will ship</a> the final sub-components of Full Site Editing. This will include support for block themes under the hood. Users who install them can customize them through the site editor and the global styles interface.</p>



<p>What excites me the most is still the thing that woke me up every morning 13 years ago: child themes.</p>



<p>Block child themes have partially worked in the Gutenberg plugin for months. However, the feature that I was looking forward to the most was not ready until a week ago. A new patch <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35459">allows a child theme to overwrite</a> single values of its parent&rsquo;s <code>theme.json</code> file. Essentially, the two files are merged, with the child taking precedence.</p>



<p><em>Why was I so excited about this feature?</em> Because it was the same system I had built in years past &mdash; but better.</p>



<p>After seeing this land in the development version of Gutenberg, the first thing I did was load up a custom theme I have been dabbling with. It is a project that I have been building for fun and my own edification.</p>



<img />Single post view of parent theme.



<p>Then, I created a new project in my code editor. I added the required <code>style.css</code> file and plugged in the appropriate header fields. I would not need it beyond that. My child theme&rsquo;s design would rely on another feature altogether.</p>



<p>I added a <code>theme.json</code> at the child theme&rsquo;s root level and began having more fun than I have had with theming in a long while.</p>



<p>I picked out a couple of autumn colors and a fun heading font. Within a few minutes, I had a new coat of paint splashed across my test install. The design was not revolutionary or anything of the sort. I was just amazed at how easy it was to transform my design by plugging in a few values.</p>



<img />Single post view of child theme.



<p>This is the type of child theming I have always longed for. I want the power to switch my theme&rsquo;s design elements around for various seasons and holidays. And I want to be able to share these child themes with others.</p>



<p>As I said, I had built such methods of child theming before (I used PHP instead of JSON). However, this is much more powerful because it relies on the standard block system and not something custom that only a handful of people would ever use.</p>



<p>Some of you may ask why I did not make these changes via the site editor instead of creating a child theme. Rich Tabor posed, essentially, <a href="https://twitter.com/richard_tabor/status/1452611152089862160">the same question on Twitter</a> earlier today. &ldquo;If a theme consists of JSON and block templates that can both be modified via Global Styles, then what are child themes for?&rdquo;</p>



<p>Let us say that I have installed a block theme and made a few color adjustments. Now, pretend that I want to mix this up when Christmas rolls around &mdash; throw in a few colors and find a festive holiday font. When I make these changes, my old design will no longer be there when the season ends because user customizations are stored based on the active theme. I could, of course, make a note of all my old settings and change them all back later. However, doing it via a child theme means that I can merely switch themes at any time. My old settings would remain intact.</p>



<p>Perhaps this is very much an edge case. <em>Who is making seasonal changes to their design these days, right?</em></p>



<p>The exciting part is that I can share child themes built with a single JSON file with others.</p>



<p>Child theming has been a passion of mine since the feature landed in WordPress. In some respects, it has not changed much. Themers can still overwrite templates from the parent. They can continue adding custom CSS if they want to. But now, they can configure any part of the design from a single standardized file. That is something worth putting my developer&rsquo;s cap back on for and building one more theme.</p>



<p>I also see a child-theme-less future that still has the same benefits of sharing design elements.</p>



<p>The block pattern directory already provides layouts that should work with any well-built WordPress theme. However, there are other components of design that we could break apart in the future.</p>



<p>I imagine a future where WordPress could have installable color palettes like what <a href="https://www.colourlovers.com/">Colour Lovers</a> offers. Just browse a directory, install, and change your color scheme without finding a new theme. Something similar to the recent <a href="https://wptavern.com/take-the-guesswork-out-of-selecting-fonts-with-the-adrian-wordpress-plugin">Adrian plugin</a> could serve the same purpose for fonts. These are things the community may want to consider down the road. No ideas should be off the table at this point.</p>



<p>For now, I am happy to have the full power of child theming at my disposal. The change should land in Gutenberg 11.8 this week and WordPress 5.9 later this year.</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, 26 Oct 2021 00:29:55 +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:"Justin Tadlock";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:116:"Gutenberg Times: How to convert classic widgets to block widgets, What is a Universal theme? – Weekend Edition 190";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=19377";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:164:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/how-to-convert-classic-widgets-to-block-widgets-block-patterns-to-speed-up-site-builds-and-what-is-a-universal-theme-weekend-edition-190/";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:19402:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>Some people in the community are worried about that WordPress 5.9  will change &#8220;everything&#8221;.  Of Full site- editing, all you will see in 5.9 is a sneak preview of what will be, in an impressive way. But that doesn&#8217;t change anything, if you don&#8217;t want it to. There won&#8217;t be an overnight automatic update of your site, and you don&#8217;t know how to handle it. I understand the fear, though.</p>



<p>The last five years, there was  plenty of doomsday amplification. That&#8217;s what social networks depend on for advertising. People coming back in outrage. It might also happen in WordPress groups on Facebook and other places. </p>



<p>WordPress changes are not sudden. You are in control. You got this. </p>



<p>The web follows wabi-sabi, a Japanese philosophy, appreciating beauty that is &#8220;imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete&#8221; in nature. Or as I phrase it &#8211; nothing&#8217;s perfect, nothing lasts and nothing is ever finished. There is beauty in it and there is peace in it. And there is exciting creative and brilliant work being done on all the WordPress teams. </p>



<p>I am very happy that you are here, so I can tell you about it. And please, let me know what grabs you. What are you working on? </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br />Birgit</p>



<p><em>PS: And if you have <strong>questions about Full-site editing</strong>, you can <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/10/13/submit-full-site-editing-questions-by-oct-27th/">send in your question to the FSE outreach program by October 27, 2021</a>. </em></p>



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<p class="has-large-font-size">New fabulous patterns by Tammie Lister</p>



<p>In Weekend Edition 189, I  mentioned the <a href="http://patternspiration.com/"><strong>Patternspiration</strong></a> site.  This week, I went back to check out the new patterns. This one intrigued me to no end. <a href="http://patternspiration.com/">Check it our for yourself! </a></p>
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<h2>Gutenberg Development and Design </h2>



<p class="has-drop-cap">In his post <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2021/10/22/site-editing-ia-concepts-part-2/"><strong>Site Editing iA concepts –&nbsp;Part 2</strong></a>, <strong>James Koster</strong> picks up where <strong>Kelly Hoffman</strong> ended <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2021/10/15/site-editing-ia-concepts-how-to-surface-and-access-new-features/">her explorations</a> last week. Koster tested both ideas on real life examples &#8220;to see how they handle complex plugins that add custom post types&#8221;. <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/design/2021/10/22/site-editing-ia-concepts-part-2/">Read the post</a> and find out about his recommendation.</p>



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<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> published the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/10/21/fse-program-pattern-party-summary/">FSE Program Pattern Party Summary</a>. Apart from providing important feedback to the developers and designers of Gutenberg, McCarthy also highlighted encouraging quotes from the comments: </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><em>While some things are still not totally intuitive to new users, I feel that&nbsp;Gutenberg&nbsp;made more big steps ahead in just a few months. I enjoy creating content in it and some of the things I have in mind are easier to achieve.</em></p><cite>Piermario</cite></blockquote>



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<p>In the post, <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2021/10/20/hallway-hangout-5-9-go-no-go-site-editor-ia-and-more/"><strong>Hallway Hangout: 5.9 Go/No Go, Site Editor IA, and more</strong></a>, Anne McCarthy summarizes a impromptu online hangout with community and team members to talk through the various aspects what features will land in WordPress 5.9. They also looked at Tammie Lister&#8217;s Block Patterns, the locking API for blocks and the Navigation block. A fast paced run down of what&#8217;s going on among friends. </p>




<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 2021&#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.  </p>




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<p>In yesterday&#8217;s post by <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/justinferriman">Justin Ferriman</a></strong>, former Learndash, wrote about what works and doesn&#8217;t work in <a href="https://justinferriman.com/matts-page-builder"><strong>Matt&#8217;s Page Builder</strong></a>.  Once you look past the ClickBait headline and the expression of personal frustrations, there isn&#8217;t much you can argue with Ferriman. He is right. Gutenberg is not a page builder. Yet.</p>



<p class="has-drop-cap">Only with WordPress 5.9, will we see the <strong>first </strong>version of site editing, template, template parts and a user interface to change some global designs. Built in the open, the full-site editing part in the next version, will only give users an idea what Gutenberg can become in terms of page building. It will not hold comparisons with page builders that have many years of development in their own universe. Elementor is in its fifth year, Beaver Builder in it&#8217;s seventh year. Gutenberg full-site editing? Not yet.</p>



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<p class="has-drop-cap">If you want to see what is possible at the moment, watch <strong>Anne McCarthy </strong>demostrating in this five minute video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPU-sT96f2g"><strong>Using duotone in theme.json to customize your image blocks</strong></a>. See how it works for Cover Image, Feature Image in Query Block and stand alone image block. </p>



<img /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPU-sT96f2g">Still images from the video</a>



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<p>In this post <strong><a href="https://www.godaddy.com/garage/using-block-patterns-to-speed-up-site-builds/">Using Block Patterns to speed up site builds</a></strong>, &nbsp;<strong>Courtney Robertson</strong> walks you through the steps to adopt page sections with Block patters from your Theme or Block Directory. Roberston answered the questions on why you should use them, how you use them and where to learn more. </p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/jcasabona">Joe Casabona</a></strong> just published his new course on LinkedIN Learning: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/learning/creating-block-patterns-in-wordpress"><strong>Creating Block Patterns with WordPress.</strong></a> &#8220;In this course, experienced course developer Joe Casabona shows you how to take advantage of block patterns to create more flexible WordPress without needing to know code.&#8221; read the course description. Casabona <a href="https://twitter.com/jcasabona/status/1451665848469532672">tweeted</a>: &#8220;It’s a cookbook style course that shows you how to make all sorts of patterns!&#8221; </p>



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<p>There is new hope for the Gutenberg Forms plugin, the only Forms plugin with a Gutenberg-first approach. <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> wrote about the plugin&#8217;s Odysee in his article: <a href="https://wptavern.com/wpchill-takes-over-gutenberg-forms-plans-to-shake-up-the-free-forms-market"><strong>WPChill Takes Over Gutenberg Forms, Plans To Shake Up the Free Forms Market</strong></a></p>



<h2>Developing Custom Blocks for WordPress</h2>



<p id="4-a-href-https-us-02-web-zoom-us-webinar-register-1016333846354-wn-v-e-xlr-fa-rcab-gz-78-jgj-8-ca-converting-classic-widgets-to-blocks-a">Next Week! Don&#8217;t miss it! <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1016333846354/WN_v-EXlrFaRcabGz78jgj8CA">Join us on October 28th at 12 pm EDT / 16:00 UTC</a> <br /><strong>Gutenberg Times Live Q &amp; A: <a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1016333846354/WN_v-EXlrFaRcabGz78jgj8CA">Converting classic widgets to blocks</a> </strong><br />Learn from the BuddyPress team members, <strong>Mathieu Viet</strong>, <strong>David Cavins</strong>, <strong>Varun Dubey</strong>.</p>



<a href="https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/1016333846354/WN_v-EXlrFaRcabGz78jgj8CA"><img /></a>



<p></p>



<p>In this week&#8217;s Twitch stream, Ryan Welcher can be watched <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1182869425"><strong>Building a pre-publish checklist plugin for Gutenberg.</strong></a></p>



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<p><a href="https://twitter.com/carlodaniele"><strong>Carlo Daniele</strong></a> created this comprehensive tutorial for <a href="https://kinsta.com/blog/gutenberg-blocks/"><strong>Building Custom Gutenberg Blocks</strong> </a>on the Kinsta blog. It&#8217;s meant to bring Beginners up to speed. Daniele covers the set-up and the scaffolding tool <code>@wordpress/create-block</code>, explains in depth the folder and file structure, and this also includes the handling of the built-in local web environment <code>wp-env</code>. The example Block is a Call to action (CTA) for affiliates, something quite useful and a nice change to the basic hello-world example.  </p>



<p class="has-drop-cap">What I am missing and what would probably be a nice follow-up is a discussion on when you have to build your blocks. There are other ways to provide content creators with great experience by adoption existing blocks: be it by creating  Block Patterns, augment the Block Styles, or build Block Variations. All options are much less involved, then going all in on Custom Blocks, that need to be maintained separately.   </p>



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<p class="has-drop-cap">And if you want to dive deeper into block development, <strong><a href="http://twitter.com/ryanwelcher">Ryan Welcher</a></strong> got you covered. He updated the <strong><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg-examples">Example Blocks repository</a></strong> on GitHub. Welcher wrote in <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/10/20/check-out-contribute-to-the-updated-gutenberg-examples/">his Make post</a>: &#8220;These examples can be used in many ways. You can read through them to learn how to create blocks, check out the repository and modify them to see how they work, or use them as a starting point for your own blocks.&#8221; He asked &#8220;Please consider opening an&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg-examples/issues">issue</a>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg-examples/pulls">pull request</a>&nbsp;with your example suggestion.&#8221;</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>WPCampus</strong> has released their video recordings. Here are three that covered developing for Gutenberg and blocks: </p>



<ul><li><strong><a href="https://2021.wpcampus.org/schedule/making-gutenberg-viable-with-real-world-strategies/demand">Making Gutenberg viable with real world strategies</a></strong> with Jesse Janowiak</li><li><a href="https://2021.wpcampus.org/schedule/dynamic-blocks-ftw-customize-gutenberg-without-living-in-fear-of-validation-errors/demand"><strong>Dynamic blocks FTW!: Customize Gutenberg without living in fear of validation errors</strong></a> with Joni Halabi</li><li>Panel Discussion: <a href="https://2021.wpcampus.org/schedule/what-ive-learned-from-using-gutenberg"><strong>What I&#8217;ve learned from using Gutenberg</strong></a> with Brian DeConinck, Amy Grace Wells, Jesse Janowiak and Travis Cook</li></ul>



<p>All their recordings are linked from <a href="https://2021.wpcampus.org/schedule"><em>their schedule.</em></a> It&#8217;s a treasure trove for sure! </p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p class="has-drop-cap">Speaking for recording: Video and Slidedeck of my page builder summit talk is now online: <strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/gutenberg-adoption-levels-1-5-page-builder-summit-october-2021/">Gutenberg Adoption: Levels One through Five</a></strong>. The Google Slides have all the links to the resources shared. I covered these topics and shared a ton of links and resources. </p>



<ul><li><strong>Level 1: Style and Control&nbsp;</strong></li><li><strong>Level 2: Create Block Patterns&nbsp;</strong></li><li>Level 3: Adding Block Styles and Variations</li><li>Level 4: Create Custom Blocks with ACF</li><li>Level 5: Create Custom Blocks with ReactJS</li></ul>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s main (trunk) 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>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total" /></p>




<h2>What is a Universal theme?</h2>



<p>The theme team at Automattic has now five Universal themes in the WordPress repository. </p>



<ul><li><a target="_blank" href="https://blockbasetheme.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Blockbase</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://wordpress.org/themes/quadrat/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Quadrat</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://wordpress.org/themes/geologist/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Geologist</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://wordpress.org/themes/seedlet-blocks/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Seedlet Blocks</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://wordpress.org/themes/mayland-blocks/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mayland Blocks</a></li></ul>



<p>What is a Universal theme? You might ask: &#8220;A Universal Theme is a block theme that can use the Site editor but can also be configured in a more classic way.&#8221; &#8211; Or that&#8217;s the idea. For the themes to work, you would need minimum WordPress 5.8 (for the theme.json) and the Gutenberg plugin (for the site editor) . </p>



<p>The team also published on the site Themeshaper a few articles for developers exploring Universal themes in more depth. </p>



<ul><li><a target="_blank" href="https://themeshaper.com/2021/10/06/universal-themes/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Universal Themes</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://themeshaper.com/2021/07/12/universal-themes-customization/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Universal Themes: Customization</a></li><li><a href="https://themeshaper.com/2021/06/23/universal-themes-some-ideas/">Universal Themes some Ideas</a></li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://themeshaper.com/2021/05/27/blockbase-a-parent-theme-for-block-themes/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Blockbase: A parent theme for block&nbsp;themes</a></li></ul>



<p>We will need to see how far the idea can be pushed with WordPress 5.9. We&#8217;ll start testing with the alpha version, as soon as 11.9 is merged into core. </p>



<p>You can help testing by using the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester plugin</a> and select the <em>bleeding edge </em>channel and the <em>nightlies</em> stream from the settings page.</p>



<h2>WordPress Events</h2>



<p><strong>October 28, 2021 &#8211; 1 pm EDT /  17:00 UTC </strong><br /><strong><a href="https://bit.ly/3p6b0ir">Post Status: Headless WordPress Webinar </a></strong></p>



<p>With Experts from WebDevStudios</p>



<ul><li>Brad Williams, CEO and Co-Founder</li><li>Lisa Sabin-Wilson, COO and Co-Founder</li><li>Greg Rickaby, Director of Engineering</li><li>Amor Kumar, Frontend Engineer</li></ul>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p><strong>November 4th, 2021</strong>,  <br /><a href="https://events.wpengine.com/event/965784e1-7d9f-4ca4-b5c7-3186a468e125/websitePage:5bbe0ca6-fd0c-4e77-b99b-de21baff9062"><strong>WPEngine Summit 2021</strong></a> (EMEA)<br />starts at 10 am UTC / 6am EDT</p>



<p>With many fantastic speakers, among them CEO Heather Brunner, Chris Weigman, Rob Stinson, Hashim Warren, Grace&nbsp;Erixon, and Brian Gardner</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://events.wpengine.com/event/965784e1-7d9f-4ca4-b5c7-3186a468e125/websitePage:645d57e4-75eb-4769-b2c0-f201a0bfc6ce">Schedule</a></li><li><a href="https://events.wpengine.com/event/965784e1-7d9f-4ca4-b5c7-3186a468e125/regProcessStep1">Tickets</a></li></ul>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p class="has-drop-cap">On the<a href="https://wpcalendar.io/online/">&nbsp;<strong>Calendar for WordPress Online Events</strong>&nbsp;</a>site, you can browse a list of the upcoming WordPress Events, around the world, including WordCamps,  WooCommerce, Elementor, Divi Builder and Beaver Builder meetups.</p>




<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide" />



<p class="has-text-align-center"><strong>Don&#8217;t want to miss the next Weekend Edition? </strong></p>



<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">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 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>



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<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/13998657@N02/18526571462" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01/38744499" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Blocks on a Wood Floor&#8221;</a>&nbsp;by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/51035555243@N01" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Thomas Hawk</a>&nbsp;is licensed under&nbsp;<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CC BY-NC 2.0</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:"Sat, 23 Oct 2021 04:45:00 +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: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:28;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:85:"WPTavern: WPChill Takes Over Gutenberg Forms, Plans To Shake Up the Free Forms Market";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124575";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:213:"https://wptavern.com/wpchill-takes-over-gutenberg-forms-plans-to-shake-up-the-free-forms-market?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=wpchill-takes-over-gutenberg-forms-plans-to-shake-up-the-free-forms-market";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:4675:"<p class="has-drop-cap">WPChill is now the owner of <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/forms-gutenberg/">Gutenberg Forms</a>, a project created by Munir Kamal. While still <a href="https://wptavern.com/build-forms-via-the-block-editor-with-gutenberg-forms">rough around the edges</a> a year ago, the plugin was updated regularly and was something to at least keep an eye on as it matured. <a href="https://wptavern.com/extendify-acquires-editor-plus-introduces-commercial-templates-in-its-plan-to-improve-block-editing">Extendify acquired it</a> alongside Kamal&rsquo;s Editor Plus and Gutenberg Hub at the end of 2020.</p>



<p>Then, Gutenberg Forms seemed to stall. Since Extendify took over the project, outside of bug fixes, most of the changes revolved around the addition of its commercial template and pattern library. However, the plugin still racked up over 1,000 active installs and a 4.6-star rating.</p>



<p>Cristian Raiber, the CEO of <a href="https://wpchill.com/">WPChill</a>, said he had discussed acquiring the plugin early on. However, he backed out before closing the deal because his company already owned <a href="https://kaliforms.com/">Kali Forms</a>, a commercial forms solution.</p>



<p>&ldquo;After a while of not gaining enough market share with Kali Forms, we circled back, and luckily, this time around, Chris Lubkert, the CEO of Extendify, was actually looking for someone to take over the project (adopt it) and keep it going,&rdquo; he said.</p>



<p>There are no plans to merge the two form solutions. Both plugins serve different markets.</p>



<p>&ldquo;Kali Forms is a more complex and complete solution whereas Gutenberg Forms just focuses on simpler forms, which also makes it limited in functionality but also in scope,&rdquo; said Raiber. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a market for people who just need a basic form solution built into Gutenberg, and we just happen to be the new owners of that solution.&rdquo;</p>



<p>Gutenberg Forms is still in its infancy, and there are many paths the new development team could take. Given enough time and resources, WPChill could shake up the free forms market.</p>



<img />Building a simple contact form with Gutenberg Forms.



<p>The first order of business will be clearing the backlog of issues, according to Raiber. Then, his team will focus on new features as requested by users.</p>



<p>&ldquo;Features such as the ability to build Quizzes or even more field types that will unlock even more powerful form types,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s also quite a bit of overlap with our existing plugins. A bunch of our plugins are already providing a form functionality that&rsquo;s&hellip;well, kind of limited and hard to maintain at the same time. A goal I&rsquo;d see us pursuing is removing those form components from our existing plugins and instead recommending Gutenberg Forms as a one-click install module.&rdquo;</p>



<p>Such a solution would allow his team to focus its efforts on a single code base. Then, they can extend their other plugins without recreating bits and pieces across each project.</p>



<p>&ldquo;For our Strong Testimonials plugin, we&rsquo;ve had people ask several times if the form collection plugin could be used for something else as well,&rdquo; said Raiber. &ldquo;Right now, that&rsquo;s not possible, unfortunately. We&rsquo;ve got a knowledge base + help desk plugin as well that could benefit from an enhanced form solution, such as Gutenberg Forms.&rdquo;</p>



<p>Currently, his team is about halfway through migrating all of their plugins into the block system. He said they are fully committed and on board with being a &ldquo;Gutenberg-first&rdquo; plugin shop.</p>



<p>&ldquo;The market&rsquo;s full of form plugins, and they&rsquo;re all competing on features, pricing, and really complex scenarios,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But what happens to those people that just need a simpler solution for free? My really long-term goal here is to be able to keep Gutenberg Forms 100% free and maybe become a worthy alternative to the aging Contact Form 7, a form solution that&rsquo;s got a really huge technical debt and has been poised with a lot of bugs. And that&rsquo;s normal for a plugin that&rsquo;s grown that big and has been around for that long without a team around it.&rdquo;</p>



<p>Raiber wanted to point out that they are not looking to compete with popular commercial solutions with Gutenberg Forms. A paid version is not even on the roadmap.</p>



<p>Commercially, they plan to integrate with their other projects and get users to jump on their other pro plugins. The goal is to disrupt the free forms market.</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:"Sat, 23 Oct 2021 00:13:01 +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:14:"Justin Tadlock";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:"Post Status: Post Status Excerpt (No. 29) — Better Ways To Support Customers";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:31:"https://poststatus.com/?p=88157";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:34:"https://poststatus.com/excerpt/29/";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:4341:"<h2>&#8220;If you're a founder of a company go through your own customer experience yourself — with your own eyes.&#8221;</h2>



<p class="has-drop-cap">In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, Cory and David talk about their best and worst support experiences as customers. If you are a freelancer or small agency and your ability to deal with support issues from customers isn't working, then that's a sign of something broken in your workflow. Companies should try to be more proactive and helpful to customers even if they can't help them immediately or solve all their problems.</p>



<p><strong>Also don't forget: </strong>We're encouraging listeners to check out the &#8220;<a href="https://poststatus.com/make-wordpress/">Week at WordPress.org</a>&#8221; — get the feed <a href="https://poststatus.com/make-wordpress/feed/">here</a>) — and <a href="https://poststatus.com/submit-2021-black-friday-cyber-monday-deals/">submit your Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals</a> to us at Post Status.</p>







<p class="has-background">Every week <strong><a href="https://poststatus.com/podcast/the-excerpt/">Post Status Excerpt</a></strong> will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/26a1.png" alt="⚡" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br />You can listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcast/the-excerpt/">past episodes</a> of <strong>The Excerpt</strong>, <a href="https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/">browse all our podcasts</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1m3xwXbe0MG5BzFVPtB0A7">Spotify</a>, Amazon Music, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://castro.fm/podcast/c53552c6-1ee0-4fc4-9de4-08ed6bf1ee4d">Castro</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://player.fm/series/wordpress-post-status-podcasts">Player.fm</a>, <a href="https://pca.st/05rR">Pocket Casts</a>, <a href="https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/">Simplecast</a>, or by <a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P">RSS</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f3a7.png" alt="🎧" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h3 id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html">SuperDuper!</a></li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://jenniferbourn.com/profitable-project-plan/">Profitable Project Plan | Business Training For Web Designers</a></li><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About-ebook/dp/B000RO9VJK/ref[%E2%80%A6]8350250%2CB00HTJR0NU%2CB00OH76SJE%2C0060938404&srpt=ABIS_BOOK">The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It</a></li><li><a href="https://poststatus.com/submit-2021-black-friday-cyber-monday-deals/">Share Black Friday / Cyber Monday Deals With Post Status</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/dimensionmedia" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">David Bisset (Twitter)</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cory Miller (Twitter)</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/post_status" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Post Status (Twitter)</a></li></ul>



<h3><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> Sponsor: <a href="https://poststat.us/ithemes" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener sponsored nofollow">Yoast SEO</a></h3>



<p><strong>Yoast</strong> is SEO for everyone. Yoast SEO Premium gives you 24/7 support and extra features like internal linking, social previews, a redirect manager, tutorial videos, and integration with Google Webmaster Tools. Get on board today with the premiere SEO plugin for WordPress — <strong>Yoast</strong>.</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, 22 Oct 2021 03:41:25 +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:"";}}}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:"David Bisset";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:87:"WPTavern: Branded Social Images, a New Plugin for Generating Per-Post Open Graph Images";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124633";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:217:"https://wptavern.com/branded-social-images-a-new-plugin-for-generating-per-post-open-graph-images?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=branded-social-images-a-new-plugin-for-generating-per-post-open-graph-images";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:5138:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Generated social images seem to be all the rage now. <a href="https://wptavern.com/automattic-acquires-social-image-generator-plugin-plans-to-integrate-with-jetpack">Automattic scooped up</a> Daniel Post&rsquo;s Social Image Generator last month for eventual inclusion in Jetpack. There is a <a href="https://wptavern.com/dynamic-social-images-for-plugins-themes-and-patterns-yes-please">proposal to dynamically generate them</a> for plugins and themes hosted on WordPress.org. And, there is a new player in town: <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/branded-social-images/">Branded Social Images</a>.</p>



<p>Admittedly, I have had a mild obsession lately with the concept, and I would like to see the Tavern use dynamically-generated social images at some point. Because we already use Jetpack, I will wait to see where its development team takes the feature.</p>



<p>Branded Social Images is a solid addition to the WordPress plugin directory for those who want a solution now. It is not as featured-filled as Social Image Generator, which is no longer available for purchase. However, it is an introduction to the concept for those trying it out for the first time. And, it may just prove well-rounded enough for many users.</p>



<p>The plugin was <a href="https://www.clearsite.nl/branded-social-images/">released by Internetbureau Clearsite</a>, a web development and design agency. Branded Social Images is the team&rsquo;s first extension on WordPress.org.</p>



<p>My favorite feature from this plugin is that it allows users to upload any TTF or OTF font file for the social image&rsquo;s text. I tested it with the Oleo Script Swash Caps and Rampart One font families to see how it worked.</p>



<ul><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><img /></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><img /></li></ul>Testing custom font families.



<p>Well, I tested with several more than that, but I had to stop myself before going too far. I have a font addiction and am easily sucked into hours of tinkering with them. The goal was to test this plugin feature, and it worked as it was supposed to.</p>



<p>The plugin already packages a reasonable set of 10 font families to choose from out of the box. If nothing suits your fancy, just snag one from Google Fonts or another site of your choosing and upload the <code>.ttf</code> or <code>.otf</code> file.</p>



<p>Branded Social Images is straightforward to use. Its settings screen has a preview image at the top and two boxes with settings. One for the social image text. The other is for the background image and logo.</p>



<p>Where it fails to live up to the competition is that it does not have any pre-built templates. This is not necessarily a make-or-break feature, but it also does not have the design options to recreate many of the layouts of something like Social Image Generator.</p>



<p>Essentially, the layout options boil down to positioning a logo and text atop a background image via a three-by-three grid.</p>



<ul><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><img /></li><li class="blocks-gallery-item"><img /></li></ul>Plugin options.



<p>However, its scaled-back interface with minimal options could be seen as a feature in and of itself. Not everyone needs or desires a swath of settings when a few baseline customizations will do.</p>



<p>I did have some trouble understanding whether the placeholder logo could be removed. After some testing, I realized it was limited to the settings screen unless I explicitly uploaded a custom one. I would also like to see an option to use the site title instead &mdash; not every site has a logo but might still want to show their brand name.</p>



<p>Users can also modify the social image on a per-post basis. The plugin adds a meta box with four options on the post-editing screen for:</p>



<ul><li>Disabling the social image.</li><li>Editing the text.</li><li>Disabling the text.</li><li>Adding a custom image.</li></ul>



<img />Per-post social image options.



<p>By default, the text will be the post&rsquo;s document title. It should work with most SEO plugins, such as Yoast SEO. The featured image will also be swapped in for the background if a custom one is not added.</p>



<p>After three years of using the current WordPress post editor, it still catches me off-guard when a plugin puts a meta box at the bottom of the screen instead of the sidebar. It always looks out of place. In this case, it takes up a ton of real estate for four options, and there is no need for it. If I could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the plugin, this would be it.</p>



<p>The plugin also breaks the cardinal rule of not adding a top-level admin menu item for a single screen. WordPress literally allows for sub-menu items under Settings. <em>So, maybe I need that magic wand for two things.</em></p>



<p>Outside of a few issues, I love what the plugin team has created thus far. It is a little rough around the edges, but that is OK for a version 1.x. Software is meant to be iterated and improved upon, and Branded Social Images has the foundation for becoming even better.</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, 22 Oct 2021 00:35:45 +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:"Justin Tadlock";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:"WPTavern: Jetpack Launches Commercial Backup Feature as a Standalone Plugin";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124622";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:195:"https://wptavern.com/jetpack-launches-commercial-backup-feature-as-a-standalone-plugin?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=jetpack-launches-commercial-backup-feature-as-a-standalone-plugin";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:3577:"<p>Jetpack is splitting out its <a href="https://cloud.jetpack.com/pricing">commercial Backup feature</a> into a standalone plugin that can be used without installing the core Jetpack plugin. </p>



<p>The commercial product includes automated daily or real-time backups with one-click restores, even for sites that are offline. Backups include all WordPress database, theme, and plugin files, which are stored on WordPress.com&rsquo;s infrastructure with redundant copies on multiple servers. The product was built with WooCommerce in mind and can restore a site to any past state while keeping current orders and products in place. </p>



<p>Jetpack representative Rob Pugh <a href="https://jetpack.com/2021/10/21/meet-jetpack-backup-now-as-a-standalone-plugin/">said</a> the product was split out of the core plugin because &ldquo;many developers and site owners asked for the flexibility to use specific components of Jetpack as part of their own, custom-built &lsquo;tech stack&rsquo; of plugins.&rdquo;</p>



<p>The standalone plugin is available on WordPress.org and requires a user connection to WordPress.com. It is essentially a shell for connecting the commercial product, as the plugin doesn&rsquo;t have a free tier or perform any function unless you click &ldquo;Upgrade Now.&rdquo; </p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><img /></div>



<p>The plugin&rsquo;s description on WordPress.org is somewhat misleading, as it isn&rsquo;t explicit that this is a commercial-only product. The &ldquo;Get Started&rdquo; section states, &ldquo;Installation is free, quick, and easy. It only takes a few minutes to install Jetpack Backup.&rdquo; The fact that it&rsquo;s a paid product isn&rsquo;t evident unless you dig into the accordion FAQ section about how to create a backup: &ldquo;As soon as you purchase Jetpack Backup, it will be activated, and the first backup will be completed.&rdquo; </p>



<p>The launch of the new standalone plugin should not affect current Jetpack customers using the backup services.</p>



<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the same engine that powers the backup solution that&rsquo;s part of the full Jetpack plugin and we&rsquo;ve developed loaders to only load the engine once&mdash;whether you have only Jetpack, only this, or both,&rdquo; Jetpack engineer Brandon Kraft <a href="https://twitter.com/Kraft/status/1428101956879454210">said</a>. &ldquo;If you have Jetpack already, this adds some UI for you, but the same service.</p>



<p>&ldquo;The loader tech is the same that ensures the connection code only loads once between this, Jetpack, Boost, WooCommerce Payments, etc and ensure the latest version is running. [You] don&rsquo;t have to load into memory more than you need.&rdquo;</p>



<p>Jetpack is often criticized for being &ldquo;bloated&rdquo; and bundling too many features. In 2019, the Jetpack team began <a href="https://wptavern.com/jetpack-is-promoting-paid-upgrades-on-plugin-search-screen-wordpress-plugin-team-says-it-may-be-a-violation-of-directory-guidelines">promoting feature suggestions on the plugin search screen</a> in an attempt to solve a discovery problem, where users are quite often not familiar with the plugin&rsquo;s dozens of modules and end up installing plugins to perform functionality that Jetpack already includes. Splitting the backup feature out into its own plugin should be helpful on this front and is part of a long-term plan to make Jetpack more modular. Jetpack Backup joins Jetpack CRM and Jetpack Boost, two features already available as standalone plugins outside of the core plugin.</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, 21 Oct 2021 22:56:46 +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:13:"Sarah Gooding";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:52:"Post Status: Membership and Courses with Sean McCabe";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:31:"https://poststatus.com/?p=88020";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://poststatus.com/post-status-live-membership-and-courses-with-sean-mccabe/";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:3578:"<h2>&#8220;It's easier to sell courses today&#8230; what hasn't changed is HOW you sell and the validation of what you're selling.&#8221;</h2>



<p class="has-drop-cap"><strong>Cory Miller</strong> talks with <strong>Sean McCabe</strong>, CEO of <strong>Seanwes Media</strong>. While it’s likely never been easier to sell courses for an audience (especially if you are using a system like WordPress), what hasn’t changed — according to Sean — is the marketing and the validation of what you are marketing, how you are marketing it, and how you are pricing it. Sean shares his perspectives on these permanent problems, outlining what has and hasn’t worked for him. Sean also shares his thoughts on what comes first — the community, the courses, or both. This is a must-listen for anyone with a membership course or learning site, or anyone who is thinking of starting one.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">

</div>







<p class="has-background">Every week <strong><a href="https://poststatus.com/podcast/the-excerpt/">Post Status Live</a></strong> will brief you on important WordPress news — in about 15 minutes or less! Learn what's new in WordPress in a flash. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/26a1.png" alt="⚡" class="wp-smiley" /><br /><br />You can listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcast/the-excerpt/">past episodes</a> of <strong>Post Status Live</strong>, <a href="https://poststatus.com/category/post-status-podcasts/">browse all our podcasts</a>, and don’t forget to subscribe on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1m3xwXbe0MG5BzFVPtB0A7">Spotify</a>, Amazon Music, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8ySkU5c2M4UA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/post-status-draft-wordpress/id976403008">iTunes</a>, <a href="https://castro.fm/podcast/c53552c6-1ee0-4fc4-9de4-08ed6bf1ee4d">Castro</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/PostStatus">YouTube</a>, <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/krogsgard/post-status-draft-wordpress-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://player.fm/series/wordpress-post-status-podcasts">Player.fm</a>, <a href="https://pca.st/05rR">Pocket Casts</a>, <a href="https://wordpress-post-status-draft-podcast.simplecast.com/">Simplecast</a>, or by <a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P">RSS</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f3a7.png" alt="🎧" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h3 id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://seanwes.com/courses/presale-profits/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><a href="https://seanwes.com/courses/presale-profits/">Seanwes.com on presale profits</a></a><a href="https://twitter.com/corymiller303" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cory Miller (Twitter)</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/post_status" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Post Status (Twitter)</a></li></ul>



<h3><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.0.1/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> Sponsor: <a href="https://poststat.us/ithemes" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener sponsored nofollow">Pagely</a></h3>



<p>You need durable Managed WordPress Hosting for all your mission-critical sites.&nbsp;Pagely offers managed DevOps and a flexible stack with the same enterprise-level support to all its customers. Peace of mind starts with Pagely. Try it today!</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, 21 Oct 2021 16:57:19 +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:"David Bisset";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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: The HeroPress Network Launches Find It WP, a Cooperative Resource Archive for 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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124587";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:237:"https://wptavern.com/the-heropress-network-launches-find-it-wp-a-cooperative-resource-archive-for-wordpress?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-heropress-network-launches-find-it-wp-a-cooperative-resource-archive-for-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:6301:"<img />



<p class="has-drop-cap">Two weeks ago, Cate and Topher DeRosia <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-heropress-network-launches-as-a-multi-project-portal">launched the HeroPress Network</a>, a centralized website that would host various projects for helping people with WordPress. Today, the duo announced the opening of <a href="https://finditwp.com/">Find It WP</a>, a new site that is part of the collective. It will serve as a database or archive of all things WordPress.</p>



<p>The goal is ambitious, and it is powered by submissions from the community. The site is open to anyone who wants to share a WordPress-related resource. &ldquo;Resources&rdquo; in this sense is literally anything. It can be a plugin, agency, podcast, theme shop, or even more. And, if there is not a category available, submitters can recommend a new one.</p>



<p>&ldquo;This new way to search WordPress resources helps both veteran and beginner users by saving them time and frustration as they try to find what they need,&rdquo; wrote Cate DeRosia in the <a href="https://heropressnetwork.com/a-new-wordpress-resource-archive-find-it-wp/">announcement post</a>. &ldquo;Often, I&rsquo;ve seen someone tweet out that they&rsquo;re looking for a WooCommerce specialist or have a friend ask me if I know of a plugin that does x. Now everyone has a new place to start: Find It WP.&rdquo;</p>



<p>All of the submissions are manually approved to make sure the content is appropriate. This will add to the team&rsquo;s workload. DeRosia jokingly said her role has become &ldquo;Chief Approval Officer.&rdquo;</p>



<img />Partial view of the resource submission form.



<p>&ldquo;And this really highlights the reason we&rsquo;ll be reaching out for funding,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot to maintain with the new additions to the HeroPress Network, resources that seem like they&rsquo;ll be a real asset to the growth of the WordPress community. Instead of each company trying to do this on their own, let&rsquo;s pool our resources and support it together.&rdquo;</p>



<p>The current plan is to open some funding options for the HeroPress Network on October 24. DeRosia said in an <a href="https://heropressnetwork.com/introducing-the-heropress-network/">earlier announcement</a> that this would be similar to Patreon, where users could fund the mission. However, they will also have a corporate sponsorship program for WordPress businesses.</p>



<p>&ldquo;I think of it like the local library,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Not everyone needs to be in there checking out books and shelving things, but somebody does, and they have to buy groceries, too.&rdquo;</p>



<p>DeRosia believes this will benefit individuals as well as smaller and larger agencies.</p>



<p>&ldquo;You never know where a customer is going to come from or what up and coming agency could give you unexpected competition, so this is a simple way to see what all is going on in the WordPress ecosystem,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s also an ideal opportunity to find smaller products and business larger companies may want to acquire.&rdquo;</p>



<p>I asked her whether including plugins and themes was worth it because there are already dedicated directories and marketplaces for those types of resources.</p>



<p>&ldquo;We had the same thoughts as you about whether it was worth including plugins and themes, particularly free ones,&rdquo; she responded. She listed four primary reasons they thought it was worth doing:</p>



<ul><li>If it&rsquo;s for &ldquo;all things WordPress,&rdquo; we need to include all things WordPress.</li><li>We liked that free and paid plugins were searchable alongside each other.</li><li>The WordPress repositories don&rsquo;t have our advanced searching. We&rsquo;re not a replacement for them, just an additional option.</li><li>Reviews can negatively impact products that don&rsquo;t always deserve them. We wanted to level the playing field there.</li></ul>



<p>DeRosia said the idea for this project and <a href="https://wppodcasts.com/">WP Podcasts</a> came along at about the same time (note: the WP Tavern podcast is <a href="https://wppodcasts.com/podcast/wp-tavern/">listed on the site</a>). The latter was less ambitious in scope, so they launched it first as a case study.</p>



<p>&ldquo;From the beginning, the driving force behind the HeroPress expansion was to create bridges between the various WordPress communities, and Find It WP seemed like a natural element to that,&rdquo; said DeRosia. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s really difficult to be successful and stay on top of an ever-growing ecosystem like WordPress. With Find It WP, we can simplify it all, for both searchers and those looking to be found.</p>



<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve spent the last 18 months looking at ways people can get visibility in the WordPress Community, and it&rsquo;s nearly impossible. It&rsquo;s so large and spread out that, even if you have the most amazing new product, it&rsquo;s hard to get noticed. Find It WP simplifies all of that and provides equitable opportunities for anyone.&rdquo;</p>



<p>Equity is a a crucial part of this project, leveling the playing field for creators regardless of their size. There is no special attention given to major players. The resources are simply there for people to search for and find what they are looking for.</p>



<p>At the moment, there are currently 42 listings spread across multiple categories. DeRosia said she was getting back to approving more as we ended our chat. As the site grows, it should offer opportunities for more businesses and people to connect.</p>



<p>&ldquo;The idea for Find It WP did come out of our experiences with HeroPress and expanding into the HeroPress Network,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve needed help along the way and have been thrilled by the talent we&rsquo;ve come across. If we hadn&rsquo;t been looking or had the connections we had, we wouldn&rsquo;t have found them. We didn&rsquo;t want to keep that to ourselves. We want everyone to be able to experience the benefits that come from working together as a community.&rdquo;</p>



<p>Topher DeRosia also published a <a href="https://heropress.com/a-new-heropress-family-member/">Find It WP announcement</a> on the HeroPress blog.</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, 20 Oct 2021 21:58:59 +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:14:"Justin Tadlock";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:11:"
	
	
	
	
	
";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:40:"HeroPress: A New HeroPress Family Member";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=4190";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:125:"https://heropress.com/a-new-heropress-family-member/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-new-heropress-family-member";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:2398:"<img width="1024" height="683" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2121/10/marten-newhall-uAFjFsMS3YY-unsplash-scaled-1-1024x683.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" /><p>Last summer when Cate and I were on our anniversary trip we were brainstorming about new things we could bring to the WordPress community that would really help people. Cate came up with the idea of a site that lists every single WordPress resource in the entire world. I was a little dubious at first, but she pitched it well, and I came around. We&#8217;ve spent months planning, building, starting over, and dreaming about it at night, and today we released <a href="http://FindItWP.com">FindItWP.com</a> as part of the <a href="https://heropressnetwork.com">HeroPress Network</a>.</p>
<h3>So What Is It?</h3>
<p>Imagine a list of every WordPress resource in the world. Every podcast, every email newsletter, every plugin, every theme, every agency for hire, every news outlet, every training site, etc. Then imagine you can search and filter it, to find exactly what you&#8217;re looking for.</p>
<p>Now also imagine you&#8217;re a small plugin or theme shop selling a product, struggling to get visibility an overwhelming world. You can get your item listed on an equal platform as places that have far more marketing resources.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s <a href="https://finditwp.com">FindItWP.com</a>.</p>
<h3>Who Is It For?</h3>
<p>Anyone who wants to find something, and anyone who wants to be found.</p>
<h3>Can I Help?</h3>
<p>Yes! The entire foundation of Find It WP is the community entering all the resources.&nbsp; There&#8217;s no way a single person, or even a large group could handle it.&nbsp; It has to be all of us or it won&#8217;t really work. Anyone can enter any resource, even if it&#8217;s not theirs. Then if the owner wants to take over the listed we&#8217;ll facilitate that. So literally EVERYONE can help, and be entering content!</p>
<p>So if you&#8217;re ready to be on the team, <a href="https://finditwp.com/add-new-resource/">start adding resources</a>!</p>
<h3>Where Can I Learn More?</h3>
<p>Cate did a <a href="https://heropressnetwork.com/a-new-wordpress-resource-archive-find-it-wp/">wonderful post</a> over on the HeroPress Network site, and it has TONS more information about it than I&#8217;ve written here.&nbsp; I highly recommend checking it out!</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, 20 Oct 2021 20:36:30 +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:35;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:88:"WPTavern: Software Freedom Conservancy Takes On Vizio in Lawsuit Alleging GPL Violations";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124497";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:221:"https://wptavern.com/software-freedom-conservancy-takes-on-vizio-in-lawsuit-alleging-gpl-violations?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=software-freedom-conservancy-takes-on-vizio-in-lawsuit-alleging-gpl-violations";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:7277:"<img /><p>Inside of a Vizio TV &ndash; Model V435-J01 &ndash; photo credit: Software Freedom Conservancy</p>
" data-medium-file="https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-20-at-1.14.16-PM-300x218.png" data-large-file="https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-20-at-1.14.16-PM-500x363.png" loading="lazy" width="880" height="638" src="https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-20-at-1.14.16-PM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-124577" srcset="https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-20-at-1.14.16-PM.png 880w, https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-20-at-1.14.16-PM-300x218.png 300w, https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-20-at-1.14.16-PM-500x363.png 500w, https://wptavern.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-20-at-1.14.16-PM-768x557.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" />Inside of a Vizio TV &ndash; Model V435-J01 &ndash; photo credit: Software Freedom Conservancy



<p>The Software Freedom Conservancy <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html">announced</a> that it is suing Vizio, an American TV manufacturer, for what it alleges are &ldquo;repeated failures to fulfill even the basic requirements of the General Public License (GPL).&rdquo; </p>



<p>The 501(c)(3) charity organization is a non-profit that provides infrastructure support for free and open source software projects, defending users&rsquo; rights under copyleft licenses and the GPL. A few of its member projects include BusyBox, Git, Homebrew, OpenWrt, and phpMyAdmin. As part of its mission, the Conservancy assists member projects in enforcing the terms of FLOSS licenses, including through litigation.</p>



<p>The Software Freedom Conservancy contends that Vizio&rsquo;s TV products contain software with copyleft licenses but the company refused to provide the source code after multiple attempts at contact since 2018. Vizio also did not inform its customers about the rights included with the software it was bundling.</p>



<p>&ldquo;We filed suit as a purchaser of TVs to stand up for copyleft,&rdquo; Software Freedom Conservancy Executive Director Karen Sandler said. &ldquo;There was no source or offer for source even after we&rsquo;d been working with them for a long time on older products. Copyleft can help us take control of our tech in a meaningful way, it&rsquo;s a huge benefit to consumers.&rdquo;</p>



<p>In a new twist on GPL enforcement, the organization is presenting this lawsuit on behalf of individual consumers, as opposed to the traditional path of defending copyright holders of the GPL code in question.</p>



<p>The Software Freedom Conservancy contends that Vizio&rsquo;s alleged noncompliance prevents consumers from being able to repair their devices, improve and control them, as well as curtail surveillance and ads through modifications. The <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/docs/conservancy-v-vizio-original-complaint-2021-10-19.pdf">full text of the complaint</a> includes examples of how consumers might benefit from having access to the source code:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Vizio is unlikely to unilaterally implement features that prevent the collection of such user data, as such user data is valuable to Vizio. Access to the Source Code of the Linux kernel, the other SmartCast Programs at Issue, and for the Library Linking Programs, as used on Vizio smart TVs, would enable software developers to preserve useful but obsolete features. It would also allow software developers to maintain and update the operating system should Vizio or its successor ever decide to abandon it or go out of business. In these ways, purchasers of Vizio smart TVs can be confident that their devices would not suffer from software-induced obsolescence, planned or otherwise.</p></blockquote>



<p>In the organization&rsquo;s announcement of the lawsuit, Sandler highlighted the environmental impact of denying consumers access to the code.</p>



<p>&ldquo;The global supply chain shortages that have affected everything from cars to consumer electronics underscore one of the reasons why it is important to be able to repair products we already own,&rdquo; says Sandler. &ldquo;Even without supply chain challenges, the forced obsolescence of devices like TVs isn&rsquo;t in the best interest of the consumer or even the planet. This is another aspect of what we mean by &lsquo;ethical technology.&rsquo; Throwing away a TV because its software is no longer supported by its manufacturer is not only wasteful, it has dire environmental consequences. Consumers should have more control over this, and they would if companies like Vizio played by the rules.&rdquo;</p>



<p>The complaint alleges that Vizio is in breach of the GPLv2 and the LGPLv2.1 every time they distribute a smart TV without the source code or a written offer to provide it. It claims that none of the smart TVs Vizio has introduced in the US market in the past four years have been accompanied by the source code. </p>



<p>Open source leaders from affiliate organizations commented on the unique approach of this lawsuit, where the Conservancy is acting on behalf of consumers as the plaintiff, as opposed to prevailing upon the copyright holder to defend its users. The complaint states:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>No one other than the purchaser has both the information and motive to enforce the Source Code Provision. Purchasers will both know whether the Source Code Provision has been honored and have a desire to examine and further develop the corresponding source code.</p></blockquote>



<p>&ldquo;If this consumer-rights-based approach succeeds, the main excuse for copyright assignments to organizations like the FSF will be gone and we can unambiguously treat a CLA as a red flag,&rdquo; Open Source Initiative Director of Standards/Policy Simon Phipps said.</p>



<p>The complaint states that the &ldquo;Plaintiff and other members of the class of persons intended to benefit from the GPLv2 and LGPLv2.1 have been damaged in an amount that cannot be readily determined.&rdquo; Vizio&rsquo;s alleged noncompliance has effectively stunted the source code&rsquo;s potential for improvements from consumers for years. It has also robbed consumers of the control of their electronics and given Vizio an unfair advantage that protects their corporate interests at the expense of users&rsquo; freedoms. The Conservancy is not seeking an exact amount for damages but rather leaving it to the judgment of the court. </p>



<p>&ldquo;This lawsuit has the potential to empower many consumers, radically changing the landscape of consumer technology,&rdquo; Open Source Initiative Executive Director Stefano Maffulli said.</p>



<p>The Conservancy&rsquo;s case will be an important one to watch, as its decision could set a precedent for GPL enforcement in the future. If nothing else, it should signal to companies benefiting from GPL-licensed code that they must also respect consumers&rsquo; rights. If consumers are the intended third-party beneficiaries of the license agreement, then they have a right to the source code. </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, 20 Oct 2021 20:07:16 +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:13:"Sarah Gooding";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:80:"WPTavern: Tidying the Media Library With WP Ninjas’ Remove Unused Media Plugin";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124177";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:199:"https://wptavern.com/tidying-the-media-library-with-wp-ninjas-remove-unused-media-plugin?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tidying-the-media-library-with-wp-ninjas-remove-unused-media-plugin";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:6172:"<p class="has-drop-cap">A few weeks ago, <a href="https://wp-ninjas.de/remove-unused-media">WP Ninjas announced</a> it was stepping into the media optimization plugin market. The team released its <a href="https://remove-unused-media.com/en">Remove Unused Media</a> plugin as a commercial project for tidying storage space. I received a full copy of it and put it through the ropes.</p>



<p>With so many commercial plugins, I am accustomed to the developers creating an entirely new menu item, taking up precious admin real estate. This happens even with those that just have a single screen too. However, I was happy to see the WP Ninjas team tucked everything neatly under &ldquo;Media&rdquo; as a sub-menu. We were off to a good start, and things only got better.</p>



<p>When I review plugins, there is one thing that I consistently preach: simplicity. That begins with following the core WordPress UI and sticking as closely to it as the plugin&rsquo;s features will allow. In essence, <em>don&rsquo;t make me think</em> about how to use your plugin.</p>



<p>For the most part, Remove Unused Media got the user experience right.</p>



<p>I could nitpick a few design choices with the interface, such as modifying the list table with rounded corners and extra padding. The &ldquo;filter&rdquo; sub-navigation also deviates from the standard. And, the &ldquo;last analysis&rdquo; message should receive the WordPress admin notice treatment so that it stands out.</p>



<p>These are all core UI elements with unnecessary customizations. However, they did not diminish the experience on the whole. The plugin mostly stuck with the WordPress standard.</p>



<p>The real question is whether the plugin does what it says on the tin. <em>What is the experience of removing unused media like?</em></p>



<p>It was easy. Users merely need to click the &ldquo;Start Analysis&rdquo; button and wait a few seconds. The plugin then has three tabs:</p>



<ul><li>Unused Media</li><li>Used Media</li><li>Ignored</li></ul>



<p>The Unused Media tab presents an overview of all media that the plugin could not find used on the site. There is a possibility that it missed something. However, I only found one old-school scenario where this happened, which I will dive into later.</p>



<img />Unused media screen.



<p>From this point, end-users can manually delete individual media attachments or use the bulk-delete option. Before doing so, the plugin recommends making a backup of the site &mdash; solid advice for any such plugin.</p>



<p>My favorite feature of the plugin was not its primary feature of deleting media. It was actually the &ldquo;Used Media&rdquo; screen. Its &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; and &ldquo;How?&rdquo; columns break down where images, videos, and other files are used and in what context.</p>



<img />Used media screen.



<p>It reminded me of the &ldquo;instances&rdquo; screen for the WordPress <a href="https://wptavern.com/version-1-prototype-of-the-wordpress-admin-block-directory-announced">admin block directory proposal</a> from 2019. The concept showed where specific blocks were used across the site. Remove Unused Media does the same thing for media files.</p>



<p>The &ldquo;Ignore&rdquo; tab for the plugin keeps track of media files that should not be deleted, even if they are unused. Users can click a link from the other screens to add them to the list. This persists after running a new analysis too.</p>



<p>The plugin scans several third-party plugins like Elementor, Beaver Builder, ACF, and Yoast SEO. Some store media instances outside of the post content, such as in custom post meta, and Remove Unused Media searches those specific fields.</p>



<p><a href="https://remove-unused-media.com/en/pricing/">Pricing</a> starts at 39&euro; ($45.38 at today&rsquo;s exchange rate) for one year of support and updates for a single site. It also has a five-site option at 149&euro; and a 100-site tier at 299&euro;.</p>



<p>For the first version, the user experience felt solid. However, it does not have much in the way of customizability. That could be a sticking point for users who are looking for a more flexible premium option.</p>



<h2>Exploring Alternatives</h2>



<p class="has-drop-cap">The plugin is not the first of its kind. The <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/media-cleaner/">Media Cleaner</a> plugin by Meow Apps is free, routinely updated, and has over 40,000 active installations. It also has a commercial version with more features, such as third-party plugin integration, WP-CLI support, filesystem scan, and live-site analysis.</p>



<img />Media Cleaner plugin results.



<p>The UI for Remove Unused Media feels more like WordPress. Its &ldquo;Used&rdquo; tab also shows where (i.e., what posts) and how (e.g., content, featured image) specific media files are used across the site. This feature alone makes it worthwhile for me.</p>



<p>One area where Media Cleaner shines is its option for ignoring (not deleting) attached media. This is a vital feature if users have ever added the old <code>gallery</code> shortcode. At one point, WordPress simply displayed all attached images as a gallery. Eventually, it specified the IDs in the shortcode. However, for those older instances, this was not the case. Without enabling this option, those media items might get queued up for deletion.</p>



<p>The Remove Unused Media plugin does not have such an option. Attached images that are not explicitly used are considered unused. This may not be an issue for most users, but those with old gallery shortcodes should be aware of potential problems.</p>



<p>The baseline features for both are similar. Remove Unused Media gets the edge in its default user interface and experience. However, Media Cleaner has many more options for customizing how the plugin works. Plus, users who cannot afford an upgrade can always run the free version.</p>



<p>This is not to say either is better or worse than the other. Both were solid options in my tests. I just want to merge the best features from each, snagging the interface from Remove Unused Media and the configurability of Media Cleaner.</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, 20 Oct 2021 01:31:40 +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:"Justin Tadlock";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:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Adoption: Levels One through Five — Page Builder Summit, October 2021";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:41:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?page_id=19119";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:90:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/gutenberg-adoption-levels-1-5-page-builder-summit-october-2021/";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:21135:"<p class="has-large-font-size">Thank you for attending my talk at the Page Builder Summit! 💕</p>



<p>Follow-up from the Page Builder Summit October 18 &#8211; 22, 2021 and the presentation: &#8220;<strong>Customizing WordPress Block Editor for Client Projects</strong>&#8221; by Birgit Pauli-Haack </p>







<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<div class="toolbelt-video-wrapper"></div>
</div>



<p class="has-large-font-size">Transcript</p>



<p> </p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, hello everybody. Thank you all for inviting me to the Page Builder Summit. I&#8217;m honored to be here, and I can only hope that today&#8217;s topic will be valuable to you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>My talk is about how you as an agency or freelancer can start adopting working with the block editor and provide your customers, content creators, a true what you see is what you get experience.</p>



<p>I know we have been promised true vis-a-vig for the last 25 years. We have come closer and closer every five years. The tools and modern software development have really advanced. And I talk to many site owners, freelancers and consultants in the WebPress community, and there have been plenty of sites that still rely on the classic editor for a myriad of reasons. And 80% of our customer sites are still on the classic editor. So don&#8217;t feel bad, but it&#8217;s also always good to figure out what would I do if a customer would come and want to start using the block editor.</p>



<p>So should you consider migrating your building block enable site? You don&#8217;t need to know it all. You can start introducing only some features of the block editor without having to know ReactJS or even build a block. There are quite a few levels of expertise that I will show you where you don&#8217;t need any of the React or modern JavaScript to be successful.</p>



<p>So I call them levels of expertise. So level one is style and control. Level two is create block patterns. Level three is adding block styles and variations. And then level four is creating custom blocks with ACF or other tools like genesis blocks or lazy blocks plugin. And then level five is create native customs, static or dynamic blocks.</p>



<p>So this talk was inspired by a conversation that I had with Victoria Ramirez on the Gutenberg Times YouTube channel about a year ago. And I modified it a little bit with adding a few things. And I have for all five levels I show you examples and resources, so you can kind of jump in wherever you think it&#8217;s possible for you. But I will also go a bit deeper into level one and level two, to give you a head start.</p>



<p>We won&#8217;t have time for the rest. But I&#8217;ll share the resources because quite a few developers have gone the path before you, and they share very generously what they learned and what they found. So let&#8217;s dive in.</p>



<p>So out of a box we heard in 2018 that any theme works with a block editor. And that is mostly still true today. Mid-2019 two client project managers within a few months of each other came to me and said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s just enable the block editor and see what happens our contact readers will figure it out. And we&#8217;ll just ask you to restrict the color selections to our brand colors.&#8221;</p>



<p>And you might know that there is actually a custom color option and one client wanted it to be removed and the other said, &#8220;Well, let&#8217;s see if it&#8217;s a problem first.&#8221; So those are the two different approaches. But they all said, okay, let&#8217;s just kind of keep the theme, adopt some brand colors and see where the block editor takes us.</p>



<p>So the first step that we did was to, is the theme actually the theme block editor compatible. And for that, we developed a test that&#8217;s not rocket science. We create a page with all the blocks and see how they look. And then we evaluate the amount of styling that is needed. And we share our test site as code in the gist that&#8217;s kind of linked in the slides. There are also linked to the instructions if you need more of them. And yeah, just so the bit.ly/pagebuilder1021 is actually the link to the slide deck if you want to follow along or use other links that I share.</p>



<p>So with this, we tested our theme. The theme just looks something like this. Yeah. With some blocks in there. And also some additional attributes. But I&#8217;m going to show you how that looked in just a normal theme. First, I just tested it in the starter theme underscore. And so that&#8217;s graded by automatic and has been a starter theme for many, many classic themes in this space. And I&#8217;m click you on that video and it gives you&#8230; So it&#8217;s a sample test and we scroll through.</p>



<p>We have added the test page and then we scroll through and see how things work or how things don&#8217;t work. And for this one, it seems fairly well adoptable. So if you, as freelancers have used underscore and didn&#8217;t change a whole lot, except the styling of course, and added a few things you should be fine with the block editor out of the box.</p>



<p>Well, I also tested it with the Naked WordPress starter theme by Josh Beckman. It&#8217;s a little bit dated, but it has a few more opinionated stylings already. So when we click on the same video again, you see, okay, the page looks a little bit different but in essence, and we see there are some line height issues that we would need to change. There are also some justification issues. But nothing really that is earth shattering or that would take a lot of time to fix. Well the drop caps there, you could disable that if you wanted to. And that even though the table with the stripes came through.</p>



<p>So that was easy. Well, let&#8217;s test one more. I had a client recently, he approached us because their are mobile ranking is very, very bad. So I tested the theme and that&#8217;s a theme from 2007. That&#8217;s 14 years old. And I just created a page with my blocks and you see it has some line height issues here but we can take care of that. Even the quote comes through with the background image, the buttons have round the corners and the columns look nice. We have a few distance issues there. They&#8217;re not as generous with white spaces, other themes are. But nothing earth shattering even there. So that should get you started and make your clients and yourself feel much better about using the block editor on an existing site and not have to do too many adjustments.</p>



<p>So if you want to add a custom color palette then you would need to do two things depending on which version of WordPress you are on. So having a color palette, that means the colors that are in the side bar of the block editor for maybe a paragraph block or the background image and the text color that&#8217;s where your custom palette would go.</p>



<p>So depending on which version on WordPress you are. For WordPress 5.7 or older, 5.6, 5.5, you had a two step there. One is to put in the functions, PHP, add the theme support for editor color palette, and add an array of your colors with the name, the slug and the hexadecimal representation of the color. And then you will need to go to your style sheet and add for each color two more classes like has black color and has black background color.</p>



<p>So you had three places to when you want to change your color, for instance here to modify. Starting with WebPress 5.8 or higher there&#8217;s&#8230; You probably heard that the theme json file was introduced and there was actually introduced for themes that prepare for full-site editing. But guess what? The theme json works also for classic themes. And you could use all the advantages of that for your classic themes when you start out and have it all in one configuration file. So there, you only would need to put in the json file, the settings and then the color, and then the palette with names, slogan, the color and hexadecimal, but you would not need to do the updates in your style sheet because the block editor is styling that out of the box. So you only need to set the palette and then the rest will be handled automatically.</p>



<p>Now, there was this one little thing where you have colors for background and text color. You also have these custom color link that opens up a little window where your user could change any color or add any color that is in that color picker. If you want your, or the customer decides to adhere just to the brand colors. You can remove that either by theme support and disable underscore custom, underscore colors. Or in the theme json you have the settings and then the color and the set the custom to false. So these are few for the custom colors.</p>



<p>Let&#8217;s look at the text fonts. You could also do a custom font sizes. Right now the topography selection for paragraph has font sizes with small, medium, large, huge. And in the theme json you can set the pixel sizes for that, but with the custom font size the content creator could change. If you don&#8217;t want that, if you want to disable that you just use in the theme json typography, and then custom font size and set that to false.</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s kind of a glimpse into how you can just change the configuration of the block editor, add custom colors, add custom font sizes to it and add some styling. And you are golden there. You haven&#8217;t touched any JavaScript, maybe just a little bit your functions PHP. But that wouldn&#8217;t be the first time that you tweak the theme with through functions and filters in the functions PHP.</p>



<p>The next level I want to discuss with you is our block patterns. They are a complete game changer for Gutenberg now that they&#8217;re introduced. They help content creators to use a set combination of core blocks and reproduce a wanted design and section over and over. That could be testimonials or a price list or a header pattern. So you could check out the pattern directory at wordpress.org/pattern.</p>



<p>So sometimes I get the question because some of the early users of the block editor were very taken by the concept of reusable blocks and have used reusable blocks actually like block pattern, because there was nothing available with that. But block patterns are the opposite of reusable blocks. So reusable block is you will use on various places the identical block including the content and you could use it on every page or on 15 blog posts. And when you change the content, it changes every single instance of the block. And so you only have to change it once.</p>



<p>Now, block pattern is, as I said, the collection of core blocks that you can add to your candles and then adjust to your needs. But the previous instances of the black pattern stay the same. So just because you modify a black pattern, now the tenth, you will not change previous instances of that. The block pattern directory is right now in version one, one where you can copy paste of patterns from the directory into your editor. Soon there is also a way to submit that&#8217;s designers submit patterns to the directory. Right now they are 84 that are with a design team together and outside designers of course. But they tested also how to translate them and how it all functions.</p>



<p>So version two is coming soon. I just wanted to show you a few more examples of the block patterns that you find in the directory, because it also shows what you can do with them. So the next one. This is a team page kind of pattern, where you have your team member with a profile picture, the name, and the title. And underneath if you want a group of social links and that is repeated in a three-column layout. That&#8217;s just beautiful and depending on how the images are that you use for the profile, you can switch out every part of that once you put it into your block editor. Then also a testimonial is there with a little picture there, the testimonial and then the name of the person who said it. And then there is another beautiful header pattern. So check it out. It&#8217;s wordpress.org/pattern.</p>



<p>The next part is that you could actually create custom block patterns if you have sections in your new website or an existing website that needs to have the same layout over and over. We have that on our website that called impact stories. We have media and text pattern, one with a picture on the left and the other one with the picture on the right. And then we have a header, a paragraph, and a smaller citation, which organization that is. But there were also some attributes with the media text where we said okay, adopt the size of the picture, apply that background and apply it completely and have these kind of spaces left and right around the text. You can register a category and then register a block pattern that fits into the category. You don&#8217;t have to have a certain category. But you see it&#8217;s only a four attributes kind of array. It&#8217;s in PHP so it goes into your function, PHP.</p>



<p>You need a title, you need a description, the category is optional, and then the content. And when you see the content it&#8217;s not quite displayed here well. But you see it starts with a block comment with the attributes in the curly brackets. And that is so you can&#8230; And when you grab a pattern from the directory and click the copy and paste that into here, then it would be a new register block pattern for your site. It&#8217;s quite interesting to do that.</p>



<p>So there are also plugins available for content creators to create custom patterns without using code. So Marcus Kazmierczak created one just recently called templates, which allows you to actually store your block pattern as a custom post type and then bring it in into your block editor. Jean Baptist Audras also added a block pattern featured to his reusable block, extended plugin, and in EditorsKit by Extendify, that was first built by Jeffrey Carandang and then taken over by Extendify a few months ago. There is a huge selection of patterns and page layouts that you can use.</p>



<p>And if you don&#8217;t have enough creative inspiration, there are also quite a few themes now that offer a great selection of block pattern. I think Anders Noren tweeted the other day and said, &#8220;When is it enough to ship the theme after 40 block patterns?&#8221; So his full-site editing so you can&#8217;t just install it as a classic theme. But if you put it up on a test site and add the Gutenberg plugin to it, you can test his theme Tove. That&#8217;s the new one. And Ellen Bauer from Elma Studio also has a new theme, it&#8217;s called Aino. And Carolina Nymark and the Theme team build the Twenty Twenty One theme also as a block-based theme. And they also have quite a few block patterns that you want to consult and see how they work. So you can replicate something for your clients there.</p>



<p>Here is the resource list for block patterns. There&#8217;s a big resource list on the Gutenberg Times. Then there is developer handbook docs on&#8230; Sorry, the developer handbook on patterns. And then Justin Tadlock on WPTavern has a post on block patterns will change everything. And so that concludes our level two of&#8230; And see how far you already have come without touching any code but still create custom designs for your clients.</p>



<p>And then on level three. Get to a little bit into more code. The level three is add block styles and variations. Adding block styles means there&#8217;s a few you more choices in the sidebar for a block, and can also be selected as a default style and variations show up a bit more elaborate in creation and can be found in core for instance for the social icons block or layout elements for different buttons that&#8217;s from one of the tutorials out there.</p>



<p>And with the documented block filters you can also add custom attribution and additional functionality that how plugins extend the core blocks. So here are a few more block styles that I found in the wild. Here are two for columns where there&#8217;s a style not to use any gutters or horizontal separators. And this is a style for the for list block here with check marks and then block styles for an image where you can&#8230; The rounded is coming with core but then one plugin also had the bottom wave and the top wave for the images.</p>



<p>To dive in a little bit deeper into block variations. So they&#8217;re more elaborate rather than just styling. There&#8217;s also additional functionality in there. Like for the block variations for the core columns, you see for instance a two-column variation. A two column with a 50/50 split and a two column with a 30/70 split either way left or right. And then a three-column split with the same size or 25, 50. Those are variation that come in with the block into your site.</p>



<p>Here is an example from one of the tutorials where they had a one block that has some additional information about a portfolio. Like a page intro where they identify the client and the role of the organization with the freelancer on that particular project. And so they don&#8217;t have to design it every time when they add that to a block. They just can use their block variations for that. And you see in that little box here, that&#8217;s also coming through the inserter of the block here.</p>



<p>So on the next slide, I have a few articles that dive deeper in those topics. As I said, we don&#8217;t have enough time here. But you will be able to kind of follow along on those. Yeah. With add custom size, a White Pixel is a great site to visit about Gutenberg blocks and development. Then there is the dev note when the block variations API was introduced into WordPress, then how to use block variation WordPress at the CSS-Trick site, extending Gutenberg blocks with custom attributes and controls by Jeffrey Carandang. And then the reference guide and a crash course on WebPress filters. So that should get you all started and successful on block styles, variation, and block filters. And that concludes the level three.</p>



<p>The next level is&#8230; Okay. So we needed to add data to it, like in a ACF and advanced custom fields or other plugins. We also not only manage content, but also data. If you think you need custom blocks and you&#8217;re not comfortable with ReactJS and modern JavaScript. These three plugins help you out in building custom blocks.</p>



<p>Nowadays, there&#8217;s also the parts framework, which just came out with version 2.8 with a block integration. There&#8217;s also a tool set that helps you create blocks. But the Advanced Custom Fields Pro, Genesis Custom Blocks, prior to that, it was called Block Lab, and the Lazy Blocks. I wrote an intro kind of comparison article for the WPTavern quite a while ago by might still get you started, or at least thinking of how to select which plugin to select and to work with it. If you are already a customer of Advanced Custom Fields, get the pro version and so you get also the building of the custom blocks.</p>



<p>And then level five is creating custom blocks with ReactJS. There&#8217;s plenty of getting started information available. The official scaffolding script create block creates everything that you need for a plugin with a single block and Ali Alaa and has a course on Udemy on Gutenberg blocks for WordPress and react developers.</p>



<p>There is certainly also a build block series. Marcus Kazimierczak also has a short series. I think it&#8217;s seven steps or seven block posts. A White Pixel also has a tutorial series to create Gutenberg blocks to follow along. And then the Udemy block.</p>



<p>And we&#8217;re coming right about to the end of the talk. I just wanted to point out there is a Gutenberg Times live Q&amp;A happening on October 28th at 1600 UTC. That&#8217;s noon Eastern US. We call it case study for converting classic widgets to blocks for BuddyPress. So we will have a discussion with the team members of BuddyPress Mathieu Viet, David Cavins, and Varun Dubey will tell us how they transformed in very fast succession dozens of classic widgets in two blocks for the WordPress 5.8 release. They also will be there to answer your questions. Link is in the slide of course.</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s all I have for you today. You can certainly stay in touch with me on the WordPress Slack or on Twitter with BPH. My DMs are open, or you can reach me via email at <a href="mailto:pauli@gutenbergtimes.com">pauli@gutenbergtimes.com</a>.</p>



<p>Check out our YouTube channel, youtube.com/gutenbergtimes where we posted all our previous live Q&amp;A over the last two years. And then every Saturday I send out a weekend edition of hand curated links from the community and from the Gutenberg development team. So you can keep up with Gutenberg. The slides, as I said, are available under https:/bit.ly.ay/pagebuilder1028. And that&#8217;s it. Thank you very much. And I&#8217;ll see you around the internet and in the community. Bye-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:"Tue, 19 Oct 2021 15:15:08 +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:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";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:76:"WPTavern: Build Notification Banners With ElmaStudio’s Latest Block Plugin";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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=124460";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:191:"https://wptavern.com/build-notification-banners-with-elmastudios-latest-block-plugin?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=build-notification-banners-with-elmastudios-latest-block-plugin";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:5840:"<p class="has-drop-cap">A friend and I were discussing the need for more one-off block plugins earlier today. He had mentioned that WordPress has this powerful block search feature that rarely turns up anything useful. Most are part of collections that do not appear in the results. This was part of a more wide-ranging conversation that I am sure I will tackle on another day.</p>



<p>However, it reminded me that I had a couple of ElmaStudio&rsquo;s block plugins sitting in the backlog along with some notes on them. The team released <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/aino-accordion-faq-block/">Aino Accordion FAQ Block</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/aino-notification-block/">Aino Notification Banner Block</a> three weeks ago. The latter piqued my interest more so than the former.</p>



<img />Inserting an error notification.



<p>The two-person team of Ellen Bauer and Manuel Esposito could have continued amassing a collection within their existing Aino Blocks plugin. Instead, they took a turn down the path few have traveled. They are now releasing single-purpose blocks.</p>



<p>&ldquo;We plan to work on smaller add-on single blocks from now on as well,&rdquo; <a href="https://wptavern.com/a-second-look-at-elmastudios-aino-theme-and-companion-block-plugin#comment-392898">said Bauer in the comments</a> on my last <a href="https://wptavern.com/a-second-look-at-elmastudios-aino-theme-and-companion-block-plugin">review of their theme and block library</a>. &ldquo;Blocks that are needed for building more complex block page templates.&rdquo;</p>



<p>Notification boxes are so commonplace that you almost wonder why they are not a part of core WordPress. Many block collection plugins bundle one or multiple, but it is hard to find a solid solution as a single block.</p>



<p>The block has six statuses that users can select from:</p>



<ul><li>Welcome</li><li>Info</li><li>Help</li><li>Success</li><li>Warning</li><li>Error</li></ul>



<p>Each status has its own icon and default colors. The colors are customizable, but the icon itself is not. I am a fan of the decision because it means one less choice I must make. There is also an option to hide the icon and switch between fill and outline versions.</p>



<img />Testing different notification statuses.



<p>The block also displays a &ldquo;dismiss&rdquo; button for visitors to close the banner on the front end. The state is not saved, so if the visitor returns to the page, it will reappear. I would like to see an option to store the banner state in the browser in the future.</p>



<p>I like the plugin for its simplicity. The default output works well enough for most themes, but it has enough options for users to customize it.</p>



<p>The upcoming site editor is where the plugin could really shine. Of course, a user would need a block theme to use it there, such as ElmaStudio&rsquo;s <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/aino/">Aino</a>. The block offers a quick and easy way of plopping something like a sales banner across the top of the site.</p>



<img />Adding a sales banner at the top of the site.



<p>I do have a few nit-picks, of course. These are not <em>OMGBBQ</em> problems that make the plugin unusable. Instead, they are places where it could be improved.</p>



<p>Because many themes use a top margin approach to vertical rhythm, it can disrupt the alignment of the icon and paragraph. The plugin should zero this out.</p>



<p>If anyone else runs into this issue, the following CSS is a quick fix:</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>.wp-block-ainoblocks-notification-block .content-wrapper p:first-of-type {
    margin-top: 0;
}</code></pre>



<p>One of the downsides to the plugin is its custom system for borders and padding. From a development perspective, I prefer the plugin&rsquo;s system under the hood, which uses a curated set of values that keep a user from doing something really crazy. It offers a balance between flexibility and rational choices.</p>



<img />The plugin&rsquo;s custom controls.



<p>I have argued that most design controls should have such a system &mdash; the same one that is in place for font sizes and colors &mdash; <em>ad nauseum</em>. However, Gutenberg and core have moved in a different direction, preferring arbitrary user-defined values over a range of presets. Plugin authors should fall in line for the sake of users.</p>



<p>As a user, I prefer consistency. I want the interface to be the same, regardless of whether I am dealing with a core or third-party block. Having to learn multiple methods to add padding or change a border creates unnecessary friction.</p>



<p>The plugin&rsquo;s custom system also conflicts with default block styles that theme authors can define in their <code>theme.json</code> files. The standards set by WordPress create a bridge between plugins and themes that the platform has never had before. The more block developers follow it, the easier it is for theme designers to work within the system.</p>
