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";s:7:"attribs";a:1:{s:0:"";a:1:{s:7:"version";s:3:"2.0";}}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:1:{s:7:"channel";a:1:{i:0;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:61:"
	
	
	
	




















































";s: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:85:"WPTavern: How To Build a Two-Column Single Post Header with the WordPress Site Editor";s: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=131951";s: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:96:"https://wptavern.com/how-to-build-a-two-column-single-post-header-with-the-wordpress-site-editor";s: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:8719:"<p class="has-drop-cap">One of the features I liked about <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-archeo-wordpress-theme-blends-mayan-history-with-magazine-style-block-patterns">Automattic&#8217;s Archeo theme</a> that I reviewed earlier this week was its split-screen single post header. I loved that an author was doing a little something different with the Featured Image block, giving users some variety.</p>



<p>The design was simple. It is a two-column section with an image on the right and the post title and date on the left.</p>



<img />Split-screen post title and image.



<p>It reminded me to dust off one of the untold numbers of &#8220;ideas&#8221; folders on my computer. I knew I had built something similar last year. I merely needed to find it.</p>



<p>I finally stumbled upon it after a bit of rummaging &#8212; <em>I really need to learn how to name things to make them easier to find</em>:</p>



<img />Old split post header design idea.



<p>My approach to the problem was different, and I remember why it went to the scrap-heap. It used the Media &amp; Text block instead of Columns. Then, and this is still the case, it is impossible to use the Featured Image inside of Media &amp; Text.</p>



<p>The Columns block is a decent second choice, but it stacks differently on mobile views, with the first column always landing on top. The image takes precedence when using the Media &amp; Text block, regardless of its horizontal position on desktop views.</p>



<p>There is an open ticket to use the post&#8217;s featured image <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/35221">within the Media &amp; Text block</a>. There is a similar ticket for using it <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/13795">within a Cover</a>. Both would be solved by addressing an issue that would have farther reach by allowing <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/37753">generic blocks to utilize site or post metadata</a>.</p>



<p>At least for now, we must work with the tools we have.</p>



<p>For this entry in the <a href="https://wptavern.com/category/building-with-blocks">Building with Blocks</a> series, I will walk you through modifying Twenty Twenty-Two&#8217;s single post template to create a similar layout.</p>



<p>It is hard for some people to visualize the result without the post data. As shown in the following screenshot, the editor has placeholders:</p>



<img />Editor view of split-screen post header.



<p>However, those placeholders will be transformed on the front end. <em>How do we know that what we see there will translate correctly and turn out like the following?</em></p>



<img />Front-end view of single post with split-screen header.



<p>Even I struggle with this visualization at times. The placeholders used for Post* blocks do not offer me enough direct feedback, so I often refresh an example post on the front end as I build layouts like this. I wanted to note this in case it disorients or even throws anyone else off. It is OK to save and check your work on the front end as you go through this.</p>



<p><strong>Side note:</strong> <em>I would love to see a plugin that adds dummy post data instead of the default placeholders.</em></p>



<h2>Step 1: Selecting the Single Post Template</h2>



<img />Select the Single Post template.



<p>To make this layout change for all single posts, you must go to the site editor via Appearance &gt; Editor in the admin. Select the WordPress logo/icon in the top left corner to open the slide-out panel. From there, click on the Templates link. The next screen should display a list of editable templates. Select &#8220;Single Post.&#8221;</p>



<p>If you prefer to make this an optional template, you should build this from the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/06/16/introducing-the-template-editor-in-wordpress-5-8/">template editor</a>. The process is similar, but the UI does have some differences.</p>



<h2>Step 2: Adjusting Site Header (Optional)</h2>



<img />Adjusting header Row blocks&#8217; alignment and padding.



<p>Twenty Twenty-Two&#8217;s header does not work well for the type of layout that we are building. It has a ton of padding at the bottom, and its width is limited. You will want to make a few changes for a more ideal design. Note that this will change the header across the entire site unless you save it as a separate template part. This step is optional, but the final result will look better.</p>



<p>In the Header area of the editor, select the Row block that holds the Site Title and Navigation blocks. From the toolbar, select the &#8220;Full width&#8221; alignment option. In the block sidebar panel on the right, set the &#8220;Padding&#8221; option to <code>2rem</code> or a value of your preference.</p>



<h2>Step 3: Creating Columns</h2>



<img />Wrapping the Post Title and Post Featured Image blocks in columns.



<p>Because Twenty Twenty-Two already has the Post Title and Post Featured Image blocks grouped together, there is no need to start from scratch here. Select both with your mouse or keyboard, click the &#8220;Transform To&#8221; button in the toolbar, and choose the Columns option.</p>



<p>If working from a theme with a different layout, you can manually add a Columns block with a 50/50 setting and insert the Post Title and Post Featured Image blocks in the two columns.</p>



<h2>Step 4: Designing Columns</h2>



<img />Adjusting alignment, colors, and padding of Columns block.



<p>We have gotten some of the boring layout stuff out of the way. Now, you can start adding your own brand of artistry to this thing. I chose a black background and white text for the Columns block. However, feel free to add whatever colors you want. Maybe even try out the border options to mix it up.</p>



<p><em>Now, back to boring layout adjustments.</em></p>



<p>For this layout to work, there are two changes you should make to the Columns block. First, select the &#8220;Full width&#8221; alignment from the toolbar.</p>



<p>Then, change the &#8220;Padding&#8221; option in the block sidebar to <code>0</code>. Zeroing this out allows the featured image to stretch to the edge. This is not a hard requirement if you want a little space around it.</p>



<h2>Step 5: Title Group</h2>



<img />Grouping the Post Title block and adding some padding.



<p>Because we zeroed out the padding in the previous step, the Post Title block will now butt against the side of the layout. Text always needs room to breathe in design, so we need to fix this problem we have created for ourselves.</p>



<p>There are two ways of going about this. The first is to simply add padding to the Column block that the Post Title is in. This should work fine, but WordPress does not handle this well (it does not use <code>box-sizing: border-box</code> for Column blocks). If you add padding here, it will make the left side wider than the right. Unfortunately, this is a little quirk that creates extra work.</p>



<p>The best option is to select the Post Title and transform it into a Group. Then, find the &#8220;Padding&#8221; control in the sidebar and change it to <code>2rem</code> or your preferred value.</p>



<p>Some themes may correct the column-padding issue, so give the first option a shot if using something other than Twenty Twenty-Two.</p>



<h2>Step 6: Adjusting Featured Image</h2>



<img />Removing margin from Post Featured Image block.



<p>Neither WordPress nor Twenty Twenty-Two adds any default margin handling for the Post Featured Image block. The <code>&lt;figure&gt;</code> wrapping element will fall back to the browser&#8217;s default (browsers generally add some margin to the top and bottom).</p>



<p>To ensure that the image does not have extra spacing, select it in the editor, find the &#8220;Margin&#8221; setting in the sidebar, and set it to <code>0</code>.</p>



<h2>Step 7: Have Fun</h2>



<img />Customized split-screen post header.



<p>The foundation of the layout is in place now. Adjusting paddings, margins, and similar settings is the giant mountain you must conquer to do some of the <em>really</em> cool stuff that is possible. I do not want to limit folks with the rest of the design and would love for everyone to put their own spin on it.</p>



<p>I changed the vertical alignment on the Columns block to the &#8220;Align bottom&#8221; setting for my layout. Above the Post Title, I added a Row with the Post Author Name, Post Date, and Post Categories blocks. I also removed the Separator that Twenty Twenty-Two adds before the content.</p>



<p>Please share customizations you made in the comments if you followed along with this tutorial.</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, 25 Mar 2022 04:42:33 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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: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:53:"Post Status: Finding the Upside in WordPress Security";s: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=95029";s: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:68:"https://cdn.poststatus.com/finding-the-upside-in-wordpress-security/";s: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:6065:"<h3>Can exposing security vulnerabilities in the open be done in a way that doesn't hurt WordPress?</h3>



<p class="has-drop-cap"><strong>Rob Howard</strong>, who recently acquired <strong>MasterWP</strong>, used it last week to <a href="https://masterwp.com/is-wordpress-security-getting-better-or-worse/">criticize</a> <strong>Patchstack</strong>’s <a href="https://patchstack.com/whitepaper/the-state-of-wordpress-security-in-2021/">Security WhitePaper for 2021</a>. He called the report &#8220;sensationalist&#8221; with &#8220;sloppy data reporting,&#8221; &#8220;too much information,&#8221; and some important good news left out. He also advocated &#8220;WordPress security messaging&#8221; that would clean up the &#8220;wasteland of poorly framed articles about security patches&#8221; in <strong>Google News</strong>. Rob expressed skepticism security companies have an interest in accentuating the positive. </p>



<blockquote><p>What if the way we talk about WordPress security focused on public acknowledgement of the security team members' work, goals, and successes?</p></blockquote>



<p>This week, Patchstack Security Advocate <strong>Robert Rowley</strong> has written a response in MasterWP. Robert countered that Patchstack is helping &#8220;open source projects reach security maturity.&#8221; In <a href="https://masterwp.com/rebuttal-how-patchstack-is-improving-wordpress-security/">a polite &#8220;rebutal-but-not-a-rebuttal response,&#8221;</a> he explains Patchstack's perspective and intentions. </p>



<p>According to Robert, the large increase in vulnerabilities emphasized in Patchstack's report have to do with an increase in code review and bug reporting. WordPress core is secure, and increased attention to vulnerabilities in themes and plugins is a good thing. Patchstack is helping that happen, in their view. &#8220;Vulnerability disclosure for the commons&#8221; is how they understand what they're doing with projects like <a href="https://patchstack.com/alliance/">The Patchstack Alliance</a>.</p>



<h3>What we've learned and agree on about WordPress security</h3>



<div class="wp-container-623d3e4d9d7ed wp-block-group has-theme-palette-7-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><strong>There are two good, compatible takeaways from this discussion everyone seems to agree on</strong>.</p>



<ol><li>WordPress is getting more secure, and open source ways of addressing vulnerabilities openly together is helping.</li><li>WordPress could benefit from (and deserves) better messaging about security that contextualizes it in open source values and practices where we give and grow together. </li></ol>
</div></div>



<p class="has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background"><strong>A noteworthy aside:</strong> Robert brought up <a href="https://poststatus.com/are-active-installs-of-wordpress-plugins-declining-in-2021/">some numbers we rarely see that I follow closely</a>. The WordPress.org plugin repository grew by less than 3% in 2021, from 58,151 to 59,800 plugins. Themes grew by around 10%. That's decent growth in both cases.</p>



<h3 id="h-how-can-we-do-security-related-messaging-better-for-wordpress">How can we do security-related messaging better for WordPress?</h3>



<p>When the discussion began between Robert and Rob, <a href="https://poststatus.com/would-wordpress-benefit-from-public-relations-messaging-around-security-issues/">we posed this question</a> here at <strong>Post Status</strong>: <a href="https://poststatus.com/would-wordpress-benefit-from-public-relations-messaging-around-security-issues/">Would WordPress benefit from public relations messaging around security issues?</a> </p>



<p>Robert <a href="https://poststatus.slack.com/archives/C02S57UHCKD/p1647876595955309">responded</a> in <strong>Post Status Slack</strong>: </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>&#8220;There are many teams in the open source WordPress project who publicly share details on progress, metrics and planning&#8230; I would disagree with calling this PR, that has some other connotations. But I would love to see more regular updates on metrics.&#8221; </p></blockquote>



<p>Robert's view of good PR is &#8220;public acknowledgement of the security team members and sharing some of the teams plans and goals.&#8221;</p>



<p><strong>Kimberly Lipari</strong> joined the Slack convo and wants to flip the narrative: </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Why not flip the narrative? Instead of “core vulnerabilities reported” it could be “security code pushed” or “release improvements.” Why not educate on what open source is and updating is a good thing, not something to fear?</p></blockquote>



<p>Robert agreed with Kim's approach and acknowledged it was a mistake to have used the term &#8220;vulnerabilities&#8221; rather than &#8220;security bugs patched.&#8221;</p>



<h3>WordPress is different, and we should embrace that</h3>



<p>This is a good approach moving forward. It doesn't matter what company or open source project you are working with. If you are releasing information about security and your product, you need to educate and reassure your audiences. WordPress is not selling the same experience as other (especially non-open-source) web publishing platforms. <strong>Wix</strong> and <strong>Shopify</strong> only make public the security information they're legally obligated to release. When they do they are often on the defensive. Openness and transparency are our strengths, but it is easy to make them liabilities. </p>



<p class="has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background"><strong>Do you have ideas</strong> for specific strategies to make openness around security issues something that educates and reassure? Is it a way to attract contributors or draw WordPress users deeper into the community? Could it spread a better understanding and appreciation of open source? <strong>Tell us</strong> in <a href="https://poststatus.com/planet/feed/#comment">the comments</a>!</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 25 Mar 2022 03:31:08 +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: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:52:"WPTavern: Weglot Raises €45M From Partech Partners";s: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=131912";s: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:61:"https://wptavern.com/weglot-raises-e45m-from-partech-partners";s: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:2711:"<p>Weglot, a popular WordPress multilingual plugin, has <a href="https://weglot.com/blog/weglot-announces-45m-growth-investment/">raised €45M</a> from <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://partechpartners.com/" target="_blank">Partech Partners</a>. This is the first time the Paris-based company has taken outside capital since it <a href="https://wptavern.com/weglot-multilingual-plugin-closes-450k-in-seed-funding">closed €450K in seed funding</a> from SIDE Capital in 2017. Since that initial round Weglot has expanded its offerings to include more translations and integrations for other platforms. </p>



<p>Weglot representative Elizabeth Pokorny confirmed that the company is profitable with 25k customers paying for its SaaS translation platform and 60k+ websites using the company&#8217;s products, including IBM, Microsoft, Spotify, Steve Madden, and Volcom.</p>



<p>In 2021, Weglot <a href="https://weglot.com/blog/2021-year-in-review/">passed €10M ARR</a>, primarily through the sale of its WordPress, Shopify, and Webflow products, but the company also has growing user bases on Squarespace, Wix, Magento, BigCommerce, Square Online, and Salesforce.</p>



<p>Weglot has a free version of its <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/weglot/">plugin on WordPress.org</a> for small websites (under 2,000 words) with one translation language. It includes a Gutenberg block that makes it easy for users to position and customize their language switcher. The plugin has 40,000 active installs. Commercial plans range from €99/year for 10,000 words and one translated language to €4,990/year for 5 million words and 20 translated languages. </p>



<p>Weglot&#8217;s chief competitors are <a href="https://wpml.org/">WPML</a> (a commercial product with no free version) and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/polylang/">Polylang</a> (700K installs), a free plugin with a pro version that provides additional features and support. Despite having a much smaller WordPress user base and going up against more established competitors, Weglot CEO Augustin Prot said the company is aiming to &#8220;become the category leader for web translation.&#8221; The company employs a team of 30 people and plans to use the new funding to hire more over the coming year.</p>



<p>&#8220;We found success by focusing on usability and simplicity,&#8221; Pokorny said. &#8220;The SaaS model allows us to develop very quickly on the product side and the plugin is based on users’ and customers’ feedback. If you don’t take that into account they would simply leave. That’s why the SaaS approach favors continuous and fast improvement to make sure we match users’ expectations.&#8221; </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, 25 Mar 2022 01:39:19 +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: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: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:73:"Post Status: WooCommerce Function of the Week: wc_get_customer_last_order";s: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=94658";s: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:56:"https://poststatus.com/woocommerce-function-of-the-week/";s: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:6391:"<p class="has-drop-cap">This week we'll take a look at WooCommerce orders and a neat WooCommerce core function called <code>wc_get_customer_last_order</code>.</p>



<p>Nothing mysterious here — pass a customer ID, and with a PHP one-liner, you get immediately the customer's latest order!</p>



<p>This can be used in several scenarios. Think for example of an email campaign that triggers six months after the customer's last order to entice them to reorder. (In marketing, you'd call it a &#8220;Win-Back&#8221; campaign.)</p>



<p>But before looking at some case studies, let's analyze the function syntax and source code. </p>



<span id="more-94658"></span>



<h2 id="h-function-syntax">Function Syntax</h2>



<p><code>wc_get_customer_last_order()</code> function is under <code>woocommerce\includes\wc-user-functions.php</code>:</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>/**
 * Get info about customer's last order.
 *
 * @since 2.6.0
 * @param int $customer_id Customer ID.
 * @return WC_Order|bool Order object if successful or false.
 */
function wc_get_customer_last_order( $customer_id ) {
	$customer = new WC_Customer( $customer_id );

	return $customer-&gt;get_last_order();
}</code></pre>



<p>I personally go mad when I see blank lines for no apparent reason within WooCommerce core functions, but that's just me. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f603.png" alt="😃" class="wp-smiley" /> </p>



<p>The <code>wc_get_custmer_last_order()</code>  function returns the output of another function called <code>get_last_order()</code> that you can find under <code>woocommerce\includes\data-stores\class-wc-customer-data-store.php</code>:</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>/**
 * Gets the customers last order.
 *
 * @since 3.0.0
 * @param WC_Customer $customer Customer object.
 * @return WC_Order|false
 */
public function get_last_order( &$customer ) {
	$last_order = apply_filters(
		'woocommerce_customer_get_last_order',
		get_user_meta( $customer-&gt;get_id(), '_last_order', true ),
		$customer
	);
	if ( '' === $last_order ) {
		global $wpdb;
		$last_order = $wpdb-&gt;get_var(
			// phpcs:disable WordPress.DB.PreparedSQL.NotPrepared
			"SELECT posts.ID
			FROM $wpdb-&gt;posts AS posts
			LEFT JOIN {$wpdb-&gt;postmeta} AS meta on posts.ID = meta.post_id
			WHERE meta.meta_key = '_customer_user'
			AND   meta.meta_value = '" . esc_sql( $customer-&gt;get_id() ) . "'
			AND   posts.post_type = 'shop_order'
			AND   posts.post_status IN ( '" . implode( "','", array_map( 'esc_sql', array_keys( wc_get_order_statuses() ) ) ) . "' )
			ORDER BY posts.ID DESC"
			// phpcs:enable
		);
		update_user_meta( $customer-&gt;get_id(), '_last_order', $last_order );
	}
	if ( ! $last_order ) {
		return false;
	}
	return wc_get_order( absint( $last_order ) );
}</code></pre>



<p>Well, that's an easy one to understand: <code>get_last_order</code> calls the WordPress database, selects the posts and postmeta tables, sets the customer ID, and looks for the shop order with the greatest ID — which means it's the most recent order.</p>



<p>In return, we get the <code>$order</code> object. </p>



<p>Brilliant!</p>



<p>Simply declare a customer ID, call <code>wc_get_customer_last_order( $customer_id )</code>, and get whatever data you need.</p>



<p class="has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background">Take a look at my <a href="https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-easily-get-order-info-total-items-etc-from-order-object/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WooCommerce: Get Order Info (total, items, etc) From <code>$order</code> Object tutorial</a> to learn how to get any kind of data from that last order, such as the paid-on date, its product IDs, or even the total amount transacted.</p>



<h2>Case Studies</h2>



<p>Earlier we mentioned a Win-Back campaign as a scenario where your customers' last orders might be a way to re-engage them. It could be as simple as defining a time period (based on your business and customer patterns), and then sending a &#8220;come back!&#8221; email. Or display a message to customers who <em>didn't</em> place an order within that timeframe.</p>



<p>Let's consider the second option — <strong>displaying a notification message to logged-in customers if they haven't placed an order in the last 6 months</strong>. Here's how I do it:</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>/**
 * @snippet       Win-Back notice | WooCommerce My Account
 * @how-to        Get CustomizeWoo.com FREE
 * @author        Rodolfo Melogli
 * @compatible    WooCommerce 6
 * @donate $9     https://businessbloomer.com/bloomer-armada/
 */
 
add_action( 'woocommerce_account_content', 'bbloomer_notice_if_ordered_7_months_ago' );

function bbloomer_notice_if_ordered_7_months_ago() {
	$customer_id = get_current_user_id();
	$last_order = wc_get_customer_last_order( $customer_id );
	if ( ! $last_order ) return; // BAIL IF NO PREVIOUS ORDERS
	if ( time() &gt; strtotime( $last_order-&gt;get_date_created() . ' +6 months' ) ) {
		wc_add_notice( 'Been a while! Use coupon code XXXYYYZZZ for 10% off today!', 'notice' ); // WP_PRINT_NOTICE MAY WORK BETTER? PLEASE TEST
	}
}</code></pre>



<p> Screenshot:</p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/image-1-752x407.png" alt="" class="wp-image-94659" width="730" height="395" />If today is July 11, 2022 or later, this message will appear because the last order for the logged-in customer will have been at least six months in the past.</div>



<p>Other case studies could see the use of <code>wc_get_customer_last_order</code> function to determine a specific product offer. (For example, &#8220;<em>Buy product XYZ again ad get 15% off today</em>!&#8221;) </p>



<p>To do this, you'd simply loop through the order items, and then use my <a href="https://www.businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-set-override-product-price-programmatically/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WooCommerce: Set / Override Product Price Programmatically</a> guide to set the price for the logged-in customer.</p>



<p>Also, you could use <code>wc_get_customer_last_order</code> for special offers, such as giving away a freebie in case the last order total is &gt; $200.</p>



<p>What would you use the <code>wc_get_customer_last_order</code> for? I'm curious — let me know in the comments!</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, 24 Mar 2022 16:00:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"Rodolfo Melogli";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:77:"Post Status: Post Status Comments (No. 6) — Getting Up To Speed On PHP News";s: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=94825";s: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://poststatus.com/post-status-comments-no-6-getting-up-to-speed-on-php-news/";s: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:4982:"<h2 id="h-these-php-deprecation-notices-are-warnings-to-project-managers-and-developers-do-we-have-enough-time-for-wordpress-core-but-especially-the-community-to-fix-the-codebases-tonya-mork">“These [PHP] deprecation notices are warnings to project managers and developers… do we have enough time for [WordPress] core but especially the community to fix the codebases?” — Tonya Mork</h2>



<p class="has-drop-cap">Anyone seriously invested in WordPress, from developers to agency owners, has a big stake in the primary language WordPress is built with: <strong>PHP</strong>. WordPress professionals have a lot to keep track of, so it's not surprising they often overlook important news from the PHP community and development team. To bring you up to speed, <strong>David Bisset</strong> speaks with <strong>Carl Alexander</strong> and <strong>Tonya Mork</strong> in this episode of The Excerpt. Tonya and Carl have been deep into WordPress and PHP for many years. Here they offer a &#8220;Cliffs Notes&#8221; take on the PHP news the WordPress community should be paying attention to now. This includes big changes to code for developers and the need for a <strong>PHP Foundation</strong>. </p>



<p><strong>Why This Is Important:</strong> WordPress depends on PHP, so developers and professionals should be aware of what is coming down the road as features are added, modified, and deprecated. There are also challenges of governance and sustainability that PHP is facing now that impact WordPress and relate to similar issues in the WordPress project.</p>







<p class="has-background"><strong>Post Status Comments</strong> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f4ac.png" alt="💬" class="wp-smiley" /> is a stage for WordPress professionals to exchange ideas and talk about recent topics and trends.<br /><br /><a href="https://poststatus.com/podcast/comments/">Browse past episodes</a> and subscribe to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcasts/">our podcasts</a> on&nbsp; <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 get them by <a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/2JE9sc8P">RSS</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f399.png" alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h3 id="%f0%9f%99%8f-sponsor-godaddy-pro"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> Sponsor: <a href="https://poststatus.com/godaddy-pro">GoDaddy Pro</a></h3>



<p>Manage your clients, websites, and tasks from a single dashboard with <strong>GoDaddy Pro</strong>. Perform security scans, backups, and remote updates to many sites on any host. Check up on site performance, monitor uptime and analytics, and then send reports to your clients. GoDaddy Pro is free — and designed to make your life better.</p>


.kt-block-spacer-_fa223a-7a .kt-divider{width:80%;}
<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_fa223a-7a"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>



<h3 id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://opencollective.com/phpfoundation">PHP Foundation</a></li><li><a href="https://www.php.net/">PHP Project</a></li><li><a href="https://blog.krakjoe.ninja/2021/05/avoiding-busses.html">Avoiding Buses</a></li><li><a href="https://blog.krakjoe.ninja/2021/11/2-1.html">2-1</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/jrf_nl/status/1459221992876515328">Juliette's Tweet</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/about/stats/">Key WordPress Statistics</a></li><li><a href="https://carlalexander.ca/how-to-start-unit-testing-wordpress-code/">How do you start unit testing existing WordPress code?</a></li><li><a href="https://getrector.org/">Rector</a></li></ul>



<h3 id="follow-our-panelists-and-post-status-on-twitter-a4ffc805-90f1-41dc-9135-61b3ff20cb40">Follow Our Panelists (and Post Status) on Twitter:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="http://twitter.com/dimensionmedia/">David Bisset</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/twigpress?lang=en">Carl Alexander</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/hellofromtonya">Tonya Mork</a></li></ul>



<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:"Thu, 24 Mar 2022 15:03:19 +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: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:92:"WPTavern: The Archeo WordPress Theme Blends Mayan History With Magazine-Style Block Patterns";s: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=131868";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"https://wptavern.com/the-archeo-wordpress-theme-blends-mayan-history-with-magazine-style-block-patterns";s: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:4732:"<p class="has-drop-cap">The day has finally arrived when a block theme does something interesting with the featured image on single post views. One of my biggest pet peeves is when themers simply dump it at the top of the content and call it a day.</p>



<p>I nearly always bolt straight for the site editor to remove the single-post featured image upon installing block themes from some authors. However, after installing <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/archeo/">Archeo</a>, Automattic&#8217;s latest, I simply let it be. At least in this instance, the implementation did not make me wonder if we were ever going to get this whole block-based theme venture <em>right</em>.</p>



<img />Split-screen post title and featured image.



<p>Perhaps the most impressive thing about the single-post header design is that it works with the limited toolset offered by the current Featured Image block.</p>



<p>If there is one knit-pick I have it is that the post and site titles do not align on the left side of the page, at least on wide-desktop views.</p>



<p><em>So, the single-post header is well-designed. How does the rest of the theme hold up?</em> I am getting to that, but every now and again, something special about a design catches my eye. And, I cannot wait to let others know about it.</p>



<p>Automattic is the most prolific block theme creator to date. Its Theme Team has rolled out a dozen designs to the WordPress directory over the last year. Many of its initial outings had a familiar feel &#8212; tiny variations on a simple base. However, things have livened up recently. <a href="https://wptavern.com/automattics-livro-is-a-minimal-block-theme-for-writers">Livro</a>, the dark theme that made me dislike dark themes a little less, and <a href="https://wptavern.com/skatepark-is-a-bold-and-vibrant-block-theme-for-events-and-organizations">Skatepark</a>, a unique experiment in its own right, represented a fresh start after the previous months began to feel stale.</p>



<p>Archeo continues that momentum. The theme is bold when it needs to be while making enough use of whitespace to not overwhelm readers.</p>



<img />Intro section of Archeo&#8217;s homepage.



<p>It is one of the few faithful representations of magazine designs that I have seen. No, I am not talking about the muddied term in some circles that confuses it with news design. It reminds me of those stunning feature layouts that would draw a reader into a story as they flipped through the latest gloss-covered print that arrived in the mail. I am a product of my generation and will always have a sense of nostalgia for the dying art form, and I love seeing web-based implementations of it when they work well.</p>



<p>Nearly every one of Archeo&#8217;s image-categorized patterns captures that essence of a magazine featured article. The following is one of my favorites.</p>



<img />Two-column image pattern with header on the left and additional text.



<p>The theme is described as being inspired by Mayan history and culture. Archeo&#8217;s patterns are littered with tidbits of historical text and images that make me want to learn more about the subject. Great design can speak to us in ways that we were not expecting.</p>



<p>As an aside, I would love to see creators who describe their designs as &#8220;inspired by&#8221; something to provide more insight into the subject via a blog post. For those unfamiliar with whatever that subject may be, it would pull back the curtain a bit, giving us a glimpse into why it was important to the designer.</p>



<p>Archeo is the first theme that I have seen use the <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-wordpress-web-fonts-api-has-arrived">upcoming web fonts API</a> expected to land in WordPress 6.0. Users with the Gutenberg plugin installed should see the theme&#8217;s only font, Chivo, gracing the front end and editor. Those without the plugin should see their system&#8217;s default sans-serif font.</p>



<p>The following screenshot is of the theme&#8217;s 404 template and shows the Chivo font:</p>



<img />404 page template in site editor.



<p>It looks far better than the default, at least on Windows. I recommend running this theme alongside the Gutenberg plugin for the ideal result.</p>



<p>I am surprised the Theme Team did not include a backward-compatible method of handling web fonts for WordPress 5.9 users. It would not have taken much code: a single hook and a check for whether the <code>wp_webfonts()</code> function exists.</p>



<p>Archeo is now the 59th block theme to land in the WordPress.org directory. I am eager to see more from Automattic&#8217;s Theme Team, especially if this will be its minimum standard with future designs.</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, 24 Mar 2022 04:37:29 +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: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: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:34:"Matt: Guy Raz’s How I Built This";s: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:22:"https://ma.tt/?p=55744";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:48:"https://ma.tt/2022/03/guy-razs-how-i-built-this/";s: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:1104:"<p>I spoke with <a href="https://www.guyraz.com/">Guy Raz</a> about the early days of <a href="https://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a> and <a href="https://automattic.com/">Automattic</a> on the latest episode of “<a href="https://pca.st/ofk85jgu">How I Built This (listen on Pocket Casts)</a>.” We ended up talking for over four hours and the show has skillfully edited this down to just over an hour. We discussed my time at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNET">CNET</a>, how I accidentally invented a new way to spam, why we didn’t sell Automattic, my feelings on Wix and competitors like Shopify (sponsor of this episode, hah, in which I speak about how their dashboard looks just like WordPress’s). Guy pivoted the conversation to grief that came with the loss of my father and challenges we faced during the pandemic. He kept the conversation going effortlessly and I had a great time taping the episode. Thanks to Guy and his team for a great experience. </p>



<a href="https://wondery.com/shows/how-i-built-this/episode/10386-wordpress-amp-automattic-matt-mullenweg/"><img /></a>";s: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, 24 Mar 2022 02:40:29 +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:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:7;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s: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:"WPTavern: WordPress.org Removes Russian Pro-War Plugin From Directory";s: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=131835";s: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://wptavern.com/wordpress-org-removes-russian-pro-war-plugin-from-directory";s: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:7710:"<p>After considerable pushback from the Plugin Review team, WordPress.org has removed a plugin called <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220323182342/https://wordpress.org/plugins/zamir/">Zamir</a>, which was created by a <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/vovasik/">Russian developer</a> to display the Z symbol in support of Russia&#8217;s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.</p>



<p>The plugin gained attention after Gravity Forms founder and CEO Carl Hancock noticed that it was listed under the &#8220;New&#8221; list of plugins for WordPress.com customers.</p>



<img />



<p>Hancock contacted WordPress&#8217; plugin team to request its removal but was met with a defense for its inclusion based on what the representative deemed to be a lack of violation of the guidelines. The representative told Hancock via email that &#8220;it is permitted as long as it does not devolve into hate speech or encouraging violence.&#8221;</p>



<p>Outrage over the plugin being hosted on WordPress.org sparked heated conversations on Twitter, Post Status Slack, and in WordPress&#8217; #pluginreview Slack channel where project contributors work in the open.</p>



<p>Mika Epstein responded to discussion in the #pluginreview channel to confirm that the plugin was allowed to be in the directory: </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>This is an annoying, but allowable, thing at this time. We have no restrictions about plugins that are for &#8216;support&#8217;, as long as they avoid hate speech, encouraging violence, and raising money for military orgs (regardless of which side).We have a number of plugins that people find personally objectionable. Someone might hate a &#8216;show support for LGBTQ&#8217; plugin after all. In this case, the plugin is a &#8216;show support for Russia&#8217; and has no violation to the guidelines. Much like the porn-embed plugin that a number of people hate, you don&#8217;t have to use it. Hosting plugins here does not now, nor has it ever that I&#8217;m aware of, conferred any sort of approve besides it being secure and not violating guidelines at the time of submission.</p></blockquote>



<p>Meanwhile, the plugin had begun racking up negative reviews and Hancock had managed to get WordPress&#8217; project leadership to take a second look. The plugin was temporarily suspended while leadership considered the matter.</p>



<img />



<p>The &#8220;Z&#8221; symbol has been used by the Russian government as a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/world/europe/russia-letter-z-ivan-kuliak.html">pro-war symbol and a propaganda tool</a>, and is frequently seen painted on the Russian tanks and military trucks that have invaded Ukraine. It is widely regarded as a symbol of war and violence. The <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220323182342/https://wordpress.org/plugins/zamir/">Zamir plugin&#8217;s header image</a> includes a black and orange ribbon, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_of_Saint_George">Ribbon of St. George</a>, which is also a symbol of the Russian military. The symbol was <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-bans-st-georges-ribbon-separatist-symbol/28491961.html">banned by Ukrainian lawmakers in 2017</a> as a symbol of &#8220;Russia&#8217;s war and occupation of Ukraine.&#8221;</p>



<p>A few participants in the discussion in the #pluginreview channel seemed blissfully unaware of the symbol and flippant in response to concerns, while others who have been more immediately impacted by Russia&#8217;s aggression tried to explain what it symbolizes.</p>



<p>&#8220;Here is some context about what this plugin is actually in support of, from a person sitting in a city bombed by cruise missiles,&#8221; Ukrainian WordPress contributor Andrey Savchenko said. </p>



<p>&#8220;To be crystal fucking clear, this is way &#8216;morally offensive&#8217; and &#8216;abuse directed at any other member of WordPress community&#8217; under item 9 of WordPress plugin guidelines.</p>



<p>&#8220;For anyone not closely familiar with the context &#8211; Z and V, that started as markings on Russian military vehicles invading Ukraine, were adopted by Russian state as symbols of gleeful support for the war, denying it is a war, denying they are killing civilians, and so on.&#8221;</p>



<p>Many are incredulous that the plugin was even approved in the first place.</p>



<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m completely appalled by having such a thing even being considered for inclusion,&#8221; Bas Schuiling said in the #pluginreview channel discussion. &#8220;I&#8217;m a refugee and fled Ukraine, and this exact symbol is being used to applaud and cheer the murder on my country, friends, and family.&#8221;</p>



<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re watching the birth of a hate symbol in real time,&#8221; Hancock contended.  &#8220;You&#8217;d have to be living under a rock to not see that.&#8221;</p>



<p>After a lengthy discussion, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy decided made the call to have the plugin permanently removed from the directory, overruling the plugin team&#8217;s decision. She followed up later with a published <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/03/23/removal-of-the-zamir-plugin/">statement</a>, clarifying why it was removed:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>The plugin’s description, “Shows the Z symbol to support Russia,” eluded initial plugin checks. While it is true that there is no current plugin guideline barring plugins that “support” political leanings, this icon symbolizes something more complicated than that. Contributors were right to report this and, with their help and the help of WordPress community members, the plugin has been removed from the directory. </p></blockquote>



<p>In a separate post on the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2022/03/23/journal-entry-removal-of-the-zamir-plugin/">Make WordPress Plugins</a> blog, Haden Chomphosy said that since Z is an emerging symbol of hate, &#8220;it was considered a grey area in initial checks and on further review was removed.&#8221;</p>



<p>&#8220;As a reminder, WordPress guidelines call upon all community members–including extenders like plugin authors– to &#8216;be kind, helpful, and respectful,&#8217; she said. &#8220;A symbol that is connected to an ongoing war and humanitarian crisis is none of those things.&#8221; </p>



<p>Many of those initially outraged about WordPress.org hosting this plugin are satisfied with the outcome, but it highlighted a disconnect between WordPress&#8217; values and the current processes in place for addressing symbols of hate in extensions.</p>



<p>&#8220;I’m glad that plugin was removed from the repository,&#8221; Hancock said. &#8220;It was absolutely the right call. But I wish that it didn’t take rattling cages for that to happen. I think comparisons that were made between this situation and others that may offend people (such as a porn embed plugin) were completely off base. </p>



<p>&#8220;I would hope that the WordPress Plugin Repository is not a place for plugins used to facilitate the spreading of propaganda and hate symbols that support war crimes and genocide in Ukraine. And that is exactly what the Z symbol has become.”</p>



<p>Haden Chomphosy&#8217;s statement indicated that the project may be reexamining its plugin review policies in the future.</p>



<p>&#8220;I am aware that this issue leads to natural questions about clarifying our plugin policies moving forward,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I’ll work with the community to explore our guidelines and create a clearer framework for how plugins can be evaluated in the context of current events.&#8221;</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, 23 Mar 2022 23:01:03 +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: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:95:"WPTavern: #19 – Evangelia Pappa &amp; Bernhard Kau on Making WordCamp Europe Safe and Diverse";s: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=131164";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:103:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/19-evangelia-pappa-bernhard-kau-on-making-wordcamp-europe-safe-and-diverse";s: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:51217:"<p>On the podcast today we have Evangelia Pappa &amp; Bernhard Kau.</p>



<p>WordCamp Europe is the biggest in-person event in WordPress. Last time the event was held, in 2019, there were over 3,000 attendees and hundreds of volunteers who participated.</p>



<p>The 2020 event, which was due to take place in Porto Portugal was cancelled due to the outbreak of Covid. Ever since then pretty much all WordPress events have been done online. The community has stayed together and kept things going, but it’s time to return to the in-person event.</p>



<p>This is great news, but what can we expect from such an event. Whilst the pandemic is less of a concern than it was just a few months ago, it’s not gone away.</p>



<p>On the podcast today we talk to two of the WordCamp Europe 2022 organisers and discuss what preparations they’ve been making to ensure that the event is as safe as possible. How will social distancing work? Will you need to wear a mask? Will there be social&nbsp; aspects to the event?</p>



<p>Hopefully the podcast will put your mind at rest about the precautions that have been taken, and possibly help you make up your mind about whether you want to attend in-person, or participate via the live streaming.</p>



<p>We also get into the subject of diversity. A few months ago, some members of the community questioned the makeup of the event in terms of the organising team.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>We discuss how the team reacted to this. Whether they thought that the concern was justified and what they’ve been doing since then to address those concerns.</p>



<p>Hopefully the event will take place this year, and if you enjoy WordCamps, but have never been a part of the organising team,&nbsp; it’s really interesting to pull back the curtain and see some of what’s required to put an event of this scale on.</p>



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



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/EvangeliaPappas">Evangelia&#8217;s Twitter</a></p>



<p><a href="https://evangeliapappa.me/">Evangelia&#8217;s website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/2ndkauboy">Bernhard&#8217;s Twitter</a></p>



<p><a href="https://capital-p.de/">Bernhard&#8217;s Capital P podcast</a></p>



<p><a href="https://kau-boys.com/">Bernhard&#8217;s website</a></p>



Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks the themes, and in this case, diversity within the community. If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to WP Tavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcasts players.</p>



<p>If you have a topic that you&#8217;d like us to feature on the podcast, well, then I&#8217;m very keen to hear from you and hopefully get you, or your idea, featured on the show. Head over to WP Tavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox. And you can use the contact form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today, we have Evangelia Pappa, and Bernhard Kau. WordCamp Europe is the biggest in-person event in WordPress. Last time the event was held in 2019, they were over 3000 attendees, and hundreds of volunteers who participated. The 2020 event, which was due to take place in Porto. Portugal, was canceled due to the outbreak of COVID. Ever since then, pretty much all WordPress events have been done online.</p>



<p>The community has stayed together, but it&#8217;s time to return to in-person event. This is great news, but what can we expect from such an event. Whilst the pandemic is less of a concern than it was just a few months ago, it&#8217;s not gone away. On the podcast today, we talk to two of the WordCamp Europe 2020 organizers, and discuss what preparations they&#8217;ve been making to ensure that the event is as safe as possible.</p>



<p>How will social distancing work? Will you need to wear a mask? Will there be a social aspect to the event? Hopefully, the podcast will put your mind at rest about the precautions that have been taken, and possibly help you make up your mind about whether you want to attend in-person, or participate via the live streaming.</p>



<p>We also get into the subject of diversity. A few months ago, some members of the community questioned the makeup of the event, in terms of the organizing team. Some felt that not enough work had been done to ensure that everyone was represented in the decision making of the event. We discuss how the team reacted to this, whether they thought that the concern was justified, and what they&#8217;ve been doing since to address those concerns.</p>



<p>Hopefully the events will take place this year, and if you enjoy WordCamps, but have never been part of the organizing team, it&#8217;s really interesting to pull back the curtain and see some of what&#8217;s required to put on an event of this scale.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all the links in the show notes by heading over to WP Tavern.com forward slash podcast, where you&#8217;ll find all the other podcast episodes.</p>



<p>And so. without further delay. I bring you, Evangelia Pappa, and Bernhard Kau. I am joined on the podcast today by Evangelia and Bernhard. Hello both of you.</p>



<p>[00:03:58] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> Hey there.</p>



<p>[00:03:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Very nice to have you on the podcast today. These two fine people are going to be talking to us today about WordCamp Europe, which is happening later in 2022. There&#8217;s a couple of things that we&#8217;re going to be talking about, particularly around the two topics of COVID and also about the diversity aspect of the organization of the event. We&#8217;ll come to those two things later, but I&#8217;m just going to ask you, one at a time to introduce yourself properly. We always do this at the beginning of the podcast. Just to let the listeners know who you are, what&#8217;s your relationship with WordPress and so on. So, let&#8217;s make a start. Let&#8217;s go for Evangelia, let&#8217;s begin there.</p>



<p>[00:04:34] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> Hey there to everyone. My name is Evangelia. I come from Greece. I am a recruitment specialist for WPMU Dev. I like blogging. I love and breathe for the WordPress community, not only the global one. And I&#8217;m really happy and passionate about the people and culture.</p>



<p>[00:04:54] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you so much and the same question, Bernhard.</p>



<p>[00:04:57] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> Yeah. Hello. I&#8217;m Bernhard Kau. I&#8217;m located in Berlin, Germany. I&#8217;m a WordPress developer for a small agency in Potsdam and, I&#8217;m also an active blogger on my blog posts, also a podcaster and longtime contributor to the community. I think it was in 2009. I started.</p>



<p>[00:05:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you both very much indeed. Now we know that in the recent past, all events have been called off. WordCamp Europe last took place, I believe it was in 2019 in Berlin. Subsequent events have been online. There were possibly attempts made to put things back in the real world, but then they were kiboshed by the reality, the COVID strain, which was spreading throughout the world, but it has been decided that the time is now right to bring this event back. Just very briefly, is it going to be the same event that we would have been attending back in 2020 had COVID not have taken hold of the world.</p>



<p>In other words, are you trying to put on the full scale event, or is it in some way pared back?</p>



<p>[00:05:56] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> We&#8217;re going back to in-person events. In fact, we were going back to the events we didn&#8217;t have in 2020. It&#8217;s a live event, an in person event. We can host 4,500 people, which is an amazing number judging, from the pandemic that has kept us in lockdown. I&#8217;m not quite sure yet if we will be able to have everyone, but at least we will be able to see a smiley faces.</p>



<p>[00:06:22] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, and Bernhard.</p>



<p>[00:06:23] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> Yeah, I think in general it&#8217;s going to be the exact same when we&#8217;ve initially planned in 2020. We&#8217;ve canceled in 2020, I think in March. Like around the time, we just decided just after WordCamp Asia postponed their events and for 2021, we, in the beginning said it&#8217;s going to be online as well.</p>



<p>We think now is the time to have an in-person event again. And we hope that we get the same amount of attendees we were expecting in 2020. But we cannot tell if that&#8217;s going to happen. And also if all attendees will be able to join the event, but we probably come to that a bit later.</p>



<p>[00:06:57] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I guess only time will really tell whether that&#8217;s the case or not. In terms of the organization of the event, it strikes me that many people listening to this podcast, perhaps they&#8217;ve never attended a WordPress event and they may very well of course be new to the WordPress community. So maybe just if we spend a very brief amount of time discussing the structure of the organization team. In other words, explain how it is that you came to be involved, and perhaps emphasize the fact that everybody involved in the event is a volunteer. So let&#8217;s go for Evangelia.</p>



<p>[00:07:26] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> This is a very important topic because we will need to share stories with Bernard. I was with the WordPress Greek community since 2015 and it was pure luck. I mean, I met the community in 2015 and I was just attending a meetup to see what exactly is. What is WordPress? What is a WordPress meetup? What is that community I&#8217;m reading about? My skillset at that point had to do with PR and media, as I was working as a radio producer and as a generalist at that point. And I started writing the press releases that had to do with events of the WordPress Greek community, and suddenly I became a member of the organizing team. After two local WordCamps in Athens, the team that has become a family decided that we should volunteer to a bigger event to see how exactly it is happening. And we had never been to a WordCamp Europe, so we decided to apply as volunteers altogether. Since we were selected, we traveled to Belgrade and this was our first experience with WordCamp Europe. When we finished, let&#8217;s say WordCamp Europe in 2018 in Belgrade, we decided we would like to apply as organizers and some of us are organizing WordCamp Europe for around two, three years now.</p>



<p>[00:08:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you very much, and Bernhard.</p>



<p>[00:08:49] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> Yeah. Usually becoming an organizing team member for WordCamp Europe, you probably have been a volunteer before for WordCamp Europe, or you&#8217;ve been an organizer for a local WordCamp. We really want to see some experienced organizers in the team. It&#8217;s not a necessity. So we even have some people very new to the community.</p>



<p>In fact, in Berlin, we even had one in the local team who never attended a WordCamp himself before joining the organizing team, but he was organizing a local meetup in a city in Germany. But because it&#8217;s a huge time investment, we really need people dedicated enough to spent nine months organizing an event that size. A usual WordCamp, a local one, is maybe four or five months of organizing and WordCamp European is a whole lot different, and this is also why we need people being willing to go all the way from the beginning to the end and organizing events. And quite naturally, there&#8217;s always things happening that become more important than organizing a WordCamp, and so those people drop off because they just volunteer their time, they&#8217;re not getting paid. Yeah that&#8217;s also natural. And from the 2020 organizers we initially had for Porto, many of them continued. Some take a break. I personally took a break in 2021 because it was an online event. And I could see myself in better health for the in-person events once it&#8217;s going to happen.</p>



<p>And so many of the organizers that were initially on board for 2020 are back again, but some didn&#8217;t have the time again to join the organizing team for this year. So, we are a bit smaller in size, but still we have quite a good team to organize this year&#8217;s event.</p>



<p>[00:10:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> How many people do you have currently, and how many people did you have previously? You mentioned that it was smaller this time. I&#8217;m just curious to know what kind of numbers we&#8217;re dealing with on the volunteer side, whether that&#8217;s organizers who are doing the event prior to the actual event, as well as those people who show up and volunteer their time during the event. How many people in total are you looking at there?</p>



<p>[00:10:54] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> So organizers plus volunteers, I would say it&#8217;s around 260 to 300 people.</p>



<p>[00:11:01] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. That gives us a really good metric as to just how large it is. Needless to say it&#8217;s incredibly complicated to sort out and incredibly complicated to put on. It&#8217;s a marvelous event, but there&#8217;s so many moving parts. It must be really difficult to get right. And so rewind to whenever it was now, I can&#8217;t remember the exact month of the year, but WordCamp Asia was about to have its first meeting and we all know the story, COVID spread throughout the world, and WordCamp Asia was canceled. The events around the world, the whole thing just rippled and all of those events were canceled and it feels to me like WordCamp Europe is one of the first, if not the first, I think there&#8217;s been a, maybe a couple in the United States that have happened more recently. But you&#8217;ve taken the decision that you&#8217;re going to bring it back. And, as with all these things, safety and keeping everybody updated about the situation and how you are hoping to maintain safety is going to be important.</p>



<p>And that&#8217;s a big component of this podcast episode, to reassure people as to what you&#8217;ve done. So, let&#8217;s get into that discussion.</p>



<p>In terms of the organization team, what are some of the key things that you would like the audience to hear? If they were hovering over the hotel booking button or the airplane purchasing button, or maybe just getting the ticket itself, and something in the back of their mind is niggling them. They&#8217;re potentially a little bit worried thinking about all of the different things that could happen that have happened over the last few years. What are some of the main things that you could highlight, which would assuage their fears and let them know that you&#8217;re taking the safety in terms of COVID seriously.</p>



<p>[00:12:40] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> To be honest because I am at this let&#8217;s say situation at the moment, trying to book my accommodation and flights for a Porto. I did make a list with the things that I would need to have ready or have with me do to arrange my travel. But first of all I felt safe to go there. Not everyone feels safe because we have been through two very difficult years, but this is the reason because we are also humans and we do care about safety and health, not only of the attendees, but also our families.</p>



<p>We are going to come back home after the event and we don&#8217;t want to contaminate anyone or give COVID to our family and put anyone in danger. We are taking measures for the venue and for the event, measures that are regulations of the Portuguese government, and also some extra measures right now that are mandatory, like the facial masks, which is not a measure that is mandatory in other countries most probably. We do have hand sanitizers that will be available inside the venue. And we will keep also social distancing guidelines, at the moment is to respect the distance of two meters.</p>



<p>We also know that the regulations are changing. So we are keeping an eye and monitoring the whole situation and the restrictions in Portugal. And at the same time, it&#8217;s not only you know, about the event and the venue, but we need to be careful a little bit outside, and before we get to the venue or while traveling. And also make sure we have whatever is needed to travel for the entry to Portugal.</p>



<p>[00:14:25] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you very much Bernhard. Anything that you would like to add into that?</p>



<p>[00:14:29] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> Yeah. In the organizing team, we agreed that the bare minimum would be any regulation the Portugal government would put in place. But on top of that, we really want to make sure that everyone is safe. We have parents within the organizing team, just having a new child and, they want to come home to a family and not having bad feelings about infecting them.</p>



<p>And so we also take additional measurements that might not be necessary by like government law, but we still think they are something we want to have. Serving food outside, not inside, because we really want to have a strict mask mandate and eating with a mask is not possible. So we&#8217;ve moved the catering to outside.</p>



<p>You have fresh air and it&#8217;s safer to eat without a mask being outside and not inside. So things like these. We really try to make the best possible measures to keep everyone safe. And we probably also provide some testing stations where people can get themselves tested, if they feel that they want to know if they are infected or not. We really want to make everyone feeling safe, attending the event.</p>



<p>[00:15:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Let&#8217;s just drill down into a few of those. You mentioned that there was going to be social distancing. Maybe the word in forced is the wrong word, but the request to be socially distant. So in an ideal world, in all of the indoor components of WordCamp EU this year, you&#8217;re going to be asking people to stay whatever the minimum safe distance is, be that a couple of meters or six feet or whatever it works out to be. That&#8217;s going to be a request. And I think I heard the word mask being used as well. So if you&#8217;re in an indoor space, there&#8217;s going to be a supposition that you&#8217;re going to be wearing a mask as well. Is that right? Did I hear that correctly?</p>



<p>[00:16:09] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> You will need to wear your mask, covering all over the nose and your mouth. Also went in closed spaces and outside the venue. At the moment though, the Portuguese government requires the face mask covering only in closed spaces, but we will also see how that goes in the future. At the moment the facial mask is mandatory in and outside of the venue. We&#8217;d like to see people wearing it, that if they don&#8217;t wear it correctly, we might popup, pinging on your shoulder and asking you to wear it properly.</p>



<p>[00:16:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. The event arena itself is a simply magnificent piece of architecture. I believe, forgive me if I&#8217;ve got this wrong, it&#8217;s called the Superblock Arena and it&#8217;s a giant dome, and so the central auditorium where I guess some of the larger events will take place are going to be in that gigantic auditorium, but there&#8217;ll be many smaller. spaces in use as well. And I would imagine a lot of people would want to know whether or not you&#8217;re kind of limiting the amount of people that can go into certain spaces at certain times. So for example, this room over here we&#8217;ve only got a capacity for 15 people and you may not sit in this chair, but you can sit in this one so that we maintain the social distancing. Is that all happening as well? You&#8217;re limiting the numbers that can go into different parts of the building. Is that happening?</p>



<p>[00:17:31] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> We are limiting the number of people who could go into the arena and that we would allow as attendees. I think the arena has a capacity of well over 7,000 people. And we are not going to have 7,000 attendees. And also we have different floors. So like the place we were talking about is the main floor.</p>



<p>And this is going to be split between an exposition, area and track one. And then one level lower, we have the second track and we also have the workshop rooms and those rooms are quite large and we would not allow too many people into the workshops. So there&#8217;s enough space between attendees. So it&#8217;s not really a fully packed area. And also we have lots of area around. There&#8217;s a huge, a nice park around and we&#8217;d like to see attendees browsing through the park and enjoying everything around. So only when they go to visit the sponsors or some of the sessions or workshops, they go inside. And as we said earlier, we have the catering outside and also things like WP Cafe would be located outside. So it&#8217;s really attendees going in and out. And if they need to. distance themselves a bit, they can find places around.</p>



<p>[00:18:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s lucky that you&#8217;re doing it in Portugal and not Great Britain. You may have found it quite difficult to have the outdoor component quite so easily, but I presume the weather in Porto, Portugal is going to be fairly predictable.</p>



<p>An important question I suppose to ask is, whether or not you guys have actually seen this space because it&#8217;s very easy on a piece of paper or on a computer screen to take a look at what the venue looks like, but actually being there in person and imagining it on a piece of paper are two very different things. So have people from the committee been, looked around, made judgments based upon being there in the real world?</p>



<p>[00:19:19] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> We just had a venue visit last month and a huge number of our organizing team was there, I think it was 15 people, something like that. I don&#8217;t know the exact number. And some organizers have been there multiple times. I was not there, unfortunately myself, because in 2020, when we decided to go online, I was not going to see the venue.</p>



<p>And then this year, just two weeks before I was going to go to Portugal, I got to COVID myself, canceling my travel plans. But those organizers who went there, they took pictures. They even had a video walkthrough. So all the organizers who were not able to go to the place, they have a pretty good impression of what it looks inside.</p>



<p>And those teams really need to know how it looks. Like the sponsor&#8217;s team, the content team. They really know how to arrange things And we also have a company helping us with many of the logistics and they have been to the arena multiple times. So they really have a good plan on how to make things in the best way possible in the arena and the park around.</p>



<p>[00:20:20] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. That&#8217;s great. Evangelia, it sounded like you needed to add something to that.</p>



<p>[00:20:24] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> A team that is seeing the venues very often in every WordCamp Europe is always a local team. That is the one also that selects the venue after a very careful research, when they apply for the call for her city. Because you see, we are always in search of a venue that can provide us certain things.</p>



<p>The ability of people that have certain issues to be able to enter and navigate a big space that can host a specific amount of people and stuff like that. So, they have already checked the venue before they apply for the called for host city, and also, they need to visit it often in order to check other things that are necessary.</p>



<p>And usually we have two visits, two venue visits for the rest of the team, where the team leads are available to the visit, or they send a representative of the team. I wasn&#8217;t able this year to the venue, visit too. But I had a representative of the team to check for the spaces that my team would need so we can discuss further. It&#8217;s not only, the plans, for floor plans.</p>



<p>[00:21:28] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you very much, indeed. Now the next question is, obviously the answer that you give here is subject to change, but assuming that WordCamp Europe were to happen over the next week or so, do you know what the restrictions are right now in Portugal, in terms of, let&#8217;s say, for example, as Bernhard, you just said you had COVID relatively recently. Do you know what the restrictions are in terms of accessibility, your ability to fly into Portugal? Should you have had COVID and I guess, it&#8217;s a question nobody wants to probably happen to them, but nevertheless, if you were to catch COVID in Portugal, do you know what your options are there in terms of repatriating yourself and getting yourself home? Do you have to isolate in a hotel or wherever you may be settled for a period of time before you can come out and resume normal life?</p>



<p>[00:22:21] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> I cannot tell you what would happen if you get COVID while being in Portugal. The local team could probably answer the question. For entering Portugal, as of today, you need to have proof of full vaccination. That&#8217;s between 14 and 270 days old. You can also have a proof of recovery from COVID 19. That&#8217;s quite usual in European countries. It&#8217;s not so normal in other countries that a proof of recovery is also treated the same as the vaccination. And you also need to present a negative pre-departure test. So it&#8217;s a PCR test or a rapid antigen test, that&#8217;s not older than 24 hours. And for me, when I was planning to travel to Portugal, I would just get a test at the airport, like an antigen test. And that would be enough to enter the country. But Portugal is lowering restrictions right now. And, our local team leads was telling us that they are at level one and level zero would be no restrictions. And they will soon be at level 0.5. So they are about to lift all restrictions.</p>



<p>So I would assume that even having a negative tests for entering the country would not be in place anymore when we have the event, but you&#8217;d never know. It&#8217;s still a long time to go. I mean for your own safety, it&#8217;s probably good advice to have full vaccination, if it&#8217;s possible for yourself.</p>



<p>If there&#8217;s no medical condition hindering you from being vaccinated. And then also when I see my family or people, I know that&#8217;s not as healthy. I just get myself tested. So I&#8217;m safe that I&#8217;m not infecting someone. So that would be my advice to get yourself tested before you travel to Portugal, because you don&#8217;t want to get stuck in another country, you being infected and then you might not know how to isolate in a hotel room or something. And then how many days you need to stay there before you can leave. But that&#8217;s something I don&#8217;t really know, like the restrictions in Portugal, if you are getting infected and then traveling back to your country.</p>



<p>[00:24:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yes, but thank you. That was an excellent answer nevertheless, and like everything else, if you are planning to travel, just make sure you&#8217;ve got the necessary documents. And now along with the ride, is have your documents. Your travel insurance, your passport, and also some proof that you have been inoculated or that you have had COVID or that you are COVID free. So that&#8217;s just another thing to add into the itinerary of things, which you must bring along. But thank you. Yeah, that&#8217;s great.</p>



<p>You mentioned that there was going to be testing stations in the venue. Is that, presumably they are what we call in the UK at least anyway, lateral flow tests. So you just had a different word for it, but they&#8217;re going to be freely available are they, or is it, do we need to pay for those? How does that work?</p>



<p>[00:25:03] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> Those will be freely available for attendees. If they choose to get a test and we would not have testing mandatory for everyone entering. And we would probably need to have some kind of proof that you are not positive. So either recovery, vaccination, something like this, which would be checked when you get your tickets. Your badge for the event. But we would not have a mandatory test for every single day for every attendee, that would just be too much. But if you feel you would want to get tested, we have some testing next to the venue. So you don&#8217;t have to go to a public testing place somewhere in Portugal.</p>



<p>Because I also think that they are not free for people not located in Portugal. So that Like be a high cost. And then also let&#8217;s say we have 4,000 attendees and they all want to get tested in the testing centers around the venue. That would be quite a lot of work for them. And we probably would have attendees coming late because they need to wait for some hours to get their test.</p>



<p>[00:26:04] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> At the moment, we will have this option and also if someone has symptoms of COVID like fever, or they have a difficulty breathing or a cough or they feel they have an issue or they test positive. They can contact immediately the Portuguese national health service. We have listed the telephones on our website too, and we will have someone available to assist them when they are outside of the venue and, also, they can call 1 1 2, that is the number for emergencies. At the moment, people that test positive need to be isolated. However, previously it was mandatory also for the high risk contacts. This limitation has been eliminated, it has been removed. So now only people that test positive for COVID will be required to be in isolation.</p>



<p>At the same time another measure like the digital certificate that was required for entry into restaurants, bars places like that. Was required and now is no longer required. However, it is required if you&#8217;re traveling, like we said previously, and you need to cross the borders or you need to pick a flight or something like that. And also the capacity limits of closed spaces has been eliminated. Previously there was a capacity limit and according to the last measures, this does no longer exist. Looking at the situation right now seems like the pandemic is phasing beyond, things are improving daily.</p>



<p>So we have the hope that if variation prevails among the others, it will be lot easier on people, and also more restrictions will be eliminated until we get to the event date.</p>



<p>[00:27:49] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Now, I know that we all love WordPress and we love attending WordPress speakers, presentations and so on, but another thing we love is the after-party. I suspect that this is a very large reason why many people attend these events. It&#8217;s just such good fun. Now that, I&#8217;m presuming, has been modified in its scope and in its limitations, and what have you. So just very briefly, the social side of things, how is that different now?</p>



<p>[00:28:14] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> Yeah, basically the same applies as for the conference days. So we would have foods and drinks served outside. So we make sure that&#8217;s if you eat or drink something and you cannot wear your mask at the same time, you do that outside. And for the party itself we have it inside, it&#8217;s in the same area as track one was the same day.</p>



<p>So like after the closing remarks, we would move everything out and then this area would be for the after party. And it&#8217;s quite huge space, so there&#8217;s enough space for those who want to go inside and listen to music. And those who want to talk to other people, they would probably go outside because it&#8217;s quiet outside, and there they can also have drinks and food.</p>



<p>[00:28:52] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. This section wasn&#8217;t a part of the show notes when I originally wrote down the questions, I was going to be asking you but, in the last couple of weeks, we&#8217;ve had really seismic events happening in Europe. On the Eastern side of Europe. We&#8217;ve had the events happening in the Ukraine. And I don&#8217;t know if there are any thoughts as to whether this will change anything, whether or not the event has any posture on that at all. I don&#8217;t really have a question around that. Just whether or not the Ukrainian situation has forced something to be changed on the WCEU side?</p>



<p>[00:29:26] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> At the moment the war is not changing anything regarding the event. Location dates, restrictions remain the same for everyone. We can say how things might end up in the future. It will depend also, for example, in the Portuguese government, in case they have any restrictions for citizens from Russia for example. As things that are floating at the moment, and it might not change anything regarding the event.</p>



<p>However, this is a very tough topic and being Europeans, we have a really big history of wars on this continent. And some of them are really recent. It definitely does not make us happy and it does affect everyone. Mentally, mostly, in the rest of the continent. As many of us have colleagues there, relatives, friends and we wake up and sleep with the news everyday.</p>



<p>Talking about the WordPress side of things and the community. Both countries, Ukraine and Russia have active local workers, communities, and our organizing team in WordCamp Europe includes members from Ukraine and Russia? This is a very difficult period. One thing that makes us proud during this whole situation is to say that we have members of the organizing team that are offering their help actively and our hearts and minds at the moment are with our people over there.</p>



<p>If we have any information about further restrictions that might be, we will definitely inform everyone through the website and the social media. At the moment, nothing is changing regarding the event.</p>



<p>[00:31:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, moving on then, that&#8217;s the first part of our discussion. And this next part will probably be a little bit shorter, but nevertheless, equally important. After the event website had gone live with the organizing committee details and the speakers being announced and the sponsors and all of that. There was some conversation that arose, I believe, but I could be wrong about this, I believe it began on Twitter. Where questions were raised about the event. I&#8217;m not sure specifically around which aspect of the event, whether it was the speakers or whether it was the event organizers. Maybe it was both or one or the other, I&#8217;m not entirely sure.</p>



<p>But there were questions raised about the diversity of the event. I know that upon those questions being raised, the response you gave was pretty swift, and there was a lot of soul searching going on. I don&#8217;t know who wants to answer it first, but really, do you want you to summarize what the concerns that members of the community were raising about WordCamp EU and the diversity of it.</p>



<p>[00:32:08] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> It was a social media post on Twitter that started the whole conversation. And it was based on the diversity of the organizing team Which is something that was a really difficult discussion and a really difficult thing this year. You see this organizing team and this conference in 2022, it&#8217;s coming back after two years of lockdowns. It was really difficult to get it started to find people that were able to commit.</p>



<p>So the problem that this Tweet was raising was that there was not any black person among the organizers. However, where I come from for example we don&#8217;t even say black, because it&#8217;s considered, a form of racism. When we saw that Tweet, it was really difficult for us.</p>



<p>Nobody had reached out. Nobody asked why we don&#8217;t have people of skin color or why we have, for example only Europeans and North Americans or anything regarding diversity. But suddenly we are being called out on social media. It gives the team, the feeling of being chased unfairly.</p>



<p>Europe has a different background and history regarding many things. Before we start a discussion about diversity, or inclusion, which is definitely important. If you do not discuss, we cannot fix anything. But you need to have some knowledge about how things worked out when we started organizing. How things are progressing during organizing the event.</p>



<p>At the same time, you need to take a look at the background of the organizing team and also the background of Europe. Location, culture, demographics, history, and all this factors that can help identify what is the diversity we need to aim to. So definitely, seeing it from the point of view of someone that resides in the United States.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s not a good thing to see an organizing team that doesn&#8217;t include a person of skin color. I&#8217;m not quite sure if I&#8217;m using the correct word, because I&#8217;m not a native speaker in English. So, I hope it is the correct word, but I don&#8217;t want to use the black color, because, where I come from, it&#8217;s not a nice thing to call people like that. I understand where the person that started the Tweet comes from, and I understand also the people that were replying on threads and the whole discussion. However, we should make a larger discussion to understand how diversity factors and what metrics are different in the US and in Europe and in Asia, for example. Because there is not any continent that doesn&#8217;t need to take care of diverse.</p>



<p>[00:34:59] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Bernhard, anything to add to that?</p>



<p>[00:35:02] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, we had quite a tough time getting the organizing team together because many of the organizers have been on the organizing team in 2020 before we canceled the in-person events and went to an online event. You can also see on the 2020 page on the organizers page there&#8217;s the in-person team, and then there&#8217;s the online event team.</p>



<p>And you can see that back then, it also was a quite diverse team. But it was really hard to convince all the organizers who&#8217;ve committed themselves in 2020 to rejoin the team. So we really had to find people who are willing to invest that huge amount of time into organizing and WordCamp Europe, and for us, diversity is not just dictated by skin color or by gender or something.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s also by origin, from which country applicants are coming from also in terms of how experienced are people. We don&#8217;t want to be gatekeepers only inviting the same organizers over and over again. So we really want to have some experienced organizers, but we also want to welcome new organizers. And then it might be that you have to reach out to people.</p>



<p>But for 2022, it was really hard to find people that were in the organizing team in 2020 to rejoin. And that was one of the many factors why we are not as diverse as we&#8217;ve been in the past. And it&#8217;s true that reaching out to people is important, but in these times it&#8217;s really hard. And also, many organizers weren&#8217;t really sure, and it was back in September, I would say when we asked people and back then the COVID situation was not as positive in quotes as today. So people were really not sure if WordCamp Europe in-person is going to happen at all. And if they would be able to help organizing it.</p>



<p>[00:36:51] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> People are not able to commit at the moment. Not only their time, but it also costs some money. I know it doesn&#8217;t sound, really romantic. But being volunteers, we&#8217;re not being paid for the time that we offer while organizing. And at the same time we have to be present at the event. So this means accommodation. This means travel expenses. And even if someone wants to assist is not able to travel to the event and knows it in advance, then they know they will not be selected. This is one thing. Because, practically, there are funds, companies that can fund someone and help them do this trip, but not everyone knows it, or not everyone is willing to ask for this kind of help. And this is really important. At the same time, as Bernard said, feeling not safe, and also not believing that the event is going to be in person was one of the reasons that people were turning our invitations down, and this is totally understandable.</p>



<p>During two years we had so many online events, not only WordPress related, but, we had so many online events. We did everything online, zoom meetings with the companies you work with, with clients with everyone. So, you were stuck on a display. People still when we started didn&#8217;t believe we are going to go for an in-person event.</p>



<p>Frankly, they were saying, I don&#8217;t want to do an online event again. I don&#8217;t want to be part of it. I don&#8217;t want to commit myself, and then in the end we end up with an online event. And I understand that it was tiring for many people, online events have different duties than in person events, and it wasn&#8217;t so easy to get it going and get the ball rolling.</p>



<p>[00:38:43] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you very much. So since that tweet was posted and this diversity debate began. Are you able to tell us the ways that you&#8217;ve interacted with those people? The lessons potentially that may have been learned, but also the things which you are now doing differently. Measures that affect this particular event, or perhaps you&#8217;ve put things on hold and you&#8217;ve got procedures, which might be different for the next WordCamp Europe, whether or not you&#8217;re both involved I don&#8217;t know, but things that would be done differently the next time around. So, essentially I&#8217;m wrapping that up all in the phrase of, are there any lessons that you&#8217;ve learned here?</p>



<p>[00:39:22] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> I think the lesson that the whole WordPress community learned is that diversity is important. And it&#8217;s something the whole community has to have an eye on. It&#8217;s not just the organizing team, and it&#8217;s something that can help an organizing team to solve because being a diverse team is not just posting a call for organizers form and waiting for people to respond.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s how you promote the call for organizers. How do you maybe find people you invite directly into the organizing team? And there are some great resources and some great initiatives. There&#8217;s the diversity training program which targets more towards speakers. The same things can be applied to organizers as well.</p>



<p>And I have been taking part in this training and many other organizers as well. So we really know how to make sure that the next organizing team is even more diverse as the current one. But for this event, we cannot change the organizing team. It was hard enough to get enough people. We also had help from some companies. Volunteering some employees to us. So we have enough people to get all the workload done we have in the organizing team. But for other things, it&#8217;s a bit easier, like for the call for speakers and call for volunteers there it&#8217;s easier to have a diverse group of people. And this is always something we kept in mind.</p>



<p>So in the past we&#8217;ve increased the number in the gender ratio. But as I said earlier, diversity is not just dictated by gender. So we really want to have a very diverse group of speakers. So in terms of gender and experience and all of that. And the content team really focuses on that a lot and has focused a lot in the past. And the volunteers, I would say every year, you can see that the volunteers group is really diverse. We have people from all around the world because being an organizer, you need to be within some time zones. It&#8217;s really tough to have someone from, I don&#8217;t know, Australia in the organizing team, we had some people from that time zone back in 2019, which is really a challenge.</p>



<p>But for volunteers it&#8217;s really easy to invite everyone to become a volunteer because they all have to travel to Porto and time zones are not a huge tissue. But for the organizing team, that&#8217;s really something that can be challenging.</p>



<p>[00:41:42] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you has the debate on Twitter, has it led to a conversation? In other words, when that was mentioned on Twitter, presumably it was a calling out of something that people felt needed addressing. Did you engage with those people and ask for their opinion and what it was that they thought needed to be looked at? How has that conversation, that debate move forward over the last several weeks?</p>



<p>[00:42:06] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> Regarding having a discussion with the people on Twitter. We don&#8217;t want to use the social media for such conversation as some of the social media, not good enough, and not the proper way of communication for such discussions. And the reason is for example, Twitter has a limitation of characters. It&#8217;s not easy to make a discussion over there for diversity. That is a huge topic and really important for the whole community. So we had to have another way to discuss this and move forward with a whole situation. You see, diversity means you belong here and you&#8217;re not the only one. So you give people the opportunity to representation and the feeling of inclusivity.</p>



<p>It is one of the things that makes a community viable and creative. It means that people with different backgrounds are able to express themselves freely. They are able to stand behind their ideas. They have a voice. And this is very important. And it is a goal that takes time. It&#8217;s not a post a post on Twitter that, you know, can make things different, there is no a quick hack.</p>



<p>We can only focus on the work that is needed to make it happen. And it takes time. It&#8217;s not going to happen from one day to the other. It takes time and we need to work on this. So we have asked for help from WordCamp central. We have asked for resources, the ones that Bernard mentioned previously, and we&#8217;d like to thank everyone for this help.</p>



<p>And a great open discussion has been opened to the make WordPress website which is a discussion well to follow closely about diversity in WordPress events. This was the way, not WordCamp Europe, but WordPress community in general approached the people that felt underrepresented and opened this topic about WordCamp Europe, because it&#8217;s not only about WordCamp Europe it&#8217;s about all the WordCamps and also local events like meetups.</p>



<p>[00:44:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think that I&#8217;ve asked all of the questions that I would like to ask. Just one quick thing. We were talking previously about hybrid events and the fact that people were possibly a little bit fed up of being online, but for those people who, for example, are unable to attend WordCamp Europe, is there a plan this time around to have any of the sessions broadcast live?</p>



<p>In my parlance I&#8217;m terming that a hybrid event live mixed with online. Is that going to be happening at WordCamp Europe this year? Or is it just live with WordPress TV to look at them after the fact?</p>



<p>[00:44:38] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> We&#8217;ve been livestreaming WordCamp Europe, I think since 2017, when we were in Paris. Maybe even in Vienna. So we had live streams for a long time. What would make WordCamp Europe really a hybrid event is the opportunity to connect the online world with the offline world. So for example, we are planning to have in the Q and A after a session, someone taking questions from the online audience and asking the speakers onstage some questions from the online audience so they feel more connected to what&#8217;s happening in Portugal. We cannot have every aspect of the events being put into the online world as well, but we really try to make it more hybrid. So those were just watching on our websites. They can also participate in some way, and we are still figuring out in the many different ways how we can make as many aspects of the WordCamp Europe also available for the online world, but at least for the Q and A, this is a plan we already agreed on. So we would have questions from the online audience after the speakers onstage.</p>



<p>[00:45:47] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Lovely. Thank you very much. If anybody wanted to reach out to both of you, either of you, are you able to share the best place to do that? That could be a Twitter feed or it could be an email address, whatever you&#8217;re comfortable with. So I&#8217;ll start with Bernhard.</p>



<p>[00:46:04] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> I think that the best and easiest way is either by my personal block or through Twitter. You probably have to put that into the show notes, my exact Twitter handle. It&#8217;s second cowboy, but it&#8217;s K A U. So my my last name that&#8217;s my Twitter handle and yeah, my blog post and my block is listing as well. So that&#8217;s probably the best way to get in contact with me.</p>



<p>[00:46:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you very much and Evangelia.</p>



<p>[00:46:29] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> If someone needs to get in contact with us as organizers of WordCamp Europe, they can always find us at europe @ wordcamp dot org, which is the official email of WordCamp Europe. If someone needs to talk to us directly, social media I think is the best way at the moment. And. Twitter or Facebook or something like that.</p>



<p>Mine is, Evangelia Pappa my handle on Twitter, so they can find me over there too.</p>



<p>[00:46:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I will make sure to put all of those into the show notes, which can be found on the WP Tavern website. Bernhard, Evangelia, thank you so much for talking to me about WordCamp Europe today. I really appreciate it.</p>



<p>[00:47:09] <strong>Bernhard Kau:</strong> Thanks for having us.</p>



<p>[00:47:10] <strong>Evangelia Pappa:</strong> Thank you for having us.</p>
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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:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"Post Status: This Week at WordPress.org (March 21, 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:31:"https://poststatus.com/?p=94894";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"https://poststatus.com/this-week-at-wordpress-org-march-21-2022/";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:8902:"<p>Each week we are highlighting the news from WordPress.org that you don't want to miss.  If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, we've got the news you need to know. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.</p>



<h2 id="h-news"><a href="http://wordpress.org/news">News</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/03/the-month-in-wordpress-february-2022/"></a><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/03/wordpress-5-9-2-security-maintenance-release/"></a><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/03/episode-27-is-wordpress-made-for-me/">WP Briefing: Episode 27: Is WordPress Made for Me?</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/03/23/removal-of-the-zamir-plugin/">Removal of the Zamir Plugin</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2022/03/23/journal-entry-removal-of-the-zamir-plugin/">Journal Entry: Removal of the Zamir Plugin</a></li></ul>


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<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_a09d8b-b0"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-core"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core">Core</a> </h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/23/migrating-wordpress-e2e-tests-to-playwright/">Migrating WordPress E2E tests to Playwright</a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/07/the-performance-lab-plugin-has-been-released/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/07/a-week-in-core-march-7-2022/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/14/a-week-in-core-march-14-2022/"></a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/21/a-week-in-core-march-21-2022/">A Week in Core – March 21, 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/15/bug-scrub-schedule-for-6-0/">Bug Scrub Schedule for 6.0</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-community"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community">Community</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/03/03/2022-community-team-goals-summary/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/03/14/meetup-organizer-newsletter-march-2022/">Meetup Organizer Newsletter: March 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/03/23/return-to-events-blue-sky-thinking/">Return to In-Person Events: Blue Sky Thinking</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/03/17/discussion-revisiting-in-person-regional-wordcamps/">Discussion: Revisiting In-person Regional WordCamps</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-docs"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs">Docs</a>:</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2022/03/23/working-on-wordpress-release-6-0-selecting-trac-tickets-for-devnotes/">Working on WordPress release 6.0 – Selecting Trac tickets for DevNotes</a></li></ul>



<h3 id="h-support-articles">Support Articles:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/submit-your-block-pattern-to-the-directory/">Submit your Block Pattern to the Directory</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/post-date-block/">Post Date Block</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/post-tags-block/">Post Tags Block</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/post-categories-block/">Post Categories Block</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/post-excerpt-block/">Post Excerpt Block</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/post-title-block/">Post Title Block</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-meta">Meta</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/03/16/coming-soon-block-pattern-directory-submissions/">Coming soon: Block Pattern Directory Submissions</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-mobile">Mobile</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/03/21/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-ios-19-5/">Call for Testing: WordPress for iOS 19.5</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/03/21/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-android-19-5/">Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 19.5</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-photos">Photos</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/photos/2022/03/23/announcement-photo-directory-team-reps-2022/">Announcement: Photo Directory Team Reps 2022</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-polyglots">Polyglots</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2022/03/22/polyglots-monthly-newsletter-march-2022/">Polyglots Monthly Newsletter: March 2022</a></li></ul>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-plugins"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins">Plugins</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/02/22/plugin-review-team-21-february-2022/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/02/28/plugin-review-team-update-28-feb-2022/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/03/15/plugin-review-team-14-march-2022/"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/03/22/plugin-review-team-21-march-2022/">Plugin Review Team: 21 March 2022</a></a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-project"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project">Project</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/03/16/proposal-to-remove-spam-dormant-five-for-the-future-pledges/">Proposal to remove spam/dormant Five for the Future pledges</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-themes"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes">Themes</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/03/02/themes-team-update-march-02-2022/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/03/15/themes-team-update-march-15-2022/"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/03/22/themes-team-update-march-22-2022/">Themes team update March 22, 2022</a></a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-training"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training">Training</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/02/28/whats-new-on-learnwp-in-february-2022/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/03/03/march-2022-team-sprint/">March 2022 Team Sprint</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/01/31/faculty-program-structure-proposal/">Faculty Program: Structure Proposal</a></li></ul>



<h4 id="h-workshops">Workshops</h4>



<ul><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/adding-a-site-tagline-to-block-themes/">Adding a Site Tagline to Block Themes</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/manage-settings-privacy/">Manage Settings: Privacy</a></li></ul>



<h4 id="h-social-learning-spaces">Social Learning Spaces:</h4>



<ul><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/social-learning/">Calendar</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-support">Support</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2022/03/health-check-troubleshooting-upcoming-release-of-version-1-5-0/">Health Check & Troubleshooting – Upcoming release of version 1.5.0</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-openverse">Openverse</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2022/03/10/openverse-frontend-v3-1-1-release/">Openverse Frontend v3.1.1 Release</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2022/03/14/last-week-openverse-2022-03-07-2022-03-14/"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2022/03/21/last-week-openverse-2022-03-14-2022-03-21/">A week in Openverse: 2022-03-14 – 2022-03-21</a></a></li></ul>
</div>
</div>



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<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile has-background"><a href="https://poststatus.com/"><img src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/vertical-post-status-logo-250.png" alt="Post Status" class="wp-image-85823 size-full" /></a><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p class="has-text-align-left has-normal-font-size" id="h-get-ready-for-remote-work">You — and <a href="https://poststatus.com/business-membership/">your whole team</a> can <a href="https://poststatus.com/post-status-membership-club/">Join Post Status</a> too!</p>



<p class="has-text-align-left has-small-font-size"><strong>Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire.</strong> Read the <strong>Post Status</strong> <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter/">newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/2709.png" alt="✉" class="wp-smiley" /> Listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcasts/">podcasts</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f399.png" alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" /> Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status/">@Post_Status</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /></p>
</div></div>



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></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, 23 Mar 2022 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:18:"Courtney Robertson";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:85:"WPTavern: WP Engine, Pantheon, and Others Drop Support for Russian Business 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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=131723";s: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:94:"https://wptavern.com/wp-engine-pantheon-and-others-drop-support-for-russian-business-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:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:6742:"<p>WordPress managed hosting company WP Engine has joined Acquia, Fastly, Gatsby, Netlify, and Pantheon to begin booting Russian companies off their platforms. </p>



<p>In addition to the joint protest, each organization has also pledged support to the <a href="https://ooni.org/">Open Observatory of Network Interference</a> (OONI), a non-profit that documents internet censorship around the world.</p>



<p>&#8220;As part of that effort to increase our support, we are adopting a stronger stance against the actions of the Russian government while supporting the ideals we hold true as an Open Web company, which is why WP Engine has joined with other Open Web companies Acquia, Fastly, Gatsby, Netlify, and Pantheon to stand with Ukraine,&#8221; WP Engine said in a <a href="https://wpengine.com/blog/wp-engine-stands-with-ukraine/">statement</a>. &#8220;WP Engine has ceased all business with Russian companies that were using our platform.&#8221;</p>



<p>These stricter measures came after the company had already donated to Polish and Ukrainian humanitarian funds, matching employee funds.  WP Engine condemned Russia&#8217;s invasion in its first published statement on the matter:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>As the world watches in horror, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to leave heart-wrenching destruction in its wake. It is truly shocking that in 2022, a major world power would launch an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation, causing the largest humanitarian crisis in Europe since WWII.</p><p>As they face unimaginable hardships, we stand firmly with the Ukrainian people and condemn the actions of the Russian government in Ukraine.  </p></blockquote>



<p>Similarly, Acquia <a href="https://twitter.com/acquia/status/1505997734909722625?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1505997734909722625%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwptavern.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D131723action%3Dedit">tweeted </a>earlier this week that the company &#8220;will not provide software or services to organizations based in Russia.&#8221;</p>



<p>The coalition of organizations is sanctioning Russia in a similar way to Namecheap, and many other companies, that have <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30504812">terminated service for Russian customers</a>. The world has never seen anything like it with the number of companies across every industry willingly sanctioning the Russian market without a government requirement to do so. Widespread outrage against Putin&#8217;s invasion of Ukraine has provoked a massive response from corporations and private enterprises.</p>



<p>&#8220;The net effect of so many companies exiting or pausing operations in Russia means the government sanctions might almost become a moot point. “It’s a chicken and egg story,&#8221; Leo Feler, senior economist at UCLA Anderson School of Management, told <a href="https://time.com/6155725/corporations-war-russia-ukraine/">TIME magazine</a>. &#8220;If enough businesses abandon the Russian market on their own, the Russian market is also going to shrink. You don’t need sanctions to do it if everyone self-sanctions.”</p>



<p>In the world of open source software, individuals, companies, and projects are grappling with the ethical implications of staying neutral versus imposing some form of sanctions. One misguided attempt at &#8220;protestware&#8221; was included as a dependency for a popular npm package with malicious code that <a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/big-sabotage-famous-npm-package-deletes-files-to-protest-ukraine-war/amp/">deletes data by overwriting files for users based in Russia and Belarus</a>. People are desperate to make a difference for those suffering in Ukraine, but they don&#8217;t always know the most effective way to direct their efforts.</p>



<p>The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has taken a firm stance on the immutability of the freedoms and protections that open source licensing confers. </p>



<p>&#8220;Civil society has many non-violent ways at its disposal to resolve conflicts and it’s important to explore all possible avenues,&#8221; OSI Executive Director Stefano Maffulli <a href="https://opensource.org/newsletter/OSI-mar-2022">said</a>. </p>



<p>&#8220;When it comes to open source software, however, the&nbsp;<a href="https://opensource.org/osd">Open Source Definition</a>&nbsp;is clear: There must be &#8216;no discrimination against persons or groups&#8217; and &#8216;no discrimination against fields of endeavor.'&#8221;</p>



<p>Maffulli elaborated on these thoughts in an interview with <a href="https://thenewstack.io/where-does-open-source-fit-into-russias-war-with-ukraine/">The New Stack</a>, noting that limiting distribution is one option for protesting but that this could hurt Russian citizens more than “the Russian military and powerful elites who certainly have the means to develop workarounds.&#8221; </p>



<p>Limiting distribution would likely be far more difficult than denying service to Russian businesses, which is why this tactic has been more readily adopted. Businesses are  using whatever means they have within their spheres of  influence to make an impact. </p>



<p>The WordPress project stopped short of explicitly condemning the aggression and has focused more on the humanitarian crisis and supporting peacebuilders. The project produced a <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/03/episode-26-matt-mullenweg-on-ukraine-community-and-wordpress/">special edition of its WP Briefing podcast</a> to address the situation in Ukraine earlier this month.</p>



<p>&#8220;The downstream humanitarian crises of the invasion are unimaginable,&#8221; WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg said.</p>



<p>&#8220;And seeing destruction in the world we live in is confusing, disconcerting, and difficult.&#8221;</p>



<p>Mullenweg invited the WordPress community to stand &#8220;with those in the world working to end conflict and working toward a world of peace, promise, and opportunity.&#8221;</p>



<p>Many companies have followed this same approach with efforts aimed at providing relief for refugees and economic support for Ukrainians who are still fighting. WP Engine, Acquia, Fastly, Gatsby, Netlify, and Pantheon were compelled to go beyond their humanitarian efforts to put some pressure on Russia. It&#8217;s not yet clear whether disempowering Russian companies will have any bearing on the outcome of this conflict.</p>



<p>After a nearly month long war that has left cities like Mariupol in ashes, with Russia&#8217;s war crimes on full display across media outlets around the world, companies are coming under more pressure to act. </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, 23 Mar 2022 03:25:25 +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: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: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:87:"WPTavern: Block Accidental Edits of Shared Content With the Lock Reusable Blocks 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=131797";s: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://wptavern.com/block-accidental-edits-of-shared-content-with-the-lock-reusable-blocks-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:4091:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Over the weekend, web developer Marie Comet released the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/lock-reusable-blocks/">Lock Reusable Blocks</a> plugin. Since then, she has published a couple of more updates that polish that initial release. The extension blocks users from directly editing reusable blocks from the post-editing screen.</p>



<p>Reusable blocks allow users to group one or more blocks in the post editor, save them, and reuse anywhere blocks are supported. Technically, they are &#8220;shared&#8221; or &#8220;synced.&#8221; If editing a reusable block in one location, all uses of it will share those changes.</p>



<img />Creating a reusable block.



<p>The problem with the feature is that it is not always clear when you are editing a reusable block. WordPress will display its name in the toolbar, list view, and breadcrumbs nav. However, the only clear message that it is a shared instance is in the sidebar panel, which only appears if open.</p>



<p>Before WordPress 5.7, users had to click an &#8220;Edit&#8221; button to make changes to a reusable block. At least in that scenario, it was somewhat clear that the content was different from the main post or page content. However, 5.7 rolled out a &#8220;click-through&#8221; method for editing. The first click selects the wrapper element around the saved block, requiring a second click to edit any inner content. This change has made it far too easy to inadvertently edit global content.</p>



<p>I am familiar enough with the editor that I doubt I would slip up with this problem. However, I still hand sites over to friends and family from time to time. Most never discover the feature, but those who do inevitably make these global changes when they did not intend to. I have also heard enough client-related horror stories from others to know it is a legitimate issue.</p>



<p>There is an open ticket to <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/32461">bring a locking mechanism</a> to reusable blocks, and there has been a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/32710">patch for it since June 2021</a>. However, there has not been much movement in the last several months. In the meantime, at least we have the Lock Reusable Blocks plugin.</p>



<p>Comet&#8217;s solution takes a different approach from earlier versions of WordPress and the proposed patch. Instead of giving users the option to edit in-content, they are blocked from doing so altogether:</p>



<img />Lock Reusable Blocks overlay and buttons.



<p>The plugin grays out the reusable block and adds two buttons over the top when selected in the editor. The first button enables editing, but it does so by opening a new browser tab/window and taking the user to the editor for the block itself. This approach makes it clear that the content is separate from the post.</p>



<p>WordPress&#8217;s reusable block management screen is hidden by default, but there are a few <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/reusable+blocks/">plugins that enable it</a>.</p>



<p>The plugin&#8217;s second button in the overlay allows users to convert the reusable block to regular blocks. Doing this takes it out of the global scope and can be safely edited without affecting other uses.</p>



<p>I want to like the reusable blocks feature in WordPress. I understand how it could be one of the platform&#8217;s most powerful tools. However, its implementation has yet to live up to the potential it showed four years ago when under development in Gutenberg.</p>



<p>If we could fix the accidental-editing issue and the longstanding problem with <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/8288">wide alignments not working</a> (<em>I could not write this post without at least noting that ticket</em>), it could start down the path of becoming the feature it was always meant to be.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/lock-reusable-blocks/">Lock Reusable Blocks</a></blockquote>
</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, 23 Mar 2022 03:15:10 +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:64:"Akismet: How to Enable or Disable User Registration in WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"http://blog.akismet.com/?p=2344";s: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://blog.akismet.com/2022/03/22/how-to-enable-or-disable-user-registration-in-wordpress/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12896:"<p>WordPress offers a built-in user management and registration system. That means you can allow visitors to register on your website to receive updates, make purchases, or <a href="https://blog.akismet.com/2022/01/12/how-to-stop-comment-spam-in-wordpress/">submit comments</a>. User registration is disabled by default, so you may need to turn it on.</p>



<p>Fortunately, enabling user registration in WordPress is simple. Once you complete the process, you can share a registration link with visitors so they can sign up at any time. WordPress will take care of the rest. This includes saving user data, assigning roles, and submitting email confirmations.</p>



<p>In this article, we’ll talk about when it makes sense to offer users the option to sign up on your website. Then we’ll show you how to enable and disable user registration.&nbsp;</p>



<span id="more-2344"></span>



<h2>An introduction to WordPress user roles</h2>



<p>Before we continue, it’s important to have some familiarity with the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/roles-and-capabilities/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">six user roles</a> WordPress offers. Each user account is assigned a specific role, and as the administrator (the top user role), you have full control over assignment and permissions.</p>



<p>The default WordPress user roles are:</p>



<ol><li><strong>Super admin. </strong>This only exists for <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/create-a-network/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordPress Multisite networks</a>. This level gets administrative permissions on websites within the entire network.</li><li><strong>Administrator. </strong>With this role, you can modify any aspect of the website through your dashboard. You can also create, modify, and delete user accounts.</li><li><strong>Editor. </strong>This account gets to create and publish posts. It can also edit entries by other users.</li><li><strong>Author. </strong>The author user role can create and publish posts, but it only has access to content published under its own account.</li><li><strong>Contributor. </strong>The contributor user role can create posts, but it doesn’t get publishing permissions. An editor needs to review the content and publish it.</li><li><strong>Subscriber. </strong>This is the lowest user role. Subscribers don’t get to create, publish, or edit content. They simply have access to their own profiles.</li></ol>



<p>The default WordPress user role system is designed primarily for blogging. You can expand on existing user roles with plugins or by modifying your WordPress setup. Depending on your choices, you might end up with dozens of available user roles.</p>



<img />



<p>When a visitor creates an account, they’re assigned a user role and a corresponding set of permissions. You have control over what role new users are assigned, and can change them if needed.</p>



<h2>When to enable user registration in WordPress</h2>



<p>By default, users won’t be able to register on a new WordPress website. This is primarily because a lot of sites won’t need this feature. If you’re running a one-author blog, for example, there’s little reason to provide this option. If your goal is to collect emails for marketing, there are plenty of choices that don’t require user registration.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It does make sense under other circumstances, though. If you have a team of authors, you can enable registration and assign Author<em> </em>and Editor<em> </em>roles to specific users. For online stores, you can enable custom user roles like Customer<em> </em>and Shop Manager.</p>



<p>Here’s the standard registration form:</p>



<img />



<p>There are few downsides to enabling user registrations. You can avoid most potential problems by not giving accounts access to more permissions than they need.</p>



<p>Still, one issue you should consider is spam registrations. This is when bots or attackers register fake accounts on your website. They may do this so they can fill your comments sections with affiliate links, try to modify your content, or even steal user data.</p>



<p>Fortunately, there are several ways to <a href="https://blog.akismet.com/2022/01/26/how-to-stop-user-spam-registrations-in-wordpress/">prevent spam registrations</a> on your website. So you shouldn’t let that concern stop you from implementing this feature if it suits your needs.</p>



<h2>How to enable user registration in WordPress</h2>



<p>Enabling user registration in WordPress is simple. If you want to make it easy for visitors to register, you’ll also need to provide them a link to the signup page. Let’s see how you can do this in just a few steps:</p>



<h3>Step 1: Enable the user registration feature</h3>



<p>First, log in to your WordPress site and navigate to <strong>Settings → General</strong><em> </em>in your dashboard. Scroll down until you see the option that reads <strong>Membership</strong>. Tick the <strong>Anyone can register</strong> box.</p>



<img />



<p>Before you save your changes, take a look at the <strong>New User Default Role</strong><em> </em>option. By default, WordPress assigns the Subscriber<em> </em>user role to new accounts, but you can modify this depending on your needs.</p>



<p>If you’re <a href="https://woocommerce.com/posts/a-guide-to-woocommerce-user-roles-permissions-and-security/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">using WooCommerce</a>, you might prefer to set the default role to Customer<em> </em>instead. That way, new users will be able to track their purchases through their profiles.</p>



<h3>Step 2: Add a registration link to your website</h3>



<p>Once you enable registration for your WordPress site, you’ll need to provide visitors with a link to the signup page. You can find this page by navigating to the following URL:</p>



<p><em>yourwebsite.com/wp-login.php?action=register</em></p>



<p>You have multiple options for adding this link to your website, but your best bet is to use the main navigation menu. To modify this menu, go to <strong>Appearance → Menus → Edit Menus</strong>. Next to <strong>Select a menu to edit</strong>, you’ll see a list of existing options.</p>



<img />



<p>One of those should be called something like “main navigation.” Select the primary menu and WordPress will show you the links it contains under <strong>Menu structure</strong>.</p>



<img />



<p>The above menu includes links to three pages, which are Homepage, Shop, and Checkout. To add a link to the registration page, select the <strong>Custom Links</strong><em> </em>tab in your left-hand panel.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Then add your site’s registration link in the <strong>URL</strong><em> </em>field, and type something like “Sign up” in the <strong>Link text</strong><em> </em>field. Click on <strong>Add to Menu</strong>.</p>



<img />



<p>By default, any new links that you add to the menu will appear last. If your site design displays a horizontal menu, the Signup<em> </em>link will show up as the last entry on the right. If your navigation is vertical, the Signup link will appear at the bottom.</p>



<img />



<p>If you want to change the order, you can easily do so by dragging and dropping the menu items. Then click on <strong>Save menu</strong>,<em> </em>and that’s it. When you check out your website again, you should see a Sign Up<em> </em>option in the main navigation menu.</p>



<img />



<p>Keep in mind that you can use any text you want for the link to the user registration page. “Sign Up” is usually a safe bet, but you can also opt for “Register Now,” “Sign Up Now,” or other variants.</p>



<h3>Step 3 (Optional): Customize your WordPress registration page</h3>



<p>If you want your user registration process to be as clear and user-friendly as possible, you may want further customization options. In that case, your best choice is to use a plugin like <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/user-registration/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">User Registration</a>.</p>



<p>With User Registration, you get access to a drag-and-drop builder that enables you to easily add new fields to your registration page. This plugin comes with a collection of pre-built fields. This includes options that let you choose your country, upload a profile picture, and more.</p>



<p>After installing and activating the plugin, go to <strong>User Registration → User Registration</strong><em> </em>in your WordPress dashboard. The plugin will automatically generate a basic signup form, which you can select and edit.</p>



<img />



<p>User Registration will show you a preview of its basic registration form. You can use the menu to the left to select the fields you want to include. Then you can rearrange them on the right.</p>



<img />



<p>Additionally, if you select any field in the right-hand panel, the plugin will show you its customization settings (or <strong>Field Options</strong>) to the left. These settings enable you to choose which elements are required, as well as what labels and descriptions to include.</p>



<img />



<p>When you’re done tweaking your registration form, click on <strong>Update form</strong>. Then copy the shortcode above the form editor.</p>



<img />



<p>You can use that shortcode to embed the new registration form on any page on your website. Simply add a Shortcode<em> </em>block to your chosen page.</p>



<img />



<p>Publish the page, and it should look something like this on the front end:</p>



<img />



<p>Since you’re using a custom registration page, you’ll also need to update the Sign Up<em> </em>link in your main navigation menu. To do so, replace the link with the URL for this new page (for more details, refer back to Step 2.) Then, test the link on the front end of your site to ensure that it leads to the new registration page.</p>



<h2>How to update user roles in WordPress</h2>



<p>After a user registers, you might need to update their role manually. This may occur if you set the default role to Subscriber.</p>



<p>To update a user’s role, go to <strong>Users → All Users</strong><em> </em>and locate the account you want to modify. If there’s a large number of users, you might need to search to find the right account.</p>



<img />



<p>When you’ve located the desired account, hover over it and click on <strong>Edit</strong>. That will open a new page for editing account settings. While you’re there, you can also manually update the Nickname, First Name, Last Name, and more.</p>



<img />



<p>Most importantly, you’ll need to use the drop-down menu next to <strong>Role</strong> to select a new permissions level for the account. After altering the user’s role, save your changes.</p>



<h2>How to disable user registration in WordPress</h2>



<p>Disabling user registration in WordPress is simple. If you’re having problems with your website due to an <a href="https://blog.akismet.com/2022/01/26/how-to-stop-user-spam-registrations-in-wordpress/">influx of fake users</a> or you just want to disable registration temporarily, you can do it in a few clicks.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Go to <strong>Settings → General</strong><em> </em>in your WordPress dashboard. Look for the option that reads <strong>Anyone can register</strong><em> </em>and deselect it.</p>



<img />



<p>After you disable the setting, save your changes. If you have a user registration link in your site’s main navigation menu, remember to remove it as well. That way, visitors won’t try to register while the option is turned off. If they attempt and fail to register, it may create confusion.</p>



<h2>Creating a strong community through your WordPress website</h2>



<p>WordPress makes it easy to enable user registration on your website. You also get full control over what roles to assign to new users. As the administrator, you can edit existing users, change their roles, and even delete them.</p>



<p>Once you enable user registration in WordPress, you can link to your registration page anywhere on your website. A great place to add a registration URL is in your main navigation menu. Some plugins even enable you to <a href="https://blog.akismet.com/2022/03/18/how-to-create-a-custom-wordpress-user-registration-form/">create fully-customized registration pages</a>, so you can ask users for pertinent information when they sign up to your site.</p>



<p>Of course, the more users who join your website, the harder it can be to deal with spam. Fortunately, <a href="https://akismet.com/how/">Akismet</a> can help keep your site spam free. That way, real users will be able to enjoy engaging with each other in the comments sections. <a href="https://akismet.com/plans/">Sign up for an Akismet plan</a> and watch spam disappear!</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, 22 Mar 2022 19:49:57 +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:8:"Rob Pugh";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:62:"WPTavern: How to Build a Single-Product Sales Page with Blocks";s: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=131024";s: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:73:"https://wptavern.com/how-to-build-a-single-product-sales-page-with-blocks";s: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:4585:"<p>In today&#8217;s edition of our <a href="https://wptavern.com/category/building-with-blocks">Building with Blocks</a> series, we&#8217;re going to explore one example of building a single-product sales page. There is by no means one approach for building something like this. This particular example aims to demonstrate a fast way to start selling a single product online, while using free plugins and themes available on WordPress.org. </p>



<p>Here&#8217;s what you need to build this simple page:</p>



<ul><li>Theme: <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/blank-canvas/">Blank Canvas</a> </li><li>Plugins: <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/stripe-payments/">Accept Stripe Payments</a> and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/testimonial-wp-block/">Testimonial Block</a></li><li><a href="https://stripe.com/">Stripe Account</a></li></ul>



<p>This five-minute video walks through the sale page setup:</p>



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

</div>



<h3>Step 1: Install Automattic&#8217;s <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/blank-canvas/">Blank Canvas</a> theme. </h3>



<p>The reason I selected this theme is because it makes it easy to build a one-page website without all the extra unnecessary page elements. It has no header, navigation menus, or widgets by default, so you don&#8217;t have to figure out how to turn all that stuff off.</p>



<p>First, create a new page and then select the theme&#8217;s &#8216;About me&#8217; pattern from the pattern explorer: </p>



<img />



<p>Replace the image with your product image and replace the text with product info. Customize the button text to &#8220;Buy Now&#8221; or whatever you want for the purchase button. </p>



<p>Add testimonials below the product. If you search in the block inserter, you can find the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/testimonial-wp-block/">Testimonial Block</a> and install it from there. </p>



<h3>Step 2: Install and Activate the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/stripe-payments/">Accept Stripe Payments</a> Plugin.</h3>



<p>This plugin enables users to accept credit card payments via the Stripe payment gateway. Even those who have not established a business entity can use Stripe for a small project like this. Select &#8220;Individual/Sole proprietor&#8221; when activating a Stripe account.</p>



<p>If you need PayPal or another gateway, just look for a block plugin that offers what you need. If I was setting up a full-blown e-commerce store with multiple products, I would probably use WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, or another more complex plugin. Accept Stripe Payments seemed simpler for this project.</p>



<p>The video does not show how to configure the plugin&#8217;s settings, but you will need to add your Stripe API keys and make a few selections for your one-product store.  </p>



<h3>Step 3: Create a New Product and Link the Checkout Button.</h3>



<p>Go to <strong>Stripe Payments >> Add New Products</strong>. Add a title, default currency, price,  variations, shipping cost, product URL (for digital products), and thank you page URL, if any of these are applicable to your product. The plugin includes support for setting the quantity available and enabling stock control. Make sure to select &#8220;Collect Both Billing And Shipping Addresses&#8221; for physical products that need to ship.</p>



<p>I am not advocating using this specific commerce plugin. It&#8217;s just one I saw with a Stripe block that wasn&#8217;t necessarily aimed at providing a full e-commerce engine. A surprising number of plugins still only support shortcodes and have no block available. In this instance, even though the plugin includes a block, I didn&#8217;t want to have to re-style the button&#8217;s output. Each product provides a URL that you can paste into the block editor. Once your product is created, paste the product link on the checkout button&#8217;s text.</p>



<p>The last step is to test out the purchasing process. You can use <a href="https://stripe.com/docs/keys">Stripe &#8216;s Test API keys </a>and  test credit card numbers to make sure it is working before making it live. The checkout form launches in a modal window and customers will be redirected to a “Checkout Result” page after the credit card payment. This page can be further customized in the block editor.</p>



<p>If you want to expand beyond this basic single-product website, the Accept Stripe Payments plugin allows you to add multiple products or do different things like collect donations or create “Authorize Only” products. </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, 22 Mar 2022 03:56:48 +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:"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:86:"WPTavern: DeoThemes Launches Ona Creative, Another Well-Designed WordPress Block Theme";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=131727";s: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:96:"https://wptavern.com/deothemes-launches-ona-creative-another-well-designed-wordpress-block-theme";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4901:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Yesterday, DeoThemes&#8217; latest block theme, <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/ona-creative/">Ona Creative</a>, landed in the WordPress directory. It is the second child of Ona, a theme I <a href="https://wptavern.com/ona-by-deothemes-just-raised-the-bar-for-wordpress-block-theme-design">initially showcased</a> here on the Tavern in November 2021.</p>



<p>When I first reviewed the Ona parent theme, WordPress 5.9 had yet to be released, and users were required to install the Gutenberg plugin to test it. Developers were still rapidly launching features in a push to get a production-ready version of the block-based templates and global styles features.</p>



<p>Ona was unlike any other block theme submitted to the directory at that point. If not paying attention, one could mistake it as a classic theme. It was well-designed in its own right, regardless of the system under the hood. However, most block themes were bare-bones experiments for a system struggling to launch. Ona carried a promise that block themes did not need to suck all the life out of design to function.</p>



<p>At the time, the theme had bugs that were not of its own making. Depending on a user&#8217;s site structure, default images could return a &#8220;404: Not Found&#8221; result. The Pattern block did not exist in either WordPress or Gutenberg, and themes had no surefire way of inserting dynamic data. However, Ona now uses this feature to create beautiful default templates.</p>



<p>Not only does the Ona parent do this, but the Ona Creative child theme reuses and rearranges those patterns without needing to write nearly as much new code. The front page template adds a custom header but inserts two existing patterns to set its design apart from its parent:</p>



<img />Ona Creative, partial front page template.



<p>But, there are also some missed opportunities with Ona Creative. While it uses patterns from its parent theme, there are sections in its front page template that would have made perfect patterns themselves. Users may like the default posts Query block and want to use its layout on other pages.</p>



<p>The following testimonial section definitely makes sense as a pattern:</p>



<img />Testimonials section.



<p>At this point, I am not sure if directly inserting most block code in theme templates is an ideal path. If it is good enough to be in a template, <em>why not make it reusable?</em> I have hardly seen cases where theme templates should not just be made up of one or more patterns.</p>



<p>The most significant issue I have with Ona and Ona Creative is that they eschew the block-style system in favor of custom classes. For example, the theme has two classes that it adds to the Cover block in this section of its front-page template:</p>



<img />Cover block selected in a pattern.



<p>The first styles the inner border, and the second creates a hover effect that zooms in on the background. There are two ways for users to recreate this design on the Cover block elsewhere. Either copy and paste one of the blocks in the pattern or manually type the classes under the &#8220;Advanced&#8221; section of the block options sidebar.</p>



<p>The same is true for the cursive handwriting style used in some sections. Users must manually add the <code>ona-alt-font</code> class instead of picking it from the design tools. I am willing to give a pass on this because font-family selection should be handled via the Font Family block control. However, this is not yet supported for blocks like Heading and Paragraph in WordPress.</p>



<img />Adding handwriting/cursive text.



<p>Both are cases of the old way of designing themes, requiring users to jump through hoops to recreate a specific look. Themers need to leave this way of thinking back in the classic era. The block system has a standardized block styles feature that allows users to select these classes visually. If they are registered via the theme, users can recreate that same design with literally any block that supports them.</p>



<p>There is a simple question to ask when deciding whether to register a block style: <em>Is the class on a block in a pattern or template?</em>  Except in some rare use cases &#8212; usually involving headers and navigation &#8212; the answer is almost always that the custom class should be a block style.</p>



<p>I may be a bit nit-picky about the implementation of some features. The space is still largely unexplored &#8212; Ona Creative is only #56 out of 58 block themes in the directory. This does not take away from how well-designed it is.</p>



<p>And the one thing that DeoThemes continues to get right is the design. Ona Creative deserves to grace the front end of many WordPress sites. Its development team has kept up with changes to the block system, the typography is on-point, and it simply looks good.</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, 22 Mar 2022 02:35:02 +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: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:115:"Post Status: Post Status Excerpt (No. 51) — Comparing the Drupal and WordPress Communities with Amy June Hineline";s: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=94432";s: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:119:"https://poststatus.com/post-status-excerpt-no-51-comparing-the-drupal-and-wordpress-communities-with-amy-june-hineline/";s: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:30722:"<h2 id="more-important-than-being-responsive-is-setting-expectations-dave-rodenbaugh">&#8220;When it comes to contributing…. time is a true privilege&#8221; —Amy June Hineline</h2>



<p class="has-drop-cap">There are a lot of people in the <strong>WordPress</strong> community who also work (or previously worked) with <strong>Drupal</strong>, <strong>Joomla</strong>, and other open-source software projects. <strong>Amy June Hineline</strong> is Community Manager at <a href="https://t.co/1jey6pgCSr" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Opensource.com</a>. She is also a member of both the WordPress and Drupal communities. As <strong>DrupalCon 2022</strong> approaches, Amy June shares the lessons she thinks WordPress can learn from Drupal’s relationship with its contributors and open source. </p>



<p><strong>Why This Is Important:</strong> Drupal and WordPress are both mature open source PHP/MySQL CMS platforms that emerged in the early 2000s. They share a common goal and have similar communities, but there are notable differences between them. There are opportunities for each community to learn from the other. </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/13.1.0/72x72/26a1.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/13.1.0/72x72/1f3a7.png" alt="🎧" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h3 id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://github.com/shaal/DrupalPod">Drupal Pod GitHub</a></li><li><a href="https://events.drupal.org/portland2022">DrupalCon</a></li><li><a href="https://kanopi.com/"><a href="https://t.co/1jey6pgCSr" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Opensource.com</a></a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/volkswagenchick">Amy June</a> (Twitter)</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/dimensionmedia" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">David Bisset</a> (Twitter)</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/post_status" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Post Status</a> (Twitter)</li></ul>


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<h3 id="sponsor"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> Sponsor: <a href="https://pagely.com/">Pagely</a></h3>



<p><strong>Pagely</strong> offers Top-Tier Managed WordPress hosting solutions for <strong>Enterprise</strong>, the<strong> Public Sector</strong>, and <strong>Media</strong> companies. We invented Managed WordPress and we never stopped raising the bar. Expect Extraordinary.</p>


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<h2 id="h-transcript"><strong>Transcript</strong></h2>



<p>Amy June</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> So I have, um, some housekeeping to tell you my gardener has not made his appearance yet, so we may have all kinds of visitors. So my name is Amy, June Heinlein. Amy, June being one word, title, camel case. I'd like to point that out because if you just yell Amy down the street, I probably won't turn around and answer</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Me or June either probably goes.</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> Exactly, exactly. Um, so I've been working in open source since about 2016. I started in the Drupal community and then, um, a couple years later started in the WordPress community. I am a self-described non coder, but very prolific con contributor to both of those communities. Along with the accessibility community, specifically in Drupal, I am a very huge advocate.</p>



<p>Reducing the barriers to non code contributions. Um, and in WordPress, that's not nearly as much of an issue because when I entered the WordPress space, um, WordPress is already a big ag advocate for lots of different kinds of things. Contributions. Um, many of them being non code. Um, recently I've switched over and I'm working in the wider open source community and I help curate articles for source.com.</p>



<p>Um, and so I work with all sorts of different communities now, but my love is still in those, um, that content management system of WordPress and Drupal</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So you were in Drupal first, so what got you into the WordPress space,</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> took a job with canopy studios. They're an agency that does WordPress and Drupal. I suckered and the CEO into hiring me exclusively to give back to the community.</p>



<p>Yeah, I could be her corporate citizenship. And, um, when I started a week, one on Monday, she says, oh, Hey, so we do WordPress. How would you like to go to work camp us on Friday? I was like, oh,</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> is it free? Do I get to miss work?</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> Yeah, that was my first start. And let me tell you, the people I met there, I met you, I've met everyone, you know, um, established relationships, but that's, that was my initial exposure to WordPress community was at WordCamp us.</p>



<p>I had had the obligatory blog, you know, when my kids were little or my, or my girlfriend would get married, that kind of thing, but I never worked on WordPress. It was just, you know, just opening the blog and putting pictures up before.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So when it comes to contributions, It's big on advertising, uh, or getting people motivated to contribute and truthful to the same way from your experience, both being in Drupal and WordPress, how would you compare how they handle, um, their contribution events and recruiting?</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> First off for the crowd of admirers listening at home, my space and both WordPress and Drupal is mostly in contributions, starting off in Drupal contributions. Um, it's very code centric. Um, it's all about the tools and the resources to get ramped up into contributing to. Core contributions. Um, so when I helped organize a Drupal contribution days at like the local and the regional, and even at the national level, which I do now, um, it's all about the tools and the processes and the mentoring that involves around, uh, revolves around code.</p>



<p>Um, looking back at that first word camp us, I went to, um, in, in Nashville, uh, the. The big thing I noticed when I walked into contribution day was how there were all of these tables around contributions and code was only one of those tables where it was like the complete opposite from when you go to a contribution day at Drupal con.</p>



<p>So you have marketing. You have translations, you have events, you have Drupal TV, you have all of these tables and one table for code. And at first I thought that was really. Different, you know, cause we all, when we're used to one thing and going into another, it takes us a little bit to wrap our head around things.</p>



<p>But you know, I've been advocating for non-covered contributions or lowering the barrier to code contributions in the Drupal space that walking into the word camp, us contribution space was like, wow, it's already set up where everyone can continue. I liked to go to camps and I like to organize, and I, you know, I enjoy the Drupal space.</p>



<p>That's something that I took away from word camp us is when I did start. Going to more camps. Um, and the Drupal space and setting up contribution days was having, uh, issues available for non coders. You know, not just in the code, not just like documentation tasks, but Hey, we have a slide deck that this initiative team wants to work on, you know?</p>



<p>Absolutely no code contributions for non coders. And I don't mean that in a reductive sense, just, you know, we all want to come to camps and we all want to contribute, you know, but there's, there's people who don't code. There's our marketers, there's our human resources. There's our salespeople, you know, there's our, um, there's our designers, you know, and giving them the space to be able to.</p>



<p>Come to that extended day, you know, that day after camp and go to the, you know, go to the picnics and the, just the more activities to get involved with the whole community, I think is really valuable. And that's what that word word camp U S space showed me. And that was really inspiring to me. So when I sat down at the code table at WordCamp us, I didn't know how to contribute back as a non coder.</p>



<p>So. That is something I think that the WordPress side could learn from the Drupal side is maybe providing some tools that would reduce the barrier to code contribution to people who don't historically code.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So you could code, you just were a little bit lost in like where to start,</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> right. Or, you know, do I have to have a local environment set up, you know, do I have to do I have to use Vagrant?</p>



<p>You know, all of these, like. Because those are kind of complex things. When you're maybe just new to WordPress, maybe you don't know how to set up the local environment. Maybe you don't know how to write a patch, you know, and having those resources really more human readable, or maybe having a tool that is browser-based versus locally based would help lower that barrier a little bit more.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> What is Drupal pod?</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> Drupal pod does it allows folks to spin up an environment. That's, browser-based spins up this environment online where you can test drive your Drupal site. It applies the merge requests. It provides an integrated development environment and IDE like vs code. So you can share the URL with like, I could spin up a Drupal pod site right now, share the URL with you.</p>



<p>And we could both be participating on. Issue at the same time in real time, exploring and, uh, sort of reviewing each other's code and having an instance up online that way we wouldn't have to take the time to like, maybe get something like D dev or Lando or, you know, um, one of those, uh, like DVE up on our local machines it's right there and shareable with the URL.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Oh. So we can collaboratively. Test out a patch and in, and this is I'm assuming this fairly quickly and without much technical know-how because it is an actual browser extension for Chrome or Firefox,</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> right? It's for Chrome or Firefox. We don't have it working on anything else, but you can do a patch. You can do a fork, you can do a branch.</p>



<p>Um,</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> it's all running on the cloud, that is pretty impressive.</p>



<p>There's</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> documentation on it. There it's still sort of our new tool. You know, this is something new that we're doing at Drupal con this year. We're, um, as, as mentors, we're learning the process. You know, this is, this is only the second year. We're really working on merger requests versus patching too.</p>



<p>So there's a learning curve with mentors teaching this, but every year we really struggle with first time contributions and the tooling and the processes. So we're hoping with Drupal pod being browser-based a lot of those. Cumbersome tasks for onboarding or eliminated because it's a browser extension versus, you know, is it a windows machine?</p>



<p>Are they running Linux? You know, uh, do we have to, you know, go against, you know, a VPN or some of these things that people have on their machines. So we're hoping. Having that browser-based really makes it just a whole lot easier. And then two, you know, instead of like having to peer share a local tool, you know, the bandwidth it takes to, you know, download an extension and just have something running browser-based versus downloading tools will alleviate a lot of those pains we have with, with, with, with internet, uh, during the event.</p>



<p>I have a tool that I that's very near and dear to my heart called simply test, uh, dot Emmy. And that's another tool that's, browser-based where we, um, the environment's a little bit. In Drupal, as opposed to WordPress, you know, we have contributed modules that are kind of mirrored the plugin system, but a lot of them are free and you can test drive plugins.</p>



<p>But also with simply test me, you can also test patches. And again, it's a browser-based environment that really reduces the barrier to contributions as well. I would love to see some of these browser based tools being extended further out into the wider CMS.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> How do you compare the mentorship sides that you've seen in your, in your observations between Drupal and WordPress?</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> We do have one. Um, so we have a mentoring cohort where we have, you know, Drupal core, um, Mentoring leads where there's a group of us. There's maybe 10 of us that work on processes and documentation, and really leading the initiative all year long. Um, and with that, what that means is we. Have weekly meetings where we talk with other mentors, we've run mentoring summits, where we do mentor the mentoring.</p>



<p>Um, we run two flagship events, one being Drupal con us and the other one being Drupal con Europe. Um, if Drupal con Asia happens, we help with that one as well. And we really concentrate on those, uh, two or three, you know, uh, uh, continental events rather than the local and regional events because, um, the local regional load events, um, Uh, can be run, um, by the local and regional organizers, but at the slash ship events, we make sure that we have enough mentors to have a contribution day, be very successful.</p>



<p>Um, and with that, we run first time contributor workshops. And again, you know, Drupal's a little bit more code centric. And so we run first time. Contributor meant first time contributor workshops, where we talk about tools. We talk about documentation. We talk about non code participation. We, um, go into demos of, you know, how do you do a merge request?</p>



<p>How do you review a patch? How do you do issue queue triage? And these are all things that we teach all year long, um, to the other mentors who want to join in to our monthly meetings. And then as we get closer to events, we meet a little bit more often, like we're, you know, we're about a month and a half out from Drupal con in April.</p>



<p>So we're starting to meet weekly. Um, really trying to. Discover who's coming to triple con you know, who's going to be around who's, you know, cause there's. There can be mentors for all sorts of different spaces. We have mentors that help when people arrive to the event, you know, making sure they make it to the right space because we have, you know, uh, a mentored contribution room.</p>



<p>We have a first time mentor contribution room, and then we have just the general contribution space. So making sure have people that are welcoming and lead people in the right direction. And then people leading people in the right direction when they're ready to graduate and go into another room, you know, making sure we have.</p>



<p>Table leads, you know, um, that people are, are, are paired up with, you know, folks of similar skill sets or passions. And then we always want to stress too, that you don't have to know everything to be a mentor. You just have to have the passion to be able to figure out how to get the answer yourself. You know, you don't have to know everything, but you have to kind of just know how to figure it out, you know?</p>



<p>We always know a little bit more than someone else, you know, and, and we really try to, uh, encourage people to, if you've contributed once you're qualified to be a mentor.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Oh yeah. That seems pretty, pretty a straightforward way of getting a lot more people on board that much more quickly and boosting their self-esteem too, because.</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> Yeah. And then we, we, we try to be empowering as the event takes place. Like, you know, right now we're planning, Drupal con and our, our event is Monday through Thursday, but the mentored event is on Wednesday afternoon. So Monday and Tuesday, we have a booth to encourage people to sign up, to be a mentor.</p>



<p>And then Monday afternoon, we have a couple of events that like how to triage issues or here's the tools or mentor the mentor. So we have a couple of, you know, we call them birds of a feather over there, you know, Box where we're sit down with the mentors and, and answer questions and really sort of get to know one another.</p>



<p>And then that way they feel supported when we go into the main event too. So we, we really build up that empowerment as the week goes on.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> You've probably observed in the WordPress space. There's been a lot of discussion, especially recently, um, open-source contributions, uh, people having being compensated for their time, um, efforts or just playing, getting.</p>



<p>How does Drupal handle giving credit or what's their credit system light?</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> So I am a huge fan of incentives. Um, we don't all need them, but sometimes the agencies and the organizations we work for a need them, all of us, I would hope understand that, you know, if we use open source, open source depends on us, you know, and all of us have this idea of, we should contribute 10 to 20%.</p>



<p>And we hope that our employers in our organizations, that we work for feel the same way. And you know, sometimes agencies need more than just corporate citizenship. And Drupal has this really robust incentive program where they have this marketplace where. When someone like, I'm just going to use me as an example.</p>



<p>When I get back to Drupal, I give, I concentrate and I work on a core issue and I get a credit for working on that core issue. I could get the credit because I opened the issue. I could get the credit because I contributed the solution. Or maybe I wrote a test for the issue, or maybe I, you know, designed a logo, any sort of thing.</p>



<p>I could get a contribution. When the issue is closed, I have the choice of taking a box that gives an organization that I mark on my profile as my employer. I can give them attribution for the credit as well. So at the end of the year, Drupal has these stats of, you know, their top contributors, but also the agency.</p>



<p>Who employed those top contributors, they have metrics of who contributed their own time and volunteered. And then they have this marketplace where a person looking to hire an agency. You go to this marketplace and the marketplace is your position on the marketplaces ranked on how much you give back to Drupal.</p>



<p>And then their, their ranking is also. Broken down into, you know, a core credit gives you a little bit better ranking than if you work on like a contributed module or on a community module. And then the last couple of years, they've also opened spaces for community projects. So say you run a camp like Drupal camp Asheville.</p>



<p>Well, Drupal understands that there's more than code contributions. Some people are camp organizers and dedicate hundreds and thousands of hours of their lifetime organizing camps. And sometimes, you know, can a person's first. Exposure to communities at the local camp level. And that's just as important as code.</p>



<p>And so we've actually put those into the credit system as well. So people who are speaking at camps and training at camps and writing documentation for, you know, things like get pod or, you know, um, from, uh, doing podcasts. So they, they have this really robust and rich incentive program, which I think has really.</p>



<p>Driven more organizations to pay for more of their employees times to give back to open source, because especially during the pandemic, we know that time is a privilege. As more of us are at home as caregivers, we don't have that luxury of, you know, quote unquote free time after our 40 hours a week. So we noticed a drop in the, the numbers of diverse based.</p>



<p>Who are contributing to our projects because more of them are caregivers. You know, we definitely seen a drop in women contributing to our projects because you know, their home, their mothers, you know, and these are broad blanket statements. Of course ,</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> but that makes sense.</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> But yeah, so.</p>



<p>I know that the few agencies I've really worked close with have seen that. And they've added, you know, instead of only having, you know, one hour of community time a week, they've added it to two or three because they seen that that time is a true privilege.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So if there was one thing that you could maybe based off of what Drupal's is doing on the lessons from it, what's one thing that you would heavily suggest for WordPress to make an adjustment to regarding contribution.</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> Okay, so this is two, and I know you just said one, but there's two things that I really think I would really love to see on the code contribution side. The barriers really reduced like something like the browser-based solutions for helping contribute to core. And then also, like there is a little bit of a, of a program for, uh, incentivizing agents.</p>



<p>Providing their employees around to contributions. There's the five for five. Is that what it's called five for the future? It's in a way that's sort of hidden, it needs to be more pronounced. So when people are looking for those, it needs to be incentivized more. Right. You know, like I said, like, I hate to, I hate to be like this incentivized program, but you know, has to be some sort of.</p>



<p>In your face visual. Cause I know like I give back to WordPress and I have these little ticks on my profile, but there's no ticks on my company's profile. Right. They're only on mine and then not every camp I've talked with or not every project I helped contribute to gives me a tick. So as much as I give, like say I, you know, the whole time I worked with a company where I, you know, donated 25% of my time for WordPress, I only have.</p>



<p>Five kicks on my WordPress profile. So it's not, it's not very reflective of how much work I actually did for WordPress.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> I see, I know we track, I know WordPress does track a kiss man at state of the word does show. I mean, we do have, we do know how many contributors. I guess are associated with companies because they do track number of employees per company, obviously automatic is the biggest, and then there's Yost and there's a few other ones, but it sounds like to me, this is an on Drupal site.</p>



<p>It's more integrated into, into maybe not a leaderboard, but at least a kind of like an ongoing. System. I like the top 40 and music or something where</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> it's, it's okay to say leaderboard. Like, I love seeing my name on that top 40 slide when it came up, you know,</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> is that cause any problems or any conflicts or any burnout, anything or is it just people just kind of accept the leaderboard and what the,</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> I don't think so because, because th they also break it down into who's paid and who's not, you know, because there definitely is a.</p>



<p>Uh, something to say about the, the non-paid contributions. There's a lot of people who give back on their own dime, you know, and they do break that down as well.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Yeah. So tell me, as we wrap things up here, tell me a little bit about this Drupal con that's coming up.</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> Okay. So it is the last week in April, and it will be in Portland, Oregon in-person, which is very exciting</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Is this the first in-person event for Drupal?</p>



<p>No,</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> I, I just got back from Florida Drupal camp. That was the first in-person Drupal event. Um, well, in, in north America anyway, we were the last triple event in north America. Um, and I think it was sort of funny that we were the first one coming back in 2020. Um, we're not quite sure how many people were going to expect, you know, people are still up in the air about the state of all of the things going on in the world, you know? So, um, we don't know whether or not to expect more people because people haven't seen one another or less people because of all of the things going on in the</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> world. Perfectly understandable. Everybody it's come back when you feel comfortable or come, when you feel comfortable.</p>



<p>That's same thing for what I'll say for work camp us as well. No one's should be shaming. Anybody else or wondering why someone isn't physically. Um, it could be physical reasons. Emotional. Some people have been awhile.</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> We're kind of mixing things up a little bit, you know, we're still doing summits and a lot of interactive sessions and contributions every day.</p>



<p>Um, we're abiding by the local, uh, the local laws around vaccination and masks, you know, so whatever you know, Portland is doing at the time is what we're going to go by. As far as you know, our, our vaccination stuff. Um, I'm really excited. I haven't seen a lot of these people in a long time. Um,</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> I'm drawing a blank on his name now dries for&#8230; drees.</p>



<p>Is he give his, uh, state of Drupal at this one. Oh,</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> okay. Yeah. So actually the jury's note will be the only. Uh, streaming session. That's</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> where, that's how I remember it because whenever, whenever, and I believe it's free, I think pretty sure to just broadcast like that. Um, and that's, I don't miss that. Uh,</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> yeah, you're right.</p>



<p>I always forget about that one. Cause it's always been, but that, yeah, that'll be the only streaming event will be the teres. now,</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> because your Drupal concept will have so many tracks and it's how many days is it? Three. Wow. That's let's that's longer than a WordCamp. EWAS yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. I don't miss his, um, livestream.</p>



<p>Keynotes usually lasts about an hour. Lots of just like how Matt does a state of the word. Uh, the Drupal version equivalent has a ton of information. I like the statistics that he shares, so I definitely will not be missing that. And I'll put a link in the show notes for the event, and specifically, as soon as I can figure it out.</p>



<p>Where on the website or any blog posts that has that kind of link or to expect that, um, maybe on the calendar or something like that. I'll definitely put that in there as well. I, I honestly believe all of the open source. CMS is the WordPress, the Drupal's and the gym was in we're all kindred spirits in terms of opensource.</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> Uh, I actually have the privilege of working on the contributor team with word camp us this year. So I'm hoping to bring some of the ideas, um, with me and maybe start like a mentorship program too. So very excited</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> WordCamp US has always been. Open to trying new things. I remember in 2019 before the, that was the last one before the pandemic, we had an entire track just based off of community aspects of things like, you know, diversity planning, meetups, that sort of thing.</p>



<p>I thought that went pretty well. And who's to say what we could have expanded that to, if we could have gone beyond 2019. Um, uninterrupted. Um, so I really would look forward to see, because it's a different landscape. Now. We haven't had word camps. Um, we haven't had physical work camps and more than two years, we, a lot of the momentum for contributions for WordPress came from live events.</p>



<p>You know, in one way, we've kinda been a little bit of, um, handicapped in terms of, of what we've been used to. Get new contributions in or get fresh ideas, experimented with fleshed out. So I'm really looking forward. And maybe we can talk about that later, as it's closer to where camp us, I would love to hear some of the things that are getting, going to be publicly announced and what some of the thinking has gone on behind it.</p>



<p>So, yeah,</p>



<p><strong>Amy June:</strong> and my Gardner came just on cue. Okay. Thanks a lot, David. I appreciate that.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> No, thank you for voluntarily contributing your time and go talk to your. Okay. If I sit there, have a good night. Thank you. Have a good one.</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, 21 Mar 2022 15:00:43 +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:70:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 27: Is WordPress Made for Me?";s: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=12451";s: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:71:"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/03/episode-27-is-wordpress-made-for-me/";s: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:9761:"<p>Who is WordPress actually made for? Join our host, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy, as she explores this controversial question and three things that can help find the answer.</p>



<p><strong><em>H</em></strong><em><strong>ave 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>



<p>Hosts: <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/chanthaboune/">Josepha Haden Chomphosy</a> <br />Editor:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dustinhartzler/">Dustin Hartzler</a><br />Logo:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/beafialho/">Beatriz Fialho</a><br />Production:&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/santanainniss/">Santana Inniss</a></p>



<h2>References</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2022/call-for-volunteers/">WordCamp Europe call for volunteers</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photo Directory team</a></li><li><a href="https://www.unicefusa.org/stories/unicef-children-crossfire-ukraine-crisis/39542?utm_campaign=20220225_Emergencies&utm_medium=Organic&utm_source=UkraineWebStoryChildrenFeb2022&utm_content=LearnMoreUkraineWebStoryChildrenFeb2022&ms=Organic_PRL_2022_Emergencies_20220225_UkraineWebStoryChildrenFeb2022_LearnMoreUkraineWebStoryChildrenFeb2022_none_none&initialms=Organic_PRL_2022_Emergencies_20220225_UkraineWebStoryChildrenFeb2022_LearnMoreUkraineWebStoryChildrenFeb2022_none_none">UNICEF</a></li><li><a href="https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/what-we-do/countries/ukraine">Médecins Sans Frontieres</a>&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://www.icrc.org/en/where-we-work/europe-central-asia/ukraine">International Committee of the Red Cross</a>&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://help.rescue.org/donate/ukraine-acq?ms=gs_ppc_fy22_ukraine_mmus_feb&initialms=gs_ppc_fy22_ukraine_mmus_feb&gclid=CjwKCAiAjoeRBhAJEiwAYY3nDHNlEUUNRM4wKl1bY0ploy1RNl0M7G1OlLTqawZdg_XhrJ0TircZ_RoCfh8QAvD_BwE">International Rescue Committee</a></li><li><a href="https://www.unrefugees.org/what-we-do/">UN Refugee Agency</a>&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://donate.wck.org/give/236738/#!/donation/checkout">World Central Kitchen</a></li><li><a href="https://www.techtotherescue.org/tech/tech-for-ukraine">Tech For Ukraine</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wp4ukraine">#WP4Ukraine</a></li></ul>



<h2>Transcript </h2>


<a class="wp-block-read-more" href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/03/episode-27-is-wordpress-made-for-me/" target="_self">Read more</a>


<p><strong>Episode 27</strong></p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:00:00]&nbsp;</strong></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>Today, we&#8217;re talking about who WordPress is built for. I was talking to a group of contributors last week and we encountered some questions around just who WordPress is built for. And it&#8217;s a question that you&#8217;ll find any time that you&#8217;re working on user testing or on triaging tickets, and especially when that comes up when you look at the big picture, roadmap sorts of things. The easiest answer for this question is, of course, everyone because WordPress&#8217; mission is to democratize publishing and that should be available to everyone.</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy </strong><strong>[00:01:11]</strong></p>



<p>However, everyone is a really big target and certainly doesn&#8217;t help get your mind around the people that you&#8217;re wanting to actually build it for, the people that you actually want to be able to use your product, your software on a day-to-day basis. So let&#8217;s take a look at the one question that can help us figure out who it&#8217;s built for today and how we get it to being something that&#8217;s built forever.</p>



<p>Firstly, there&#8217;s a basic premise of open source that informs this thought. And that premise is that we are citizens of a community of contributors therefore the decisions are made by the people who show up. In general, I believe that to be true, though, I also believe that some basic qualifications are needed.</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:01:50]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>So with that in mind, the one question that can help us figure out who a software is built for is this: how do your active contributors see themselves? I would bet that most contributors to open source software projects, like WordPress, are developers of some sort, it is sort of written right into the definition of the project.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you work on software, then you need developers. And what I love about WordPress, in particular, is that we do work to include contributors who are not developers. Yet it still remains true that there is a fairly high level of technical knowledge required to actively contribute.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:2:25]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>Which kind of brings us to the second half of the original question of how can we make sure that WordPress can be something that&#8217;s built for everyone? The answer to this one is easy to say, hard to do, and that is to make sure to include them as co-creators in the development process.&nbsp;</p>



<p>We&#8217;ve talked about co-creators in open source before. It&#8217;s this idea that people who use the software every day are likely to know the biggest pain points. So if you want your software to be used by people who don&#8217;t know HTML, talk to a bunch of people who don&#8217;t know HTML about how it is to use your software.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you want your software to be mostly used by enterprise agencies, talk to enterprise agencies, but also ask them what their clients hate, because everyone has more than one stakeholder. And I know that I said this already, but it bears repeating that, obviously, this is all very easy to say and hard to do.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:3:20]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>So what is my best guess for the how-to-do part for WordPress? There are three things.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The first is testing. This not only helps bring in new contributors and helps train future contributors, which I&#8217;ve talked about on the podcast before. But testing also gives us a higher chance of actionable feedback from folks who don&#8217;t necessarily spend time directly in the WordPress project.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Frequently the feedback that we do get that is just kind of undirected and ad hoc is exactly that– it is undirected and ad hoc and is then hard to follow up on and make sure that we understand what was wrong and how we can help fix it. And so testing is important for that. And testing it turns out is important for a bunch of things. When you&#8217;re working in open source.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The next thing is support. So checking in with support teams at hosts, as well as the hardworking support teams in the project. And that can really help us to get early indications of what difficulties exist now. They have routinely seen problems and issues that are raised in support forums, and from their everyday users that they are providing support to.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That probably could be fixed in WordPress if we had a good understanding of just what was not going right, how many people really needed it to go better, and what our targets were to fix that particular problem.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:4:45]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>And the third thing is communication. I know that I&#8217;ve gone on record in many places as saying that most of our problems at the end of the day are communication problems. And I&#8217;m going on record about it again here in this podcast, establishing better communication patterns with users is key.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That can be a multi-year project in itself. And even after that, it&#8217;s going to be an ongoing journey. But it is one of the many things that WordCamps and other WordPress events have given to us over the years, an opportunity to really hear from and see the struggles that people who are not building with WordPress every day, or literally building WordPress every day are actually having.</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:5:34]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>So now that you&#8217;ve heard my small list of way too big things, that brings us to our regular small list of big things. The first thing is that WordCamp Europe is still looking for volunteers. If you&#8217;ve never done that before, I think it&#8217;s quite fun. You get to meet a lot of people and the team of organizers is super fun, but I&#8217;ll leave a link for you in the show notes.</p>



<p>We also have a new code-free way to contribute through the photo directory. That team is just getting started and still is working toward building out its programs. So now&#8217;s a good time to drop in and just kind of see what they are up to. And finally, a reminder that we do have contributors who are affected by the war in Ukraine right now. I will reshare the list of humanitarian organizations in case you missed them a couple of weeks ago as well.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy [00:6:21]&nbsp;</strong></p>



<p>And that my friends is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for this WordPress Briefing. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. 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, 21 Mar 2022 12:57:38 +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:"Santana Inniss";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:125:"Gutenberg Times: Block Pattern Directory, Export FSE Theme, Integration with BentoJS and Tailwind CSS – Weekend Edition 207";s: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=20709";s: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:130:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/block-pattern-directory-export-fse-theme-integration-with-bentojs-and-tailwind-css-weekend-edition-207/";s: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:24677:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>Thank you for keeping in touch between weekend editions. I am always grateful to read your comments and ideas. I learn so much. Keep &#8217;em coming👍 .</p>



<p>I just finished testing the submission process for the block pattern directory. It&#8217;s a great experience. It showcases how the block editor can be used outside the content creation process. It is also a test case to for integrating Openverse into a media library and how to handle custom post types with the block editor. If you are eager to learn more about either of the topics the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues">code is public and available on GitHub.</a></p>



<p>I hope to see you at the <a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284434154/">Gutenberg Developer Hours on Tuesday</a>. </p>



<p>Be well, </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br /><em>Birgit</em></p>




<div class="wp-container-2 wp-block-group has-light-background-background-color has-background"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p><strong>Table of Contents</strong></p>



<div class="wp-block-sortabrilliant-guidepost"><ul><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#0-gutenberg-plugin-version-12-8">Gutenberg Plugin Version 12.8 </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#1-gutenberg-for-nocode-site-builders-and-content-creators">Gutenberg for #nocode site builders and Content Creators. </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#2-developing-blocks-and-for-the-block-editor">Developing Blocks and for the block editor</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#3-developing-themes-for-gutenberg">Developing Themes for Gutenberg</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#4-word-press-social-learning-events">WordPress Social Learning Events</a></li></ul></div>
</div></div>




<h2 id="0-gutenberg-plugin-version-12-8">Gutenberg Plugin Version 12.8 </h2>



<p><strong>Hector Prieto c</strong>oordinated the release of the 12.8 version of the Gutenberg Feature Plugin. In his release notes <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/16/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-8-16-march/"><strong>What’s new in Gutenberg 12.8? (16 March)</strong></a>, he highlights the following topics: </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/16/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-8-16-march/#highlight-1">New Webfonts API</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/16/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-8-16-march/#highlight-2">Swift inline insertion of internal links</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/16/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-8-16-march/#highlight-3">Steps towards full visual theme creation</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/16/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-8-16-march/#highlight-4">Iterating on placeholder and loading states</a></li></ul>



<p>Many of the other changes are subtle, vital changes to the interface, to make the users feel more comfortable. </p>



<p>As always, WPTavern&#8217;s <strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> wrote about it, too: <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-12-8-launches-the-web-fonts-api-improves-group-nesting-and-adds-keyboard-shortcut-for-links"><strong>Gutenberg 12.8 Launches the Web Fonts API, Improves Group Nesting, and Adds Keyboard Shortcut for Links</strong></a></p>



<p><strong>Mary Job</strong> and I recorded our <strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-63-webfonts-api-gutenberg-12-8/">Gutenberg Changelog episode 63</a> </strong>last night and it should already travel to your podcast app. We really hope that we figured out the sound issues now, although technology wasn&#8217;t cooperating very well. We still had fun chatting about family and travel, off the record. </p>



<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-63-webfonts-api-gutenberg-12-8/"><img /></a>




<p><strong>&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Keeping up with Gutenberg &#8211; Index 2022&#8221;</a>&nbsp;</strong><br />A chronological list of the WordPress Make Blog posts from various teams involved in Gutenberg development: Design, Theme Review Team, Core Editor, Core JS, Core CSS, Test and Meta team from Jan. 2021 on. Updated by yours truly.  <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/references/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index/keeping-up-with-gutenberg-index-2020/"><em>The index 2020 is here</em></a></p>




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



<h2 id="1-gutenberg-for-nocode-site-builders-and-content-creators">Gutenberg for #nocode site builders and Content Creators. </h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/bb____ross">Beatriz Fiahlo</a></strong> is a product designer at Automattic and open-source contributor, among others she worked on the new <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/02/a-new-wordpress-news/">News theme on WordPress.org</a> and the site of the <a href="https://block-museum.com">Block Museum of Art</a>. </p>



<p>In her most recent post and video, <a href="https://automattic.design/2022/03/15/designing-a-theme-in-the-wordpress-editor/"><strong>Designing a theme in the WordPress&nbsp;Editor</strong></a>, Fiahlo recounts how you can create a theme by just using the Site Editor.  &#8220;We’re finding that it’s more and more possible to design a fully-featured theme using just the Site Editor, skipping that Figma step entirely. This takes us from a rough idea to a working theme in just a matter of hours, and doesn’t require opening a code editor at all.&#8221; she wrote about the theme design process at Automattic. She also had a few tips along the way. </p>



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



<p>This week&#8217;s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9AE90TRZgQ"><strong>Gutenberg Block News</strong></a> show with <strong>Jamie Marsland l</strong>anded. First, Marsland demos the new theme export features. Go from modifying and existing theme via Styles,  to uploading it as a new theme in six steps:</p>



<ol><li>how to modify a theme, </li><li>export it via the site editor, </li><li>make three minor changes,  </li><li>re-zip it and </li><li>upload it to a website and </li><li>activate it. </li></ol>



<p>Check it out and learn about Marsland&#8217;s Theme of the Week, the review roast and more. </p>



<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9AE90TRZgQ"><img /></a>Still shot from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9AE90TRZgQ">WordPress Gutenberg News March 18th, by Jamie Marsland</a>




<p><strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/">Need a plugin .zip from Gutenberg&#8217;s master branch?</a></strong><br />Gutenberg Times provides daily build for testing and review. <br />Have you been using it? Hit reply and let me know.</p>



<p><img alt="GitHub all releases" src="https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/bph/gutenberg/total?style=for-the-badge" /></p>




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



<p><strong>Lesley Sim,</strong> founder of the Gutenberg first <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/newsletter-glue/">Newsletter Glue plugin</a> and used her on the Gutenberg Times, published an in depth tutorial on how to <a href="https://newsletterglue.com/blog/build/paid-newsletter-paid-memberships-pro/"><strong>build your own paid newsletter on WordPress with Paid Memberships Pro</strong></a>. If you ever wondered what it took to create a Substack-like tool for writers, educators and consultant, this could be your blueprint. </p>



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



<p>In the series Building Blocks, Justin Tadlock walks you through his tutorial <a href="https://wptavern.com/how-to-build-a-recipe-card-via-the-wordpress-block-editor">H</a><strong><a href="https://wptavern.com/how-to-build-a-recipe-card-via-the-wordpress-block-editor">ow To Build a Recipe Card via the WordPress Block Editor</a>.</strong> The end product is a pattern, created all with existing blocks and available to copy/paste into your site via a GitHub Gist the<em> <a href="https://gist.github.com/justintadlock/2948ca4470b5e2fe1ba70b9e999e91d2#file-wp-recipe-card-pattern-html">wp-recipe-card-pattern.html</a></em></p>



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



<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> started the 3rd round of <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/03/16/fse-program-bring-your-questions-round-three/"><strong>Full-Site Editing (FSE) Questions</strong></a>. &#8220;If possible, please focus questions specifically around WordPress 6.0 as those will be the most high impact to address ahead of this upcoming release.&#8221; she wrote. You can either submit your questions <a href="https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/fse-outreach-program-submit-fse-questions-round-three-1">via the Survey Form</a> or leave a comment on the post by<strong>&nbsp;March 30th, 2022.</strong></p>



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



<p><strong>Alex Shiels</strong> from the Meta Team just announced that <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/03/16/coming-soon-block-pattern-directory-submissions/"><strong>the Block Pattern Directory will soon be open for public submissions</strong></a>. You are invited to test the submission process before it goes live. You can create your block pattern using a stand-alone front-end block editor, using all core blocks, except theme blocks, for instance site title or tag) and dynamic, site related blocks, like a query loop. </p>



<p>Openverse is integrated as media library, and you can use images released with the Creative Commons license &#8220;CC0 license, no attribution needed&#8221;, to keep everyone out of licensing troubles. </p>



<p>Once you hit the submit button for your English block pattern, volunteer translators on the Polyglot team will make it available as well for other locales. </p>



<a href="https://wordpress.org/patterns/"><img /></a>First designers submitted <a href="https://wordpress.org/patterns/">Block Patterns to the directory</a>: Carolina Nymark and Rich Tabor. 



<p>After the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress Photos Directory</a>, the <a href="https://wordpress.org/patterns/">Block Pattern Directory</a> is another opportunity for creative people, non-developers to contribute to the WordPress community. </p>



<p>Sarah Gooding on WPTavern wrote about it in her article: <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-org-to-launch-pattern-creator-to-expand-pattern-directory"><strong>WordPress.org to </strong></a><em><a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-org-to-launch-pattern-creator-to-expand-pattern-directory"><strong>Launch Pattern Creator to Expand Pattern Directory</strong></a>. </em></p>



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



<p><strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnhSFvW6Q-o"><strong>10 WordPress Gutenberg Block Editor Tips That Save You Time</strong></a>. From disabling the pre-publish step, over the List View to the Slash command, you&#8217;ll find a great array of tips and tricks for the new and power user alike in Marsland&#8217;s video. Personally, I also enjoyed the Mac Shortcut to get a list of Emojis to use in your content 😉.</p>



<h2 id="2-developing-blocks-and-for-the-block-editor">Developing Blocks and for the block editor</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://renemorozowich.com/where-wordpress-block-plugins-used/">Where are WordPress Block Plugins used on my site?</a></strong> <strong>Rene Morozowich</strong> looked for the clues in the database and shares what sure discovered. She walks you through the process can code. </p>



<p>If you are uncomfortable with raw database tables and SQL you can also install the  plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/find-my-blocks/">Find my Blocks</a>. This plugin provides you the list of used blocks, the post, and pages, you used them on and the unique identifier of each block. You can use the search in WP-Admin &gt; All Posts enter the unique identifier string into search box, and you will get a list of posts where you used a particular block. I described the process in <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/28572#issuecomment-771092327">detail on GitHub</a>, commenting on the tracking issue for Block Manager enhancements. </p>



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



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/swissspidy">Pascal Birchler</a></strong>, core contributor at Google, explored building Gutenberg Blocks with BentoJS components. His tutorial, <a href="https://bentojs.dev/documentation/guides/bento-gutenberg-blocks-guide/">How to create WordPress Gutenberg blocks with BentoJS</a>, is part of the official BentoJS documentation. Birchler and <strong>Alain Schlesser</strong>, maintainer of WP-CLI are <a href="https://twitter.com/schlessera/status/1505110138662928384">meeting up at CloudFest in Germany</a>, to explore the use of BentoJS with the block editor.</p>



<p><em><a href="https://bentojs.dev/">BentoJS website</a> | <a href="https://github.com/swissspidy/gutenberg-bento">Pascal Birchler&#8217;s GitHub repo for the Gutenberg Carousel</a>. </em></p>



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



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/m_munirkamal">Munir Kamal</a></strong>, author of the Editor Plug plugin and founder of the Gutenberg Hub, posted a tutorial on <a href="https://gutenberghub.com/how-to-create-custom-block-category/"><strong>How to create a Custom Block Category</strong></a>, a section in the Inserter that can hold your group of blocks. </p>



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



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/BenjaminRitner"><strong>Ben Ritner</strong>,</a> founder of <a href="https://www.kadencewp.com/"><em>Kadence Theme</em></a> and now part of Liquid Web and StellarWP, was this week&#8217;s guest on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuTynYwpKAM"><strong>Torque Social Hour</strong></a> with DocPop and Nick Diego. </p>



<p>The <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/kadence-blocks/">Kadence blocks plugins</a> was available even before the block editor was merged with WordPress 5.0 and has now over 200,000 active installations. </p>



<p>On the show, Ritner discussed the realities of a WordPress theme developer and listed a few major features that he found missing in Gutenberg, before Ritner would consider it a site builder. &#8220;How there is no responsiveness in any of the Core Blocks is blowing my mind. How are we working on full site editing and not handling that key aspect of web development?&#8221; </p>



<p>Ritner also explained, why his team doesn&#8217;t yet consider making a child theme for the full-site editing experience. &#8220;It&#8217;s not ready yet&#8221;. Kadence created a design library early on, so there is no need for Block patterns in the theme. Once they create a child theme for full site editing, they will recreate some of their templates as Block Patterns. </p>



<p>These are only a few insights you get from the show. It was a candid discussion that is well worth your time. </p>



<p><strong>Speaking of responsiveness. </strong>The Gutenberg contributors have been tackling this for quite a while. You can follow along on these issues on GitHub, chime in and test. </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/34641"><strong>Responsive blocks &amp; intrinsic web design</strong></a> </li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/38167"><strong>Add a Style Engine to manage rendering block styles</strong></a>. </li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/34345"><strong>Typography Tools: Tracking tools</strong></a> </li></ul>



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



<h2 id="3-developing-themes-for-gutenberg">Developing Themes for Gutenberg</h2>



<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> discovered a <a href="https://wptavern.com/new-plugin-for-writing-wordpress-theme-json-files-via-yaml">New Plugin for Writing WordPress Theme JSON Files via YAML</a> by <strong>Sascha Paukner</strong>, a web developer from Berlin, Germany. In his article, Tadlock walks you through on how to use the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/theme-yaml/"><em>Theme YAML plugin.</em></a> For some developers YAML is an easier format than JSON. </p>



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



<p>It seems the feature of configuring the block editor via the theme.json file sparks great creativity for tooling. If you are searching for other tools check out this list: </p>



<ul><li><strong>David Dwyer&#8217;s</strong> <a href="https://www.themegen.app/"><strong>ThemeGen.app</strong></a>  with a browser interface to select all the desired options and generate your theme.json file. </li><li><strong>Carolina Nymark&#8217;s</strong> <a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/block-theme-generator/"><strong>Block Theme Generator</strong></a></li></ul>



<p>You also might be interested in our post <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/how-to-disable-theme-features-and-lock-block-templates-for-full-site-editing-in-wordpress/">How to disable theme features and Lock Block Templates for Full-Site Editing in WordPress</a></p>



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



<p><strong>Misha Rudrastyh</strong> shared their insight on <a href="https://rudrastyh.com/gutenberg/learning-full-site-editing-with-kubrick-block-theme.html"><strong>Learning Full Site Editing with Kubrick Block Theme</strong></a>. Riad Benguella rebuilt the long-time default theme as block theme. Rudrastyh&#8217;s walk explains how the pieces fit together. </p>



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



<p><strong>David Dwyer</strong> published a <a href="https://github.com/dgwyer/tailwind-blocks">demo plugin</a> how he was able to integrate the create-block script with Tailwind CSS.  Say hello to <a href="https://github.com/dgwyer/tailwind-blocks"><strong>&#8216;Tailwind Blocks&#8217;</strong></a>. The plugin started its existence with the recommended @wordpress/create-block script and auto enqueues all JS and CSS (including Tailwind styles).&nbsp;</p>



<p>In this week&#8217;s Twitch stream, <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> invited his follower &#8220;<a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1428319101"><strong>Let&#8217;s add Tailwind CSS to our custom blocks and create a create-block template for it.</strong></a>&#8221; </p>



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



<p><strong>Nyasha Green</strong> of MasterWP posted an <a href="https://masterwp.com/an-interview-with-anne-mccarthy-on-wordpresss-coolest-new-project-the-museum-of-block-art/"><strong>interview with Anne McCarthy on WordPress’s coolest new project: the Museum of Block Art</strong></a>. Green wrote about her response to the museum: <em>&#8220;Speaking for myself the best thing about this project is that it reminds us that we are artists.&nbsp; Even those us of who are not designers, or the best at Front End work.&nbsp; We still create masterpieces in the form of code, websites, apps, etc.&nbsp; I think you have created that link that makes us go to ourselves, “Hey we are making&nbsp;art!” And I for one am very grateful for it.&nbsp;&#8220;</em> </p>



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



<p>Are you interested in <a href="https://buddy.works/webinars/how-automate-gutenberg-block-in-wp-projects"><strong>Automating your Gutenberg Block development</strong>? </a>The next Buddy.works webinar will take place on March 23 at&nbsp; 17:00 PM UTC / 1 pm Eastern / 10am PT.</p>



<p>With <strong>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</strong>, Open Sourcerer @ Automattic and <strong>Maciek Palmowski</strong>, WordPress Ambassador @ Buddy.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You will learn&nbsp;</p>



<ul><li>How to start WordPress block development</li><li>How to leverage JavaScript developer tools for WordPress plugin and block development</li></ul>



<ul><li>How to automate your development workflow to maximize confidence in the codebase and monitor its health</li><li>How to configure a pipeline in Buddy to automate the development process</li></ul>



<h2 id="4-word-press-social-learning-events">WordPress Social Learning Events</h2>



<p>If you are a developer working with code, the Gutenberg Developer Hours are for you. The next event will take place&nbsp;<a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284434154/">March 22nd, 2022 16:00 UTC / noon ET.</a></p>



<a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284434154/"><img /></a><em>With Joni Halabi, Tammie Lister and Fabian Kägy</em>



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



<p><strong>March 22, 2022, at 3 am ET / 19:00 UTC</strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284320854/"><strong>Intro to Theme Blocks</strong></a>&nbsp;with Wes Theron</p>



<p><strong>March 23, 2022, at 1pm ET / 17:00 UTC</strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284383346/"><strong>Builder Basics: Exploring Block Layout, Alignment, Dimensions, and Spacing</strong>&nbsp;</a>with Nick Diego</p>



<p><strong>March 25, 2022, at 11 am EDT / 15:00 UTC </strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284679152/">Block Theme Discussions: Custom Fonts</a></strong> with Daisy Olson</p>



<p><strong>March 28, 2022, at 11 am ET / 15:00 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284387767/">Hello Blocks! Coding a custom block</a></strong>&nbsp;with Wes Theron and Ryan Welcher</p>



<p><strong>March 29, 2022, at 3 pm ET / 20:00 UTC</strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284252760/">Beginner’s Guide to Full Site Editing&nbsp;</a></strong>with Sarah Snow</p>



<p><strong>April 1, 2022, 11 am EDT / 15:00 UTC </strong><br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284700941/">Block Theme Discussions: JSON Schema</a></strong> with Daisy Olsen </p>



<p><strong>April 6, 2022, 2pm EDT / 18:00 UTC</strong> <br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284700789/"><strong>Builder Basics: Designing with Columns, Group, and Row Blocks (Part 2)</strong></a> with Nick Diego</p>



<p><strong>April 8, 2022, 11 am EDT / 15:00 UTC </strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284701015/"><strong>Block Theme Discussions: Supports in theme.json with Daisy Olsen </strong></a></p>



<p><strong>April 12, 2022 2pm EDT 18:00 UTC</strong> <br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284700822/">Builder Basics: Headers and Footers in Full Site Editing</a></strong> w/ Nick Diego</p>



<p><strong>April 15, 2022, 11 am EDT / 15:00 UTC</strong> <br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284701295/">Block Theme Discussions: Presets in theme.json</a></strong> with Daisy Olsen</p>



<p>April 19, 2022 2pm EDT / 18:00 UTC <br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284700867/">Builder Basics: Exploring Block Layout, Alignment, and Dimensions </a>(Part 2)</strong></p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator" />



<p><em>Featured image: DC Metro-ChinaTown platform by Sara Marcondes found on the WordPress photos directory </em></p>




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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:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:101:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #63 – Block Pattern Directory, WebFonts API and Gutenberg 12.8";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:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:53:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?post_type=podcast&p=20755";s: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:86:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-63-webfonts-api-gutenberg-12-8/";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:23103:"<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack and Mary Job discuss Block Pattern Directory, WebFonts API and Gutenberg 12.8.</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://icodeforapurpose.com">Birgit Pauli-Haack</a></li></ul>



<span id="more-20755"></span>



<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-63-webfonts-api-gutenberg-12-8/#shownotes">Show Notes</a> / <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-63-webfonts-api-gutenberg-12-8/#transcript">Transcript</a></p>



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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://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/03/16/fse-program-bring-your-questions-round-three/">FSE Program: Bring your questions – Round Three</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/03/16/coming-soon-block-pattern-directory-submissions/">Coming soon: Block Pattern Directory Submissions</a></li></ul>



<h2>Community Contributions</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://github.com/dgwyer/tailwind-blocks">Tailwind Blocks</a> by David Gwyer </li><li><a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1428319101">Let&#8217;s add Tailwind CSS to our custom blocks and create a create-block template for it</a> Twitch Stream with Ryan Welcher</li><li><a href="https://buddy.works/webinars/how-automate-gutenberg-block-in-wp-projects">How to automate Gutenberg block development in WP projects</a> Buddy.works</li><li><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284434154/">Gutenberg Developer Hours</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/284434154/">March 22nd, 2022 16:00 UTC / noon ET.</a></li></ul>



<h2>Gutenberg 12.8</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/16/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-8-16-march/">What’s new in Gutenberg 12.8? (16 March)</a> by Hector Prieto</li><li>Justin Tadlock <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-12-8-launches-the-web-fonts-api-improves-group-nesting-and-adds-keyboard-shortcut-for-links">Gutenberg 12.8 Launches the Web Fonts API, Improves Group Nesting, and Adds Keyboard Shortcut for Links</a></li></ul>



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



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<p class="has-large-font-size" id="transcript">Transcript</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Hello, and welcome to our 63rd episode of the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. Today we&#8217;ll talk about Block Pattern Directory, the Web Fonts API, and Gutenberg 12.8. I&#8217;m Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and WordPress developer advocate. And I&#8217;m here with my co-host, Mary Job, WordPress advocate and support engineer at Paid Memberships Pro. Good evening, Mary. How are you today?</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: I&#8217;m doing very good, Birgit. Thank you. It&#8217;s almost 9:00 P.M. my time, so that&#8217;s great.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, Friday night, that&#8217;s what you do for fun, right?</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: Yes, this is&#8230; All right, so we have a couple of announcements. Anne McCarthy published a third round of questions about full site editing experience. Now that all features for full site editing are available in a better version, what are the questions you have? If you have them, please submit them via the survey form that we&#8217;re going to share once this episode is published. You can also find it on the Make WordPress Test blog.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Awesome. Yeah. So there was a first round and a second round, and now this is the third round. And I think that it has gotten quite some improvements since the first round of questions, and the vision for full site editing becomes probably clearer and hopefully answer the questions that you have. So, Alex Shiels and the Meta team invite you to test the Block Pattern Directory, especially the submission. They have created the pattern creator page where you can then, completely with a block editor, create block patterns. So the block pattern creator page, Alex wrote, will allow designers and content creators to build, edit, and submit their best block patterns to the directory.</p>



<p>Approved patterns will be added to the directory where they will be instantly available to the authors of millions of WordPress sites. So for Alex Shiels, I did some testing and also wrote a few notes for the documentation. And it&#8217;s not yet ready for you to submit dynamic blocks or patterns for dynamic blocks, like the ones that you use for templates or header, footer, or query loop. And another caveat is that all patterns need to be submitted in English before the translators then can make them available for different locales. That&#8217;s kind of, yeah, some that are two things you need to know before you start creating your patterns, but check it out.</p>



<p>We will of course have links in the show note, or when you go to WordPress.org/meta, M-E-T-A forward slash, you see the latest page there is the invitation about the coming soon pattern submission. Only in this phase before it&#8217;s really public there is an approval process in there, but the team is actually working to make that instant so that there is no review process in there. But they&#8217;re also implementing a report process. So that&#8217;s really exciting that people can now submit their best patterns and other people can use it. There&#8217;s some great creativity going on as we saw with the block museum, block-museum.com. That came out two weeks ago. So there&#8217;s a lot of things happening on the block patterns.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: I think this is a great idea, Birgit, because it&#8217;s going to open up a chance for people to contribute more to WordPress. This is also an opportunity for people who want to contribute. It&#8217;s a good one.&nbsp;</p>



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



<p>And on community contributions, we have David Dwyer just published a demo plugin on how he was able to integrate the quick blocks with Tailwind CSS. We&#8217;re going to also put the link to this GitHub repository in the show notes to say hello to Tailwind blocks, it&#8217;s a streamlined way to develop blocks using Tailwind CSS. The plugin is scaffolded using the recommended at WordPress/script, block scripts and autos and CSS, including styles.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And I just wanted to add that Ryan Welcher this week did a live Twitch stream to create actually a template for the create block scaffolding tool for these tailwind styles. That&#8217;s also a link we will share in the show notes and let&#8217;s see how far he came with it.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: If you have a withdrawal from Grzegorz , and you are interested in automating your Gutenberg block development, put the next buddy works webinar on your calendar. It&#8217;s for March 23rd, at 1700 UTC, 1:00 PM Eastern, 10:00 AM Pacific. And it&#8217;s with Grzegorz Ziokowski, the open sorcerer at Automattic and Maciek Palmowski, WordPress ambassador at Buddy. And you will learn how to start a WebPress block development, how to leverage JavaScript developer tools for the WebPress plugin and block development and how to automate your development workflow and maximize confidence in the code and monitor itself. You also learn how to configure the pipeline of deployment with Buddy to automate the process. As always links are in the show notes and yeah, hopefully I can make it to see Grzegorz again.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: Oh yes. That&#8217;d be good to see him again. I miss him already, even though we didn&#8217;t spend so much time together on the show. So the next Gutenberg developer hours would take place on March 22nd, at 1600 UTC. At noon Eastern, you can pick part in the fourth Gutenberg developer event and meet up with Fabian Kagy, Tammie Lister and Joni Halabi on the expert panel.</p>



<h3><strong>What’s Released &#8211; WordPress 5.9.2 and Gutenberg 12.8</strong></h3>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes. Hope to see everybody there. So that brings us to the section of what&#8217;s released. And if you are on automatic updates of minor releases, WordPress 5.9.2 security and maintenance release has already landed on your site near you. And if you haven&#8217;t yet, update now, don&#8217;t wait.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: Woo commerce release also the security and maintenance version, and you can automatically update from version 3.5 to 6.3. If you don&#8217;t get the plugin automatically, please update now.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Don&#8217;t wait.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: At all.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And that brings us to Gutenberg 12.8. Hector Prieto handles the 12.8 release from release candidate to the final release this week on Wednesday, March 16th. And so there are a few enhancements, not so much particular new features. It&#8217;s not an entirely spectacular release because it&#8217;s still does some bug fixing for 5.9, but we can start with the enhancements.&nbsp;</p>



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



<p>And the navigation block has now improved loading and place holder states. And it also has improved user interface feedback for the navigation block. So it makes it easier to handle that.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: Yes, the media and text block also add announcements. You can now display the media where you are uploading the same way it works for the cover image and the other gallery images.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And that&#8217;s really interesting because then you can continue working and know that that&#8217;s uploaded. There&#8217;s also a link completer for inline links to post, and this is more for power users, but I think other people who use the keyboard quite a bit is so you can add a link to internal on your site pages and posts by just having two left square brackets in sequence. Yeah. Put them in. And then it brings up a search of modal where you can pick the page or the post that you want to link to.</p>



<p>This is very interesting and it&#8217;s really for the power users and it doesn&#8217;t put more weight on the user interface. It has a nice balance and it doesn&#8217;t affect performance. So this is a great add on to the keyboard shortcuts that we know, too. It&#8217;s an auto completer so you can kind of select things from search. It&#8217;s similar, like the slash command where you put the forward slash and then for the inserter and this is just for the links. Check it out and try it out and see how it maybe improves your speed on linking things in. It takes the link. If you select it takes the title of the page as the link text. So that saves a lot of time.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: Yes, I personally recommend if you haven&#8217;t, you should download full site. You use full site editing on the local site and practice with it and play with it, at least that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m doing before it becomes mainstream. It&#8217;s a good idea to get used to how it works, it&#8217;s sustainability, the future, WordPress, so there is no point waiting. You can test it out now and be part of the development process. The site editor also got an enhancement. You can now export app to your team expert, the theme.json file, your index, the PHP and style of CSS. This is great.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And it&#8217;s really interesting. Yeah. Now a non coder can actually create themes and with the site editor and then so under the three.menu on the right hand side and the sidebar where you also go to the code editor or change the top toolbar kind of thing, there&#8217;s also now in the site editor, a menu items that has export and you click on it and then it grabs everything into the theme.json, the index PHP, styles as all, and other files that are in the current theme and downloads it as a zip file to your hard drive. And then you could make just some changes on the styles CSS and give it a new name, zip it again, and upload it. That is kind of the first process of having these no code theme development or theme designers work with the site editor at that. It will be quite have an impact on the WordPress ecosystem.</p>



<p>I also wanted to give a shout out to Jamie Marsland. Just before I headed into the recording of this Changelog, I saw his new Gutenberg block news show on YouTube. And he&#8217;s in his show from March 18th, he&#8217;s actually demoing the exact process on how to export and import the theme that you create with the site editor. So it&#8217;s a fantastic video and of course we link it in the show notes, but just should subscribe to Jamie Marsland&#8217;s YouTube channel because he comes out every Friday with this new news show and shows you a few things that are new in the WordPress in the block editor.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: I think this is great because it means that you don&#8217;t have to recreate your design every time as a person who is no code. You don&#8217;t have to recreate your design every time you&#8217;re trying to build a site. You could just start with the templates that you already have and then take it from there.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Exactly, exactly. It&#8217;s a great tooling for site builders that work with clients and that have that want to streamline their process. Yes.</p>



<h3><strong>New APIs</strong></h3>



<p>So what&#8217;s also in there and is the new webfonts API finally landed in Gutenberg then that has been in the works for quite a while. And does API is the first step in helping people to load fonts in a performance friendly and privacy friendly, future proof manner. Something that has been very difficult before and with the few weeks left until the WordPress 6.0 beta release, it would be really helpful to give it a wheel, test this API for your sites, especially theme developers, and also plug-in developers. The tooling still needs to be built. The UI is meant the user interface. So, but it&#8217;s definitely good to have it in there so it will land in WordPress 6.0. Yeah, go get the 12.8 and start working on it for testing on your site or others.</p>



<p>What also is new in Gutenberg? And it doesn&#8217;t have any ramification for a user, but for contributors, it definitely makes life easier because the WordPress preference panel has been isolated into a package and then all the editors use the same preference panel. So there&#8217;s some code reuse and some streamlining of the editor handling. So the widget editor, the site editor, the post editor and the standalone editor can now use this preference panel exclusively. So that is definitely&#8230; So the preferences are the things like, do you want to have the two step publish process? Do you want the toolbar on top? They are which blocks are enabled or disabled. This is definitely a step towards something that has been on the wishlist of a lot of people using the editor that the choices that you make are not going to go away when you delete the cache off your browser or close the browser and it&#8217;s emptied. And when you come in again, it shows you the welcome guide again, and you have to do some of the preferences, put them in again.</p>



<p>And having that in one package now is the first step to kind of, for the contributers to figure out how those choices can actually be persistent, like being in the user meta panel or something like that. So this is definitely a progression. I know that that has been on the wishlist for definitely three years, if not four, of many people, that those selections are actually persistent. There is a plugin actually out there by Mario Jensen, who has the preference all make them persistent in the user meta fields. I&#8217;ll share the link again in the show notes, just so those can kind of bridge the times waiting for that to land in core.</p>



<p>We talked about the create block scripts before. There is another item in the Changelog that the script now supports more plugin held head of fields to add additional information to the plugin that comes out of it. So that is definitely an additional step there.</p>



<p>Speaking of create blocks, there&#8217;s also a new confirmed problem for showing the plugin options. So you can type them in and also improve the custom project template configuration that how you integrate your own custom templates with the scaffolding tool. The release shows all the different ways how this works now. And I&#8217;m sure either Ryan Welcher or some other developer will walk us through what that exactly means, but for now, know it&#8217;s in the Gutenberg plugin, 12.8.</p>



<p>Does that conclude our release today? Yes, it does. There are certainly a few code quality PRs that contributors might want to look at. And also for some tools, especially testing, there have been some changes there and build tool that just has some minor fixes. Yeah. So, that&#8217;s the end. Well, thank you. It was that big of a release as we had before, but anything that kind of jumped at you, Mary, that you want to talk about that we haven&#8217;t yet?</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: Oh, I think we&#8217;ve pretty much covered everything for this episode.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes. And before we end the show, I want to remind everyone the Gutenberg Developer hours, the next one is on March 22nd, at 1600 UTC on Meetup for registration. And if you listen to this at a later date, I know a few people kind of binge listen to this, but kind of weeks later, so check out the Meetup group, WordPress Social Learning, because there are where the Gutenberg Developer events happen are announced. That&#8217;s also where other social learning discussions happen like Nick Diego does some builder building blocks series. Ryan Welcher does some create block tutorials, beginners ones, and then also for no code site builders, there are additional tutorials on there and discussions. All right.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: Yes. And if you want to join in for my side of the continent, that will be 10:00 PM, 10 to 11, say between nine to 11:00 PM our time. You should definitely join in. I look forward to seeing you there. As always, the show notes are there.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Oh, sorry.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Good point. Thank you very much for pointing that out. So, I just want to recap the Gutenberg Developer hours are actually&#8230; We scheduled four events as a trial. There was a proposal at the core make blog in October, and we finally got it implemented to have four events trial. And as it turns out, we probably will have more events. So there will also be to better times for other time zones. Yeah. So for Europeans, it&#8217;s definitely relatively late and it&#8217;s also, I don&#8217;t even know what the time it would be for the Asia Pacific people, but we definitely will schedule different dates and also different time for different time zones, the future ones. We might take a break in April, but then in May, we will start out with new Gutenberg Developer hours in all different time zones.</p>



<p>And if you are a practitioner, you work for an agency as a block developer or a site builder or build themes, and you want to be part of our expert panel that answers the questions from the audience, it&#8217;s totally audience driven event. So the people that attend, give us the questions sometimes ahead of time. We sort through them and then say, okay, these are all the questions for block development and these are all the questions for theme development. And these are all the questions that are more conceptual or architectural. And then we work through them and have a discussion about them amongst the panel or with the people in the audience. It&#8217;s a meeting style rather than a webinar style. So yeah. Join us either on March 22nd or when we have the next one on schedule. Sorry. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: That would be great. That would be great, Birgit because, so there&#8217;s a saying where I come from that it&#8217;s very difficult to please everyone. And I know that it commits is trying. Cracking time zone is very tricky, so we definitely understand, but we will do what we can to make it better and to be able to set everyone. As always the show notes for our episodes, they will be published GutenbergTimes.com/podcasts. And if you have questions or suggestions or news you want us to include, send them to <a href="mailto:Changelog@GutenbergTimes.com">Changelog@GutenbergTimes.com</a>. That&#8217;s <a href="mailto:Changelog@GutenbergTimes.com">Changelog@GutenbergTimes.com</a>.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Wow. Thank you so much, Mary. And this is it for me. This is episode 63. And just in case you&#8217;re looking for it on the podcast website, you all have a great time and I&#8217;ll talk to you in two weeks. Thank you.</p>



<p><em>Mary Job</em>: Thank 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:"Sat, 19 Mar 2022 18:23:29 +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: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: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:90:"WPTavern: WordPress Community Team Reconsiders Guidelines for In-Person Regional WordCamps";s: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=131608";s: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:101:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-community-team-reconsiders-guidelines-for-in-person-regional-wordcamps";s: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:6160:"<p>The pandemic has dramatically slashed the number of in-person WordPress events that volunteers are organizing and events have been slow to start up again. This has caused the WordPress Community Team to reconsider the guidelines for hosting regional WordCamps.</p>



<p>Historically, these guidelines have generated lengthy discussions, as many vocal opponents found them to be needlessly prohibitive. WordCamps began as local, city-based events, and organizers were not allowed to put together a regional WordCamp without jumping through a lot of extra requirements. These included having experienced event organizers that represent all WordPress communities in the region. The <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/wordcamp-organizer/become-an-organizer/regional-wordcamps/">guidelines</a> state:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Before applying to organize a regional WordCamp, there should be at least 3 cities in your region (but very possibly more) with a local group that meets monthly, and that have hosted at least one WordCamp. The size of your region (in geography and population) will affect the expected number of established communities.</p></blockquote>



<p>In 2017, WordPress Community Support (WCS) <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-community-support-shuts-down-wordcamp-netherlands-in-favor-of-city-based-wordcamps">shut down WordCamp Netherlands</a> in favor of city-based WordCamps, sending the Dutch community <a href="https://twitter.com/roytanck/status/847365810506969089">into</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jrf_nl/status/847470162496241664">an</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/nielsvr/status/847384382541148161">uproar</a>. The region, which is roughly the size of Maryland, had successfully held six editions of WordCamp Netherlands before WCS decided not to approve its application. </p>



<p>The camp was <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordcamp-netherlands-reinstated-for-2018">reinstated in 2018</a> after organizers agreed to meet additional requirements in the guidelines outlined above. This was not without a significant struggle, as the project moved to shed its “one-size-fits-all” approach to WordPress events. WordCamp Netherlands is once again on the schedule for 2022 as an in-person event. </p>



<p>In 2017, WordPress Community Manager Hugh Lashbrooke proposed the idea of <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2017/11/10/discussion-micro-regional-wordcamps/">micro-regional WordCamps</a>, which makes exceptions to the meetup requirements for regional camps in situations where neighboring cities share meetup organization responsibilities. The idea received widespread support, as it makes sense in certain instances.</p>



<p>&#8220;Exception is the keyword here,&#8221; WordCamp Netherlands organizer Marcel Bootsman said at the time. &#8220;If these local communities are active and healthy, let them organize a WordCamp. Be happy with the fact that people want to organize.&#8221; </p>



<p>WordPress is slowly coming around to this idea &#8211; that volunteer-run events thrive better with more flexible guidelines that allow for cultural and geographical differences.</p>



<p>In 2020, the Community team <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/24/community-events-in-the-time-of-covid-19/">relaxed a number of guidelines</a>, including some for regional online WordCamps, in order to help keep communities connected during a difficult time.</p>



<p>&#8220;This resulted in a bunch of online regional WordCamps in<a href="https://centroamerica.wordcamp.org/2021/"> Centroamerica</a>,  <a href="https://greece.wordcamp.org/2021/">Greece</a>, <a href="https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/">Finland</a>, <a href="https://india.wordcamp.org/2021/">India</a>, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://italia.wordcamp.org/2021/" target="_blank">Italy</a>, <a href="https://japan.wordcamp.org/2021/">Japan</a>, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://spain.wordcamp.org/2021/" target="_blank">Spain</a>, and Taiwan, among others,&#8221; Community Team Representative Hari Shanker said. &#8220;These events were quite successful in bringing together local communities even despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.&#8221;</p>



<p>Now that WordPress events have taken a hard hit, the Community Team is considering loosening these restrictions for in-person regional events. </p>



<p>&#8220;Some local communities have also approached WordCamp Central, expressing their interest in organizing regional events,&#8221; Shanker said. &#8220;At this time, our organizers are still encouraged to plan smaller city-based WordCamps over larger regional events (especially in the light of COVID restrictions that are still in place in many regions). However, I strongly feel that the Community Team should revisit the existing guidelines for regional events due to a renewed interest in the same.&#8221;</p>



<p>Shanker is asking for feedback on the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/03/17/discussion-revisiting-in-person-regional-wordcamps/">discussion</a> before April 4, 2022. A few contributors and organizers have already weighed in.</p>



<p>&#8220;Switzerland is such a small country that having separate WordCamps for Geneva, Lausanne, Bern and Zurich seems to be unnecessarily complicated,&#8221; Mark Howells-Mead said. &#8220;By re-establishing WordCamp Switzerland – which takes place in a different city each time and which was organized as a regional event until 2015 – we can better ensure that the visibility of the event and repetitive work can be more efficiently organized.&#8221;</p>



<p>Marcel Bootsman once again called on the Community Team to use common sense as a guide when evaluating whether a region is fit to host a WordCamp.</p>



<p>&#8220;We’ve had quite a few discussions about regional WordCamps in The Netherlands,&#8221; Bootsman said. &#8220;Let me just say I’m happy WCNL is back on the agenda, and I hope regional/local (city based) WordCamps are evaluated according to the country geographical size, and the feedback of the people organizing them.&#8221;</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, 19 Mar 2022 04:44:09 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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: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:68:"WPTavern: New Plugin for Writing WordPress Theme JSON Files via YAML";s: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=131662";s: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://wptavern.com/new-plugin-for-writing-wordpress-theme-json-files-via-yaml";s: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:4156:"<p class="has-drop-cap">I have a new favorite WordPress development-related plugin: <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/theme-yaml/">Theme YAML</a>. Sascha Paukner released it a mere day ago, and it may find its place in many theme developers&#8217; toolboxes before long. It allows themers to write theme JSON in <a href="https://yaml.org/">YAML format</a>.</p>



<p>To use, theme authors only need to create a new <code>theme.yaml</code> file and begin adding their custom configuration in the human-friendly YAML format. The plugin will convert it into JSON and save it to the <code>theme.json</code> file.</p>



<p>As someone who has had his fair share of headaches writing directly in JSON, I have never been happier to look at the following in my code editor:</p>



<img />



<p><em>That is pretty.</em></p>



<p>I just wish I had thought of this plugin idea first. I routinely work with YAML files when dealing with other systems and convert the data to PHP and JSON. It just made sense as soon as I saw the plugin description.</p>



<p>JSON is not the easiest-to-write format when dealing with configuration files, which is what the <code>theme.json</code> file is. It works well for cross-language data storage, but I sometimes cringe when opening a JSON file to type in, especially if it has 100s or 1,000s of lines. Plus, you cannot leave inline comments to remind yourself or others why a particular decision was made or a setting configured.</p>



<p>Is YAML better? It has its pros and cons, and in my experience, parts of the syntax can become complex for the unfamiliar. However, supporting inline comments alone is worth it.</p>



<p>The plugin&#8217;s documentation was bare-bones at best. It said nothing about how it worked under the hood. I had questions. <em>Is there a setting for the conversion? Is it automatic? Does it happen on every page load?</em></p>



<p>I peaked under the hood so that you do not have to. The plugin automatically searches for a <code>theme.yaml</code> file in the active theme&#8217;s root folder when a page is loaded. If found, it will check its last modified time and store the value in the database. If there are new modifications, the plugin parses <code>theme.yaml</code>, converts it to JSON, and writes it to the <code>theme.json</code> file.</p>



<p>If the active theme is a child, it will also automatically run through this process for its parent.</p>



<p>The downside to the plugin is that it leaves the resulting JSON minified, which is tough to read. This is OK when you have the <code>theme.yaml</code> file on hand. However, when submitting to the WordPress.org theme directory, this &#8220;build&#8221; file would typically be something a theme author would not bundle in their theme ZIP.</p>



<p>I firmly believe in shipping code that is readable and editable to whoever receives a copy. There are a couple of options for theme authors to do this. They can ship both the <code>theme.json</code> and <code>theme.yaml</code> files or change the following code in the plugin&#8217;s main file:</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>$themeJson = json_encode($themeObject, JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES);</code></pre>



<p>We merely need to toggle on the <code>JSON_PRETTY_PRINT</code> flag for the <a href="https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.json-encode.php"><code>json_encode()</code> function</a>:</p>



<pre class="wp-block-code"><code>$themeJson = json_encode($themeObject, JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES | JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);</code></pre>



<p>I hope the plugin developer will consider this change in a future version or allow theme authors to filter it.</p>



<p>There are other solutions for theme authors who shy away from <code>theme.json</code>. I have split my JSON into manageable chunks across multiple files in the past. Then, I used a <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/merge-jsons-webpack-plugin">webpack plugin for merging them</a> during my watch/build process.</p>



<p>I recommend using the <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/js-yaml">JS YAML Parser</a> or a similar package for those who prefer YAML but want integration with their build system.</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, 19 Mar 2022 03:32:36 +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: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:64:"Akismet: How to Create a Custom WordPress User Registration Form";s: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=2316";s: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://blog.akismet.com/2022/03/18/how-to-create-a-custom-wordpress-user-registration-form/";s: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:22325:"<p>Converting visitors into registered users is a big win for any website. If you’re going to build a loyal community, a quick and easy user registration form is essential.</p>



<p>Fortunately, there are various ways to create a custom WordPress user registration form. With the right tool, you should have no problems capturing leads, building your mailing list, and reaping the many other benefits of user registrations.</p>



<p>In this post, we’ll discuss why registration forms play a huge role in running a successful website. We’ll then cover four ways to create an effective form.</p>



<span id="more-2316"></span>



<h2>An introduction to user registration forms</h2>



<p>Internet users typically create accounts with websites by entering their personal information into registration forms. You’ll find these forms across the web, including on forums, online job boards, membership websites and social media sites.</p>



<p>An admin can create user accounts in the WordPress dashboard by navigating to <strong>Users → Add New</strong>, but this process requires time and effort, especially if you have thousands of users.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The admin also needs to know all of the user’s personal information and assign them a password. This can become a security vulnerability if the new member doesn’t change their login information immediately.</p>



<img />



<p>By creating a public user registration form, you can significantly reduce your admin’s workload. You can also <a href="https://jetpack.com/features/security/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">improve your website’s security</a> since the admin doesn’t know the passwords for the user accounts.</p>



<p>Additionally, if you offer memberships, a quick and easy registration form is essential for capturing leads and driving conversions. You might even generate a profit by charging your members.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Many online stores also use registration forms to encourage brand loyalty. After completing the signup process, customers may be more inclined to visit your store again.</p>



<p>In addition, many registration forms collect personal information, like customer postal addresses. You can then use this data to auto-complete subsequent forms. This feature can improve the checkout experience, potentially reducing <a href="https://woocommerce.com/posts/fewer-abandoned-carts-more-sales-nine-proven-strategies" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cart abandonment rates</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You might even use this information to target visitors with personalized content, advertisements, or email marketing. For instance, you could create targeted email campaigns.</p>



<p>These segmented campaigns typically deliver <a href="https://mailchimp.com/resources/effects-of-list-segmentation-on-email-marketing-stats/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">74.53 percent higher click rates</a> than non-segmented ones. Your targeted campaigns may include exclusive coupon codes for products that customers have previously purchased. The emails could also include new blog posts that subscribers may be interested in reading.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Overview of 4 different ways to create a custom WordPress user registration form</h2>



<p>Now that we’ve explored the pros and cons of each approach, let’s see some solutions in action. Here are four different ways to create a custom user registration form for your WordPress website!</p>



<h3>1. The WordPress built-in user registration form</h3>



<p>You can create a basic user registration form with WordPress built-in settings. This feature is quick and easy to set up and requires no extensive configuration.</p>



<img />



<p>Note that the built-in WordPress registration form simply collects a user’s email address and password. You can’t add more fields without diving into your site’s code. This means that you miss out on capturing important information.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For example, if you’re running an eCommerce site, you may want to record a visitor’s postal address. It isn’t possible to get this data with the WordPress built-in registration form, potentially impacting the effectiveness of your membership functionality.</p>



<p>The built-in registration form will also appear on a separate page, without an easy way to change its location. For a more seamless user experience, many sites choose to embed registration forms within their content. They may even add the feature to recurring areas, like the website footer.</p>



<p>Featuring this form alongside your site’s content is a great way to encourage signups. This isn’t possible using WordPress built-in features unless you’re willing to edit your website at the code level.</p>



<h3>2. A custom-coded user registration form</h3>



<p>As an open-source platform, WordPress gives you complete access to its source code. This openness lets you extend the core software and add extra features.</p>



<p>If you’re comfortable editing WordPress at the code level, it’s possible to customize the built-in registration form. This option has more flexibility without weighing down your site.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It can also help you control the data that customers enter into your forms. This is particularly true when comparing this method to using a third-party plugin or external form-building tool.</p>



<p>Note that writing custom code requires a considerable amount of technical knowledge. Editing WordPress at the code level can also be risky. For example, if you make a mistake, you could take down your site or cause conflicts with existing themes, plugins, or WordPress core. Or you could even create a security vulnerability that hackers might take advantage of.</p>



<p>To minimize the dangers, we recommend implementing all of your changes through a site-specific plugin. You can then deactivate this plugin if it causes issues on your website.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Still, it’s wise to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://jetpack.com/2021/11/11/how-to-back-up-your-wordpress-site" target="_blank">create a full backup</a> before making any changes at the code level and test them on a <a href="https://jetpack.com/2022/02/23/create-a-staging-website-on-wordpress/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">staging site</a> so you can spot and resolve issues before rolling out changes to a live site.</p>



<h3>3. Third-party tools&nbsp;</h3>



<p>You can also offer user registration with a third-party tool like <a href="https://www.google.com/forms/about/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Forms</a>. Typically you’d be able to share the same form across multiple locations and platforms by opting for a cloud-based service.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For example, you might embed the form in your WordPress website, email marketing campaigns, and social media pages.</p>



<img />



<p>With cloud-based platforms, you can often view your responses in a single, centralized location. This setup can make it easier to analyze your results and share them with your team members.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Still, it may be difficult to seamlessly integrate third-party forms with your website. You’ll also need to ensure the form perfectly complement’s your site’s branding.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And not all third-party form builders are correctly optimized for mobile, including some big names like Google Forms. This limitation means that people visiting your site on mobile devices may not have the best user experience. With <a href="https://www.statista.com/topics/779/mobile-internet/#dossierKeyfigures" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">over 90 percent</a> of the global internet population using a mobile device to go online, a lack of form optimization is a significant drawback.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Depending on your chosen tool, third-party forms may also negatively impact your site’s speed. This is bad news for conversion rates and your website’s overall performance.</p>



<h3>4. Form builder plugins&nbsp;</h3>



<p>You can also create a wide range of custom WordPress user registrations forms with a plugin. These tools often give you complete control over your form’s design and the type of information you collect.</p>



<p>Some plugins can impact your site’s performance or conflict with other software. So, we recommend <a href="https://jetpack.com/2021/03/16/how-to-select-the-best-wordpress-plugins" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">researching potential plugins</a> carefully.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you’re downloading the plugin from the official WordPress repository, then you can check out its most recent reviews.&nbsp;</p>



<img />



<p>We recommend paying special attention to the most recent feedback. A plugin may have a positive average star rating, but an influx of recent negative reviews can indicate an issue with the latest release.</p>



<h2>How to enable user registration in WordPress</h2>



<p>Before you can start accepting registrations on your site’s front-end, you’ll need to enable signups on the back-end.&nbsp;</p>



<p>To do this, navigate to <strong>Settings → General</strong>. Now, find the <strong>Membership</strong> section, and select the accompanying <strong>Anyone can register</strong><em> </em>checkbox.</p>



<img />



<p>While you’re here, you can configure the role for new signups. This setting restricts the actions members can perform on your site and the data they can access.&nbsp;</p>



<p>To keep your site secure, it’s wise not to automatically assign roles that give visitors elevated privileges, like<em> </em>Author or Editor. Instead, consider using Subscriber.</p>



<img />



<p>After making these changes, click on <strong>Save Changes</strong>. WordPress is now ready to accept signups, so the next step is giving visitors a way to register with your site.</p>



<h2>How to create a user registration form in WordPress</h2>



<p>Many websites offer membership functionality. With this in mind, it’s unsurprising that there are multiple ways to create a user registration form in WordPress. Here are four options:</p>



<h3>1. Use the built-in WordPress user registration form</h3>



<p>Out of the box, WordPress has everything you need to add a basic registration form to your website. The form page is similar to the standard WordPress login screen for accessing the admin dashboard. Although it appears on a separate page, you can link to it from any widget-enabled area on your website.&nbsp;</p>



<p>To create this link, navigate to <strong>Appearance</strong><em> </em>→<em> </em><strong>Widgets</strong>. Now, find the area where you want to add the <strong>Register</strong> URL, like <strong>Footer Column 1</strong> or <strong>Below Header</strong>. Then, click on this section to expand it.</p>



<img />



<p>Now, select the <strong>+</strong> icon and search for the <strong>Meta </strong>widget. When it appears, give it a click.</p>



<img />



<p>To save your changes, click on <strong>Update</strong>. Now, if you check out your site’s front-end, you should notice a brand-new <strong>Register</strong> link.</p>



<p>Clicking on this link will take visitors to a separate page with WordPress’ built-in user registration form. If the person already has an account, they can select the widget’s <strong>Log In</strong> URL instead. This will take them to a similar form to sign into their account.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>2. Write custom code</h3>



<p>It’s impossible to edit the built-in registration form using the standard WordPress tools and interface. Fortunately, you can edit the registration page with <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/hooks/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordPress hooks</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Hooks are functions that you can apply to any Action or Filter. WordPress will perform Actions when a specific event occurs. In contrast, Filters can modify certain functions.</p>



<p>To customize the WordPress built-in registration form, it’s a good idea to make your own site-specific plugin. It will contain all of your custom code.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Placing all of this functionality in a separate plugin can ensure that you don’t lose your modifications whenever you update your site’s theme. This setup will also make it easier to activate and deactivate the registration form feature if required.</p>



<p>To start, connect to your server via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) using a <a href="https://filezilla-project.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">client like FileZilla</a>. Once you’ve made this connection, navigate to your site’s<em> /wp-content/plugins/</em> folder.</p>



<img />



<p>Create a new file with a descriptive name like <em>registration.php</em>. Next, open this file in your computer’s default text editor.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You can now implement all of your hooks. This step will vary depending on the user data you want to collect. You’ll find a demo over at the <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Customizing_the_Registration_Form" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WordPress Codex</a>, plus a breakdown of some of the hooks you may want to use.</p>



<h3>3. Embed a Google Form&nbsp;</h3>



<p>There are various third-party form creation tools. Google Forms is a popular option that stores all data in your Google Drive account, where it’s easily accessible.&nbsp;</p>



<p>To create a custom WordPress user registration form, head to the <a href="https://www.google.com/forms/about/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Forms website</a>. You can then either make your form from scratch or use one of Google’s ready-made templates.</p>



<p>To start, give your form a descriptive title. You can then add fields using the<strong> </strong><strong><em>+</em></strong> icon.</p>



<img />



<p>If you’re creating a long registration form, you may want to group your questions into sections. You can achieve this with the <strong>Add Section</strong> icon.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Before visitors can sign up, you’ll need to make your form public. In the upper-right corner, click on the three dots, and then select <strong>Add Collaborators</strong>.</p>



<img />



<p>In the subsequent popup, click on <strong>Change</strong>. You can now make this form accessible to anyone who visits your website.</p>



<p>Next, select the <strong>Send</strong> button. This opens a popup containing an embed link:</p>



<img />



<p>To add this form to your website, copy the embed code. Then, switch to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to the page or post where you want to use this form. You can then open the page and insert a new <strong>Custom HTML</strong> block.</p>



<img />



<p>Paste your embed code into this block. You can now update or publish this page, and your form will be ready to accept registrations.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Finally, head back to Google Forms and open your user registration form to view your responses. From here, select the <strong>Responses</strong><em> </em>tab, and you can see all of the submitted information.</p>



<h3>4. Use the Contact Form 7 plugin</h3>



<p>When it comes to WordPress, there’s a plugin for almost everything — and building a user registration form is no exception. You can create a wide range of forms using <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Contact Form 7</a>.</p>



<p>After activating this plugin, navigate to <strong>Contact → Add New</strong>. Now, give your form a descriptive name.</p>



<p>Contact Form 7 automatically creates fields for collecting the user’s name and email address. It also adds a space for them to write a message and a subject line. Since we’re creating a user registration form, you’ll likely want to delete those last two fields.</p>



<img />



<p>If you want to collect more information, you can add extra fields. For instance, you might want to give visitors the option to create a username.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The easiest method is to copy/paste a section of the pre-existing field code. You can then modify the <strong>Label</strong>, which is displayed to the user. Finally, change the<em> </em><strong>text*</strong> value, which is only visible on your site’s back-end.</p>



<img />



<p>Alternatively, you can create fields with the buttons above the main editor, like <strong>email, URL</strong>, or <strong>tel</strong>. Clicking on any of these buttons will launch a popup where you can configure your field:</p>



<img />



<p>By default, submissions are sent to the email address associated with your WordPress admin account. You can change this by selecting the <strong>Mail</strong> tab. You can also customize the text included in Contact Form 7’s messages.&nbsp;</p>



<img />



<p>When you’re happy with your form, click on <strong>Save</strong>. Then, copy the provided shortcode and navigate to the page or post where you want to embed this form. Here, insert a new Shortcode block.</p>



<img />



<p>Paste the embed code into the <strong>Shortcode</strong> block. Your custom user registration form should now appear on your website.</p>



<h2>How to protect your WordPress registration forms</h2>



<p>Malicious third parties often try to exploit user registration forms. In fact, <a href="https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2019/11/07/cybercriminals-testing-exposed-credentials/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">one in five account registrations</a> is fraudulent. If hackers create an account on your site, they might use it to launch more sophisticated attacks or even flood your website with spam. With this danger in mind, securing your registration against attackers is essential.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>1. Use an anti-spam tool</h3>



<p><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/">Akismet</a> works in the background, so it doesn’t interrupt the user experience or require any complicated setup. If you’re using a contact form plugin for your registration form — <a href="https://contactform7.com/spam-filtering-with-akismet/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">like Contact Form 7</a> — Akismet can run submissions against a global database of known spam. That means that you won’t have to deal with spammers and hackers on your forms; Akismet will take care of everything for you.</p>



<h3>2. Change your form URL</h3>



<p>If your form is located at an obvious URL, you may want to consider moving it. This new location makes it more difficult for hackers to find your form with automated bots.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You can modify the default WordPress user registration form URL with a plugin like <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wps-hide-login/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WPS Hide Login</a>.</p>



<h3>3. Set up automated email authentication</h3>



<p>If you only expect a small number of registrations, your admin may be able to review each submission manually. Still, this isn&#8217;t feasible for all websites.&nbsp;</p>



<p>If you receive many submissions, performing automated email authentication using a plugin like <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/user-verification/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">User Verification</a> may make more sense. This tool enables you to respond to incoming registrations by sending verification emails to the addresses associated with those submissions. Users can then confirm their identities by clicking on authentication links.</p>



<h3>4. Use a honeypot or CAPTCHA</h3>



<p>Another option is protecting your form with a honeypot verification field or a <a href="https://blog.akismet.com/2021/12/23/do-captcha-and-recaptcha-protect-wordpress-sites-from-bots/">CAPTCHA/reCAPTCHA</a>, using a plugin like <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-captcha/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reCaptcha by BestWebSoft</a>. These tools are specifically designed to stop bots in their tracks.</p>



<h3>5. Limit access based on location</h3>



<p>If your website has strong ties to a particular location, you might even restrict access based on the user’s geographical area, using <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/ip2location-redirection/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">IP2Location Redirection</a>.</p>



<p>All of these techniques can help to keep your registration form safe. Still, you can also benefit from having a <a href="https://akismet.com/">professional spam detection plugin</a> in your corner.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>6. Prevent brute force attacks</h3>



<p>Brute force attacks occur when hackers use bots to try thousands of username and password combinations until they gain access to your website. Once a hacker gets into your site, they can use it for whatever malicious purpose they have in mind.&nbsp;</p>



<p>To protect your registration forms, you’ll want to enable <a href="https://jetpack.com/features/security/brute-force-attack-protection/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">brute force attack prevention</a> with a plugin like Jetpack. It automatically blocks malicious actors before they even reach your site, and keeps hackers from gaining access or slowing things down due to repeated login attempts.&nbsp;</p>



<h2>Drive conversions with WordPress user registration forms&nbsp;</h2>



<p>Getting people to your site is no easy task, but convincing them to stay can be even more difficult. By offering user registrations, you boost your chances of transforming one-time visitors into loyal, repeat members.</p>



<p>Let’s quickly recap four ways to create a WordPress user registration form:</p>



<ol><li>Use the built-in WordPress user registration form.</li><li>Write custom code.</li><li>Embed a <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Form</a>.</li><li>Use the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Contact Form 7</a> plugin.&nbsp;</li></ol>



<p>With one of these methods, you should have no problem making a quick, convenient, and high-converting registration form. This feature then opens up a world of possibilities, including email marketing, retargeting campaigns, and personalized advertising.&nbsp;</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 18 Mar 2022 15:21:59 +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:13:"Simon Keating";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:35:"Post Status: Post Status Notes #490";s: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=94564";s: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:45:"https://poststatus.com/post-status-notes-490/";s: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:12972:"<p class="has-medium-font-size">Newfold acquires YITH, Hostopia. Wordfence stops FastOrSlow.com. DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks. Tips and tricks for WordPress devs.</p>



<p class="has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background"><strong>Courtney</strong> has <a href="https://poststatus.com/this-week-at-wordpress-org-march-14-2022/">the week's news from the people making WordPress</a> at .org. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f3d7.png" alt="🏗" class="wp-smiley" /> Check out <strong>David</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://poststatus.com/wordpress-podcast-and-video-picks-for-the-week-of-march-14/">podcast and video picks</a> for the week. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f399.png" alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" /> Have you found greater <a href="https://poststatus.com/the-misanthropic-dev-a-tonic-for-toxic-positivity/">benefits or costs from being assertive in your workplace</a>? <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/270b.png" alt="✋" class="wp-smiley" /> Would WordPress benefit from <a href="https://poststatus.com/would-wordpress-benefit-from-public-relations-messaging-around-security-issues/">public relations messaging around security issues</a>? <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f914.png" alt="🤔" class="wp-smiley" /> Tell us what you think! We want to hear your take.</p>


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<h2 id="joost-exploring">Joost Exploring Projects Beyond Yoast</h2>



<p><strong>Joost de Valk</strong> <a href="https://joost.blog/new-role-at-yoast/">is transitioning to a different role</a> at <strong>Yoast</strong>. He says he is &#8220;spreading his wings&#8221; in anticipation of pursuing other dreams &#8220;outside of Yoast.&#8221; He states he's not leaving <strong>Yoast</strong> but possibly devoting attention to other companies he's invested in:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>My ambitions outside of Yoast were my main personal reason for <a href="https://joost.blog/yoast-joins-newfold/">selling Yoast</a>. I really was getting bored. After our sale to Newfold, Yoast is running rather smoothly without me interfering on a daily basis.</p></blockquote>


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<h2 id="newfold-acquires">Newfold Acquires YITH and Australian Hostopia</h2>



<p>This week, <strong>Newfold Digital</strong> <a href="https://poststatus.com/the-woo-snippet-this-week-in-woocommerce-march-14/">announced it has acquired <strong>YITH</strong> and their team</a>. YITH bills itself as the &#8220;#1 Independent Seller of <strong>WooCommerce Plugins</strong>.&#8221; It is the biggest WooCommerce marketplace alternative and competitor to <strong>WooCommerce.com</strong>. </p>



<p>Last week, Newfold expanded its portfolio by acquiring <a href="https://hostopia.com.au/">Hostopia Australia</a> for <a href="https://tcbmag.com/deluxe-to-sell-australia-operations-to-newfold-digital-for-23m/">$23 Million</a> (USD). Hostopia was founded in 1999 and acquired by <strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluxe_Corporation">Deluxe</a></strong> in 2008; <a href="https://www.crn.com.au/news/australian-hosting-provider-digital-pacific-acquired-by-hostopia-for-52-million-470804">it acquired another Australian host</a>, <strong>Digital Pacific</strong>, for $52 Million (USD) in 2017. (Digital Pacific was itself a consolidator of other regional hosting companies.) Only the Australian arm of Hostopia is being acquired by Newfold.</p>



<p>Hostopia's website describes it as &#8220;delivering a white-label platform for Deluxe's suite of small business solutions.&#8221; Deluxe (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Stock_Exchange">NYSE</a>:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nyse.com/quote/XNYS:DLX">DLX</a>) is a US-based publicly-traded international company focused on small business needs. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Deluxe dates back to the origins of the personal checkbook and adapted in the digital era to payment processing and fintech. </p>



<p class="has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background">There have been <a href="https://poststatus.com/acquisitions/">nine acquisitions in 2022</a> within the WordPress space to date.</p>


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<h2 id="digitalocean-acquires">DigitalOcean Acquires CSS-Tricks</h2>



<p>This was a bit of a surprise: <strong>CSS-Tricks</strong> <a href="https://css-tricks.com/css-tricks-is-joining-digitalocean/">is being acquired</a> by <strong>DigitalOcean</strong>. CSS-Tricks (currently running on WordPress) has been a popular source of CSS (and at times WordPress) information for 15 years. Founder <strong>Chris Coyier</strong> said he &#8220;will be working with the DigitalOcean team as an advisor as we transition CSS-Tricks to DigitalOcean’s management,&#8221; but then he will &#8220;step back to focus on my other projects.&#8221;</p>



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<p class="has-small-font-size">Maybe it's not so surprising. This week, I received an email from Digital Ocean announcing, &#8220;<a href="https://docs.digitalocean.com/support/why-is-my-account-now-a-team/">Your personal account is now a team</a>.&#8221; (Teams are a relatively new feature for collaboration at Digital Ocean that's included with all new accounts — and now apparently all old accounts.) Digital Ocean is emphasizing its value for agencies, freelancers, and solo developers. As Digital Ocean CEO <strong>Yancey Spruill</strong> says in <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/css-tricks-joins-digitalocean">his blog post about the CSS-Tricks acquisition</a>:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-small-font-size"><p>&#8220;CSS-Tricks will broaden and complement our existing library of content, furthering DigitalOcean’s reach with both frontend and full-stack developers, and supports our community strategy, a key differentiator for DigitalOcean in the cloud computing space.&#8221;</p></blockquote>



<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size"><strong>— Dan Knauss</strong></p>
</div></div>


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<h2 id="fast-slow-and-stop">Fast, Slow, and Stop</h2>



<p><strong>Mark Maunder</strong>, Founder & CEO of <strong>Wordfence</strong>, recently informed <a href="http://fastorslow.com">FastOrSlow.com</a> users the service is shutting down on March 31st. </p>



<p>As a lesser-known Wordfence property, Mark noted, &#8220;<strong>FastOrSlow</strong> never really gained much traction as a product&#8230; the total number of users we gained was just over 7,000&#8230; it isn't showing growth, and it is a burden on our operations team to operate. It's also outside our core business, which is cybersecurity.&#8221;</p>



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<p class="has-small-font-size">This is a shame. FastOrSlow developed into quite a beautifully designed and useful service I've certainly taken for granted. I'm not sure I even knew it belonged to WordFence. Rather than shut it down, I wonder if someone else might be interested in acquiring it?</p>



<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size"><strong>— Dan Knauss</strong></p>
</div></div>


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<h2 id="how-page-experience-ranking-works">How Page Experience Ranking Works</h2>



<p>If SEO is important to you, then check out <strong>Search Engine Journal</strong>&#8216;s <strong>Roger Montti</strong> summarizing the key details in a talk with <strong>Google</strong>&#8216;s Search Advocate, <strong>John Mueller</strong>: &#8220;<a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-page-experience-ranking-factors-work/441622/">How Page Experience Ranking Factors Actually Work</a>.&#8221; </p>



<p>Mueller addresses <strong>Core Web Vitals</strong> and says their &#8220;ranking signal might account for small changes, but it’s not the kind of signal that would result in a huge change&#8221; in a site's position in search results.</p>



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<p class="has-small-font-size">Also good to know and a bit of a mythbuster: Mueller explains in the Q&A; part of his talk that <code>alt</code> text only impacts SEO for Google Image Search.</p>



<p class="has-text-align-right has-small-font-size"><strong>— Dan Knauss</strong></p>
</div></div>


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<h2 id="registering-a-custom-font">Registering a Custom Font in the WordPress Editor for Block or Classic Themes </h2>



<p><strong>Geoff Graham</strong> demonstrates <a href="https://geoffgraham.me/adding-custom-fonts-to-the-wordpress-site-editor-ui/">two ways to register a custom font</a> with the WordPress editor: the &#8220;future friendly&#8221; <code>theme.json</code> way and a PHP alternative for those working in classic themes.</p>


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<h2 id="dont-peev-on-me">Don't Peeve the Plugin Team: A Guide to Successful Plugin Submission at WordPress.org</h2>



<p>If you're a plugin developer or aiming to be one, then you might enjoy <strong>Ronald Huereca</strong>&#8216;s new guide through a series of workflows and <a href="https://mediaron.com/tips-tricks-for-wp-plugin-authors/">tips for a successful plugin submission</a> to the wordpress.org plugin repo. An example:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>WordPress “hosts” your plugin. It isn’t a dev environment.</p><p>Excessive plugin commits will peeve the plugin review team. Do your development somewhere else.</p></blockquote>


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<h2 id="pipe-viewer">This is not a pipe, it's Pipe Viewer</h2>



<p><strong>Tom McFarlin</strong> shares how developers can use <strong>Pipe Viewer</strong> to <a href="https://tommcfarlin.com/pipe-viewer-for-large-migrations/">see what's happening between two applications</a>. His use case is a database migration. If you are importing the contents of a very large SQL file into <strong>MySQL</strong>, then you want to know its progress as the import is happening. Pipe Viewer can do that. </p>


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<h2 id="just-cargo-cult">Just Cargo Cult and Paste </h2>



<p><strong>Mitchell Hashimoto</strong>, the founder of <strong>HashiCorp</strong> and creator of <strong>Vagrant</strong>, <a href="https://mitchellh.com/writing/contributing-to-complex-projects">writes and shares</a> his processes for learning and contributing to complex software projects: &#8220;The first step to understanding the internals of any project is to become a user of the project.&#8221; </p>



<p>Next, you need to learn how to build the project, and you don't have to know a great deal about it: &#8220;Don’t bother with <em>understanding</em> the build system, the dependencies, etc. Just cargo cult guides, websites, whatever you need to reliably and repeatedly go from source code to runnable binary on your system.&#8221;</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:"Fri, 18 Mar 2022 04:24:36 +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: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:92:"Post Status: Would WordPress benefit from public relations messaging around security issues?";s: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=94729";s: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:102:"https://poststatus.com/would-wordpress-benefit-from-public-relations-messaging-around-security-issues/";s: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:1737:"<p class="has-drop-cap">After looking at the latest <a href="https://patchstack.com/whitepaper/the-state-of-wordpress-security-in-2021/">WordPress security report</a> from <strong>Patchstack</strong>, <strong>Rob Howard</strong> <a href="https://masterwp.com/is-wordpress-security-getting-better-or-worse/">challenges some of its numbers</a>. He believes core WordPress is more secure than the report indicates. He notes a significant overlooked statistic: &#8220;core WordPress vulnerabilities went from 22 in 2020 to just one in 2021.&#8221; </p>



<p>Rob also thinks open-source transparency about bugs and security issues &#8220;puts us at a bit of a public-relations disadvantage&#8221; that ought to be counteracted with positive messaging. No one outside of <strong>Shopify</strong> and <strong>Squarespace</strong> knows how many security issues those platforms had in any given year. That may be a competitive advantage in marketing. </p>



<p>This isn't a bad idea:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>&#8220;It would benefit everyone if we could figure out a better public-relations solution to these announcements. When writers use only raw numbers (millions!) or low-context statistics (150%!), it degrades the WordPress brand for no good reason&#8230; we [also] need WordPress security messaging that <em>doesn’t</em> come from people who sell WordPress security software.&#8221;</p></blockquote>



<p>Not a bad idea at all.</p>



<p class="has-theme-palette-8-background-color has-background">What do you think — should we spin up the bright side of WordPress security issues? Would it make a difference that matters to market share, brand reputation, the WordPress community and ecosystem, or&#8230;?</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, 18 Mar 2022 03:31:41 +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:24;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:67:"WPTavern: How To Build a Recipe Card via the WordPress Block Editor";s: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=131630";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://wptavern.com/how-to-build-a-recipe-card-via-the-wordpress-block-editor";s: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:9277:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Last summer, I was on a pattern-creating bender. In two months, I had designed just shy of 100 block patterns. Outside of work and necessary household duties, I spent every waking moment building things with the block editor for fun. I had complete creative freedom, no need to roll out a commercial product, and no one to please but myself.</p>



<p>As an artist, I was living the dream. There was no pressure to do anything other than create whatever came to mind. Of course, I crashed after a while. The real world always catches up, but I built some neat patterns over the summer.</p>



<p>There was about a three-day stretch in mid-June where I focused solely on patterns for food bloggers and recipe sites. I distinctly remember my sister, who stayed over for the week, asking why I was on the computer instead of watching the movie on TV.</p>



<p>I angled my laptop in her direction and said, &#8220;Look at this. I&#8217;m building a way for food bloggers to insert recipe cards in their posts. You know, like that card you see after scrolling through 2,000+ words of someone&#8217;s life story when you&#8217;re just trying to find a recipe? Pretty cool, right?&#8221;</p>



<p>That may not be an exact quote, but it is close enough &#8212; <em>this is my story, so I will tell it like I remember</em>.</p>



<p>I had one of those pivotal moments during this stretch of building food-blogger patterns. <em>If I can do this now, eventually, designers will be able to create and bundle any layout with themes, and users can insert them at the click of a button</em>, I thought.</p>



<p>I was already on board the block bandwagon at that point. However, there are always those moments where things seem to come together. The lightbulb clicks on. The stars align. Whatever you want to call it.</p>



<p>Unfortunately, only a few patterns from the <em>Summer of &#8217;21</em> have seen anything beyond a folder on some obscure GitHub repository. For today&#8217;s entry into the <a href="https://wptavern.com/category/building-with-blocks">Building with Blocks</a> series, I pulled one out to share. It also provided an opportunity to rebuild it from scratch with newer block design tools.</p>



<h2>Building a Recipe Card</h2>



<p>For this Building with Blocks tutorial, I will walk you through each step for creating a simple recipe card. I recommend activating the <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/twentytwentytwo/">Twenty Twenty-Two</a> theme for the same results. However, I intentionally only used black and white for the text, background, and border colors so that it transfers across as many themes as possible.</p>



<p>When finished, your recipe card should look similar to the following:</p>



<img />



<p>While I encourage trying out each step for yourself, feel free to <a href="https://gist.github.com/justintadlock/2948ca4470b5e2fe1ba70b9e999e91d2">copy the pattern HTML from Gist</a> and paste it directly into the editor.</p>



<p>The final step of this walkthrough requires the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-sharing-block/">Social Sharing Block</a> plugin by Nick Diego. If you prefer to stick with the core WordPress blocks, you can omit the last section.</p>



<h3>Step 1: Card Group</h3>



<img />Inserting Group block with border.



<p>Let us kick this walkthrough off with something simple. There is no need to complicate matters this early.</p>



<p>Open a new post or page in your WordPress admin and add a Group block. In the block options panel on the right, look for the &#8220;Dimensions&#8221; section and set the &#8220;Block spacing&#8221; option to <code>0</code>. This is necessary to get the card design we are after. Then, add a border of your choosing.</p>



<p><strong>Note:</strong> you can add a background color for the entire card during this step. However, if you do, WordPress will add some default padding. So, you will also need to set the &#8220;Padding&#8221; option to <code>0</code>.</p>



<h3>Step 2: Card Image Header</h3>



<img />Inserting Image block for card header.



<p>This is the first moment where you can really make a decision about your card. The two most obvious choices for a recipe card image are the Image and Cover blocks. I chose an Image and placed it into the Group block from Step #1.</p>



<p>The veggie pizza image is by <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/author/jenniferbourn/">Jennifer Bourn</a> and is <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/99661f0787/">available in the WordPress Photo directory</a>.</p>



<p>If you decide to add a Cover block, you can add the recipe title and description from Step #4 inside of it.</p>



<h3>Step 3: Card Content Group</h3>



<img />Inserting Group block with padding after Image block.



<p>Let us continue keeping things simple for now. We need to group the &#8220;contents&#8221; of the recipe card together. Again, add a new Group block.</p>



<p>The only change you need for this block is to add some space around it. In the block options panel in the sidebar, set the &#8220;Padding&#8221; option to <code>2rem</code> or your preferred value.</p>



<h3>Step 4: Card Title and Description</h3>



<img />Inserting Heading and Paragraph blocks.



<p>Inside the Group block from Step #3, insert a Heading block. Use this for the title of your dish. Then, insert a Paragraph immediately after for a description.</p>



<p>This is more of a free-form step, so go crazy with as much or as little detail as you want to add.</p>



<h3>Step 5: Card Meta</h3>



<img />Inserting Row block for recipe meta.



<p>Thus far, everything should have been relatively straightforward. The previous four steps did not do anything complicated with the layout. This about to change.</p>



<p>You need to create a four-column section showing cooking times and other recipe metadata for this step. The best solution in WordPress for this is the Row block. If you want, you can try it with Columns. Both experiences can feel a bit <em>janky</em> in small spaces.</p>



<p>Add a new Row block inside the Group block you have been working in. I selected the &#8220;Space between items&#8221; option for the &#8220;Justification&#8221; control. This makes sure that everything is evenly spaced, but the choice is yours.</p>



<p>Then, click the &#8220;+&#8221; icon in the Row and add a Paragraph block inside it. For my first Paragraph block, I added the text &#8220;Prep Time&#8221; first. Then, I hit <code>Shift</code> + <code>Enter</code> on my keyboard to create a line break and added &#8220;2 Hours.&#8221; For fun, I popped in an emoji.</p>



<p>The trick to making the rest of this easy is to get the first Paragraph block styled just like you want, duplicate it three times, and customize the text.</p>



<h3>Step 6: Card Ingredients and Directions</h3>



<img />Inserting Heading + List blocks for recipe ingredients and directions.



<p>The hard part is out of the way. I promise. This next step is as simple as adding  Heading and List blocks for an Ingredients section and doing the same for a Directions section. These should still be placed in the same Group that the previous blocks were in.</p>



<p>For the Heading blocks, I set the level to <code>H3</code>. The only other settings change I made was to select the &#8220;Convert to ordered list&#8221; button in the toolbar for the list under Directions.</p>



<h3>Step 7: Card Social Sharing</h3>



<img />Inserting a new Group and Social Sharing icons.



<p>You cannot have a modern recipe card without a social section, <em>right?</em> You will need the Social Sharing Block plugin installed for this. Or, you can stop now with your completed card.</p>



<p>For this section, insert a new Group after (not inside) the Group used to house the recipe content. Change the text color to white and add a dark background color. You can also tinker with the padding (I set it to <code>2rem</code>) or use a Spacer block if you want extra breathing room.</p>



<p>For the &#8220;Like This Recipe?&#8221; text, add a Heading block with the <code>H3</code> level. Then, insert the Social Sharing block below it. Feel free to play with the design. I used centered justification and enabled the &#8220;Show labels&#8221; option.</p>



<p>That is a wrap!</p>



<h2>Notes and Other Thoughts</h2>



<p>I wanted to use core WordPress blocks for everything in this recipe card. The social sharing section was the obvious roadblock, so I needed to rely on a third-party plugin.</p>



<p>Compared to many modern recipe cards that I have seen around the web, this solution still lacks two features:</p>



<ul><li>Task-style checkboxes or radio inputs for crossing out ingredients or steps.</li><li>A &#8220;print this recipe&#8221; button.</li></ul>



<p>For the task list, the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/todo-block/">Todo Block plugin</a> by David Towoju works as a great alternative to the List block. It is lightweight and will allow site visitors to cross out items as they work through the recipe.</p>



<p>For a print button, I do not have a recommended solution. It would not be particularly tough to do via code, and I would love to see a theme author take this pattern idea and run with it.</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, 18 Mar 2022 03:28:51 +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: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:49:"BuddyPress: BuddyPress 10.2.0 Maintenance Release";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:32:"https://buddypress.org/?p=323915";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:69:"https://buddypress.org/2022/03/buddypress-10-2-0-maintenance-release/";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:1129:"<p>Immediately available is&nbsp;<a href="https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.10.2.0.zip">BuddyPress 10.2.0</a>. This maintenance release fixes five bugs. For details on the changes, please read the&nbsp;<a href="https://codex.buddypress.org/releases/version-10-2-0/">10.2.0 release notes</a>.</p>



<p>Update to BuddyPress 10.2.0 today in your WordPress Dashboard, or by&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress/">downloading from the WordPress.org plugin repository</a>.</p>



<h2 id="many-thanks-to-9-2-0-contributors">Many thanks to 10.2.0 contributors&nbsp;<span class="dashicons dashicons-heart"></span></h2>



<p>&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/niftythree">niftythree</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/oztaser">oztaser</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/maleemuse">maleemuse</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/Nihanthk">Nihanthk</a>, <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/devanshijoshi">devanshijoshi</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/dd32">dd32</a>&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;<a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/imath/">imath</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 17 Mar 2022 22:15:06 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Mathieu Viet";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:71:"WPTavern: Newfold Digital Acquires YITH to Expand WooCommerce Expertise";s: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=131606";s: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:82:"https://wptavern.com/newfold-digital-acquires-yith-to-expand-woocommerce-expertise";s: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:2669:"<p>Newfold Digital, the parent company of Bluehost, Yoast, and Web.com, has <a href="https://newfold.com/newsroom/clearlake-and-siris-backed-newfold-digital-expands-e-commerce-so">acquired YITH</a>, a WordPress plugin company with more than 100 WooCommerce extensions. </p>



<p>YITH&#8217;s has more than 2.3 million active installs across its suite of products. The company hosts 31 plugins on WordPress.org, many that are lite versions with commercial upgrades. YITH&#8217;s most popular product, the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/yith-woocommerce-wishlist/">YITH WooCommerce Wishlist</a> plugin, is active on more than 900,000 WooCommerce sites.</p>



<p>YITH founder and CEO Nando Pappalardo said he started this endeavor in 2011, in a small apartment in Southern Italy. The project later became YITH, a company that has grown to employ 46 people. All YITH employees, including its leadership team, will join Newfold Digital as part of the acquisition.</p>



<p>&#8220;The acquisitions of YITH and Yoast last year are a part of a long-term strategy to provide the best solutions to our WordPress customers and further our expertise,&#8221; Newfold Digital President Ed Jay said. </p>



<p>&#8220;As a company providing WordPress solutions, we’re always looking for opportunities to create better customer experiences to help our customers succeed. YITH will allow us to offer a world-class WooCommerce experience and make it easier for our 7 million small business customers to thrive online, similar to how Yoast helped with SEO.&#8221;</p>



<p>The YITH team currently maintains nearly 150 plugins, with a much smaller number available on WordPress.org. Jay said that Newfold Digital plans to work with YITH to &#8220;expand the plugins available in the directory to reach more online sellers.&#8221; </p>



<p>Pappalardo confirmed that YITH will remain an independent brand, while improving its products and developing new e-commerce business solutions at Newfold Digital. </p>



<p>&#8220;The only difference is that now we will have the strength and drive of a partner that will allow us to break through,&#8221; Pappalardo said.</p>



<p>&#8220;We have hundreds more [plugins] on the idea board. Our solutions will still be available on our website and through WordPress.org. There are no plans to remove our free products from WordPress.org or change our current support for them. Existing customers will continue to be able to use YITH products as they do today. Additionally, our team will be exploring new solutions for our customers but also finding ways to introduce YITH products at the beginning of the website process.&#8221;</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, 17 Mar 2022 22:10:47 +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: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:71:"Post Status: WordPress Podcast and Video Picks for the Week of March 14";s: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=94566";s: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:82:"https://poststatus.com/wordpress-podcast-and-video-picks-for-the-week-of-march-14/";s: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:2316:"<h2 id="h-my-podcast-picks">My Podcast Picks</h2>



<ul><li><strong>Do the Woo:</strong> <strong>Robbie Adair</strong> sits down with <strong>Courtney Robertson</strong> to talk about <strong><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Learn.WordPress</a></strong> and <a href="https://dothewoo.io/learn-wordpress-woocommerce/">how it can help you be a better <strong>WooCommerce</strong> builder</a>.</li><li><strong>WP Review:</strong> Joe shares his summary and thoughts from <strong>Patchstack</strong>&#8216;s <a href="https://wpreview.io/state-of-wordpress-security-in-2021/">2021 WordPress Security Report</a>.</li><li><strong>Matt Report:</strong> <strong>Mayank Gupta</strong> talks about <a href="https://mattreport.com/hiring-a-wordpress-team/">his strategy for growing a WordPress team</a>.</li><li><strong>WP Tavern Jukebox</strong>: <strong>Leonardo Losoviz</strong> on the <a href="https://wptavern.com/podcast/18-leonardo-losoviz-on-the-block-protocols-efforts-to-make-blocks-work-universally">Block Protocol</a>.</li><li><strong>Decoder</strong>: I greatly enjoyed<a href="https://www.theverge.com/authors/nilay-patel"> Nilay Patel</a>&#8216;s <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22977857/wordpress-tumblr-simplenote-internet-automattic-matt-mullenweg-interview">interview</a> of <strong>Matt Mullenweg</strong>. They cover how <strong>Automattic</strong> is structured, <strong>Web3</strong>, and little more about how <strong>Tumblr</strong> operates and moderates content. It's one of the better recent interviews of Matt and worth a listen.</li><li><strong>The Tim Ferriss Show</strong>: This is another good recent talk with Matt, <a href="https://tim.blog/2022/03/09/matt-mullenweg-antarctica/">this time with <strong>Tim Ferriss</strong></a> — in Antarctica! This one is a bit different — more personal. Why Matt doesn't curse, why he likely won't have children, and what Matt has found most helpful for enduring the grieving process since his father passed away. </li></ul>



<h2 id="h-videos-of-the-week">Videos of the Week</h2>



<ul><li><strong><strong>Scott Moore</strong></strong> explores the recently released beta of the WordPress core <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UAavWZDFCI">Performance feature plugin</a>.</li></ul>";s: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, 17 Mar 2022 17:25:17 +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: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: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:23:"Matt: Decoder Interview";s: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:22:"https://ma.tt/?p=55716";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:40:"https://ma.tt/2022/03/decoder-interview/";s: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:711:"<p>In a podcast interview they&#8217;ve titled <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/15/22977857/wordpress-tumblr-simplenote-internet-automattic-matt-mullenweg-interview">How WordPress and Tumblr Are Keeping the Internet Weird</a> (<a href="https://pca.st/eiqvxhqc">listen on audio here</a>), I spoke with Nilay Patel on economics of abundance vs scarcity, <a href="https://srbachchan.tumblr.com/">Amitabh Bachchan</a>, the future of Tumblr and adult content, Gutenberg, Promethean app design, web3, NFTs, and more. A nice follow-up to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/14/20804894/tumblr-acquisition-matt-mullenweg-ceo-automattic-wordpress-verizon-changes-vergecast">our conversation in 2019</a>.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Thu, 17 Mar 2022 08:31:28 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:4:"Matt";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:113:"WPTavern: Gutenberg 12.8 Launches the Web Fonts API, Improves Group Nesting, and Adds Keyboard Shortcut for Links";s: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=131550";s: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:122:"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-12-8-launches-the-web-fonts-api-improves-group-nesting-and-adds-keyboard-shortcut-for-links";s: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:8802:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Gutenberg 12.8 landed in the WordPress plugin directory earlier today. I have been tinkering with many of the features as they were committed over the last couple of weeks.</p>



<p>There are some things that I am excited about. The Web Fonts API is something I have patiently waited months for, but the ability to quickly nest Group blocks within other Groups has earned a spot in my most-loved enhancements list.</p>



<p>A new keyboard shortcut for auto-completing links is now available. Users should also enjoy cleaner loading states for the <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/39275">Media &amp; Text</a> and <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/38907">Navigation</a> blocks.</p>



<h2>The Web Fonts API</h2>



<img />Testing various web fonts.



<p>The long-awaited <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/37140">Web Fonts API</a> is in the Gutenberg plugin. The <a href="https://wptavern.com/proposed-web-fonts-api-not-coming-to-wordpress-5-9-possibly-landing-in-gutenberg-first">road was long and bumpy</a> getting here, but it feels good to arrive at the destination.</p>



<p>Theme authors can now bundle font files with their themes and register them via <code>theme.json</code> or the <code>wp_register_webfonts()</code> function.</p>



<p>The downside is that the implementation only supports locally-hosted fonts. In the long term, this will create large theme ZIP packages as developers begin to ship global style variations, each with its own fonts.</p>



<p>Ari Stathopoulos, who has put months of work into the API, also has a patch that would <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/39350">integrate with Google Fonts</a>. The enhancement would solve the GDPR and related privacy issues because the font files would be downloaded from Google and loaded from the server. However, the feature seems to be a non-starter based on a <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/36394#issuecomment-981970167">comment from a lead developer</a> in a previous discussion.</p>



<p>In a recent comment on my <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-wordpress-web-fonts-api-has-arrived">earlier coverage of the Web Fonts API</a>, Stathopoulos <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-wordpress-web-fonts-api-has-arrived#comment-418942">said the following</a> about his hopes for Google Fonts integration:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>For better or worse I don’t expect it will be merged, but it will be enough to start a discussion and eventually find a solution to all the issues that come with the use of 3rd-party webfont providers.</p></blockquote>



<p>It is too early to see how the lack of a Google Fonts provider will play out with theme authors. However, I expect many will build a custom provider implementation or not use the new API at all.</p>



<h2>Grouping Groups</h2>



<img />Putting a Group in a Group in a Group.



<p>Have you ever created a Group block, worked on a few things, and later realized you needed to wrap the original Group within another Group? Then, did you have to work through a complicated series of tasks of copying your current blocks and pasting them into an entirely new Group?</p>



<p><em>I feel your pain.</em></p>



<p>This is <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/39062">no longer the agonizing process</a> it once was. If not for the new Web Fonts API, this would be the highlight of the release.</p>



<p>Under the toolbar Options dropdown (vertical ellipsis), users should see a Group option when another Group is selected. Nesting them has never been easier than clicking that button.</p>



<h2>Shortcut for Adding Inline Links</h2>



<img />Inline link inserter.



<p>The latest update adds an <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/29172">inline shortcut for links</a> by typing <code>[[</code> in a Rich Text area, such as a Paragraph block. This should be a welcome feature for users who like to insert links while writing but do not want their hands to leave the keyboard.</p>



<p>At first, I thought this feature was not working. The inserter did not appear as swiftly as expected, so I hit the spacebar on my keyboard, thinking I needed to trigger it somehow. However, that did not work. Essentially, it was slow for me, which may have been my computer or connection.</p>



<p>Typing <code>[[</code> followed by some other characters seems to work the best. For example, if I am looking for the <em>What a Wonderful Day</em> post, I just start typing the post name: <code>[[what a...</code>. The link inserter appears by the time I am a few characters in.</p>



<p>I would love to see more of a Markdown-style auto-completer for links. Typing <code>[some text]</code> should trigger the link inserter. The <code>[[</code> syntax feels odd at the moment.</p>



<p>Either way, it is not something I would use in my workflow. I tend to get all the text in place and add links during the editing phase. The editor already makes it easy for my workflow by allowing me to highlight any text and paste a URL.</p>



<h2>Core Blocks Shown First in Global Styles</h2>



<img />Block sorted in the global styles panel.



<p>Gutenberg will now <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/39093">show the core blocks first</a> in the global styles panel in the site editor. Those from plugins get pushed to the bottom of the pile.</p>



<p>This does not help much when looking for a single block among the dozens listed. Alphabetizing them would help, but it could also push oft-used blocks like Paragraph down the list. The sidebar has limited space, but I would like to see blocks grouped by their categories here.</p>



<h2>Building Themes from the Site Editor…<em>almost</em></h2>



<img />Exporting a customized Twenty Twenty-Two theme.



<p>The latest release brings us one step closer to <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/39189">creating themes entirely</a> from the WordPress site editor. I <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-dream-of-exporting-wordpress-block-themes-from-the-site-editor-is-close-to-reality">covered this feature</a> in more depth earlier this week.</p>



<p>Users could download a ZIP file of their templates and parts from the editor in earlier releases. The new export includes the <code>theme.json</code>, <code>style.css</code>, and <code>index.php</code> files from the theme. The <code>theme.json</code> file also adds user customizations from the global styles panel.</p>



<p>Technically, the export could be an entire theme (minus the screenshot) if it does not require a <code>functions.php</code> or include font files from the new API. However, that is a rare scenario.</p>



<h2>Code Block Styling Moved to <code>&lt;pre&gt;</code> Element</h2>



<img />Doubled padding and borders on Code block.



<p>Before now, when using the Code block, WordPress placed custom styles on the inner <code>&lt;code&gt;</code> inline HTML element instead of the wrapping <code>&lt;pre&gt;</code> element. Things like padding, backgrounds, and borders made little sense on the child element. I had always thought it was an odd practice, and it was something I had rarely seen before outside of that specific case.</p>



<p>Of course, as a theme designer, I tried to fight it. However, I eventually caved because I wanted to build block themes the &#8220;right way&#8221; by using <code>theme.json</code> and allowing users to customize the look.</p>



<p>Gutenberg 12.8 corrects this issue by <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/38712">moving the styles</a> to the outer <code>&lt;pre></code> element.</p>



<p>Note that this may be a breaking change for some themes. Authors who target <code>.wp-block-code > code</code> in their CSS may need to update their code before WordPress 6.0. It depends on whether it was literally meant for the inline <code>&lt;code></code> element or was a workaround for WordPress&#8217;s previous mishap.</p>



<p>In the interim, this is only a partial fix when themes have the <code>should_load_separate_block_assets</code> flag enabled, which is the default case for all block themes. When running Gutenberg alongside WordPress 5.9, the Code block styles are applied to both the <code>&lt;pre&gt;</code> and the inner <code>&lt;code&gt;</code> elements in the editor. That means that the block could have double borders, padding, and other styles that might make it look a bit off right now.</p>



<p>This problem is not specific to the Code block. Instead, it is a broader issue, which <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/39393">now has an open ticket</a>. I only wish this ticket had been fixed first, avoiding this transition period with broken styles.</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, 17 Mar 2022 03:47:22 +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: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:77:"WPTavern: WordPress.org to Launch Pattern Creator to Expand Pattern Directory";s: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=131542";s: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:88:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-org-to-launch-pattern-creator-to-expand-pattern-directory";s: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:2941:"<p>WordPress.org&#8217;s contributors are preparing to open the doors of the <a href="https://wordpress.org/patterns/">Pattern Directory</a> to public submissions. Patterns&#8217; transformative effect on page building in the block editor has made the feature important enough to earn its own directory in July 2021.  For the past nine months, it has been limited to a small, curated selection of patterns from designers in the community.</p>



<p>Today, Alex Shiels <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/03/16/coming-soon-block-pattern-directory-submissions/">unveiled</a> the new Pattern Creator that will enable public pattern submissions.</p>



<p>&#8220;The&nbsp;<a href="https://wordpress.org/patterns/new-pattern/">Pattern Creator page</a>&nbsp;will allow designers and content creators to build, edit, and submit their best&nbsp;block&nbsp;patterns to the directory,&#8221; Shiels said. &#8220;Approved patterns will be added to the directory, where they will be instantly available to the authors of millions of WordPress sites.&#8221;</p>



<p>The Pattern Creator loads an instance of the block editor where the Publish button has been swapped out for a Submit button. Using only WordPress core blocks, pattern designers are encouraged to create something unique that other people might want to use. </p>



<img />



<p>Pattern designers are not permitted to upload their own images but the media library is hooked up to <a href="https://wordpress.org/openverse/">Openverse</a> for access to license-free images. After putting all the elements in place for the pattern, designers can select a category, add some keywords for search, and submit the pattern to the directory. </p>



<img />



<p>Shiels said the Pattern Creator is expected to officially launch next week but the Meta team is inviting designers and theme developers to help test the submission process now. </p>



<p>With the advent of FSE (full-site editing) in WordPress 5.9, Pattern Directory contributors anticipate pattern authors may soon be submitting more site building type patterns, such as headers, footers, and query blocks. This is also important now that themes have <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/38323">gained the ability to register patterns from directory</a> with theme.json. Contributors are still working on a way to <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/pattern-directory/issues/395">categorize and show &#8220;site building&#8221; block patterns</a>.</p>



<p>While the Pattern Directory currently has a few simple, artful patterns, it is lacking in variety. Ideally, users would have multiple patterns to choose from when selecting among pricing tables, social cards, contact information, and other frequently used website building blocks. Opening the directory up to public submissions should significantly expand the collection of pre-made design options available to WordPress users in the editor.</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, 17 Mar 2022 03:34:34 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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: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:56:"Post Status: This Week at WordPress.org (March 14, 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:31:"https://poststatus.com/?p=94546";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:64:"https://poststatus.com/this-week-at-wordpress-org-march-14-2022/";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:8836:"<p>Each week we are highlighting the news from WordPress.org that you don't want to miss.  If you or your company create products or services that use WordPress, we've got the news you need to know. Be sure to share this resource with your product and project managers.</p>



<h2 id="h-news"><a href="http://wordpress.org/news">News</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/03/the-month-in-wordpress-february-2022/"></a><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/03/wordpress-5-9-2-security-maintenance-release/">5.9.2 Security and Maintenance Release</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/03/16/proposal-to-remove-spam-dormant-five-for-the-future-pledges/">Proposal to remove spam/dormant Five for the Future pledges</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/03/16/coming-soon-block-pattern-directory-submissions/">Coming soon: Block Pattern Directory Submissions</a></li></ul>


.kt-block-spacer-_a09d8b-b0 .kt-divider{width:80%;}
<div class="wp-block-kadence-spacer aligncenter kt-block-spacer-_a09d8b-b0"><div class="kt-block-spacer kt-block-spacer-halign-center"><hr class="kt-divider" /></div></div>



<div class="wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-core"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core">Core</a> </h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/07/the-performance-lab-plugin-has-been-released/"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/07/the-performance-lab-plugin-has-been-released/">The Performance Lab plugin has been released</a></a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/07/a-week-in-core-march-7-2022/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/14/a-week-in-core-march-14-2022/">A Week in Core – March 14, 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/15/bug-scrub-schedule-for-6-0/">Bug Scrub Schedule for 6.0</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/07/the-performance-lab-plugin-has-been-released/">The Performance Lab plugin has </a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/03/core-editor-improvement-choose-your-style/">Core Editor Improvement: Choose your Style</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/02/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-7-2-march/"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/03/16/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-8-16-march/">What’s new in Gutenberg 12.8? (16 March)</a></a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/25/proposal-to-start-a-news-blog-on-developer-wordpress-org/">Proposal to Start a News blog on developer.WordPress.org</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-community"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community">Community</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/03/03/2022-community-team-goals-summary/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/03/14/meetup-organizer-newsletter-march-2022/">Meetup Organizer Newsletter: March 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/03/17/discussion-revisiting-in-person-regional-wordcamps/">Discussion: Revisiting In-person Regional WordCamps</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-docs"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs">Docs</a>:</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/docs/2022/03/07/first-review-on-the-new-sitemap-for-helphub-or-documentation/">First review on the new Sitemap for HelpHub or Documentation</a></li></ul>



<h3 id="h-support-articles">Support Articles:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/post-featured-image-block/">Post Featured Image Block</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/archive-title-block/">Archive Title Block</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/term-description-block/">Term Description Block</a></li></ul>



<h3 id="h-developer-articles">Developer Articles</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/how-to-guides/data-basics/3-building-an-edit-form/">Building an edit form</a></li><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/reference-guides/packages/packages-preferences/">@wordpress/preferences</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-meta">Meta</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/03/16/coming-soon-block-pattern-directory-submissions/">Coming soon: Block Pattern Directory Submissions</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-photos">Photos</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/photos/2022/02/23/photo-directory-team-rep-nominations-for-2022/">Photo Directory Team Rep Nominations for 2022</a></li></ul>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<h2 id="h-plugins"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/plugins">Plugins</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/02/22/plugin-review-team-21-february-2022/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/02/28/plugin-review-team-update-28-feb-2022/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/03/15/plugin-review-team-14-march-2022/">Plugin Review Team: 14 March 2022</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-project"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project">Project</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/03/16/proposal-to-remove-spam-dormant-five-for-the-future-pledges/">Proposal to remove spam/dormant Five for the Future pledges</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-test"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test">Test</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/02/23/fse-program-testing-call-12-hyping-headers/">FSE Program Testing Call #12: Hyping Headers</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-themes"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes">Themes</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/03/02/themes-team-update-march-02-2022/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/03/15/themes-team-update-march-15-2022/">Themes team update March 15, 2022</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-training"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training">Training</a></h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/02/28/whats-new-on-learnwp-in-february-2022/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/03/03/march-2022-team-sprint/">March 2022 Team Sprint</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/01/31/faculty-program-structure-proposal/">Faculty Program: Structure Proposal</a></li></ul>



<h4 id="h-workshops">Workshops</h4>



<ul><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/managing-settings-permalinks/">Managing Settings: Permalinks</a></li></ul>



<h4 id="h-social-learning-spaces">Social Learning Spaces:</h4>



<ul><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/social-learning/">Calendar</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-support">Support</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/support/2022/03/health-check-troubleshooting-upcoming-release-of-version-1-5-0/">Health Check & Troubleshooting – Upcoming release of version 1.5.0</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="h-openverse">Openverse</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2022/03/10/openverse-frontend-v3-1-1-release/">Openverse Frontend v3.1.1 Release</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2022/03/14/last-week-openverse-2022-03-07-2022-03-14/">A week in Openverse: 2022-03-07 – 2022-03-14</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2022/03/07/typescript-is-now-a-first-class-citizen-in-openverse-frontend/">TypeScript is now a first class citizen in Openverse frontend</a></li></ul>
</div>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile has-background"><a href="https://poststatus.com/"><img src="https://cdn.poststatus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/vertical-post-status-logo-250.png" alt="Post Status" class="wp-image-85823 size-full" /></a><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<p class="has-text-align-left has-normal-font-size" id="h-get-ready-for-remote-work">You — and <a href="https://poststatus.com/business-membership/">your whole team</a> can <a href="https://poststatus.com/post-status-membership-club/">Join Post Status</a> too!</p>



<p class="has-text-align-left has-small-font-size"><strong>Build your network. Learn with others. Find your next job — or your next hire.</strong> Read the <strong>Post Status</strong> <a href="https://poststatus.com/newsletter/">newsletter</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/2709.png" alt="✉" class="wp-smiley" /> Listen to <a href="https://poststatus.com/podcasts/">podcasts</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f399.png" alt="🎙" class="wp-smiley" /> Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/post_status/">@Post_Status</a>. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f426.png" alt="🐦" class="wp-smiley" /></p>
</div></div>



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></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, 16 Mar 2022 18:45:08 +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:"Courtney Robertson";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:100:"WPTavern: #18 – Leonardo Losoviz on the Block Protocol’s Efforts To Make Blocks Work Universally";s: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=130896";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:111:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/18-leonardo-losoviz-on-the-block-protocols-efforts-to-make-blocks-work-universally";s: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:50043:"<p>On the podcast today we have Leonardo Losoviz. He’s here today to talk about <a href="https://blockprotocol.org/">The Block Protocol</a>.</p>



<p>Ever since WordPress 5.0 was released several years ago, we’ve been using blocks to create content inside of WordPress. More and more blocks have been developed to manage the creation of content, and the display of this content on the front end.</p>



<p>With WordPress 5.9, anyone using a block based theme has been able to manage more of their site with blocks; the header, the footer, menus and more.</p>



<p>It’s a real shift in the way that content and sites are created, and puts end users in control of the way that their website looks. But, the content that you create with your WordPress blocks are limited to your website.</p>



<p>It’s not just WordPress that is using blocks though. Go to almost any modern SaaS app and you’ll see content blocks in use. It’s such an easy process to understand. You want text, use a text block, perhaps an image, use the image block. In this way, non technical users can build up their content easily.</p>



<p>For obvious reasons, every app and CMS which is using blocks has built their own implementation for their own needs; the needs of their users and customers.</p>



<p>The Block Protocol is a new attempt to unify the way that blocks work. If you create a block on your WordPress site, that same content could be consumed and used elsewhere, seamlessly. The reverse would be true as well. If you stop to think about it, that’s a really powerful idea.</p>



<p>Leonardo talks to us today about the Block Protocol, what it is and how it might work.</p>



<p>We discuss some of the benefits that the protocol might bring, as well as some of the barriers which are undoubtedly in the way of its development and adoption. Who might benefit from using such a protocol and whether or not we can realistically expect this to be implemented in the near future.</p>



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



<p><a href="https://blockprotocol.org/">The Block Protocol</a></p>



<p><a href="https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/02/implications-wordpress-joining-block-protocol/">Leonardo&#8217;s article about The Block Protocol</a></p>



<p><a href="https://leoloso.com/">Leo&#8217;s website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/losoviz">Leo&#8217;s Twitter</a></p>



<p><a href="https://graphql-api.com/">Graph QL plugin website</a></p>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/block-protocol-project-aims-to-create-universal-block-system-may-collaborate-with-gutenberg">Block Protocol Project Aims to Create Universal Block System, May Collaborate with Gutenberg</a></p>



<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/927/">&#8216;Standards&#8217; XKCD cartoon</a></p>



Transcript<div>
<p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, the future of blocks outside of WordPress. If you&#8217;d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to WP Tavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. And you can copy that URL into most podcast players.</p>



<p>I&#8217;d really like to hear from anyone out there who would like to come onto the podcast and talk about whatever it is that you do with WordPress. It might be that you&#8217;re a developer, a WordCamp organizer, a contributor, a designer. Honestly, if it&#8217;s about WordPress, I&#8217;m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you on the show. Head over to WP Tavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the contact form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today, we have Leonardo Losoviz. He&#8217;s here to talk about the block protocol. Ever since WordPress 5.0 was released several years ago. We&#8217;ve been using blocks to create content inside of WordPress. More and more blocks have been developed to manage the creation of content, and the display of this content on the front end. With WordPress 5.9, anyone using a block-based theme is able to manage more of their site with blocks. The header, the footer, menus and more. It&#8217;s a real shift in the way that content and sites are created and puts the end user in control of the way that their website looks. But the content that you create with your WordPress blocks are limited to your website. It&#8217;s not just WordPress that&#8217;s using blocks though. Go to almost any modern SaaS app and you&#8217;ll see content blocks in use.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s such an easy process to understand. You want text, use a text block. Perhaps an image, well use the image block. In this way, non-technical users can build up their content easily. For obvious reasons, every app and CMS, which is using blocks has built their own implementation for their own needs. The needs of their users and their customers.</p>



<p>The block protocol is a new attempt to unify the way that blocks work, so that if you create a block on your WordPress site, the same content could be consumed and used elsewhere, seamlessly. The reverse would be true as well. If you stop to think about it, this is a really powerful idea.</p>



<p>Leonardo talks to us today about the block protocol, what is, and how it might work. We discuss some of the benefits that the protocol might bring, as well as some of the barriers which are undoubtedly in the way of its development and adoption. Who might benefit from using such a protocol, and whether or not we can realistically expect this to be implemented in the near future.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re interested in finding out more, you can find all the links in the show notes. Head over to WP Tavern.com forward slash podcast. And look for episode number 18. And so without further delay, I bring you Leonardo Losoviz.</p>



<p>I am joined on the podcast today by Leonardo Losoviz. Hello Leonardo.</p>



<p>[00:04:02] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> Hey, Nathan, how are you?</p>



<p>[00:04:03] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Very good. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today. We&#8217;ll get stuck into the main content a little bit later. We&#8217;re going to be talking today about something called the block protocol. But before that a little introduction from you, Leonardo, if that&#8217;s okay, how come you&#8217;re on a WordPress podcast? What is it that draws you to WordPress? Are you a coder or a developer? What&#8217;s your background with tech?</p>



<p>[00:04:24] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> I&#8217;m a developer. I&#8217;ve been working with WordPress since 2012 I believe. And, I work or I have a plugin that is a GraphQL server for WordPress and I work with that pretty much every day. And as I develop the plugin I have insights on other topics. So in particular, the whole of the block protocol is one of the things that I could connect to because of my background with GraphQL.</p>



<p>[00:04:50] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you very much indeed. Now I&#8217;m going to draw everybody&#8217;s attention to an article. I will link to it in the show notes. So if you&#8217;re not familiar, go to WP Tavern.com forward slash podcast, and today&#8217;s episode will be listed there.</p>



<p>And in that set of show notes will be links to all of the bits and pieces that we happen to mention today. And the first one is an article that you wrote on the smashing magazine website called implications of WordPress joining the block protocol. This is an idea that was raised really recently. The idea being that there is this third party idea, it&#8217;s not a WordPress idea and it&#8217;s called the block protocol.</p>



<p>Would you just like to very, in the broadest possible terms? Just tell us what the block protocol is.</p>



<p>[00:05:37] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> All right. I will try my best.</p>



<p>[00:05:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you.</p>



<p>[00:05:39] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> So the block protocol is an idea to get blocks to be interoperable between different applications. So right now, when we are using WordPress, we have the WordPress editor. We are composing a blog post with blocks and seeing the latest version of WordPress, version 5.9. We can also create layouts. We can create the full site, via what&#8217;s called a full site editor ,via blocks. Now these blocks that we&#8217;re using on WordPress, they can only be used in WordPress.</p>



<p>So there&#8217;s this guy, Joel Spolsky a very famous guy. He created a stack overflow., If I&#8217;m not, if I&#8217;m not wrong. Yeah. So he came up with this idea called the block protocol, and the idea will be to get the blocks in this case from WordPress, but from any other software tool and to port them into whichever other application. Be it based on WordPress or not.</p>



<p>So the idea is that now we can reuse blocks among applications the same way that we can reuse components like JavaScript components nowadays. So for instance if you&#8217;re a developer, and possibly you have coded a component for React, and then you have another website for another client, you can reuse the same component.</p>



<p>So the idea is to do something similar with blocks. That you have developed a block for your WordPress site. And the day after tomorrow you have a different application, which is based on Node JS or on a different CMS. And you want to reuse the same block that you have for your WordPress site. With the block protocol, you could do that.</p>



<p>[00:07:15] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So, everybody I would imagine who&#8217;s listening to this podcast has some familiarity with the new block editor. That is to say, rewind to WordPress 5.0 in come blocks. Blocks are now the way that we create all content, and increasingly the way that we create everything around our website, especially with the 5.9 release and full site editing and so on.</p>



<p>But what may not be obvious to most users is that that content is, it is completely siloed within WordPress. So as you&#8217;ve just described, if you create some text or you create an image, you are really going to struggle in any meaningful way to take that and put it somewhere else. The best you can really hope for is going in and copying and putting it into your clipboard on your computer and then going and pasting it elsewhere.</p>



<p>But the intention, I believe of the block protocol, is to make it so that applications, no matter where they are based, there&#8217;ll be able to communicate with each other. And the picture that you put inside of Gutenberg would be available to some other piece of software that&#8217;s nothing to do with WordPress. Have I more or less summed it up there?</p>



<p>[00:08:22] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> Yeah. What you have to take into account is that with the blocks, you create content. So when we&#8217;re talking about content, you can copy paste it into different application, it&#8217;s all HTML at the end of the day. It will work here. It will work there. But blocks, we&#8217;re talking about functionality. About being able to use this functionality to create the content in first place.</p>



<p>So think of any block that you might actually think of, say a Google map, that you can point and click on the map, and then you have the location that you want to display. So this is functionality. Like behind the functionality you will be producing HTML, which is the embedding of the Google map. But you&#8217;ll know, you need to know how to code HTML to do that. You don&#8217;t want to do that. You want to do it with a WYSIWYG. That is, visual that you click on a dynamic map. This functionality is a block, and this is the functionality that we want to port across applications. So this is more than content.</p>



<p>[00:09:21] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Perfect. Thank you so much for clarifying that. Okay. The article, at the beginning, you go to, you go into explain how Joel Spolsky he has got this project called the block protocol. And again, I will link in the show notes to that so that you can go and find the website there. There&#8217;s a fairly impressive website where they explain things in pretty good detail with lots of documentation, and so on. But the reason that we&#8217;re talking, is that it would appear that fairly recently, Matt Mullenweg reached out to Joel.</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t know if it was that way round or Joel reaching out to Matt, but either way some conversation began, I believe it was perhaps on Twitter, where Matt was essentially saying, look, it would be really interesting if we could make all of this work with Gutenberg blocks. So in other words, why don&#8217;t we see if there&#8217;s some possibility of making your block protocol and WordPress work together. So that stuff can be egress and enter WordPress websites, to other different parts of the web.</p>



<p>Now, in order to understand this better, you then went on to explain how a block is actually created. You&#8217;ve got this paragraph entitled what is a block. And I think, for most users of WordPress, if you&#8217;re a developer this obviously would be different, but if you&#8217;re a casual user of WordPress or you&#8217;re a publisher or an implementer, it might be that in the block editor, you just see the block and it&#8217;s a little rectangular icon and you click the button and it comes onto the website.</p>



<p>Of course, there&#8217;s a lot of incredible technology going on in the background. And I just wonder if you could explain to those of us who don&#8217;t necessarily understand, what is a block what&#8217;s actually going on in the background?</p>



<p>[00:11:00] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> All right. If you do not understand what a block is, that&#8217;s good. You do not need to understand. All you need to do is to be able to use it. So this is, it&#8217;s complex in the sense that, you know, the simpler something is to be used, the more difficult it is to implement. Which is the great thing about Apple products. You know, that the box is just white. But that whiteness, they have a huge team of designers to come up with.</p>



<p>So the block, if you&#8217;re able to use a WordPress editor, then the book already succeeded. You don&#8217;t need to understand how it works or what it is, apart from the fact that you need to use it to create content, which is in this case to write a blog post or, since the later version of WordPress to create the full, the overall site, by clicking at elements.</p>



<p>So then what is a block? It&#8217;s a concept. It&#8217;s a unit of something, in this case it&#8217;s code, that you interact with to create content on the site. If you&#8217;re a developer, you will be developing blocks. You can be a designer and that you will be applying styles to blocks. But at the end of the day, it&#8217;s a concept. It&#8217;s not really an implementation. It&#8217;s just this idea of what you said, you know, like a square, that you click on the square possibly, and something will happen on the website. You will have created content. So yeah, it&#8217;s one of those things that now it appears everywhere because WordPress is trying to make it widespread.</p>



<p>This is what Matt Mullenweg had attempted to do with his concept of reducing the different interfaces that we have to interact with. So in the past with WordPress, you could create content via short codes or with the classic editor, or with the customizer. The block replaces all of these. You had to learn only one thing, which is the block, the interface with the block, and you&#8217;re able to create your website, whatever it is that you need to create.</p>



<p>Maybe you want to add a video. You want to embed a picture, something very simple. But now also we have more functionality, like editing pictures and possibly even editing videos in the future. It&#8217;s taking more roles. It is like an application to create cotent.</p>



<p>[00:13:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I guess this approach is absolutely lovely. You&#8217;ve got a nice little graphic on your website where you talk about the fact that the block is kind of a container for all sorts of child components. So you could have all sorts of different things inside your block. So a block doesn&#8217;t just have to be one simple thing. It could be a multitude of layered things which could become incredibly complicated. But the point is the block encapsulates them all, but it&#8217;s siloed within WordPress. You can&#8217;t easily get it out.</p>



<p>And well, maybe there are ways that you can get it out, but it&#8217;s not relatively straightforward for the likes of me. So along comes Joel Spolsky with his block protocol. And the idea is that he would like all of these different bits and pieces to be interoperable. So that a block on WordPress might be able to interact, and I believe on the article that you wrote, you mentioned a couple of things. You mentioned a SaaS product called Notion, which is a bit like a note taking app, but it&#8217;s much more complicated than that. You can do all sorts of things like add bullet lists and what have you. And the premise therefore would be well, wouldn&#8217;t it be great if we could take the content that we&#8217;ve created inside of Gutenberg, inside of WordPress, and we could just have it so that it was completely interoperable and it was transparent. You could throw it over for example, to Notion or anything else. So is that the dream here is that what Joel and his block protocol is trying to enable? To make there a standard set of ways of doing things, such that everything, everywhere can communicate with anything else?</p>



<p>[00:14:56] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> Yeah, you said just right. It is a dream. It&#8217;s something that seems to be a bit out of reach. So far it&#8217;s a potential, it&#8217;s an idea, but from idea to implementation, it&#8217;s a long road. In particular, I don&#8217;t think that Notion will want to be part of this movement because there&#8217;s nothing in it for them. I believe that Notion has spent so much time and money developing their own blocks. So I don&#8217;t see why they will be sharing them with the wider world. Basically, if they give us their blocks, we can embed them in our WordPress site and recreate Notion. And this is the same with Medium. I don&#8217;t see them participating in this idea.</p>



<p>Now they could still use it, because a block protocol is a protocol. You can use it for your own internal use. That means that Medium or Notion they could have sub applications, or they could have their own internal team, their own development team, that they have internal applications and they could use the block protocol to reuse their own blocks within their own applications. But that will not be shared with us. We are using WordPress and I don&#8217;t expect to have Notion give the WordPress users access to their blocks.</p>



<p>[00:16:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. So I guess where you&#8217;ve got a proprietary piece of software and their way of creating revenue I suppose, is on their, the system that they&#8217;ve built with components and blocks and the ability to have a beautiful UI and all of that. It&#8217;s unlikely in your estimation that they would wish to become part of this because it removes that unique value proposition. If it&#8217;s simple to put that data in exactly the same form elsewhere, it&#8217;s unlikely they would want to be a part of that because it upsets that business model. However, that being said all is not lost. The block protocol opens up the opportunity for lots of different scenarios, not necessarily the SaaS proprietary platforms that we mentioned, but in your piece, you go on to describing in quite a large amount of detail that the types of people, teams, and applications, and so on that you feel the block protocol would fit well with. So should we just delve into this? Who might want to use the block protocol?</p>



<p>[00:17:07] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> Okay. First one is, if you do not have money, which is quite a general condition for a lot of startups, then you would want to use a block, develop protocol to use blocks that are already developed by somebody else, that you can just customize for your own use.</p>



<p>And this is important because coding blocks is labor intensive. You need a dedicated team and that&#8217;s money and that&#8217;s time. Think about WordPress. The WordPress editor, up to now, it took five years. You have been started five years ago. And now only now after five years we have full site editing. I believe that, that was not their idea when they launch it at the very beginning or when they were planning at the very beginning. They had never expected that it will take five years to be at this stage.</p>



<p>It took that time because high quality software takes time to produce. Think about the accessibility issues that it will have in at the very beginning, which were fixed, but it took time. So once again, if you want to create a website using blocks and you had to create it from scratch. Then you&#8217;re going to be spending a lot of money. Now you could alternatively, depend on the block protocol, use the blocks by WordPress and just customize them for your own application. So that&#8217;s the first one.</p>



<p>The second one is if you have a website that you want it to be fancy, or you want to be appealing, like Medium, like Notion, but it&#8217;s kind of falling behind because, you know, I mean, we all share the same users. So I think that&#8217;s Facebook when it came out, it was a sort of tragedy for website developers who didn&#8217;t have a lot of money to hire a team because people are expecting the same quality as Facebook. Like interactivity, dynamic functionality. Eventually they released React and we could do the same, but it takes time and it takes effort.</p>



<p>So then once again, you need to compete against these guys. If your website is not looking good, you will fall behind, nobody going to come to your website anymore. And nowadays the technology barrier is quite high in the sense, design is so amazing. Some websites out there are so amazing and they&#8217;re are all for free.</p>



<p>So if somebody developed really nice looking blocks and you don&#8217;t want to fall behind, you can just use it. So in my article, I was using Mailchimp as an example, because the Mailchimp editor for creating the newsletters, it was kind of falling behind a bit. I had noticed that they were experimenting with a new editor, which was similar to the WordPress editor.</p>



<p>I cannot find it anymore. It was buggy and I just couldn&#8217;t use it for long, and I revert back to their current experience. So I was wondering if Mailchimp could benefit from using the WordPress blocks. So you can see WordPress, MailChimp is a multi-billion company. Like, I don&#8217;t know, ten billion dollars recently or something like that. So they could benefit from this.</p>



<p>Then I believe that as a content management systems in particular, I quote Drupal, they could use it because Drupal has already expressed interest in using Gutenberg. In using the WordPress editor for creating content. So now with the block protocol, it will be easier to achieve this.</p>



<p>The reason why it will be easier is because WordPress right now, when you develop, the WordPress editor doesn&#8217;t need to care about anyone. They just care about themselves. So at the same time that you create the functionality, on the client side, all the dynamic stuff, the layouts and everything. There has to be a backend that can field the functionality. So we have the WordPress Rest API. So whenever you have a new block, possibly the block will need a new Rest endpoint to fetch data and interact with the server. All of that is happening on WordPress and WordPress needs to certify it. But right now WordPress only cares about WordPress.</p>



<p>I know WordPress can certify its own requirements. Then it&#8217;s good to go. So Drupal right now needs to be catching up with WordPress all the time. If WordPress 5.8 comes out and Drupal catches up with it, and then on WordPress 5.9, they changed the API and they&#8217;re having a bit of changes lately. Then Dupal will need to also change its own API to catch up. So it&#8217;s a lot of effort to be playing catch up all the time. But if we, if they go through the block protocol, WordPress cannot go it alone anymore. They will need to satisfy a requirement imposed by a third party. So then Drupal could say, okay, now we&#8217;re integrating into WordPress anymore, all I need to do to certify this contract with this clear guidelines, set up by the third party, and as long as I do this and WordPress does the same, then I can use WordPress blocks without having to be always running behind them. So I think it could be a good thing for Drupal in particular, because they showed interest and in general, any content management system.</p>



<p>And finally I said, open source projects, they could use this because I hope that will happen not really with components. So if you&#8217;re a React developer and you want to have a select dropdown, you don&#8217;t need to call it from scratch. You just go to NPM, to the registry and you can search, React dropdown or React select. And that will be like quite a few components that we can download. You can install and you can have in your application.</p>



<p>So a block, it&#8217;s also a component. It&#8217;s a high level component, which has a definite functionality and is trying to achieve a certain goal. So I can see that if that happened in the past with components, it will also happen in the future with blocks, that developers will create blocks, which can be used by anyone.</p>



<p>Think of blocks like modifying like editing video or editing images. Or whatever it is really. Games, the could actually create games and published them on blocks as blocks. And then any website will embed them on their own, their own application.</p>



<p>[00:23:13] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s a really nice list. I can really see exactly what you&#8217;re talking about, especially the sort of time saving, labor saving aspects of this. You know, teams who have a modest budget who can just leverage things which have already been built and contributed out as open source blocks within this block protocol, it&#8217;d be really useful. And like you say, applications where the constraints of money or perhaps experience are going to cause it to be really difficult to get over the line. And if you can then just dip into a bunch of prebuilt blocks that other people have already committed, that would be brilliant. And like you say, content management systems and the one that you mentioned Drupal, who&#8217;ve gone out of their way to link with Gutenberg and make their own module so that they can use Gutenberg. Yeah. It&#8217;s really interesting.</p>



<p>All of that though, is about, it&#8217;s about the benefits, I guess, to people if WordPress were to adopt this. So this is about people gaining a benefit, but you go on to describe it in the opposite direction. You talk about the benefits to the WordPress project of the block protocol.</p>



<p>Do you want to just explain your reasoning behind that? Who, well not who, what are the benefits? What are the benefits that will be brought to WordPress as a whole by the block protocol?</p>



<p>[00:24:32] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> All right. The first thing I believe is that WordPress will keep growing. And the reason for that is at WordPress right now, it&#8217;s used as a content management system. But if it also provides blocks, then developers can use WordPress on a different role, which is to create the layout, the client site for the applications. So then WordPress will become more entrenched in the toolkit for creating websites. And even though WordPress right now is really quite big, you know, Matt Mullenweg wants to be even bigger, right? Like, so I think that this is a potential outcome that will happen. That WordPress becomes the default tool to create sites. Not just content management system, as it may be the case that right now, but also to create layouts for even static sites, like HTML based sites that were created with JavaScript. Now you can use WordPress for that, which is something quite new. I mean, you&#8217;ll then think of WordPress to create static HTML sites via JavaScript. But this could be a possibility.</p>



<p>Then if this were to happen, the modern world of developers will come into WordPress, JavaScript developers, React, Vue, Angular. So they might want to become engaged and become contributors. So I was checking the Stack Overflow survey, and currently there are three times more JavaScript developers than PHP developers in the market. So then think about it. If you&#8217;re suddenly opening up the gates to these guys, you&#8217;re opening up to, potentially three times of many contributors as we have not right now. I mean, assuming a similar rate of contribution, of course, I mean, this is just pure guessing. But the fact that you&#8217;re opening the gates to them can only bring, either nothing happens or they come in and they contribute. So this is a potential good outcome.</p>



<p>Then, you could have blocks available from other parties that you can import into your WordPress site. So if you have an image editor that somebody hacked ready for their own application and they use a block protocol, you can embed it to your WordPress site.</p>



<p>The other aspect is that the WordPress editor or Gutenberg does not live everywhere on the WordPress site. So right now, when you go to the WP admin, you&#8217;re interacting with Gutenberg. But in the WordPress site that you&#8217;re creating as a developer, you don&#8217;t have Gutenberg there. On the client side, on the site that the visitors are accessing, there&#8217;s no Gutenberg there.</p>



<p>So the implication of that is that it not so easy to create nice layouts or dynamic functionality, using React or using Vue or using whatever else. So power the website that your visitors are accessing. So if we had a block protocol, we could create this on a much simpler way because now Gutenberg will be talking to the WP admin or to the blocks, via the block protocol.</p>



<p>And the block protocol will be a single API to create websites, whether it is a WP admin, which is already going through Gutenberg, or on the public facing site, that if you&#8217;re good with React, you can create a React client that talks to the block protocol. And the block protocol will embed the blocks that you already have provided by WordPress.</p>



<p>So whether you&#8217;re gaining from what you already have. The idea with this is that you have this set of blocks that they only have a limited use, which is only from within the WP admin. Now you will also make these blocks available to the site, to the public facing site. Some blocks, they make no sense because they are only for editing content in the WP admin. But think of a game, you can develop a block that is a game and you could embed it on the public facing site.</p>



<p>So then why not? You could. Or an audio player like, this podcast, you can create a block that is a podcast player and you embedded on the site and it&#8217;s something that is just one line of code. You just add the block and everything is already existing. So once again, either you gain or nothing happened.</p>



<p>And then I think that blocks could be helpful in that coming phase four Gutenberg phase three, which is still some time to go, possibly 2023. Which is going to be based on collaboration. They&#8217;ve yet to use the WordPress editor or to create Google docs like experience. To communicate with other people, to collaborate that you can edit the same document. And then you can add comments on the side and you can integrate the comments or suggestions. You leave feedback. So all of these is going to be the next phase of Gutenberg. As it is now, it can only happen in the WP admin. So if we had a block protocol, all of this could also be brought to the client side. Now, particularly because you will not need to log into the WP admin any more to collaborate.</p>



<p>And for instance, if I have a WordPress site, I don&#8217;t give access to random people. I just give access to my editors, or the writers, right. But what if I want to collect input from normal folks from visitors? Right now the only option that I have is comments, but that&#8217;s not integrated within the editing workflow. So if you had the block protocol, you could replicate the same workflow, editing workflow experience on the public facing site and allow visitors to give you feedback or collaboration.</p>



<p>And then one other aspect that I mentioned in the article is that you can simplify how you render blocks dynamically, because right now there is an issue that Gutenberg has, which is that you need to create the same logic twice, once in JavaScript to render the HTML, when you&#8217;re editing the content in the WordPress editor. And once in PHP, when you&#8217;re rendering on the client for the visitor, that&#8217;s the dynamic content. So that means that the same call has to be called twice in two different technologies. And for what I have seen in the GitHub issue that was bringing this up, not everyone is comfortable with the two languages.</p>



<p>You might be comfortable with JavaScript, but not with PHP, or you might become comfortable with PHP, and not with JavaScript. So this gives you the alternative to do it only in JavaScript, which is not ideal because, if you do it on PHP, then you can print it on the HTML already, which has better for SEO. But at least you have the possibility to do it.</p>



<p>And if that were to happen, I believe that more React developers could also be engaged with WordPress because they don&#8217;t need to work with PHP anymore. They will be basically working React all the way. And it will still be a WordPress site, which is quite interesting.</p>



<p>And yeah, I have one more issue, one more item to mention. Which is that you can bring in developments from outside. So as I was mentioning, I&#8217;m working with GraphQL myself and what happened with GraphQL is quite interesting, quite remarkable, that you have produced a huge ecosystem of clients and tools. Which is the couple from each other. They&#8217;re not collaborate. They&#8217;re not talking to each other,. But all of these tools, they can operate with each other because they all follow the same specification.</p>



<p>So one single case that is quite easy to follow is static documentation of the endpoints that you&#8217;re creating with Graph QL. I believe that the same can naturally happen if we use a block protocol, that some developer out there can create a tool to create static documentation of the blocks that then you can use to document the blocks for WordPress. And if that were the case, you don&#8217;t need to develop these in-house. So that means that the WordPress contributors, they can free up their time to do something that is specific to WordPress.</p>



<p>[00:32:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I do like the idea of people being able to access all of the pretty amazing stuff that&#8217;s been created by the WordPress community already. That seems to be really interesting. If this were to happen, all of that good stuff that&#8217;s been made would be available elsewhere and not bound distinctly to Gutenberg, but also the idea that you mentioned and somewhat counter-intuitive to me, I wouldn&#8217;t have thought about it.</p>



<p>The idea of having all of these blocks on the front end and the notion that you don&#8217;t need to be logged in. I guess, all sorts of complex things that are otherwise out of bounds at the moment suddenly become possible. And so as yet, unimagined scenarios potentially will become possible in the future.</p>



<p>Further down in your article, you&#8217;ve got a section where you have some nice diagrams which might be worth the listeners actually going to look at. The sections called, decoupling the WordPress editor from Gutenberg. And you make the point that at the moment, the block is bound directly to Gutenberg, you know, there&#8217;s an inextricable link between them. And they need to be decoupled. And the block protocol sits firmly in the middle. Is there a lot of work that would need to be done there in your estimation? Does that feel like a huge leap that would happen anytime soon, were this all be pushed forward?</p>



<p>[00:34:12] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> I think it&#8217;s going to be a bit difficult, yes. Not because it is difficult, but because the devil is in the details. You know, I believe this is something that you get completely right, or people will not use it. It has to be perfect. And until you get the level of perfectness, it can take five years, like it took with WordPress editor with full site editing, right? Now, I don&#8217;t think that they will take five years, but the idea that something so simple can still be quite difficult. I think that will be the case. Now, why do I say this? One thing is what I was saying is that WordPress right now only cares about WordPress, but once it connects with the book protocol, WordPress will need to care about the world.</p>



<p>So it cannot do whatever it wants to do. It doesn&#8217;t have that freedom anymore. It will be constrained by rules. And the block protocol is not set yet. It&#8217;s a work in progress actually right now is also a draft. There&#8217;s no version one dot zero. So these guys are coming up with it. And the best way that you have to come up with it, I guess if I have in a real use case example, right. So I don&#8217;t think they have anything on this sort of, because it is still the idea. So you develop an application, they use the block protocol, you will find problems. Problems that had not foreseen.</p>



<p>So what I want to say with this is, the idea is magnificent. The concept is great, but I believe that as they implement it, they will keep finding challenges to make it really usable for everyone in a way that it makes sense, also. You remember bootstrap, right? Like the CSS framework? When bootstrap came out, every single website that was using bootstrap looked the same way.</p>



<p>You can customize it. You have different colors. Fair enough, but all the websites use the same grid system of 12 columns, and you knew it was a bootstrap website. So for instance, one of the difficult things here will be, how do we use the block protocol to create blocks that allow you to create a website that is still personal, that is still unique. That doesn&#8217;t look like every other website out there. So everyone that wants to use the WordPress blocks, they don&#8217;t want to look like they&#8217;re using the WordPress blocks, possibly. They might not want to look cheap. I gave the example of Mailchimp before. Image if Mainchimp used the WordPress blocks and then Mailchimp looked like a WordPress site? It&#8217;s like, hey Mailchimp, come on. You are worth 10 billion USD, what&#8217;s going on with you? They have to have personality, and a lot of those things, they would be a bit difficult to come up with. Fine, you can have CSS on top of it, but the components that you have inside the block. So as we said before, a block is basically a component, high-level component that is loading other components.</p>



<p>All of that is fixed inside of the block. If you want to have a different functionality, you will need to add it inside of the block. But you cannot add so much stuff because then the block will be bloated. So then it has to be lean, but you still want to have personality that you have to have a functionality that no other website has, et cetera.</p>



<p>So what I want to say is let&#8217;s see, let&#8217;s see how well, it goes, but I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s going to be easy, to be honest.</p>



<p>[00:37:35] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah. It feels like it might be a bit of an uphill struggle. We&#8217;d mentioned just before we pressed record on this podcast. To some extent, it brings to mind an XKCD cartoon. I will make sure to link to this in the show notes, but there&#8217;s a wonderful cartoon on XKCD where they say the situation is there are currently 14 competing standards. This is ridiculous. We need to develop a universal standard that everybody is covered by that sorts out all use cases. And then soon after that, it says, well, the actual situation after that is, there are now 15 competing standards. And I wonder if we revisited this conversation in a couple of years time, whether or not this would have taken time to move forward, because obviously, you know, the resources to create the Gutenberg project and to push it forward are very limited.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s like you say, it took five years to do where we&#8217;ve got two so far and I suspect, if we were to rewind to five years ago, the expectation would be that it had gotten a little bit further by then. So I guess I&#8217;m just nervous that it might end up being a bit of a dead end possibly and end up consuming a lot of time. The devil, as you say, would be in the detail.</p>



<p>[00:38:51] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> I&#8217;m actually hopeful because I think the block protocol is a first attempt to make this. Now it is true, what you are saying XKCD that you have all of the different blocks implemented by different parties, but nobody&#8217;s trying to interact with any other block or any other application out there. So this is the first guy who is trying to say, let&#8217;s get all the blocks communicating. So in a way, it has credit. Okay, is it not so dire this situation yet? And I&#8217;m also quite hopeful because of what happened with Graph QL. That is a specification that, just by complying with the specification, great things may happen.</p>



<p>So what I want to say with this is that the block protocol, you develop it, you put it out there. And you let the community react and they might actually react in ways that you had not foreseen in advance. They can surprise you. You can actually create magic out of this, that you don&#8217;t need to coordinate different teams to work together. With the protocol you&#8217;re basically working together, and in this case, what you&#8217;re actually doing is having WordPress be used by the world outside of WordPress. And at the same time, you have WordPress being able to reach out to code that was not coded for WordPress. So the potential is so good that even though the path ahead may look broken it may look difficult, I think it&#8217;s utterly worth pursuing. It depends on the interest from the community. I don&#8217;t know if the community is interested to be honest. If you&#8217;re from WordPress, maybe there&#8217;s not so much for you to gain from this. If all you see is WordPress. If you will have WordPress now, and you only plan to use WordPress forever more. Yeah. Maybe there&#8217;s not so much for you. But, if you are open-minded of thinking, hey, unexpected things will happen from this. Then you can get really excited about this. I&#8217;m particularly excited myself.</p>



<p>[00:40:44] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Good. Yeah. That&#8217;s great. One of the things you mentioned a little while ago was the fact that at the moment, WordPress is kind of inward facing, you know, the Gutenberg, the output of Gutenburg and all of the things that are inside of Gutenberg. WordPress only needs to worry about WordPress. So, that&#8217;s kind of looking inside to what the project needs to achieve for its own goals of democratizing publishing. Do you feel that the fact that if it turned outwards and integrated with the block protocol and thereby had to obey the standards that that brought with it, are there any drawbacks to that? Are there any situations you can imagine where there would be a conflict of interests or things would become more difficult or more time consuming or just not done in a way that they&#8217;re done so far? That might cause things to stall.</p>



<p>[00:41:31] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> I think the biggest drawback might be that the world out there doesn&#8217;t care about this. And you&#8217;re spending your energy. So invite them, to welcome them and nobody cares and nobody comes in and so it was a lot of wasted effort. Of course. I mean, that&#8217;s always the case with everything. Like whenever you do an open source project, people may show up or they might not. And therefore for you or the same. The thing is that you have to do it because you have a real use case, that if you&#8217;re going to do it, it&#8217;s because you know that you will benefit.</p>



<p>If this is just a proposition that you think, okay, this looks good. Let&#8217;s try and invest a lot of energy to invite others to come in. And then the community out there, they&#8217;re like, yeah, I don&#8217;t care WordPress, and I&#8217;m happy with what I&#8217;m using right now. You know, they moved on to different technologies and you&#8217;re trying to convince others and they don&#8217;t care then. Yeah, I think that, that&#8217;s the biggest issue that if we&#8217;re going to do this, there has to be a clear cut use case for WordPress to benefit. Now I did try to say many, several use cases in there in my article, but of course, I mean I&#8217;m and dreaming of sorts. If you have an application that can reuse blocks across two different technologies, for instance, WordPress and something else and you already had that. So for instance, okay, you have a technology, a company like Stripe that they need to cater to different technologies, they cater to PHP and they cater to JavaScript, to Go and to everything else because they provide APIs to connect with them and they have an interface or they maybe have different applications powered by different technologies.</p>



<p>Then they will certainly benefit. So we need to be sure that when we go for, forward with this idea, that we have a real use case that we wanted and that we&#8217;re not trying to impress all the time to somebody and then they don&#8217;t get excited. They don&#8217;t come in and, it was wasted effort. I think that&#8217;s the biggest potential drawback. Conflict of interest that you mentioned.</p>



<p>I don&#8217;t know. I don&#8217;t think so. I haven&#8217;t thought about it, but Matt Mullenweg way was to make the open web open, open, open. Just now, he created, he bought the Openverse. Yeah. Yeah. So you might actually think conflict of interest. Yeah. I&#8217;m sure he will have conflict of interest that doesn&#8217;t stop him. As in if he has to give something for free, that will compete with some paid commercial product, or there, he will do it anyway.</p>



<p>I cannot think of a conflict of interest in this case, but I don&#8217;t think that that would be a reason enough to know to not do it. At least based on previous experiences.</p>



<p>[00:44:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> When we&#8217;re recording this, which is in March 2022, as far as I&#8217;m aware, there&#8217;s been no more public outpourings of whether this will go on. The debates, not debate, but the Twitter thread that was begun between Matt and Joel, I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s been updated too much. Do you have any insight or is it exactly where we were a couple of weeks ago?</p>



<p>[00:44:36] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> Yeah, I don&#8217;t have any insight. I believe that we are where we were, yeah. I wrote the article on this Smashing in part to try to start this conversation with the community, and yeah, they need to take it up.</p>



<p>I actually, I keep checking the block protocol, the project on the website. They are still developing it, but once again, it&#8217;s still a draft. So you can expect this to take a long time, many months still. So this might actually be slow and it ,might be a slow and steady process. I believe.</p>



<p>[00:45:11] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Well, so be it, if that&#8217;s the way it needs to be. Really really interesting project. You&#8217;ll find all of the links that we mentioned in the show notes.</p>



<p>You also talked about the fact that it would be nice to get this conversation begun. That&#8217;s why you wrote the piece. With that in mind, is there anywhere that you make yourself available? Perhaps a Twitter account or some email address or public facing website? Is there a particular place that you would like to mention where we could find you?</p>



<p>[00:45:39] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> Right. Yeah, my Twitter is my surname, which is Losoviz, and my personal website is leoloso dot com. And then my plugin is Graph QL dash API dot com. And then, yeah, basically I&#8217;m always around, and I like email, I&#8217;m not so, I&#8217;m not so big on social media myself. I don&#8217;t participate so much. You will not see me really on Twitter.</p>



<p>But if you send an email to me, which you can do through my personal website, I will certainly reply.</p>



<p>[00:46:10] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you very much Leonardo for joining us on the podcast today. I really appreciate it.</p>



<p>[00:46:15] <strong>Leonardo Losoviz:</strong> Okay, thanks so much, Nathan. Very, very happy that you invited me.</p>
</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, 16 Mar 2022 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: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:67:"WPTavern: GiveWP Launches Standalone Donation Form Block for Stripe";s: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=131502";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:78:"https://wptavern.com/givewp-launches-standalone-donation-form-block-for-stripe";s: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:5580:"<p class="has-drop-cap">GiveWP quietly released its new plugin, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/donation-block-for-stripe-by-givewp/">Donation Form Block for Stripe</a>, in the WordPress directory last week. It is a standalone block that allows users to accept donations almost instantly. No complicated setup. Just install, activate, connect to Stripe, and play.</p>



<p>I named the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/give/">GiveWP plugin</a> my <a href="https://wptavern.com/reflecting-on-2019-the-year-in-review">favorite of 2019</a>. The team behind the donation plugin has consistently produced top-tier plugins and extensions, and I have long been of fan of the company&#8217;s work. It did not take me long to install and activate its latest plugin.</p>



<p>Donation Form Block for Stripe is essentially a lite version of GiveWP. The primary product is far more powerful and has an entire ecosystem of extensions built around it. In general, it is geared more toward charities, non-profits, and other fundraising efforts where users might need more flexibility, reporting, and integration with third-party systems. It can be overkill for someone who merely needs a simple donation form.</p>



<p>The one-off donation form block is better-suited for those &#8220;buy me a coffee&#8221; scenarios than well-organized fundraisers. I am glad to see GiveWP tackling this side of the donation arena.</p>



<p>Inserting the block is as easy as adding any other. However, before using it, users should connect their Stripe account, and the plugin provides a handy button for doing so in the block sidebar:</p>



<img />Connecting to Stripe.



<p>The Stripe connection persists, so it only needs to be configured once. From that point, everything is relatively straightforward. Plug in a few details and publish.</p>



<p>In a couple of minutes, I had created and published a fictional fundraiser for cleaning a local basketball court.</p>



<img />Full donation form on the front end.



<p>As much as I love the idea of this block, I was not entirely happy with the user experience. However, keeping in mind that this is version 1.0.x, it has a ton of potential.</p>



<p>GiveWP&#8217;s donation form managed to break nearly every one of my block-related cardinal sins while still managing to be an exceptional product.</p>



<p>Users must add an image, custom text, and donation field text via the block options sidebar. This means there is no Rich Text input, so users cannot even add simple bold and italic styles. It also feels unintuitive working from the sidebar instead of modifying the fields directly from the content canvas.</p>



<img />Text editing in the sidebar instead of the block in the content canvas.



<p>A more ideal approach would have used the &#8220;inner blocks&#8221; feature to put Heading, Paragraph, and Image/Cover blocks &#8212; locked in place &#8212; into the main donation form. It could have done the same with the buttons and other form elements via custom blocks.</p>



<p>Ultimately, most of the problems are related to control over the design. One of the worst things block plugins can do is overrule everything the theme styles on the front end.</p>



<p>Do not get me wrong; blocks should ensure quality control over their own output. Their functionality should be unencumbered, and their layout should work well regardless of the theme.</p>



<p>However, this donation block takes its duties a step too far, using JavaScript to inject CSS into the page and doubling up on the specificity with <code>!important</code>. Even if a theme <em>wanted</em> to integrate with the block, it is next to impossible to style the donation form elements. <em>Is there really any reason that the inputs are required to have 2px, solid, rounded borders?</em></p>



<p><em>And, why are my theme and user-registered colors not even available for the single color option provided?</em></p>



<img />Theme colors not selectable.



<p>That is what frustrates me the most &#8212; not just with this block. WordPress has built this standardized system that allows communication between the platform, plugins, themes, and end-users. It lets developers build output that should always be customizable. By no means does it cover every aspect of design. However, the foundational components are in place. Colors and font sizes have been around for over three years. Extended typography and border controls are available now.</p>



<p>There is no way to make a wide or full-width form. The block does not support alignments, and even when wrapping a Group block, the plugin limits it to a maximum width of 650 pixels.</p>



<p>Some of these problems are similar to the issues I was writing about nearly two years ago with the <a href="https://wptavern.com/givewp-2-7-adds-donation-form-templates-and-per-form-stripe-connections">release of GiveWP 2.7</a>. I would have liked to have seen them addressed on an entirely new plugin release from the outset.</p>



<p>Despite my complaints, the plugin does the one thing it must do correctly, at least as good as anyone and better than most. It makes accepting donations as simple as inserting a block into a page, customizing a handful of fields, and hitting the publish button. If the dev team never added another enhancement, that would be all most of its users need.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/donation-block-for-stripe-by-givewp/">Donation Form Block for Stripe</a></blockquote>
</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, 16 Mar 2022 03:15:33 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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: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:114:"HeroPress: Connection Makes Credibility, Credibility Makes Opportunity – 連結產生信賴，信賴創造機會";s: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=4407";s: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:190:"https://heropress.com/essays/connection-makes-credibility-credibility-makes-opportunity/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=connection-makes-credibility-credibility-makes-opportunity";s: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:9682:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/031522-3-min.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: Being connected to meetups is the most valuable part of the WordPress community. 在小聚中與人建立連結，是參加小聚最有價值的地方。" /><p><a href="https://heropress.com/feed/#chinese">這篇文章同時有繁體中文版本。」</a></p>
<p>I’m Huanyi Chuang (Eric) from Taiwan. I’ve been participating in the WordPress community for several years. Of course, this experience isn’t long compared with other people’s experiences in the open-source communities. Still, I have learned a lot by joining this fantastic group and am eager to share my experience.</p>
<h2>Why I Started</h2>
<p>I started joining Taipei meetup because I tried to seek solutions to my client’s website issues. For people who haven’t been to any meetups, a WordPress meetup is somewhere you can meet experienced WordPress users or developers to help you with your questions.</p>
<p>When I encountered an issue with the custom archive pages, a local meetup announcement showed on my WordPress dashboard. And that was my original connection with the local community, not impressive, but true.</p>
<h2>Why I Keep Participating</h2>
<p>In the end, the WordPress community gives me the chance to connect with people.</p>
<p>At first, I started by asking questions, and I found that I might find some leads in the meetups and wanted to take advantage by knowing more potential clients. So I brought my business cards to every event from then on.</p>
<p>That didn’t work well, as I didn’t acquire any clients from attendees.</p>
<p>There are plenty of reasons why that didn’t work, but the main reason is credibility and sincerity. I wanted to “get” rather than “give.” It sounds cliché, but people do feel.</p>
<p>So I questioned myself, “why do I even bother staying here?”</p>
<p>“Make some friends, you silly,” said the voice in my mind.</p>
<p>I started to focus more on making new friends and listening more to people. I also started to share my own experience of website management as a meetup speaker.</p>
<p>And then, the first WordCamp Taipei was born in 2018.</p>
<p>I joined as an organizer, working on session planning and speakers contact. In the organizing phase, I met new friends from different fields and foreign countries, which gave me a great sense of achievement and strengthened my passion for participating in the community.</p>
<h2>“Start Your Meetup”</h2>
<p>Akihiro Nishino, a famous Japanese comedy actor, states that “information only goes for those who take actions.” And that’s what I benefit from the meetups.</p>
<p>After the first WordCamp, the local communities seemed more visible, and more volunteers wanted to start their meetups. The organizer of the Taipei meetup asked me, “you told me that you want to start the meetup in Taoyuan. Would you like to start it with a partner?” and referred me to another organizer.</p>
<p>“Of course,” said I.</p>
<p>We started our local community in Taoyuan. The number of people was far less than Taipei’s, but we found our own pace. We create a pattern of “multiple organizers,” which diversified the pressure of a single organizer, as there are always “minimum attendees,” who are ourselves. The organizers in Taoyuan then became a group of close friends, who often have an “after meetup” after a regular one, grabbing drinks or gourmet together.</p>
<p>Being connected tofrom meetups is the most valuable part of the community. Having these friends makes me gather more information. We share information and benefit from others’ information, and thus we gain more trust in each other. With such credibility, we share more deeply and build deeper relations.</p>
<h2>Summary: Why You Should Join</h2>
<p>To be honest, the main reason you should join the WordPress community is that you can benefit from it no matter what positions you take.</p>
<p>As an attendee, you come and ask for answers. As a speaker, you come to validate your discovery and share your ideas to build your credibility. Finally, as an organizer, you make everyone feel safe to share and ask questions to attract more people to join and follow the community.</p>
<p>If you participate in the community long enough, you may also discover the humanity behind the community: people may have reasons to start joining WordPress communities. However, what keeps them participating continuously remains the same: they found the value to do so. Most people leave because their initial needs disappear; either they have found their solutions or found someone else for their issues, which is still great, as we create an environment to help them out. However, not until you keep participating, will you find more you can achieve than you expect.</p>
<p>Here is my own story about my experience in the WordPress community, and I hope that this may encourage more people to join this organic community.</p>
<h1 id="chinese">連結產生信賴，信賴創造機會</h1>
<p>大家好，我是 Eric。我已經持續參與了 WordPress 社群幾年的時間。當然，相較於其他人，這樣的經歷並不特別，但我希望仍然可以透過這篇分享，和大家聊聊這些年我所見所學的點點滴滴。</p>
<h2>為什麼我開始參與小聚</h2>
<p>起初，我因為抱著想要解決客戶網站問題的心情，參與了第一場台北小聚。在這裡跟沒有參加過小聚的人說明一下，WordPress 小聚是個你可以與有經驗的 WordPress 使用者或開發者共享交流、取得協助的場合。</p>
<p>當時的我遇到了一些客製化的難關，在 WordPress 的控制台首頁出現了小聚的通知，那便是我第一次參與小聚的經歷。並不戲劇化，但是我相信這也是開啟許多人參與小聚的契機。</p>
<h2>為什麼持續參與</h2>
<p>原因很簡單，因為小聚讓我可以與不同的人產生連結。</p>
<p>起初，我只是為了詢問問題，接著我開始想「說不定可以在這裡遇到潛在的客戶」，並且開始琢磨著如何接洽新的生意，因此後來幾次小聚，我都是帶著名片在身上的。</p>
<p>但是這樣做其實並沒有什麼效果，我並沒有因為帶了名片就取得任何新客。</p>
<p>這個結果可能有許多原因，不過我總結來看，認為原因不外乎兩個：信賴度與真誠。在這樣的過程中，我只想要「獲得」而非「給予」，雖然這樣講有點老掉牙，但這種幽微的氣息差異，其他人都能感受得到。</p>
<p>於是我回頭思考，「為什麼我還要來？」</p>
<p>「當然是交朋友啊，傻子。」我心中的聲音跟我說。</p>
<p>我開始更專注在交朋友這件事上，並花更多時間在聽別人說話，畢竟開始工作後，並沒有太多機會認識新朋友。同時，我也開始分享自己管理網站的經驗。</p>
<p>接著，台灣的第一場 WordCamp－WordCamp Taipei 2018 誕生了。</p>
<p>在這之中，我參與了議程組的籌備。在過程中，我與不同國籍的講者、不同領域的志工接觸，得到了莫大的成就感，並且透過這樣的「連結」，加深了自己持續參與社群事務的熱情。</p>
<h2>「開始你的小聚」</h2>
<p>日本著名的喜劇演員，西野亮廣曾提到「資訊會集中在那些採取行動的人身上」，而這句話正凸顯了我在小聚中獲益的地方。</p>
<p>在 WordCamp 結束後，在地社群的能見度更高了，而更多的志工也希望開始他們自己的小聚。台北小聚的阿竣問了：「你之前說想在桃園辦小聚，要不要試著跟其他人一起舉辦呢？」並引薦了當初的另一位主辦給我。</p>
<p>「好啊！」我說。</p>
<p>我們開始了在桃園的地區小聚。參加的人數上，遠遠不及台北小聚，但我們也找到了我們自己的步調。我們採取了「多主辦」的模式，分散了一個主辦可能會需要面對的壓力——至少，我們就是「參加者」。桃園小聚的主辦們後來慢慢成為關係不錯的一群朋友，我們也常常邀著每次小聚的會眾參加「續攤」的行程，一起吃吃喝喝。</p>
<p>從小聚中建立連結，對我來說一直都是社群最重要的部分，從這些朋友身上我也了解更多不同領域的資訊，而隨著這些資訊的交流，我們也建立了更多的信任與更緊密的連結。</p>
<h2>結語：為什麼值得你參加</h2>
<p>坦白說，不論你在這個社群中站在什麼樣的位置，你都能從社群得益。</p>
<p>身為參與者，你可以來到小聚，並尋求解答；身為講者，你可以到小聚驗證你的發現，以及透過分享你的想法，建立你的可信度；身為主辦，你可以透過營造一個安全、舒適的交流環境，吸引更多的人參與社群、分享資訊。</p>
<p>如果你參加了夠長的一段時間，你也可以發現在社群後面的人性：參與社團的人原因百百種，但是持續參與的原因只有一種：發現了社群的價值。這些人十分稀少，大多數的人離開，是因為一開始的問題得到解決了，或是找到了可以幫他們解決問題的人，這也都是好事，因為我們創造了幫助他們的機會。然而，只有持續參與，才能再更進一步發現，你能夠取得的成就，將會比預期的更多。</p>
<p>這是我自己參與 WordPress 社群的故事，希望這個故事，也能夠激起你對於參與這個社群有不一樣的想法。</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, 16 Mar 2022 00:00:43 +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:20:"Huanyi (Eric) Chuang";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:42:"WPTavern: DigitalOcean Acquires CSS-Tricks";s: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=131462";s: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:53:"https://wptavern.com/digitalocean-acquires-css-tricks";s: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:4611:"<p><a href="https://css-tricks.com/">CSS-Tricks</a> has been <a href="https://css-tricks.com/css-tricks-is-joining-digitalocean/">acquired by DigitalOcean</a>, a cloud hosting provider popular among developers. Chris Coyier started the site in 2007 and will be working with DigitalOcean as an advisor during the transition before stepping back to focus on his other projects. </p>



<p>&#8220;CSS-Tricks deserves more human muscle behind it than I’ve been able to provide for it,&#8221; Coyier said. &#8220;That’s where DigitalOcean comes in. That’s the &#8216;why now.&#8217; They have the resources to put behind CSS-Tricks, and the motivation to do so. I fully trust them to do it, as they’ve been successfully doing it themselves for a long time.&#8221;</p>



<p>DigitalOcean <a href="https://twitter.com/digitalocean/status/1503707275235573762?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1503707275235573762%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwptavern.com%2F%3Fp%3D131462preview%3Dtrue">announced the news on Twitter</a> with a charming CSS animation, and many developers chimed in with their gratitude for what CSS-Tricks has done for their professional skills while they were learning web development.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="es" dir="ltr"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f973.png" alt="🥳" class="wp-smiley" /> DigitalOcean <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f91d.png" alt="🤝" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://twitter.com/css?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CSS</a> <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f499.png" alt="💙" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://t.co/yAWp7nhZ0S">https://t.co/yAWp7nhZ0S</a> <a href="https://t.co/3smm33MEGu">pic.twitter.com/3smm33MEGu</a></p>&mdash; DigitalOcean (@digitalocean) <a href="https://twitter.com/digitalocean/status/1503707275235573762?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 15, 2022</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>Over the past 15 years, CSS-Tricks has became an authoritative, inexhaustible resource for frontend developers. Navigate through the archives to the earliest days of CSS-Tricks for a blast from the past, with tutorials and code samples for things like <a href="https://css-tricks.com/css-menu-with-rollover-images/">how to create a CSS menu with rollover images</a> and the <a href="https://css-tricks.com/the-how-and-why-of-clearing-floats/">hows and whys of clearing floats</a>. If there was a time capsule for the web, CSS-Tricks is an important historical record that should be inside it. </p>



<p>&#8220;I can’t think of another website that I’ve grown up with that’s continued to be such an important part of my life,&#8221; long-time contributor Robin Rendle <a href="https://www.robinrendle.com/notes/an-ode-to-css-tricks/">said</a>, echoing the experiences of a whole generation of developers.</p>



<p>&#8220;Whenever I’ve been stuck on a front-end problem or whenever I hit a snag with something, there is an almost 100% chance that Chris would’ve already written about the problem and the 18 different solutions to it.&#8221;</p>



<p>The archives include 1,475 articles that relate to WordPress in one way or another, with many helpful tutorials like <a href="https://css-tricks.com/a-deep-introduction-to-wordpress-block-themes/">A Deep Introduction to WordPress Block Themes</a>. Jetpack and WordPress.com have many <a href="https://css-tricks.com/wordpress-com-has-a-new-home-on-youtube/">sponsored</a> many <a href="https://css-tricks.com/jetpack-features-we-love-and-use-at-css-tricks/">articles</a> on CSS-Tricks, as the resource is so widely used in the tech industry.</p>



<p>What will become of CSS-Tricks in the hands of its new owner? DigitalOcean has built a well-respected technical writing team over the years and has prioritized producing developer education resources. The company and its network of contributors have authored 6,000 developer tutorials and approximately 30,000 community-generated questions and answers. They are well-equipped to continue what Coyier started.</p>



<p>The beloved publication will continue on as a standalone site managed by DigitalOcean and will continue publishing new frontend content.</p>



<p>&#8220;CSS-Tricks will broaden and complement our existing library of content, furthering DigitalOcean’s reach with both frontend and full-stack developers, and supports our community strategy, a key differentiator for DigitalOcean in the cloud computing space,&#8221; DigitalOcean CEO Yancey Spruill said.</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, 15 Mar 2022 23:42:12 +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:98:"Post Status: Post Status Excerpt (No. 50) — The Future of Hiring is Marketing with Lance Robbins";s: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=94430";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:83:"https://poststatus.com/post-status-excerpt-no-50-the-future-of-hiring-is-marketing/";s: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:28511:"<h2 id="more-important-than-being-responsive-is-setting-expectations-dave-rodenbaugh">&#8220;Culture is King. Content is the town crier.&#8221; —Lance Robbins</h2>



<p class="has-drop-cap">In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, <strong>Lance Robbins</strong> (Global Recruitment Lead at <strong>XWP</strong>) talks to David Bisset about WordPress companies struggling to find talent in the current job market. Lance believes employers need to think about how they market themselves to prospective employees. Traditional approaches to hiring won't work with the next generation of job seekers. What if open source values and ways of thinking point to solutions WordPress businesses can uniquely embrace? </p>



<p>Lance will be speaking at the upcoming <a href="https://wpcareersummit.com/">WP Career Summit</a> on April 8th, 2022. You can <a href="https://wpcareersummit.com/register-to-attend/">register to attend for free</a> as a job seeker.</p>



<p><strong>Why This Is Important:</strong> Finding the right talent (and being found by the right employer) is challenging in the tech space. If you are looking for the right employee (or boss) then this is worth a listen.</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/13.1.0/72x72/26a1.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/13.1.0/72x72/1f3a7.png" alt="🎧" class="wp-smiley" /></p>



<h3 id="h-mentioned-in-the-show"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f517.png" alt="🔗" class="wp-smiley" /> Mentioned in the show:</h3>



<ul><li><a href="https://wpcareersummit.com/">WP Career Summit</a></li><li><a href="http://twitter.com/lancehrobbins">Lance Robbins</a> (Twitter)</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/dimensionmedia" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">David Bisset</a> (Twitter)</li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/post_status" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Post Status</a> (Twitter)</li></ul>


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<h3 id="sponsor"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f64f.png" alt="🙏" class="wp-smiley" /> Sponsor: <a href="http://poststatus.com/cloudways">CloudWays</a></h3>



<p>Just like you, we live and breathe WordPress! Cloudways is proud to sponsor Post Status. Our managed hosting for WordPress and WooCommerce takes away the cloud server-related learning curve with a seamless and scalable web hosting experience. Trusted by over 250,000 WordPress users, Cloudways gives you the freedom to choose from any of the top IaaS (infrastructure as a service) providers for ultimate performance.</p>


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<h2 id="h-transcript"><strong>Transcript</strong></h2>



<p>Lance</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Hi there. Welcome to post that a sec cert, before we get into this episode, let me tell you about one great sponsor that this week is cloud ways. They're proud to sponsor Post Status and you don't work glad to have them because they live and breathe. WordPress just like me, and probably just like you.</p>



<p>They have managed hosting for WordPress and WooCommerce and it takes away the cloud server related learning curve with a seamless and scalable web hosting experience. They're trusted by over 200. Thousand WordPress users. That's a lot of WordPress users CloudWave gives you freedom to choose from any of the top I a S, which stands for infrastructure as a service providers for one great ultimate performance experience.</p>



<p>So make sure to check them out, go to poststatus.com/cloud ways.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> I was at WordCamp us and 2018. Um,</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> I was there, but I was a ghost</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> just, it's huge. Um, so yeah, a little bit of, a little bit of WordCamp attendance looking forward to Europe this year. Yeah. And I'm. Connected to the WordPress community through XWP. And I get to meet lots of really cool people from all over WordPress, you know, um, you know, leading the recruiting and hiring over there.</p>



<p>So a lot of chances to learn, learn a lot about, you know, what WordPress is doing and in community-wise like in different spots all around the globe.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> How long have you been with, um, your ex</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> WP? Uh, since 2017.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> And what's your, what's your job title?</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Yeah, a recruitment lead.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So XWP has a recruitment department.</p>



<p>How many people is it? Is it just you?</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Um, it's it's me and one other.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Yeah, that's incredible. How many people currently work at, uh, the company?</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Uh, we're just right at 122. That's</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> I keep forgetting. You folks with that big,</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> uh, it's, it's pretty a recent development, right? We went in the last, um, what, 14 months or so from 40 to 120.</p>



<p>So we had a very, very busy year. Um, last, last calendar year, growing the team.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> What do you think we're going to get into you are a speaker at the upcoming WP career summit. That's happening on April 8th. We're going to get to that in a second, but first I wanted to get, since you are into recruitment, I wanted to get your overall thoughts on what the status or what the state of hiring and WordPress is today.</p>



<p>Where do you think the WordPress ecosystem lies currently in terms of looking for technical?</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Yeah, that's a good question. And I mean, I can speak to my observations.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Yes, please. That's you are, you are made for this.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Yeah. Well, I don't know how authoritative it really is. Right. But from what I, from what I see, it seems that.</p>



<p>Uh, particularly folks with a good bit of experience and exposure to, you know, relatively compact complex projects are in incredibly high demand, um, and are pretty well taking their pick. And at least folks that I'm talking to are typically having more than one offer coming across their desk. Um, at the same time we might be making an offer.</p>



<p>So it's, it's quite competitive and, um, You know, especially in terms of technology focused roles, you know, engineering, um, design, even though design is often less WordPress specific, um, uh, design UI design and UX design, uh, is incredibly high demand right now. Um, strategic product work, product owners, product managers are also in very high demand.</p>



<p>Um, and as far as it relates to work, press. I mean, so long as word press continues to grow and continues to be seen as a viable solution for more and more complex projects and problems to solve. Um, I don't, I don't think it's slowing down at all. At least we don't see it slowing down on our side. Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So you are actually, you're giving me giving a talk on the, um, at the career summit.</p>



<p>Your title is the future of hiring is marketing. Can you summarize the gist of. Because you're the one giving the talk.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Yeah. I'll give you some of my thoughts around why I'm going with a title like this. And what I'm thinking about here is that, um, well, a couple of things for one, um, I think about an opportunity, you know, at a company that I represent as a product.</p>



<p>And so I want to represent that product in the best way possible and in an accurate way. Right. So we need to have a good product and we need to, uh, really. Represented well, and talk about it and give people insight into, into what's here, because I think people will like the product, but maybe they just don't know about it yet.</p>



<p>And thinking</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> you're going to like working for us. You just don't know it yet.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> That's right. And, you know, so much of the, of the recruitment industry is incredibly reaction driven. Right? All of a sudden we have a need, we've got to fill it right now, get out there, uh, knock on doors, you know, send those messages, do the outbound work, you know, track someone down and get them in the door.</p>



<p>And so long as hiring is this reactive experience. Um, it's going to be. A poor experience for candidates, it's going to be stressful and it's going to result in probably not the best fit and long-term tenure for team members. But if you can think in terms of a long-term strategic arc for a company that has a great product, um, you want to be building interest, you know, building content, building this magnet that attracts.</p>



<p>Um, buyers for that product. And so I think about it the same way. If, if a candidate, if a software engineer or project manager or designer, you know, is the buyer that we're trying to reach, what kind of content matters to them? You know, how are we talking about the product, the opportunity here in a way that, Hey, somebody might actually be interested, um, without us having to harass them.</p>



<p>On their LinkedIn.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So how do you, we'll get to LinkedIn in a second. I want to ask you about that, but how do you put that into a, a digital physical form? Is that in terms of blog posts or, I mean, how do you, how do you make something more welcome to the people that you're trying to attract now? You think you will track down.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Um, I think there's, uh, several different channels that we should be looking at. And this is something we'll get into more specifically when we get to the, when we get to the talk. But as you know,</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> and just, you can just give me one, this is a preview. I don't need your whole talk here.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Yeah. Right. I don't want to fill up the fill up the whole time.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> What's your, what, what, what you think is the one that maybe gets most overlooked or the most underappreciated?</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Hmm. That's a good question. Uh, the most under appreciated might be social proof.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> What do you mean by social?</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> I mean, um, the times when somebody who already works at your company says, Hey, you know, this is such a great place to work.</p>



<p>I really love it. Um, you, whether that's on their social media or on a reviews site, something like a class door, um, or, you know, Testimonials basically. Yeah. Testimonials, right. It's super organic. And it reaches not just the network that your company reaches, but it reaches the network that these individuals reach as well.</p>



<p>Um, so I think that's under appreciated and I think if organizations will nurture that kind of thing, um, you know, not, uh, not a forced thing, obviously you want that to be organic and natural, but if you can nurture, um, that. Norm for how people engage.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Um, I don't know. I don't know normal about how people engage.</p>



<p>I'm still trying to figure that out myself, but I think, I think I get what you mean. Let me ask you the obvious question. How did you get recruited for XWP? How did you get in there?</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Yeah, that's uh, that's um, that's what I'm still trying to figure out. What am I doing here?</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> I took a glass of wine. I woke up here and I just started working for 'em.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Yeah. So I actually have a, I started my career in forestry of all things. I worked, um, running a reforestation business, um, and it was, you know, based in the Southeastern us. Um, we had tree planting crews that were covering all over the Southeastern us. And, uh, it was, it was like intense project management.</p>



<p>Um, and I got connected with Arland birds, our chief people officer over there, uh, And it was probably a two year conversation. Wow. To the point where, where we first started kicking the idea around, um, to me actually joining XWP, um, in a shared, uh, people ops and project management capacity in 2017. Um, I didn't know anything about software then.</p>



<p>I didn't know anything about WordPress and I didn't know anything about. Uh, a remote company. I just knew that I wanted more flexibility and I was willing to work hard and learn. And I was excited about, you know, the culture that I was seeing there. And yeah, it's been, it's been a fantastic journey, you know, from there to here</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Is two years, a typical time to have a conversation like that when the end result is coming to work.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> I don't think that's typical, but I think it's good to keep in mind that the people that are saying no, not right now. Are potentially two years down the road, the people that are going to be saying, yeah, the time is right. So you need to be creating this experience. That's warm and welcoming. Um, and if you take the attitude of, if they're say no, not right now, I don't have time for that conversation.</p>



<p>You might be losing out on an incredible team member like me. Right.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> You really do know how to sell.</p>



<p>Let me, uh, w what specific, what's specific about WordPress, in your opinion, um, versus any other technology or any other attract. Um, is there something unique about WordPress that, um, that from a community standpoint or anything that makes the people that XWP is looking for a specialty attractive versus some, maybe another language or another industry in general?</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Yeah, so, like I said, coming in, in 2017, not knowing that much about WordPress or software communities, the thing that is just really stood out to me is the openness and. You're just boiling it down to the open source nature of both the technology and the community, I think is just, is really astounding coming from a world where everything is proprietary and, you know, you guard your secrets and you, you know, you do everything you can to get a one-up this, this idea of, of opening things and sharing and rooting for someone else, you know, because if they succeed, you succeed, um, it's just an incredible set of values.</p>



<p>That resonates with me really strongly. And, you know, seeing folks at XVP who also resonate with our values of teamwork and giving and mastery of craft, um, you know, they're, those things are just woven so much into the fabric of the WordPress community, especially in terms of people who are. Leading releases and contributing to the core technology of it.</p>



<p>Um, yeah, it's just a really strong match there.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> You can literally sit down. Well, this was before COVID anyway, but hopefully coming it's coming soon. You could literally sit down at a table with somebody from a competitor and work on the same, um, for on contributor day, work on the same project together in the open source context.</p>



<p>Right. You know, there there's not rivals there there's just contributors. And even if it wasn't away from the table, I mean, we see people mix WordCamps all the time. Like you said, there was that openness, but with WordPress open source, but I think a lot with the WordPress openness in terms of you don't even have to be necessarily a developer, you can be, um, you know, a marketer or someone who's brand new and they have a lot of times be able to mix.</p>



<p>Like you may have a market or talk to a developer and it's that cross-pollination of, you know, you don't have to be communicating with developers to attract or make your company seem open and welcome. You know, it's all about networking that marketer may have a developer friend that's looking for a new home.</p>



<p>Eventually. You never know, you know, you plant the seed, you know, you never know where it's going to grow. Let's get back to LinkedIn for a second. I don't use LinkedIn very much. How, how important is LinkedIn? Um, for the, for the average developer may be someone who's maybe not using it or maybe someone who's currently right now.</p>



<p>Uh, maybe a freelancer. What's your view on that? Is it creepy? Is it, is it effective? Is it somewhere.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> I know there's a lot of different opinions here on LinkedIn, but for me, I think it's a really useful tool, right? So, um, especially if somebody is a freelancer or they're, you know, trying to get their development career up and going, and there's in the early years of it, the networking opportunity there is really large.</p>



<p>Um, and if you want to be found by a recruiter, Then that's a great place because they'll find you yeah. That's stopped. Number one. Right. So if you don't want to be found by a recruiter, then, you know, well, don't spend your time there. Right. So it just depends on the goals of your career.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So, and your position though, your position you're looking for work.</p>



<p>What is the number? What is the, what's a good way for people who are looking for hires, how do they most effectively use LinkedIn?</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Um, yeah, so LinkedIn has a lot of search functionality. So, you know, going through. You know, first at the first stop, right. Who is a WordPress developer. Right. So I can filter that down and filter things down to reasonable batch of people to, to, to look through.</p>



<p>Right. And then you're looking through more specific things, you know, who seems like a good fit for our organization who has particular. You have technical skillsets. Um, then you can create a batch there of people that you'd like to reach out to. And, you know, that's the, that's the outbound strategy for most recruiters when it comes to LinkedIn.</p>



<p>And the other side of that, which ties into, you know, the topic of my, uh, my, my talk for the career summit is that as a recruiter, um, LinkedIn is, should not only be an outbound tool. You should be whether you are the recruiter in our organization, or you're the founder of an organization. If it's a smaller organization, but you need to hire, this is where you start conversations.</p>



<p>You're by posting thought leadership type content, or even just engaging in comment threads the same way that you might in Twitter. Right? You didn't have to be the one to post it, but you can add valuable input to a conversation, you know, by commenting on that. Um, and I mean, it's just like any other social network where you're the more active you are, the more it will reward you, uh, in terms of growing your network.</p>



<p>And as you are visible, You know, somebody who has a freelance career in mind finishes their, their contract and just thinking, Hmm. You know, what's next for me? You know, if they've been seen, you know, you, David talking about the cool things you're doing at an Vajra gallery, you know, every week they're thinking, Hmm.</p>



<p>I wonder if there's an opportunity there and that's a place where that they might reach to you. So, um, it's a two way thing and a lot of, a lot of recruiting only sees. As this is my way to find people and send them messages. Um, but treat it as a marketing tool. Just the same.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So what, how does this, as we begin to wrap things up here, a little.</p>



<p>How does company culture fit into marketing? I've seen company culture in good context and bad contexts unintentionally a lot of times, how does that factor in, into the recruiting process? Um, part of the marketing and if so, what can recruiters, what should recruiters be careful of or which are they keeping.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Yeah, I love that. I love this question. Um, there's a phrase that I've coined and I don't know that I like the exact wording on this year, but the concept is that, you know, people often say that culture or not culture content is king. Right. So it's all about putting content out there. And I've suggested recently that culture is king content is the town crier.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Okay. Well, I got my quote for the episode anyway. Now it's worth it. Say that again, though, just to make sure.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> So rather than content being king culture is king content is the town crier. And so if you, if you don't have a culture worth talking about this whole strategy, um, isn't going to do a lot of good because people want to come to an organization to be part of the.</p>



<p>Where they can be excited about fitting in. They aligned with the values. They align with the type of work that you're doing, the impact that you're trying to make as an organization. So if you don't have anything good in that department to talk about a marketing strategy around hiring, it's going to be really difficult.</p>



<p>If the only thing you can talk about is dollars or benefits or office perks or things like this. Right. Um, so your, your question about how does culture fit in, um, at one. Culture is the source of all the marketing content that you should be thinking about as someone who's trying to drive hiring. So recently we created at XVP a, um, a blog post that outlines in detailed transparently, what our hiring process is like, what steps you can expect.</p>



<p>So basically we're pulling back the curtain of like, we, we designed the process. For hiring it, it wraps around our core values and our culture and X WP. And this is what it looks like. If you get involved, this is what you can expect. Um, so rather than trying to keep that as a proprietary secret thing, uh, to create surprises for candidates, for, you know, keep our competitors from borrowing our ideas.</p>



<p>Um, we just sold, you know, we bought into the open source nature of the community that we serve. And said, here's everything that we do. Um, so that she, that's, that's a way for us to share, you know, what it looks like inside and then a candidate or job seeker, or maybe not even a job seeker, right. Somebody who's got a skillset and an experience that would do really well here.</p>



<p>They might see that and say, oh, that's interesting. And it begins to build interest towards X WP. Or whatever, you know, organization that you're creating this content for.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Hm. And speaking of XWP, I thought it would be appropriate since you are sharing your valuable time with me. Um, what would be, if I want, if someone came up to you and said, tell me, um, tell me in a few sentences, what?</p>



<p>Well, cause I'll reedit this. I thought it would be appropriate. As we close this out to give you the opportunity glance to S to share, uh, what is your brief sales pitch in terms of X WP, the company, what would you think sets it apart? And this is educational because someone outside of XWP will listen to this and go, Hmm.</p>



<p>I may use that. Right. Or change that, but what, what's your elevator pitch in terms of XWP?</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Yeah. Okay. Well, here's my, here's my pass at that. Um, it's a few things. First of all, we have a very inclusive and flexible remote work environment. Ooh, sorry. So that resonated with somebody. I hope so in flexible, remote work environment, um, we've been doing much like many of the organizations in the WordPress community, but we've been remote since day one.</p>



<p>Significantly before COVID began. Um, so this is built in to the fabric, the DNA of, of how we operate as an organization. Um, uh, so that's, that's, that's, that's one element. Um, second, very interesting and challenging projects to work on. So the, the, the work that's coming your way is not likely to be the same repetitive task or something.</p>



<p>That's just reusing what you've learned to. Um, the, the types of projects that we're working with are usually pushing something for each of our team members. And that's something that people often give feedback on being something that's really important to them. Um, and we're a very people first culture as well.</p>



<p>Um, you know, we are, we invest heavily into the experience of being an employer or being a member of X to VP community. Um, Several things that we do, that a lot of organizations, you know, would like to do, but maybe they don't, but you know, what we're doing here is really saying that, um, we, we value each individual and, uh, we're willing to put the money where the mouth is in that regard.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Wow.</p>



<p>You guys have a big, I was just gonna say big mouth, but that didn't come out. Right. Well, Lance speaking of big mouse, I'm going to shut mine. I really appreciate the time you spent here today. And I'm looking forward to listening to your talk. The, again, it is the, um, the talk you're giving us the future of hiring is marketing.</p>



<p>You're giving it at the WP career summit, April 8th, the events happening between nine and five central time. So that's think that's 10 to six. And then everyone else will be able to pull out their calculators and figure it out for themselves. Um, and I, and it's a really, it's a really good conference too, because it's both for job seekers and hiring managers, and I've spoken to a lot of people about tips for those seeking jobs.</p>



<p>But I really appreciated your tips today on kind of like the other side of the coin behind the curtain, the, how do the, how do companies attract. And like you said, it's not just throwing out, you know, they should hopefully throw out salary ranges. Um, but you know, it's not just the perks in the salary ranges, but there's, there's a lot of other things that go into it as well.</p>



<p>And it's not just posting things on job boards. So thanks for giving me some insight on that and seeing how the other side works.</p>



<p><strong>Lance Robbins:</strong> Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks so much for the invite to be here. I'm really excited about the WP career summit. Really happy that Post Status is doing something like this. Um, great, great to be a part of it.</p>



<p>We're looking forward to it.</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, 15 Mar 2022 21:19:49 +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: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:96:"WPTavern: The Dream of Exporting WordPress Block Themes from the Site Editor Is Close to Reality";s: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=131433";s: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:107:"https://wptavern.com/the-dream-of-exporting-wordpress-block-themes-from-the-site-editor-is-close-to-reality";s: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:5387:"<p>I have said it before, but it bears repeating: <a href="https://wptavern.com/the-next-generation-of-wordpress-theme-authors-will-design-from-the-site-editor">the next generation of WordPress theme authors will design from the site editor</a>. It seems that Gutenberg project contributors are making good on my promise.</p>



<p>Earlier today, I exported a WordPress theme from the site editor. </p>



<img />Exporting the Twenty Twenty-Two theme.



<p>The resulting ZIP file seemed to include all the necessary bits to upload and activate like any other theme.</p>



<p>This was a feature that I had been waiting on for months. It is a significant step toward the idea of not only democratizing publishing but bringing that same philosophy to website design.</p>



<p>I hesitated for only a moment to check the ZIP for anything that might need adjusting. I renamed the inner folder and the <code>Theme Name</code> header in <code>style.css</code>. Then, I dropped it into <code>/wp-content/themes</code>. The moment of truth was upon me as I tapped the Activate button from the WordPress admin.</p>



<p>No fatal errors. <em>Whew.</em> Activation was a success.</p>



<p>It was by no means perfect. It felt much like climbing that first hill in programming where you move from concept to a broken-but-somewhat-working implementation. It is often the roughest hill in the journey, but you just keep moving once you get to the top. The hard work will be worth it in the end.</p>



<p>I tested exporting Twenty Twenty-Two via <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/need-a-zip-from-master/#nightly">Gutenberg Nightly</a>. After checking the front end and the site editor, I noticed that some pieces were not there:</p>



<img />Exported Twenty Twenty-Two in the site editor.



<p>The bundle was missing a boatload of files, but this was expected behavior. As of WordPress 5.9, users can download their templates and template parts. Two recent enhancements to the development version of the Gutenberg plugin adds more theme files to the mix:</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/39048">Add <code>theme.json</code> to export file</a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/27528">Add <code>index.php</code> and <code>style.css</code></a></li></ul>



<p>It is almost surprising that the &#8220;TT2 Export&#8221; theme I uploaded resembled Twenty Twenty-Two at all. It had none of the PHP files for adding features like custom patterns. Even the <code>style.css</code> file, while included, was not loaded.</p>



<p>However, this shows how powerful <code>theme.json</code> has become. It was still a functioning theme without all the other pieces.</p>



<p>This is merely the first step. One of the next tickets in line, if approved, will [maybe] <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/39202">export the entire theme contents</a>. Like its predecessors, it has its own kinks. Such an export presents challenges when the theme has anything beyond the standard features. This can be anything from class/function naming to autoloading to missing scripts.</p>



<p>The latest code from the pull request will ignore <code>.git</code>, <code>vendor</code>, and <code>node_modules</code> directories in exports. This could change how some creators build themes altogether, particularly as the system continues evolving.</p>



<p>Last week, we discussed <a href="https://wptavern.com/does-wordpress-need-1000s-of-block-themes-in-the-era-of-full-site-editing">whether 1,000s of block themes were necessary</a>. The idea stemmed from a goal set by project co-founder Matt Mullenweg in the <a href="https://wptavern.com/state-of-the-word-2021-wordpress-passes-43-market-share-looks-to-expand-the-commons-through-openverse">2021 State of the Word</a>, where he said that the directory would have 300 or, ideally, 3,000. This was after mentioning 5,000 earlier in the address when referencing the then-28.</p>



<p>Since then, WordPress has adopted a more official <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-ramps-up-social-learning-events-on-full-site-editing-project-aims-for-500-block-themes-in-2022">goal of 500 themes</a> in the directory for 2022. That feels ambitious enough to be challenging but not impossible.</p>



<p>One of the easiest ways to achieve it and those loftier numbers is to hand the keys to the design kingdom over to literally everyone. Well, anyone with access to the Appearance &gt; Editor admin screen in WordPress.</p>



<p>If a fully-featured theme exporter lands in WordPress this year, it could birth that next generation of creators the project needs.</p>



<p>Another ticket proposes that the site editor <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/39194">overwrite template files</a> directly in the theme when a &#8220;developer mode&#8221; is enabled. This could help current theme developers transition to building more block themes. Exporting templates in a ZIP file is not part of the typical theme designer&#8217;s workflow. Nor is copying block code from the editor to paste into files. Having WordPress write template files to the system would cut out some of the dirty work.</p>



<p>I would rather have the latter feature before theme exports. However, that is the developer in me talking. The end goal should be to empower as many people as possible to design.</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, 15 Mar 2022 03:02:55 +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:38;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
