The WP Minute

Will this experiment work? Can I make it a sustainable publication?

There aren't that many people who _care_ about WordPress news, let alone care to contribute to it. This is a topic I unpacked in my interview with Kim Coleman on funding a WordPress news website. So many have come and gone in this space -- I can see why.

I am grateful, however, when folks like Eric Karkovack step up to become contributors. I'm enjoying his series about the impact WordPress is having on freelancers:

Part 1: What does Full Site Editing mean for freelancers?

Part 2: Is WordPress pushing freelancers away? (published today)

You'll get to hear Eric in today's short interview. If you're interested in becoming a contributor of content, please reach out to me.

The Gutenberg Minute

Birgit Pauli-Haack shares some Gutenberg updates as well. Here are the important links mentioned:

Curated experiences with locking APIs & theme.json

#38333 Global Styles: Saving style variations

Call for Testing: WordPress Media

Italian

Japanese

Gutenberg Developer Hours 2/22 on Meetup

On November 4, 2022, WordPress project Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy announced that the feature will be simply referred to as the “Site Editor”.

Simplicity was only one consideration, however. Haden Chomphosy notes that the term can also be effectively translated into hundreds of languages. Given WordPress’ considerable international user base, a consistent name is desirable.

Paired with the Block Editor, the Site Editor name should provide users with a clearer distinction between editing environments.

Links You Shouldn’t Miss

When we discuss the challenges facing WordPress, we often focus on WordPress core. However, The WP Minute’s Eric Karkovack says that the WordPress Ecosystem Needs Closer Scrutiny. He opines that what happens in the world of themes and plugins can be just as consequential.

The phrase “Just another WordPress site” should be familiar to anyone who has installed the software. It’s been the default setting for the Site Tagline for years - but no more. Sarah Gooding at WP Tavern reports that, as of WordPress 6.1, the tagline is now blank. For the sake of nostalgia, the phrase does stick around in the form of placeholder text.

In the wake of WordPress.org’s removal of active install growth data from the plugin repository, developers are still looking for relevant information. In response, the folks at AyeCode have launched wp-rankings.com. The site scrapes the repository’s popular plugin data and shows historical comparisons for active installations. WP Tavern has more details on the project.

If you couldn’t make it to Spain for WordCamp Sevilla this past weekend, the event has published a virtual tour using the Spatial metaverse platform. Visitors can create an avatar, walk around the space, and access a stream of the event.

Classifieds listings buy yours

• See your ad in this space!

From the Grab Bag

Now it’s time to take a look at some other interesting topics shared by our contributors.

• Designer Anders Norén has released Oaknut, a WordPress block theme that lets users create a profile page similar to that of Linktree.
• Big Orange Heart have announced that their WordFest Live event has been rescheduled to Friday, December 16, 2022.
• If you run a WooCommerce store and use Stripe for payment processing, be on the lookout for fraudulent orders.
• Wordfence takes a look at a security flaw in the Blog2Social WordPress plugin.

New Members This Week

• Jamie Marsland, follow @pootlepress

If you’re not a member yet, go to thewpminute.com/support/ to join.

Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:

• Birgit Pauli-Haack
• Michelle Frechette

Dave’s daughter and her boss, who very much wanted to use WordPress, spent five weeks trying to get WordPress to work for them. They finally gave up and gave Wix a try. One week later, they had a finished, professional-looking site.

Angela and Dave talk about the reasons behind this not-so-successful WordPress story which led to the $64,000 dollar question, Who is WordPress for Anyway?

With different camps forming around WordPress, can we come back together again? Since the announcement of Gutenberg in 2015, the speed at which the page builder plugins have evolved has not slowed down. If anything, they are growing faster and stronger than ever. And it makes sense! The Block Editor can be quite confusing and in Dave’s words “janky”. The on-boarding process with WordPress requires a learning curve that is pretty steep. But it’s not just about getting hosting set up or being initiated into how to set the Front Page in the Reading Settings. In this use case, simply working with the Block Editor created a major hurdle in getting content laid out without a great deal of frustration.

What do you think about who WordPress is for? Please share your thoughts. What will it take to make WordPress easier for DIYers? And in the words of the Beatles, will we ever “Come Together” again?

The first Release Candidate (RC1) for WordPress 5.9 is now available! Your feedback helps the community check that nothing is missed. Given the tens of thousands of plugins, themes and differences in how millions of people use the software, now is a good time to test.

To really understand the year in core, you can dig deeper into contributor data with a lot of numbers and charts over on make.wordpress.org. It is an amazing amount of work that everyone can be proud of. But it should be noted that the data does not include contributions on GitHub repositories like Gutenberg.

Angela Jin shared the proposal for the Block Pattern Directory. It will soon be live and ready to accept custom Block Pattern submissions! In anticipation of this new directory, questions have been raised around the best practices for submitting Block Patterns. Before you submit your block pattern, make sure that you have some basic automated checks in place. If the submitted Block Pattern passes the checks, it will be published immediately or it will be flagged for manual review. You can comment up until January 14, 2022.

Did you hear that Yoast is headed to Shopify? There will be an online event held on Thursday, January 20, 2022. It starts at 4:30 pm CET / 1:30 pm EST. Joost de Valk, shares on his blog the business reasons that Yoast was built for Shopify, which is not open source.

Events

Post Status is having their first-ever Twitter Conference. They are picking up the torch from Hey Pressto and carrying forward with an All-on-Twitter Conference to be held Tuesday, May 24, from 9 am – 4 pm EST. Check the link on how to apply and present in 15 tweets.

From Our Contributors and Producers

WSForms posted Website Resolutions for 2022. This article is a good reminder to review your current website and make adjustments if you do not have all the innovative things to make it awesome in 2022.

If you would like to stay focused in 2022 and need motivation there are several blogs that review the past year. Syed Balkhi shares his year in review that includes many acquisitions in the WordPress space. One data point of note: Awesome Motive is now 200+ team members strong.

Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:

• Birgit Pauli-Haack
• Michelle Frechette

Next up: The Creator Clock, with Joe Casabona

WordPress 5.9 - Joséphine was released this week. There is a lot of good stuff to check out on blocks and themes. If you would like an understanding of how this major release with Full Site Editing (FSE) will impact you as a freelancer, you should read Eric Karkovack’s article right here on the WPMinute. You can learn some new features and consider how these changes will fit into your business.

While reporting on the updates of 5.9 there was a lot of concern about the Customizer going away with this release. Anne McCarthy explains all you need to know about the new site editor and the Customizer. Go check out her review on YouTube.

Sarah Gooding reported over on WPTavern that the WordPress Community Team will relieve volunteers of the burden of COVID 19 enforcement for WordCamps and Meetups scheduled with 50+ attendees. The Guidelines were posted over at make.wordpress.org.

The big picture goals for WordPress 2022 were published on make.wordpress.org. The goals are broad right now and there are many teams which you can join and contribute to. There is still a lot of work to be done so go check out the areas where you can help.

Speaking of the future of 2022, WordPress 5.9 sets a strong foundation for so much more for the future of WordPress. There is a post on the Gutenberg times that paints a picture of the future that this WordPress release provides. There is a table of contents to jump to the areas of immediate interest.

Before the dust settles on WordPress 5.9, the roadmap for WordPress 6.0 is published on make.wordpress.org. This is a high-level overview and the aim is to consolidate and expand the set of customization tools introduced in 5.9.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce 6.1.1 is available. This release resolves a bug introduced in 6.1.0, rolls back the deprecation introduced in 6.1.0, and improves WooCommerce’s support for WordPress 5.9.

Events

Post Status is having their first-ever career summit scheduled for April 8, 2022 (9:00am – 5:00pm CDT). The conference is for job-seeking and hiring in WordPress. If you are interested in speaking at this conference you can sign up on the WP Career Summit Site.

Join @schutzsmith - Daniel Schutzsmith (January 31st 3pm EST / 8pm UTC) as he hosts WP Minute Live: Learning WordPress. Roundtable guests will be @hauwazhiya - Hauwa Abashiya, @bph - Birgit Pauli-Haack, and @jcasabona - Joe Casabona.

From Our Contributors and Producers

Helen Hou-Sandi (who many know as the lead developer on the WordPress open-source project) has joined GitHub this week. This is an exciting opportunity for Helen and we wish her the best.

Elementor published their 2021 Wrapup with an impressive statistic of over 10 million active websites.

Lesley Sim wrote a really thoughtful and researched article over on Post Status about WordPress as a Commons. There has been a lot of discussion on Twitter and different Slack channels concerning WordPress since the State of the Word talk this year. This article is worth reading to help frame an open discussion around WordPress - the open-source project.

Thanks to all of the members who shared these links today:

• Birgit Pauli-Haack
• Michelle Frechette
• Davinder Singh Kainth
• Andrew Palmer from Bertha.ai

Thank you, dear listener, for tuning in to your favorite 5-minutes of WordPress news every Wednesday.

The WP Minute is an experiment in community journalism for WordPress. If you want to support WPminute, the team, and all of those that contribute – head on over to buymeacoffee.com/mattreport.

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