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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:119:"WPTavern: Newsletter Glue Version 2 Rebuilds Settings Interface With Block Components, Sets Foundation for New Features";s: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=129832";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:129:"https://wptavern.com/newsletter-glue-version-2-rebuilds-settings-interface-with-block-components-sets-foundation-for-new-features";s: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:4631:"<p class="has-drop-cap">I &#8220;officially&#8221; dubbed <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/newsletter-glue/">Newsletter Glue</a> my favorite plugin in the <a href="https://wptavern.com/wp-taverns-2021-year-in-review">2021 yearly recap post</a>. WordPress&#8217;s block system makes such projects more feasible than before, or at least more easily built and extended. Since I first took note of it, I have kept a watchful eye on its progress. Late last month, the plugin&#8217;s development team <a href="https://newsletterglue.com/blog/product-updates/newsletter-glue-v2/">released an overhauled version 2.0</a>.</p>



<p>Last September, I put <a href="https://wptavern.com/newsletter-glue-pro-my-first-foray-into-journalism-and-new-ideas">Newsletter Glue through the ropes</a>. It was a well-rounded plugin that was easy to set up and connect to my preferred email software. The onboarding process was top-notch. Creating and sending newsletters was as easy as publishing a blog post.</p>



<p>There were some pieces of the user experience that I did not like. Not being able to permanently disable fullscreen mode was one of them, and that seems to have been fixed since then. I would also welcome more integration with the active theme&#8217;s color palette in the Newsletter Theme Designer and the meta box moved to the sidebar panel.</p>



<p>With version 2.0 out, I headed back to my initial idea for this plugin. I blew the dust off my fictional family newsletter and began tapping out <em>Issue #2</em>.</p>



<img />Writing my fictional family newsletter.



<p>I am still motivated to turn this into a real-world newsletter if I ever find the time. <em>If only there were about 30 hours in a day.</em></p>



<p>Usability has remained the same in version 2.0 with the publishing process. The plugin still balances its bells and whistles against the simplicity of sending an email.</p>



<p>Version 2.0 introduces a new admin settings UI built as a React app using components from the block system. Newsletter Glue co-founder Lesley Sim said it was inspired by the WordPress.com, Jetpack, and WooCommerce interfaces.</p>



<p>&#8220;We built it to lay a faster, easier to navigate foundation for all the new features we have planned,&#8221; she wrote in the announcement. She did not spoil the surprise of what those new features will be. Like other Newsletter Glue fans, I eagerly await what the team has in store later this year.</p>



<p>Navigating the settings screen tabs was snappier. I now wish all plugins with multiple options pages had the same polish.</p>



<p>The most obvious change was the new Connections tab. It merges the old Connect and Email pages into a single unit. The change makes much more sense now.</p>



<img />Unified connections panel.



<p>Sim said in the announcement that the move conceptualizes connections to be more like profiles and provides a stronger foundation for upcoming features. I have been picking my brain, trying to figure out what those could be. Right now, the plugin allows a single connection. Perhaps she was hinting at allowing multiple connections or tying different user-based email addresses (<em>profiles?</em>) to newsletters.</p>



<p>The Newsletter Theme Designer feature now exists as a separate tab under the Templates &amp; Styles section in the admin. The default screen showcases the built-in patterns and pattern creator.</p>



<p>One of my favorite features is the Newsletter Blocks settings section, which allows users to enable or disable specific blocks:</p>



<img />Demos for every block.



<p>Instead of only having toggle switches for the blocks, the team also has a video tutorial on what each one does. Clicking the &#8220;watch demo&#8221; button for a block pops up a YouTube video with a walkthrough. Take note if you are a developer: this is how you educate and empower end-users to use the tools you are offering.</p>



<p>Version 2.0 is much more of a foundational release than a splattering of new features, but shoring up the inner workings of a project is sometimes the best use of an update.</p>



<p>Sim listed the general areas the team is working on in future releases. The list included integrations with more email service providers and plugins, more newsletter blocks, and &#8220;A***ma***&#8221; newsletters. <em>Any Wordle superstars want to take a crack at that last one?</em></p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/newsletter-glue/">Newsletter Glue &#8211; Best WordPress email newsletter plugin</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:"Fri, 11 Feb 2022 03:18:38 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Justin Tadlock";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:100:"Post Status: Post Status Excerpt (No. 45) — Block Protocol, Tumblr, and Complexity with Lesley Sim";s: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:61:"https://poststatus.com/?p=93292&preview=true&preview_id=93292";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://poststatus.com/excerpt/45/";s: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:32271:"<p class="has-drop-cap">In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David talks with <strong>Lesley Sim</strong> about <strong>Joel Spolsky</strong> on <a href="https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2022/01/27/making-the-web-better-with-blocks/">the Block Protocol</a>, <strong>Matt Mullenweg</strong> for <a href="https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/1488631655350763524">taking over for the exiting CEO of Tumblr</a>, and a blog post by Dan Devine entitled &#8220;<a href="https://coderjerk.com/the-complicated-futility-of-wordpress/">The Complicated Futility of WordPress</a>.&#8221;</p>



<p><strong>Why This Is Important:</strong> It's good to examine the views of influencers inside and outside the WordPress community about managing content (especially with blocks) and how complex content management systems (like WordPress) have become. <strong>Tumblr</strong> is a potential wildcard — social network, gateway to more advanced publishing, both, or neither?</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://www.joelonsoftware.com/2022/01/27/making-the-web-better-with-blocks/">Making the Web Better With Blocks</a></li><li>Twitter announcement: <a href="https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/1488631655350763524">Matt &#8220;running Tumblr personally for a while&#8221;</a></li><li><a href="https://coderjerk.com/the-complicated-futility-of-wordpress/">The Complicated Futility of WordPress</a></li><li>Twitter conversation: <a href="https://twitter.com/coderjerk/status/1488809827618983936">Coderjerk / Matt & Others</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/lesley_pizza">Lesley Sim</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><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/wordfence">Wordfence</a></h3>



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



<p>Conversation with Lesley</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Let's start with Joel. Spolsky's a post he did on January 27th. Um, link in shownotes by the way. But Joel is basically using WordPress already. He's seen, he knows the concept of blocks and inserting blocks and all of that. If you're not as old as me, you may not know who Joel Spolsky is and you can read up on them.</p>



<p>He. I wrote something called fog bugs, like a long time ago, which was like a, the, probably the initially like one of the first bug trackers, big popular bug trackers. I don't know where that is today. We've kind of moved on from there, but it was a really popular, it was kind of like the, um, the GitHub of it's day or the git of its day, but he was proposing a, something called a block protocol.</p>



<p>That was a protocol. And basically he wanted to standardise blocks across WordPress or Medium or Notion or something along those lines, you read this and what were your thoughts about this?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Oh , wait, so I need to preface this by saying that I'm not a developer. I'm not a developer, and so by that means is I feel like I am missing kind of one huge chunk of perspective when you know, like, so my opinions are- it's as though I'm a color blind person trying to describe, uh, a bunch of flowers and I'm like missing, missing something important. Um, I'm sorry, I wanted to kind of mention that before I said anything else. Um, but the cool thing to me about the block protocol is that I feel like it's the right level of abstraction.</p>



<p>And what I mean by that is, um, if you go to the Twitter thread, with Joel and Matt. Matt also talks about, you know, the, um, Gutenberg block editor and how the idea for the block editor is to be what Joel is trying to do. Um, you know, interoperable, you can use it yes on WordPress, but also, you know, on Tumbler, um, on Medium and, um, everywhere else.</p>



<p>I think that's kind of what Matt, um, was saying in hope Gutenberg will be. Um, but my problem with that is I feel like that's not the right level of abstraction. I feel like that's too, too far down, like it's too opinionated already. It's too built out already. Um, and if, what. What Matt really wants is to kind of be plug and play across a web.</p>



<p>Like I think he has to go take a step back and</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> be more actualize</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> talking about yeah, be more abstract. Um, in order to be more interoperable because you know, somebody coming up with their own indie CMS, isn't one, uh, isn't it we'll, we'll never basically never want to plug and play the entire Gutenberg block editor.</p>



<p>In my mind, like I know a bunch of people who are building their own indie CMSs. I know that, like, that would be the worst nightmare for them. Right? Like the reason why they built it is because they don't want the heaviness of WordPress. The idea of having like plug and play blocks because you're seeing it increasingly as well.</p>



<p>Right. Like notion is using blocks and notion itself like spawned, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of copycats who use this like concept of blocks as well. So like this whole like block concept is becoming increasingly popular and widespread. If there was a way for startups or software to quickly spin up blocks to use in their software.</p>



<p>That editor just sounds really cool to me. Um, and the idea of being able to take things with you, like that would be really cool as well. So I've built, you know, something. This like kind of more abstract level. I can now build like, you know, a set of blocks that can work on both Shopify and WordPress and you make more money that way.</p>



<p>That would be really cool, right?</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Yeah. Because when, once you start getting into, you can export your content in WordPress with still with blocks, the blocks don't come with it. Right. It's just kind of like. Content or semi raw or slightly cooked, whatever phrase you want to use, but you're not going to be able to take the content from WordPress and move it over to another CMS and still have that perfect layout that you had in over in WordPress and probably vice and probably vice versa.</p>



<p>I mean, you'll have the texts, you'll have the content, but so much more now of WordPress is paging, especially with the blocks are like repeating blocks and, and your, your posts. But it's and correct me if I'm wrong. Cause I haven't actually done this very much lately with the new blocks, but you're basically getting just the raw HTML or you're you or you or the content, the blog posts themselves.</p>



<p>But you're not really getting much of the layout in that process. So what he's talking about or what the protocol is talking about is. You can have anyone develop a block once and have it work in any blog platform or content management system or note taking app. Right. And it's of course it's free and it's open source.</p>



<p>And then you'd be able to like create a paragraph or a table over here and be able to use that same block over, um, someone else who's supporting the same protocol. Does that sound about right?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Yeah. I mean, I don't, the siding would carry over. Also, I think it would</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> The structure maybe?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> It something, yeah, the structure like the schema.</p>



<p>Right? So like if you call it something, a podcast here, it's going to also show up as a podcast there. Or you call it something, a graph here. It's also going to show up as a graph that it doesn't just break. So I think that would be really cool. Um, yeah. The other thing that would be really cool, it's kind of like.</p>



<p>Um, from an end-user perspective, you know, if, if there was some kind of, um, standard diarization on how blocks work immediately makes a lot of software, understandable to people because they're just like, oh, when I click this better, this is what's going to happen. I understand how blocks work in general.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Yeah. So if a block works generally in one application will work generally in the other. Matt's always said Gutenberg was more important than WordPress. So obviously this kind of fits into a kind of a larger picture. And that's why I think when this was published, If the protocol has been started. So it has been published. It's not just a conceptual blog post, but it's in the very, very, very, very early stages.</p>



<p>Yeah. When I read this, I was pretty much thinking along the same thing. Like what if you could take very abstract Gutenberg plugin, and automatically use it in someplace else. Um, Drupal is adopting Gutenberg to a certain extent as well, but this is, I think, agreeing with you. I think it needs to be a little bit more abstract, less opinionated if you expect it to work.</p>



<p>Um, probably a little bit of a broader scope or at least the scope that Joel is shooting for here in this. Post, uh, over time it will mean that anyone can easily publish complex typed datasets on the web that are automatically machine-readable without extra work. Yeah, this was, this was really cool.</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> One thing I am interested in is also the, the, in the thread, there were a bunch of people talking about, you know, how does this compare to web components?</p>



<p>Because that's the whole thing. Why, why not just kind of try to build off of that. Um, and also some people was saying, uh, why&#8230; Like web components or the concept of it never really took off or never, maybe like, um, fully fulfilled its potential. And. I guess like kind of knowing why that didn't take off would be helpful in knowing some of the potential obstacles that this new protocol might face as well.</p>



<p>Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> I, I don't know enough about web components on why that hasn't taken off on paper. It sounds great.</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Yeah right. I have no idea either. I'm sure there's angry people who know all about that. And that he's super curious if you don't post on it.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> I encourage somebody who's checking it out and we'll put a link to not just the article, but also the conversation that was there with Matt.</p>



<p>I thought there was some pretty interesting comments there as well, or Marvel cinematic universe. And now I'm trying to come up with a better acronym, but so far it's I have the, the Mo woo and it's Matt's open web universe. And we reason why we were trying to come up with this awful awful name was because of tumbler.</p>



<p>Um, recently, you know, you saw the same, you saw the same thing as me where, um, and apparently I did not know this, but, um, until I read it yesterday, but apparently tumbler's CEO quietly kind of departed, uh, Tumblr, no reason given. And, and then Matt said he's personally taking over. Don't know yet how that affects the WordPress releases moving forward if that affects his role as leader, anything like that. But Tumblr out of just came out of nowhere again. And what you said you were a tumbler user. I use tumbler a little bit back in the day when it was just starting out, but it just happened to be like using WordPress at the same time.</p>



<p>Tumbler was becoming popular. I kind of had to pick one thing or the other, and I decided to go with WordPress amount of blogging, but instead of, you know, posting it on Tumblr, what were your experiences with tumbler when you started, when did you start using tumbler? Are you still using it now? I</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> am not still using it now.</p>



<p>I'm trying to think back when I did start, probably definitely more than 10 years ago, maybe. Yeah, maybe 15, 15 years ago. Something like that. Maybe more, I don't know. Let's not age myself, um, I have nothing but good nostalgic memories of tumbler. And I guess like what I, when I think, think about tumbler, when I think about is super lightweight, um, posts that were like very template fight, like it's like heavily templated, um, very structured. So you can't deviate that much, or if you, if you did, you had to put in a lot of work to do that. Um, and it, simplicity is what made it really stand out. And that's why I used it. Not having to worry about the technical complexities, um, is nice. And also you were kind of writing, it felt like you were writing directly.</p>



<p>On your page. Um, so in comparison, in WordPress, you kind of write in the editor and it's, it looks separate from the website itself, which, you know, full-site editing is changing. Um, but with tumbler, from the start, it would be, this is your, your site and you write a new post and it would just. I have all the colors and like, you'd be writing.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> It'd be like, would it be like a live preview?</p>



<p>Yeah, I</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> guess so. Yeah. I mean directly on, no, it was like super life, but like, it was, it didn't feel like it was a preview. It felt like you were writing directly on top of your previous posts. You're writing it there and then you just like post it and it's done. Um, yeah, and that, that was really nice.</p>



<p>Um, and there was always kind of this thing. Tight knit community in tumbler and everything. Everyone was kind of niche focused. So you, you know, if you were into, I dunno, knitting than that, you'd have a thousand friends who are all knitting buddies. And you share your knitting, um, beanies and stuff like that.</p>



<p>Um, or if you are into pizza, then that would be your thing.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> That's your fond memory of it. Now that you heard him? Must've been interesting when you heard this, it was it back maybe a year or two ago when automatic purchased it from Verizon, I think, it must've been interesting for you to see that name pop up again.</p>



<p>Where do you see, um, uh, mats. Kind of hinted the fact that, um, we're, it's being rewritten, rewritten in WordPress. What's your guests in terms of how tumblers will be playing out in the open web space. Cause we have that, that, um, Matt's open web universe. How do you think tumbler, but where, where would, where do you think Tumblr would like let's let's if it gets it's WordPress, um, um, integration, where do you think that would fit in the open web?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> So I kind of hope people argue about this on Twitter. I think tumbler, I see tumbler as guardians of the galaxy.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> How do you think Tumblr is going to fit into the open web after WordPress gets integrated? Do you think it's going to take an a, like a new role will be refreshed?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> I don't, I don't have any specific well-defined hopes.</p>



<p>I think it'd be really nice if a new generation of emo younglings, um, use tumbler. Uh, okay,</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> well, let's talk about that then. I think you said like new generation. So do you think Tumblr is the key of introducing new, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is it possible that it could be a new way of introducing Gutenberg to a new generation?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> That would be really interesting. I don't think WordPress is seen as very cool at all amongst young people. Um, so having a different way to introduce blogging and gutenberg to the younger crowd, I think is super cool. And I'm all for that. Um, yeah, so that would be really cool, actually.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So if it wasn't, if you never knew WordPress existed, what would you use today to host a very simple blog?</p>



<p>Just your own personal blog?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Uh, me right now, I probably go on product hunt and sign up for every single in DCMS on there and see your genetics. I think that's what I would do.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So there isn't a clear second place right now for you and I didn't hear tumbler in that response either. So you probably right now, as of right now, like a tumbler as it exists right now, wouldn't be of a viable option.</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Probably.</p>



<p>I don't think the draw of tumbler is. There are some software which are tools and there are some software which are platforms and I think tumblers are platform. And so the draw of tumblers is in its community, not in like how great its software is. So like, if you're asking me now, um, have no affinity to the Tonga community.</p>



<p>So there's no job for me there. And like my goal with coming out with now and blow would just be like, cause I went to ramble on. Life and stuff.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Right. It's not a social thing. It's a publishing thing, but it, it seems like to me though, um, I think you read the same article. I did think it came out in December where they profiled Matt Mullenweg and they kind of figured out like, kind of laid out a little bit of all these acquisitions that automatic has been doing for the past year or two.</p>



<p>Actually I think it may have started with tumbler is cause I can't, well, maybe it's possible. There could been a few before that. There has been acquisitions regarding note taking apps. There's been acquisitions regarding podcasts, um, players, I believe podcast players. Yes. Pocket cast and all of that. And we we've, we've seen.</p>



<p>The we've seen it. Um, hinted at that Matt is collecting like one of every type of thing it seems like. And his, and with his, um, very, very honest and straightforward and true, um, vision of things remaining open sourced. I kind of viewed tumbler as kind of like as, as two things. One is a gateway maybe to WordPress and publishing.</p>



<p>But also as kind of like the social network of his Avenger open web team. Right. Um, you know, this is, you know, of the mats open web universe, uh, type of, type of thing, the Millwall or however we want to describe it. Because it's the closest, because he has a note taking app or I, I shouldn't say he automatic acquired, so that's probably the proper way to, to phrase all this, but there automatics acquired a note taking app it's acquired a podcast, um, player and system that goes along with that, and Tumblr is a publishing system, but like you just said, there's, there's a larger social community involved with that, but it's just interesting that how Matt personally stepped up into.</p>



<p>And we'll probably find out more later.</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Uh, I love that view. Like that's, that's super cool. So when you said it, um, it sounds to be totally on board. I want, I want to see how tumblr becomes the social network of the of Matt's cinematic universe.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Well, he's the collector, right? Or maybe, or he, or automatic is the collector.</p>



<p>There seems to be one of everything. Cause I don't see acquiring a great note. Like I said, there was note taking, there was podcasts there's this and there's one or two other examples too, that I'm not figuring, um, right now, buddy. So yeah, that's how I kind of viewed it. W it would be wonderful to, to see if Tumblr was that also that gateway into Gutenberg.</p>



<p>And that's why I think this block, the block discussion. Outside of WordPress brings on heavier meaning.</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Um, yeah, I guess, I guess tumbler in that sense would be like a live experiment on just how interoperable is the block editor. Right? Cause it's. Fine and easy to say. Yeah. We built it with the intention of being plug and play everywhere. But then like the moment someone actually does it, they're like, no, this is way too opinionated. There are all these weird WordPress artifacts we just can't use it. Um, and so, you know, all of us being able to sit, sit on the, on the sidelines and watch as Matt tries to plug and play, um, the block editor into tumblr, that's, that's going to be interesting. Right. And you'll probably lead them to a lot of, to like realizing a lot of the things that they thought were abstract enough were not abstract enough and all of the things. So that's going to be interesting.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> And I don't want to think of what a Thanos would be doing in this analogy either one last one last thing. And, um, this week, From Dan Daveen goes by coder jerk. That's his word, not mine. And I'll put the link in here. And it was, it was, um, it was a little newsworthy. Um, it got a little tension on hacker news, complicated futility of WordPress, and he had an interesting conversation with Matt on Twitter as well.</p>



<p>Matt's been pretty much very conversational Twitter, and we'll also include that link as well as WordPress continues to grow with blocks with the full site editing. You think WordPress is trying to be too much to too many people, uh, which is what the article was, was kind of leaning towards, or is it leaving anybody behind from your perspective?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> I guess the answer is yes, the answer is yes. But in the sense that, so for sure. In any healthy living, thriving community organization, group of people, there are always going to be people coming in and leaving for a million different reasons. And you know, the very reason that has caused someone to leave is probably going to be the same reason why someone decided to come in and say, oh, amazing.</p>



<p>You know, I was going to use Squarespace, but now. Um, what press has finally caught up and has this like whole drag and drop thing. Now we can use WordPress instead. Um, you know, and that could be the exact reason why someone leaves, right? Like, I don't want to ever do drag and drop. Um, the editing in the block editor, all I want to do is type text.</p>



<p>Um, so I think like just saying is good and button leaving anybody behind, um, like the answer is always going to be yes. And the answer is always going to be but. Um, and so I think it's important to take kind of a broader approach with those a broader kind of view on those things. Um, so that's like the very politically correct answer.</p>



<p>Yes. But I think it, it bears saying, because you know, it's annoying when people just approach it from one</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> perspective. Do you think newsletter glue could be possible without bots?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Uh, it would be very different. Um, it would be. It has to be more simple, I guess. Um, right now you can draw, you can do pretty much any, any template that, um, you can do it.</p>



<p>And email service provider, um, you can do with us. So, you know, that wouldn't be possible if there were no box, you wouldn't have to hardcode everything.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So you could say the blocks kind of allowed your, that particular plugin to be as a good experience at, as, as it would be in WordPress, which is a good thing.</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Yeah, I think so. What is the thing that I find kind of interesting about what he said. How he like resents having to, he seems to want kind of like the simpler times or something like that. Right. Would you, would you agree with</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> that? I commented on this on Twitter and I said, you know, I, you know, I don't agree with every, with some of the things that he said, but I kind of get where a lot of people, especially in the last year, I think, I think it started last year when there was, uh, there was, there was discussion a lot around like developers having to learn all these new things in order to build, you know, WordPress themes and all of that. And I think it's just, we've been in this industry so long and WordPress has existed for so long that we start to start to have those good old day feelings, you know, like things were so simpler 10 years ago and it's not just WordPress either.</p>



<p>There's like the industry in general. Back in the day, you could write something, push a button, and maybe you had to wait a little while, but you would have a nice static website with movable type, you know, and the, you know, in Gatsby and all those other things are trying to bring those things, you know, trying to bring that back, but it's just, you cannot get away with now just.</p>



<p>Or very rarely get away with something that's HTML and CSS anymore. There has to be all this other stuff that you need to have. It, it's very difficult as a, as a plugin, as a single person to create a successful website or a plug-in anymore, because there's so much added complexity and you have to interface with this API and so forth.</p>



<p>And I think a lot of people, especially when it comes to WordPress, it's like, you know, you're making this more complicated than it needs to be, but at the same time, people want WordPress to be more competitive and more attractive. Yeah, like that attracts more complexity. I mean,</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> yeah. I mean, you can't have it both ways, right?</p>



<p>If, if an end user wants to use WooCommerce and wants to have 50 different plugins to optimize their a hundred million dollar e-commerce site, I think it would be hard to say, no, let's go back to the simpler times. Right. Because you know, often these things that. The tools kind of followed the money and they follow the trends.</p>



<p>And if the trends are headed towards complex e-commerce sites are complex membership sites or whatever the case, you know, um, complex LMSs then, um, learning management systems. Um, then that's. Gets built and that's where things go. And, um, yeah, I think like it's one of the nice and not so nice things about working in technology are kind of always at the forefront of things you're always having to, as a result, learn constantly.</p>



<p>Um, you know, if you don't want to do that, then go be a librarian, be a sushi chef.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Um, I think there's always going to be a challenge for any freelancer to have this kind of, um, you know, um, you know, having to put things together, like. Learning curve type of thing. I think WordPress has gotten more complex.</p>



<p>Definitely. If I was to do just a blog, like I asked you before, if I was just, if I, if I wasn't going to use WordPress because it's familiar and I, we just wanted to do a blog, maybe I would choose something else. Something else that would be a lot easier. Like one of these smaller CMS is that, or one of those things that run on Google, um, GitHub pages.</p>



<p>Because, you know, I mean, in, in putting aside that it's not, I'm not owning it, technically it's on GitHub, but I mean, I was like, yeah, if it's just a blog and I put it up there and I can get stuff off of it, like I won't have to pay any hosting. And it's so simple, I press a button. So, but yeah, that's, that's what I would do.</p>



<p>Uh, I don't think, um, if I was just running a very simple blog with no design, I don't, I think WordPress is probably those days are far behind it. Um, and I would use WordPress just for familiarity, but that's not what is going to make WordPress. Continue to grow and mature. And I think some people want to look back on those days and go, I really wish I can just make a simple, this, this simple thing.</p>



<p>And I can't do it a WordPress anymore. And that's fine. I use whatever tools that you, that you want to use. Right. Um, but yeah, but WordPress was never going to be something you'd be able to use far much in the future of that. If it just stayed like that, that's. Two sentences. Yeah. But I always like to share people's opinions.</p>



<p>Like Dan's here about, um, you know, the complications of WordPress and, you know, you're building a website for people and not necessarily a WordPress website, you know? And there was a conversation Post Status Slack this morning about, you know, should you be giving the keys to a client, um, to mess up their own website because you can block blocks now in Gutenberg or something.</p>



<p>But anyway, but I want to thank you very much for sitting down and talking with me this your, your night and my morning.</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Yeah. Thanks David. Thanks for having me. Uh, I am on Twitter way too much,</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> lady. Have you seen what I do?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> I have wished wish that I could meme as well as you. I just like don't have that spark in me.</p>



<p>I see a bit dead. I just think picture not</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> stop taking your medication for a few days and it'll just come right to you. What is your Twitter handle by the way?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> My Twitter handle is @lesley_pizza, L E S L E Y and .</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> And w if somebody wanted to check out your plugin or check out something about you, where would they go?</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Uh, they can go to newsletterglue.com. So newsletterglue.com and they can have a look at what we do and just you, right? Yeah. Re we that you write news that does in the block editor. I</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> really appreciate what you do and where you're sharing your opinions, especially in Post Status slack. So, uh, look forward to seeing you there.</p>



<p>Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>Lesley Sim:</strong> Okay.</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:"Thu, 10 Feb 2022 13:14:58 +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:73:"WPTavern: Miniblock OOAK and Outside-the-Box Ideas in the Theme 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=128728";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"https://wptavern.com/miniblock-ooak-and-outside-the-box-ideas-in-the-theme-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:4759:"<p class="has-drop-cap">I have been fascinated by the concept of Carolina Nymark&#8217;s <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/miniblock-ooak/">Miniblock OOAK</a> theme for a couple of weeks now. It has served as <a href="https://wptavern.com/if-this-is-modern-wordpress-theme-development-sign-me-up">inspiration for a design idea</a> I have been working on, and I am happy to see Nymark pushing boundaries in a space where few pioneers are left. Her design style always dares to take the road less traveled, a quality of which I am envious.</p>



<p>Despite loving the idea of the theme, I had yet to do a deep exploration of it until this week. It is geared toward small home businesses and hobbyists, allowing them to set up a simple landing page.</p>



<img />Header and intro sections.



<p>With a customized heading font and an on-brand color scheme, it seemed perfect for a family member who wants an online presence for an upcoming business. She is not ready to launch yet, but Miniblock OOAK would be an easy-to-use landing page to point people to her Etsy profile while having a point of contact for clients.</p>



<p>I often went with outside solutions for single-page websites in the classic era. WordPress always seemed like overkill for such projects. The software&#8217;s upkeep could be more resource-intensive than updating content. However, I have started coming around as of late. First, the prevalence of reasonably-priced managed hosting means there is less of a need to be a webmaster than even a decade ago. This has played a not-insignificant role in democratizing publishing for more and more people.</p>



<p>The second reason is WordPress 5.9&#8217;s introduction of the site editor and global styles. Small business owners can set up a single-page website without much fuss with the ideal block theme. Sure, there are still some kinks to smooth out in the user-experience department. Those are being actively worked on, and improvements have continued during the WordPress 6.0 development cycle.</p>



<p>We need more themes to create starting points for users to build their own homes on the web in this new system. Miniblock OOAK fits that mold for its niche. It is the first one-page block theme in the directory but will not be the last. With enough fellow pioneers clearing their own paths and redefining what themes are, the years to come could be a worthwhile adventure.</p>



<p>The theme is small enough that you can explore the entirety of its default design in about 10 seconds with a quick scroll down the page. It is set up for a fictional plush creator who is open for commissions and selling their wares via Etsy. It includes a quick-links menu for navigating to a bio, work showcase, and contact section.</p>



<img />Bio section.



<p>As I said, there is not much to explore with the default setup.</p>



<p>The more pieces in the design, the more of those kinks in the user experience I mentioned earlier pop up in the site editor. However, editing Miniblock OOAK feels natural. I could move around, select blocks, and customize without issue.</p>



<img />Customizing the footer area and global styles.



<p>The theme is not just a single template. Nymark has also included eight block patterns. Users can mix and match them to get the look they are after.</p>



<p>The theme uses the featured category to highlight patterns, something I have yet to see another do. I questioned the tactic at first, wondering if that was the ideal experience for users. This category pulls featured patterns from WordPress.org by default. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the decision for this specific theme. Because it is a one-page design, it makes sense that users would primarily rely on the patterns that are first provided to them.</p>



<img />Theme block patterns.



<p>I could see theme authors getting carried away with this, placing dozens of patterns into the featured category. However, it can also make finding those that the developer wants to highlight easier. Carefully curating the patterns that land there could create a welcome user experience.</p>



<p>Andrew Starr employs an alternative method of <a href="https://wptavern.com/alara-block-theme-promises-a-new-pattern-or-design-variation-every-week-for-the-next-year">showcasing patterns in his Alara theme</a>. He has an &#8220;Alara – New&#8221; category that highlights the latest designs.</p>



<p>I like the exploration with Miniblock OOAK. I especially like that the WordPress Themes Team has unlocked the shackles holding authors back, now allowing outside-the-box ideas. It was tough to break from tradition in the classic era for both themers and reviewers, but maybe this theme is the start of something new.</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, 10 Feb 2022 02:41:19 +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:14:"Justin Tadlock";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:3;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"Post Status: This Week at WordPress.org (February 7, 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:61:"https://poststatus.com/?p=93304&preview=true&preview_id=93304";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:58:"https://poststatus.com/this-week-in-wporg-february-7-2022/";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:10994:"<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://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/02/11/a-theory-of-technology-adoption-in-the-wordpress-project/">A Theory of Technology Adoption in the WordPress Project</a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/26/preliminary-roadmap-for-6-0/"></a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/02/the-month-in-wordpress-january-2022/">The Month in WordPress – January 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/02/episode-24-three-goals-in-2022/">WP Briefing Episode 24: Three Goals in 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/02/02/fse-program-exploration-all-things-media/">FSE Program Exploration: All Things Media</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/2022/01/08/accessibility-teams-goals-for-wordpress-6-0-and-beyond/">The Accessibility Team’s Goals for WordPress 6.0 and Beyond</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/02/08/discussion-diversity-in-wordpress-events/">Discussion: Diversity in WordPress Events</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/02/07/2022-wordpress-community-support-financial-update/">2022 WordPress Community Support Financial Update</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/02/04/upcoming-wpdiversity-events-february-2022/">Upcoming #WPDiversity Events: February 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/02/03/open-invitation-diverse-speaker-training-group-wpdiversity-zoom-call/">Open Invitation: Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) Volunteers Zoom Call</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/02/02/community-team-goals-2022-open-discussion-sessions/">Community Team Goals 2022: Open Discussion Sessions</a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/01/10/proposal-mandatory-safety-measures-for-in-person-wordpress-events-in-2022/"></a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2022/01/10/wordpress-5-9-and-php-8-0-8-1/">WordPress 5.9 and PHP 8.0-8.1</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2021/12/01/help-contribute-to-social-media-materials-for-5-9-release/">Help contribute to social media materials for the 5.9 release</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2022/01/25/social-media-drafting-update-for-5-9/">Social media drafting update for 5.9</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/02/10/new-wordpress-make-team-the-photo-directory/">New WordPress Make Team: the Photo Directory</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2022/02/08/call-for-early-testers-glotpress-feedback-feature/">Call for Early Testers: GlotPress Feedback Feature</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/02/08/plugin-review-team-7-february-2022/">Plugin Review Team: 7 February 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/2022/02/11/a-theory-of-technology-adoption-in-the-wordpress-project/">A Theory of Technology Adoption in the WordPress Project</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/01/24/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-ios-19-1/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/02/08/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-ios-19-2/">Call for Testing: WordPress for iOS 19.2</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/02/08/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-android-19-2/">Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 19.2</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/2022/02/02/fse-program-exploration-all-things-media/">FSE Program Exploration: All Things Media</a></li></ul>
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<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/2022/02/09/core-editor-improvement-curated-experiences-with-locking-apis-theme-json/">Core Editor Improvement: Curated experiences with locking APIs & theme.json</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/09/cover-block-refactor-dev-note/">Cover Block Refactor Dev Note</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/03/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-5-february-2nd/">What’s new in Gutenberg 12.5? (February 2nd)</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/31/ensuring-proper-attribution-for-contributions-to-wordpress-on-github/">Ensuring Proper Attribution for Contributions to WordPress on GitHub</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/07/a-week-in-core-february-7-2022/">A Week in Core – February 7, 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/27/wordpress-5-9-simone-retrospective/">WordPress 5.9 ‘Joséphine’ Retrospective</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/26/proposed-improvements-to-the-core-editor-chat-agenda-and-format/">Proposed improvements to the Core Editor chat agenda and format</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/01/wp-notify-status-update/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/01/wp-notify-status-update/">WP Notify Status Update</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/cli/2022/01/26/wp-cli-v2-6-0-release-notes/">WP-CLI v2.6.0 Release Notes</a> </li></ul>



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



<h4 id="h-developer">Developer: </h4>



<ul><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/explanations/user-interface/design-resources/">Block Editor User Interface Resources</a></li><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/contributors/code/backward-compatibility/">Block Editor Backward Compatibility</a></li><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/explanations/user-interface/animation/">Block Editor Animation</a></li><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/contributors/code/deprecations/">Block Editor Deprications</a></li><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/explanations/user-interface/block-design/">Block Editor User Interface Design</a></li><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/pop3/last/">Pop3::last()</a></li><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/classes/pop3/reset/">Pop3::reset()</a></li><li><a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/how-to-guides/data-basics/">Create your first app with Gutenberg</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/training/2022/01/31/faculty-program-structure-proposal/">Faculty Program: Structure Proposal</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/01/17/training-team-goals-for-2022">Training Team Goals 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/02/02/february-2022-team-sprint/">February 2022 Team Sprint</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/01/07/social-learning-spaces-streaming-platforms/">Social Learning Spaces Streaming Platforms</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/01/07/learn-wordpress-version-taxonomy/">Learn WordPress Version Taxonomy</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/template-parts/">Template Parts</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/templates/">Templates</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/making-dashboard-widgets/">Making Dashboard Widgets</a></li></ul>



<h4 id="h-lesson-plans">Lesson Plans:</h4>



<ul><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/use-duotone-filters-to-change-color-effects/">Duotone Images</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/template-parts/">Template Parts</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/introduction-to-common-plugins/">Introduction to Common Plugins</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>
</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, 09 Feb 2022 15:56:00 +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: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:66:"Akismet: The Best WordPress Comment Plugins Compared (2022 Review)";s: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=2264";s: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/2022/02/09/the-best-wordpress-comment-plugins-compared-2022-review/";s: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:26903:"<p>Comments can be incredibly valuable, no matter what type of WordPress site you own. They’re an opportunity to build community, answer questions, receive feedback, and even <a href="https://www.webfx.com/seo/learn/blog-comments-seo/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">increase your search engine rankings</a>.</p>



<p>WordPress provides a default comment system that, in many cases, has all the features you need to accept and respond to comments. However, there may be times you want to customize the design or functionality to increase engagement or serve a specific purpose. You can do this thanks to a variety of free or premium plugins.</p>



<p>Let’s take a look at why you might want to use a plugin, how plugins compare to the default WordPress comment system, and how the most popular WordPress comment plugins stack up.</p>



<span id="more-2264"></span>



<h2 id="what-s-the-difference-between-wordpress-default-comments-and-comment-plugins">What’s the difference between WordPress default comments and comment plugins?</h2>



<p>The default WordPress comment system is simple, but functional. Readers can leave their name, email address, and website alongside their comment. Administrators can view all submitted comments and publish them or choose to send them to a spam or trash folder. People can also respond to comments to continue discussion, which are nested underneath one another.</p>



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<p>The appearance of published comments vary based on your theme and any other customizations you have in place.</p>



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<p>Third-party comment plugins either expand upon this base setup or replace the WordPress comment system entirely. They provide extra functionality like:</p>



<ul><li>Social login, so commenters can save a step by logging in with existing social media accounts</li><li>Extra interactions like upvotes, downvotes, and favorites</li><li>The ability for commenters to include rich media like images and videos</li><li>Incentives like badges to reward helpful comments and contributors</li><li>Social sharing buttons</li><li>Advanced moderation features to make it easier to identify and get rid of spam</li></ul>



<p>As you can see, these features can enhance your comment section and provide a more seamless, interactive experience for both site visitors and website moderators.</p>



<h2 id="pros-of-using-wordpress-default-comments-instead-of-comment-plugins">Pros of using WordPress default comments instead of comment plugins</h2>



<p>There are, of course, pros and cons to everything. Here are some benefits of using the default WordPress comment system:</p>



<h3 id="1-there-s-little-to-no-setup-required">1. There’s little to no setup required</h3>



<p>You can launch your WordPress site, post an article, and allow visitors to leave comments with absolutely no additional setup on your end. But, if you want, you can only enable comments on specific pages and posts, decide whether or not to require manual comment approval, and choose between a few other options. Either way, getting started is simple and straightforward.</p>



<h3 id="2-you-reduce-the-chances-of-theme-and-plugin-conflicts">2. You reduce the chances of theme and plugin conflicts</h3>



<p>Because the comment system is built into WordPress itself, it works with the vast majority of themes and plugins. You don’t have to worry that an update will break your comment system or cause other functionality issues.</p>



<h3 id="3-you-can-integrate-with-valuable-tools-like-akismet">3. You can integrate with valuable tools like Akismet</h3>



<p>Akismet is a leading <a href="https://akismet.com/">spam prevention plugin</a> that has blocked more than 525,000,000,000 spam comments to date. It works with the default WordPress comment system to seamlessly identify spam and automatically gets rid of the worst offenders without you ever having to deal with them.</p>



<h3 id="4-it-s-completely-free">4. It’s completely free</h3>



<p>Again, the comment system is built directly into WordPress. And since WordPress is free, it is too. That’s just one less bill you have to worry about paying each month.</p>



<h3 id="5-you-don-t-need-to-worry-about-ads">5. You don’t need to worry about ads</h3>



<p>Some third–party comment plugins place ads on websites or charge to disable those ads. These can be distracting, discourage visitors from commenting, and even direct them to competing websites.</p>



<h3 id="6-it-s-simple-and-straightforward">6. It’s simple and straightforward</h3>



<p>The design of the WordPress comment system is, well, easy. It’s super clean and straightforward. There aren’t any frills, and that can be a good thing. Visitors know exactly what steps they need to take without having to spend a lot of time figuring things out. And because it’s simple, it doesn’t weigh down or slow down your site like third-party plugins can.</p>



<h2 id="cons-of-using-wordpress-default-comments-instead-of-comment-plugins">Cons of using WordPress default comments instead of comment plugins</h2>



<p>While there are lots of benefits, there are a few cons to using the default WordPress comment system:</p>



<h3 id="1-you-may-miss-out-on-additional-features">1. You may miss out on additional features</h3>



<p>There are plenty of features included with third-party tools that may benefit your site. For example, if you have a fashion blog, it might be important for visitors to include photos of the outfits they create with your tips. If you have a news site, you might really value the ability for people to upvote or downvote comments.</p>



<h3 id="2-you-may-spend-too-much-time-managing-comments">2. You may spend too much time managing comments</h3>



<p>Without any additional <a href="https://akismet.com/">spam plugins</a>, you have to manually decide which comments to publish and which ones are spam. This can be a time-consuming and tedious process, especially since <a href="https://blog.akismet.com/2022/01/12/how-to-stop-comment-spam-in-wordpress/">stopping comment spam</a> is an important part of website maintenance.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="3-you-may-lose-engagement-opportunities-especially-for-highly-interactive-sites">3. You may lose engagement opportunities, especially for highly-interactive sites</h3>



<p>While the WordPress comment system is simple and straightforward, it’s not always the best option for engagement. This is especially true if you want to really build a community around your brand with lots of interaction. Extra features like upvoting, downvoting, and favoriting comments, along with social share capabilities, can really enhance engagement.</p>



<h3 id="4-you-may-lose-commenters-if-you-require-an-account">4. You may lose commenters if you require an account</h3>



<p>You may want to require someone to create an account in order to leave a comment in order to minimize spam. However, this can also be discouraging —&nbsp;not everyone will want to create an account due to privacy concerns or time considerations. Depending on the comment plugin you choose, you can set up social login capabilities so visitors can leave a comment using an account they already have.</p>



<h3 id="5-you-don-t-have-the-ability-to-notify-people-of-responses">5. You don’t have the ability to notify people of responses</h3>



<p>By default, there isn’t a way to notify users of responses to their own comments on your WordPress site. So if you answer their question or if someone engages them in spirited debate, they’ll have no way of knowing without checking back on your site over and over. But many comment plugins include this functionality in their list of features.</p>



<h2 id="the-best-wordpress-comment-plugins">The best WordPress comment plugins</h2>



<h3 id="1-jetpack-comments">1. <a href="https://jetpack.com/features/discussion/comments/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jetpack Comments</a></h3>



<p>Jetpack Comments replaces the default WordPress comment system with a simple, but enhanced, form of their own. The primary focus is on improving the user experience — it enables people to quickly log in using their social media accounts, get email notifications if someone responds to their comments, and like comments that they agree with.</p>



<p>And, since it’s part of the Jetpack plugin, you can also benefit from blogging features like post share buttons, social media publishing tools, media slideshows, and more at no cost.</p>



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<p><strong>Key features of Jetpack Comments:</strong></p>



<ul><li>Social media login options via WordPress.com, Twitter, Google, and Facebook</li><li>The ability to notify people via email if someone responds to their comment</li><li>The option for respondents to like other people’s comments</li><li>Seamless integration with Akismet for comment spam moderation&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p><strong>Ease of use:</strong></p>



<p>Jetpack Comments is an excellent option for everyone, from the newest WordPress user to the most experienced site owner. Setup is as simple as installing the plugin and clicking a few buttons.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Pricing</strong>:</p>



<p>Jetpack Comments is free for all users.</p>



<p><strong>Great for:</strong></p>



<p>The blogger who doesn’t need anything fancy but wants to make their comments a little more engaging and interactive.</p>



<h3 id="2-disqus">2. <a href="https://disqus.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Disqus</a></h3>



<p>Disqus is a popular, full-scale commenting system that provides solutions for design, engagement, and moderation. You can choose between a variety of plans to pick the features and pricing that are right for your WordPress site. And since it automatically adapts to fit your site design, you don’t have to worry about making it work with your brand.&nbsp;</p>



<p>However, it’s important to note that the free plan is relatively limited and includes third-party ads that can be distracting and lead your site visitors elsewhere.</p>



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<p><strong>Key features of Disqus:</strong></p>



<ul><li>Engagement options like upvotes, downvotes, threaded replies, and favorites</li><li>Video and image support</li><li>Automated spam comment moderation based on user reputation</li><li>Star ratings for product reviews and recipes</li><li>Email subscriptions</li><li>Social login support</li><li>Asynchronous loading so as not to affect your website speed</li></ul>



<p><strong>Ease of use:</strong></p>



<p>The Disqus WordPress plugin has a one-click installation to replace your comment system without editing a line of code. This makes it simple for beginners to use.</p>



<p><strong>Pricing:</strong></p>



<ul><li>The <strong>Basic</strong> plan is free and includes core features like discussion interaction and rich media. It also, however, will display ads on your site.</li><li>The <strong>Plus </strong>plan is $11 per month, is ad-free, and supports up to 50,000 daily pageviews.</li><li>The <strong>Pro </strong>plan is $105 per month, is ad-free, and supports up to 150,000 daily pageviews. It also includes additional features like star ratings, custom reactions, and commenter badges.</li></ul>



<p>There are also advanced <strong>Business </strong>plans available with custom pricing for enterprise-level sites and agencies.</p>



<p><strong>Great for:</strong></p>



<p>Websites that prioritize engagement and community interaction that are either willing to show ads on their site or pay for their comment system.</p>



<h3 id="3-wpdiscuz">3. <a href="https://wpdiscuz.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">wpDiscuz</a></h3>



<p>wpDiscuz is a top-rated, free comment plugin that offers paid add-ons with additional features. The basics provide everything you need to enhance your comments, from likes and star ratings to social logins and rich media. Plus, it comes with lightning fast speed and stores all comment submissions directly in your own database, rather than with a third-party tool.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And if you want even more power, choose from extensions that allow for video uploads, private comment threads, comment search, and more.</p>



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<p><strong>Key features of wpDiscuz:</strong></p>



<ul><li>Inline commenting and feedback so authors can ask questions for readers directly inside blog post content</li><li>Multiple ready-to-use comment system layouts</li><li>Star ratings</li><li>Social logins</li><li>A rich editor that allows for media</li><li>reCAPTCHAs to prevent comment spam</li><li>Integration with anti-spam tool, Akismet</li><li>Comment subscriptions, so people know when someone replies to them</li><li>Likes and a comment voting system</li></ul>



<p><strong>Ease of use:</strong></p>



<p>wpDiscuz is relatively easy to get started with and configure. However, since there are <em>so </em>many available features, all the options could become a bit overwhelming for beginners.</p>



<p><strong>Pricing:</strong></p>



<p>wpDiscuz is a free plugin that you can download from the WordPress.org library. However, there are premium add-ons ranging from $9.00 to $49.00.</p>



<p><strong>Great for:</strong></p>



<p>Sites looking for a reliable, free comment plugin with all the bells and whistles.</p>



<h3 id="4-graphcomment">4. <a href="https://graphcomment.com/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">GraphComment</a></h3>



<p>GraphComment is a system that really prioritizes creating a community rather than just a comment section. It offers advanced features that let readers interact with one another in real time and makes moderation easy for site owners. It also has, as its name suggests, a graphical user interface that provides a super-organized, clean look that’s perfect for large volumes of comments.</p>



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<p><strong>Key features of GraphComment:</strong></p>



<ul><li>The ability for readers to like, react, and reply to individual comments</li><li>The ability for people to chat back and forth in real time</li><li>Social login</li><li>Community profiles</li><li>A notification center that alerts users to responses in real time</li><li>Embedded images, GIFs, and videos</li><li>Badges and awards for top commenters</li><li>Discussion sharing</li><li>Smart moderation tools that automatically approve comments from trusted people</li><li>Restricted comments for members</li><li>Built-in structured data markup to improve SEO rankings</li></ul>



<p><strong>Ease of use:</strong></p>



<p>GraphComment has straightforward implementation and setup and is a good option for users of all skill levels.</p>



<p><strong>Pricing:</strong></p>



<ul><li>The <strong>Basic </strong>plan is free and includes the majority of features available.</li><li>The <strong>Starter </strong>plan is $7.00 per month and adds the ability to pin top discussions, real-time chat capabilities, comment restriction for members, and several other features. It does cap websites to 1,500,000 data loads per month.</li><li>The <strong>Pro </strong>plan is $74.00 per month, adding priority support and including up to 5,000,000 data loads per month.</li></ul>



<p><strong>Great for:</strong></p>



<p>Membership sites and websites that want to really create a social discussion group.</p>



<h3 id="5-thrive-comments">5. <a href="https://thrivethemes.com/comments/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Thrive Comments</a>&nbsp;</h3>



<p>This comment plugin comes from Thrive Themes, the maker of a variety of WordPress plugins and themes. Its entire purpose is incentivising comments through upvotes, likes, badges, and more.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And since Thrive Themes focuses on marketing across many of their tools, there are lots of unique features built into their comment plugin specifically designed for conversion. For example, you can display messages to commenters after they click “submit” to show related posts, ask for social shares, and more. Or reward first-time commenters by offering them a special reward like a welcome message or coupon code.</p>



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<p><strong>Key features of Thrive Comments:</strong></p>



<ul><li>Upvotes, likes, and featured comments</li><li>Badges for top commenters&nbsp;</li><li>Notifications for comment responses</li><li>Social sharing</li><li>Social login</li><li>Custom post-comment messages designed to drive engagement</li><li>Streamlined moderation tools with advanced filtering</li></ul>



<p><strong>Ease of use:</strong></p>



<p>Thrive Comments is easy to set up. After plugin installation, all settings are controlled using toggles and checkboxes, making things just about as simple as they can be.</p>



<p><strong>Pricing:</strong></p>



<p>Thrive Comments is only available as the entire Thrive Suite package, which includes additional features that allow you to build landing pages, collect leads, create automations, and more. This suite is $19.00 per month paid annually or $30 per month paid quarterly.</p>



<p><strong>Great for:</strong></p>



<p>Websites who also want the additional features included with the entire Thrive Suite package.</p>



<h3 id="6-social-comments-by-wpdevart">6. <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/comments-from-facebook/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Social Comments by WpDevArt</a></h3>



<p>This freemium comments plugin serves a very specific purpose: integrating your WordPress site with Facebook comments. Website visitors can respond to your blog posts either directly on your site or on Facebook, which is a great way to drive Facebook followers to your website and vice versa. However, the biggest downside is that all comments are stored on Facebook rather than in your database.</p>



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<p><strong>Key features of Social Comments by WpDevArt:</strong></p>



<ul><li>Social login through Facebook</li><li>The ability to customize basic design attributes like font color and size</li><li>The capabilities that come with Facebook, including likes and media support</li></ul>



<p><strong>Ease of use:</strong></p>



<p>Setup is relatively simple, but those inexperienced with Facebook Business may find it difficult to set up the app ID required for integration.</p>



<p><strong>Pricing:</strong></p>



<ul><li>The <strong>Free </strong>version has no cost and includes all major functionality.</li><li>The <strong>Pro </strong>version is $10 for one site and includes premium support, additional design options, and animation effects.</li></ul>



<p><strong>Great for:</strong></p>



<p>A website that specifically wants to integrate Facebook comments, such as a blogger with a thriving Facebook following</p>



<h3 id="7-replybox">7. <a href="https://getreplybox.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ReplyBox</a></h3>



<p>ReplyBox is a comment system that was built for ultimate privacy. So you won’t have to worry about ads, affiliate links, or tracking, which is a privacy win for both you and your site visitors.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But it’s also more than that. It’s super lightweight in code and design, so it’ll look simple and beautiful on your site without slowing things down. At the same time, it provides features like response notifications, social login, and emoji responses.</p>



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<p><strong>Key features of ReplyBox:</strong></p>



<ul><li>Super lightweight, agile code for a speedy site</li><li>A minimalist, mobile-friendly design</li><li>Akismet integration to prevent spam</li><li>Markdown formatting that allows for links, lists, quotes, emojis, and code</li><li>Comment response notifications</li><li>Social login</li></ul>



<p><strong>Ease of use:</strong></p>



<p>Once the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/replybox" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ReplyBox WordPress plugin</a> is installed, it automatically replaces the default comment system so nothing else is required on your end.</p>



<p><strong>Pricing:</strong></p>



<ul><li>The <strong>20,000 </strong>plan is $6.00 a month and includes support for up to 20,000 monthly pageviews.</li><li>The <strong>100,000 </strong>plan is $16.00 a month and includes support for up to 100,000 monthly pageviews.</li><li>The <strong>250,000 </strong>plan is $26.00 a month and includes support for up to 250,000 monthly pageviews.</li></ul>



<p><strong>Great for:</strong></p>



<p>Sites who want a super lightweight, beautiful comment system that focuses on privacy.</p>



<h2 id="comments-are-the-gateway-to-community">Comments are the gateway to community</h2>



<p>It’s no surprise that comments can be an incredibly effective way to build community for the right brand. And while the default WordPress comment system is simple and straightforward —&nbsp;the perfect option for many websites —&nbsp;there are cases in which you may want to expand upon it.</p>



<p>That’s where WordPress comment plugins come in. They provide the opportunity to add features that encourage interaction — upvotes and downvotes, likes, badges, social login, etc. —&nbsp;and make moderation easier.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The best WordPress comment system is the one that meets your specific needs. But if you’re looking for a few small enhancements, we recommend going with Jetpack Comments. If you want to build a membership site or an advanced social commenting system, give GraphComment a go. And if you specifically want to integrate with Facebook, Social Comments by WpDevArt is going to be your best bet.</p>



<p>No matter which plugin you choose, have fun with it! Get involved, respond to comments quickly and professionally, and keep things safe with <a href="https://akismet.com/">WordPress spam prevention</a>.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 id="wordpress-comment-faqs">WordPress comment FAQs</h2>



<h3 id="should-i-enable-comments-on-my-wordpress-site">Should I enable comments on my WordPress site?</h3>



<p>There are both pros and cons to enabling WordPress comments and the decision will be unique to each individual site. The benefits include:</p>



<ul><li>Building a dedicated and engaged community</li><li>Receiving valuable feedback</li><li>Increasing views and conversions</li><li>Improving search engine rankings</li></ul>



<p>However, the downsides include:</p>



<ul><li>Spending a lot of time moderating comments&nbsp;</li><li>Attracting unwanted spam</li><li>Negatively affecting your brand (in the case of negative comments)</li></ul>



<h3 id="how-can-i-customize-the-default-wordpress-comment-system">How can I customize the default WordPress comment system?</h3>



<p>By going to <strong>Settings → Discussion </strong>in your WordPress dashboard, you can implement options like:</p>



<ul><li>Requiring comment authors to include their name and email address</li><li>Requiring people to log in to comment</li><li>Automatically closing comments after a certain period of time</li><li>Enabling nested comments, which tucks replies underneath the comment they’re related to</li><li>Changing the order in which comments are displayed</li></ul>



<p>There, you can also set options for moderation, including admin emails and blocked comments.</p>



<p>If you’re a developer or have experience with code, you can also use CSS to change elements like font size and submit button color. For more advanced functionality changes —<a href="https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/05/adding-custom-fields-in-wordpress-comment-form/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;like adding and removing fields</a> — you can modify your child theme’s <em>functions.php </em>file.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Or, you can use the free <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-comment-fields/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">WP Comment Fields</a> plugin to drag and drop text boxes, radio buttons, and select inputs to your comment form.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="how-can-i-make-comments-more-engaging">How can I make comments more engaging?</h3>



<p>There are a number of ways you can make your WordPress comment section more engaging, including introducing the idea of gamification — adding fun rewards into the process. For a comment section, this could look like including downvotes, upvotes, and likes. You could also get a little more advanced with badges, featured comments, and prizes for the most-liked commenters.</p>



<p>Another way to make comments more engaging is to make them easier to interact with. Nest comment responses, turn on reply notifications, and let visitors easily log in using social media accounts they already have.</p>



<h3 id="how-can-i-prevent-wordpress-comment-spam">How can I prevent WordPress comment spam?</h3>



<p><a href="https://blog.akismet.com/2022/01/12/how-to-stop-comment-spam-in-wordpress/">Preventing comment spam</a> is an important part of running a community or blog. It protects your reputation, keeps your site safe, and helps your visitors not fall prey to the scams of malicious actors. Here are just a few ways you can prevent spam:</p>



<ul><li>Harden your WordPress discussion settings, like automatically blocking comments that include a link.</li><li>Use a <a href="https://akismet.com/">WordPress anti-spam plugin</a> to automatically filter out spam comments. This is your best defense against spammers.</li><li>Require user registration before people can comment. Of course, this can also be a deterrent depending on your specific audience.</li><li><a href="https://blog.akismet.com/2021/12/23/do-captcha-and-recaptcha-protect-wordpress-sites-from-bots/">Add a CAPTCHA</a> to your comment section to prevent spam from bots.&nbsp;</li></ul>



<h3 id="do-third-party-comment-tools-store-my-comments-in-their-database-or-mine">Do third-party comment tools store my comments in their database or mine?</h3>



<p>It depends on the tool you choose. Some keep your comments on their own platform, which can make things difficult if you ever want to use another plugin or revert back to the WordPress default comment system. Others store comments in your WordPress database, which you can back up and save yourself.</p>



<h3 id="what-should-i-look-for-in-a-wordpress-comment-plugin">What should I look for in a WordPress comment plugin?</h3>



<p>Aside from considering your budget and functionality needs, look for:</p>



<ul><li>Good reviews. These are often the best way to judge quality.</li><li>Regular updates for security and functionality.</li><li>Popularity. Are there a good number of people using the plugin?</li><li>Great support. Are there forums available? If it’s a premium plugin, is there a ticket system or live chat option?</li><li>Integration with plugins you’re already using. If you have an eCommerce store, for example, does it work with WooCommerce? If you run forums, does it work with your forum tool?</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:"Wed, 09 Feb 2022 15:36:20 +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: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:79:"WPTavern: #13 – Chris Lubkert and Rich Tabor on Building Sites With Extendify";s: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=129635";s: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:93:"https://wptavern.com/podcast/13-chris-lubkert-and-rich-tabor-on-building-sites-with-extendify";s: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:43267:"<h2 id="about-this-episode">About this episode.</h2>



<p>On the podcast today we have <a href="https://twitter.com/chrislubkert">Chris Lubkert</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/richard_tabor">Rich Tabor</a>, from <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/extendify/">Extendify</a>. Extendify is a library of block patterns and full page layouts which you can use inside of the Block Editor.</p>



<p>Chris and Rich, as you will hear, decided a few years ago that they were going to dedicate themselves to working with blocks. They each had their own projects, but Rich recently joined the team because his vision aligned well with Chris’.</p>



<p>That vision is to provide designs which you can import directly into WordPress with just a few clicks. From there you can edit them in your own way.</p>



<p>Although it’s become more common to use blocks, a few years ago, the future of blocks, and whether or not they would be widely adopted, was still in doubt. So it was a brave move at the time to focus entirely on blocks.</p>



<p>Whilst the promise of easy website creation is broadly the goal of blocks, they’re not always easy to create and style. And that’s where Extendify comes in with their library of designs which all work with core WordPress blocks. You pick a design, and it’s immediately pulled into your site and is editable.</p>



<p>And that’s the thrust of the podcast today. What is Extendify? How does it work? What can you achieve with it? What do they plan to build in the future?</p>



<p>If you’d like to find out more you can read Sarah Gooding’s article entitled &#8211;  <a href="https://wptavern.com/extendify-launches-new-pattern-library-plugin">Extendify Launches New Pattern Library Plugin</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 themes, and in this case, the blocks and patterns. I would encourage you to subscribe to the podcast so you can get all the episodes automatically each and every week.</p>



<p>You can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or go to WP tavern dot com forward slash feed forward slash podcast. You can also copy and paste that URL into most podcast players. I&#8217;d really like to hear from anyone out there who would like to come on the podcast and talk about whatever it is that you do within WordPress.</p>



<p>It might be that you&#8217;re a developer, a WordPress organizer, a contributor, a designer. 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 dot com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the contact form there.</p>



<p>So on the podcast today, we have Chris Lubkert and Rich Tabor from Extendify. Extendify is a library of block patterns and full page layouts, which you can use inside of the block editor. Chris and Rich, as you will hear, decided a few years ago that they were going to dedicate themselves to working with blocks. They each had their own projects, but Rich recently joined the team because his vision aligned well with Chris&#8217;s. That vision is to provide designs, which you can import directly into WordPress with just a few clicks. And from there you can edit them in your own way.</p>



<p>Although it&#8217;s become more common to use blocks, a few years ago, the future of blocks and whether or not they would be widely adopted was still in doubt. So it was a brave move at the time to focus entirely on blocks. Whilst the promise of easy website creation is broadly the goal of blocks, they&#8217;re not always easy to create and style. And that&#8217;s where Extendify comes in with their library of designs, which all work with the core WordPress blocks. You can pick a design and it&#8217;s immediately pulled into your site and is editable.</p>



<p>And that&#8217;s the thrust of the podcast today. What is Extendify? How does it work? What can you achieve with it? And what do they plan to do in the 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 dot com forward slash podcast. And look for episode number 13.</p>



<p>And so without further delay, I bring you, Chris Lubkert and Rich Tabor.</p>



<p>[00:03:19] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I am joined on the podcast today by Chris Lubkert and Rich Tabor. Hiya guys.</p>



<p>[00:03:26] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> Hey.</p>



<p>[00:03:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Very nice to connect with you. We&#8217;re here today to talk about blocks. Chris and Rich have an interesting product, which I&#8217;m sure many of you will have come across. If you haven&#8217;t, probably the best thing to do is to pause the podcast and head over to Extendify dot com E X T E N D I F Y dot com. Familiarize yourself with that and then return here, and you will then know what we&#8217;re talking about. Guys, who&#8217;s behind this, which of you two gets the credit?</p>



<p>[00:03:57] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> Rich gets all the credit for all the goodness that&#8217;s out there. Rich joined us several months ago and it&#8217;s been a huge benefit to our company and the product.</p>



<p>[00:04:06] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> I don&#8217;t know, Chris, I give you guys a lot of credit getting it rolling. I just came in and fine tuned a few things at the end there. But yeah, we&#8217;ve got an awesome team behind us, that&#8217;s really helping drive this thing through.</p>



<p>[00:04:16] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, right at the start of the podcast think is quite a nice idea if we familiarize ourselves with whoever&#8217;s on the show. So I&#8217;m going to ask you in turn, perhaps if we start with Chris and then we go to Rich, do you want to just give us a little bit of a background story, who you are, where you&#8217;ve come from, what your relationship is with WordPress, how you&#8217;ve ended up being involved with blocks at all.</p>



<p>[00:04:41] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> Sure. Yeah. I started my, most of my career and experience has been from outside of the WordPress ecosystem. So my first deep dive into WordPress was joining Automattic and working on acquisitions and investments there, in addition to like internal projects to help the different divisions of the business grow. And that&#8217;s where, along with my co-founder Arthur Grabowski, we saw a huge opportunity in the space. WordPress is growing dramatically, as we all know, continues to grow, accelerate in many ways in it&#8217;s growth. But the experience for many users is still hard. And so with Gutenberg and full site editing on the horizon, we saw an opportunity to create an experience layer on top of that, that we were excited to go out and go pursue.</p>



<p>[00:05:25] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> So I&#8217;m Rich Tabor. My career in WordPress started with designing landing pages for a local marketing firm. And I quickly wanted to learn how to better design for them by understanding the limitations of the code of the engineering behind the scenes in WordPress. So that&#8217;s how I leaned into WordPress themes.</p>



<p>I ran a shop called Theme Beans for a number of years. Did a lot of minimal type themes for portfolios for photographers, more creative type themes. It was a great time. I soon found the whisper of Gutenberg at one of the WordCamps, and, at first I dismissed it like everyone else.</p>



<p>But I went home and did some research and I&#8217;m like I need to try building some of these block things. And I tried building a gallery block. I remember the very first block I tried building. And it was a miserable failure. I didn&#8217;t know. I didn&#8217;t know anything. Yeah, it was bad. It was so frustrating. I didn&#8217;t understand any of the concepts that I was trying to roll with. But you know, over time I was very curious and I knew that I was pretty confident that this would be the future of WordPress. So much was being invested by the community that I saw the future. I saw that this type of editing is needed in WordPress and it really is needed to empower folks to publish online and in an open source fashion, I knew it was the right direction. So I leaned in, I built some blocks. I released a few here and there eventually landed on Co Blocks and ran that up with Jeffrey Caradang, and that was a lot of fun. We learned a lot and got to experience that road together. Sold that to GoDaddy, and we grew to over 500,000 active installs I think as of a couple days ago, at least. It&#8217;s been a wildride. I learned so much at GoDaddy, leading products there on the WordPress experience team and just knew from the inside out, the struggles that folks were seeing with Gutenberg that they&#8217;re experiencing and in blocks or we&#8217;re solving a big need and they&#8217;re definitely necessary for this next evolution of WordPress. But experience-wise, there&#8217;s just so much more that we could do. And that&#8217;s one of the main reasons I came over to Extendify, like they were on the forefront of patterns and layouts and this experience layer on top of Gutenberg. And I knew I would fit right in and it&#8217;s working out well. It&#8217;s amazing and we&#8217;re rocking online and doing some really incredible things.</p>



<p>[00:07:38] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> It&#8217;s a curious moment, like a fork in the road, almost to some extent, because as you&#8217;ve described, you have a rich history of designing things on top of WordPress to make them look nice. And yet it was incredibly difficult and frustrating. And so I feel that tools like Extendify are perfectly positioned really in a way, because this new paradigm of creating things, but we&#8217;ve also got a technical debt of it being really difficult to create these things all on your own.</p>



<p>Who is part of the team? I mean, I&#8217;ve seen names being announced, and I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve had much in terms of churn or growth. Who&#8217;s currently, as we&#8217;re speaking early February, 2022, who&#8217;s part of the Extendify team?</p>



<p>[00:08:20] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> I started Extendify with my co-founder Arthur Grabowski. The two of us we met at Automattic and saw the opportunity and decided to go start a business around it and to support the WordPress experience for SMBs specifically, and Rich joined us leading product. So Rich is really the brains and the power behind a lot of the quality experiences that people see. And our team is six people total right now, but we also work with a few freelancers to help support us in various ways as well.</p>



<p>[00:08:51] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So Extendify is a suite of blocks. I&#8217;m going to say, but you&#8217;ll probably have more to add than that. What&#8217;s the promise that you&#8217;re bringing? What is it that makes you different, because I&#8217;m sure in many ways, some of the things that you&#8217;re bringing to the table could be achieved by mere mortals like me with enough time. But I guess the idea is that you&#8217;re short circuiting the amount of time it takes to make websites beautiful. Is that essentially what you&#8217;re trying to do, make it easy for people to create nice, effective, beautiful websites</p>



<p>[00:09:25] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> Yeah, WordPress is hard. WordPress is challenging, even for a seasoned pro to go in and create, even within Gutenberg, it takes a lot of time and energy, and you really have to understand what&#8217;s going on, especially around the group block and the columns block and how those interact with rows and all the new stuff that WordPress is adding every single year.</p>



<p>So what we&#8217;re doing is building a suite of patterns and full-page layouts to start, that help you get to, like you said, a beautiful website fast. And it&#8217;s not just beautiful, but also very resourceful, like there&#8217;s jobs to be done that you need help getting done, and we&#8217;re here to fill that gap. That&#8217;s where we&#8217;re targeting right now.</p>



<p>[00:10:00] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> I&#8217;d say we want it to be beautiful and effective for whatever someone&#8217;s looking to accomplish. Gutenberg, full site editing. It brings a lot of powerful tools to the WordPress experience that didn&#8217;t exist years ago. And our purpose is to bring an experience layer on top of that, that makes it easy for, whether it&#8217;s a DIY user building a site for themselves, or a builder freelancer building sites for clients. It makes it easier for them leverage the power of these new tools to create both beautiful and effective sites.</p>



<p>[00:10:30] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> One of things which we&#8217;ve seen in the block space, there&#8217;s lots of different companies out there who are offering different ways of achieving the same kind of goal. In some cases, they are sticking with Core blocks and allowing you to modify your designs simply with code blocks. In other cases, they&#8217;re bringing along there own proprietary blocks, which you need in order to manage those pages and the layouts that they create. My understanding is that you&#8217;re all in on your designs with Core blocks, if that&#8217;s not true, do correct me. But if that&#8217;s true, why did you go with that as opposed to building out your own blocks to achieve possibly different things.</p>



<p>[00:11:10] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> Yeah. You know, there&#8217;s a few key reasons. I would say number one is sustainability. So when we&#8217;re creating these patterns and you add them to your site you don&#8217;t have any other extraneous resources that you have to maintain or update or even install right off the bat. Like you get, one-click, instant, something beautiful and resourceful added to your page, instead of having to follow through a bunch of different steps.</p>



<p>And we found that that was a very important for the end user, but also for our team. Like we know creating blocks is getting easier every couple of weeks or so with the new create block package and whatnot, but still maintaining those and adding the new features that Core is adding on top of its own blocks is something that&#8217;s an overhead that we don&#8217;t necessarily want to take hold of ourselves.</p>



<p>And so, you know, it&#8217;s a, win-win, the end users get the latest, that Core has to offer and their blocks that they added to their page last month, still inherent all the new stuff whenever they updated their website. It&#8217;s just practice that we found to be very, very resourceful on our end, and we really are 100% in on this front.</p>



<p>[00:12:12] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> In terms of the feature set that Core brings. Have there been any limitations? Have there been moments where you had wished that you could do something with Core blocks, but it turned out that, as yet, that was not possible and you would need to go elsewhere and maybe download some sort of other block pack because, I have found certain things difficult to create and third-party solutions have made it trivially easy to create in terms of putting things over here and things onto here and grids and layouts and all of that stuff. Has there been any limitations, are there designs that you wished you could achieve that you simply can&#8217;t at the moment or have you found a way around that.</p>



<p>[00:12:52] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> So Nathan, I think you are correct that in the short term, it would be easier for us to have just created our own suite of blocks and only use those and built any functionality we needed. And had that requirement for users that they had our blocks, our own block collection installed. But we think that&#8217;s to the detriment of the user. The world doesn&#8217;t need 28 different image blocks out there. There&#8217;s a lot of benefit to sticking with Core native blocks, as much as possible. Someone doesn&#8217;t accidentally uninstall some block collection and their whole site looks broken. Or something isn&#8217;t supported anymore, and they need to find a new solution and recreate a lot of pages that they&#8217;ve created before, because XYZ block collection, an abandoned project that&#8217;s not maintained, not secure, whatever. So, in many ways it would be easier for us to create our own blocks, but we took the hard challenge of how do we create beautiful, adaptive designs and layouts using the Core blocks whenever possible.</p>



<p>[00:13:51] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> Yeah, and, you know, on top of that, when we do come up with some different feature sets or ideas that we&#8217;re trying to flex and in some of our patterns and layouts. We take those to Core. We put an issue on Github. As a company we do a five for the future contribution every month, and we make sure that we contribute on the points that, a kind of tick the boxes that we think are important for Gutenberg users as a whole, but also, there&#8217;s things that we know would be fun to add, different type of features to extend the image block, additional color picker options. Like, there&#8217;s different things that we kind of hone in on as a company that we want to focus on and we contribute those back to Core. And I think that&#8217;s probably the most effective way to push change so that we can really not just make, the folks that are using Extendify have a better experience, but folks using WordPress have a better experience with Gutenberg.</p>



<p>[00:14:37] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you. Rich, I&#8217;m going to quote you at yourself. This is coming from Sarah Gooding&#8217;s article. She produced a piece over on the Tavern called Extendify launches new pattern library plugin. And in that piece you said all of our partners and layouts are built completely with Core blocks, infused with a clever utility design system.</p>



<p>So I can more or less guarantee, you know what the next question is? What is the clever utility design system? What&#8217;s going on under the hood there that you&#8217;ve cleverly designed.</p>



<p>[00:15:07] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> Yeah. So our utility styles are, I would say they&#8217;re essentially the glue between where we want Gutenberg to be extended to that once Core adapts and grows whenever new WordPress releases come out to where we are today. So, we&#8217;re adding some utilities that are class-based kind of like tailwind CSS. Where we can quickly add CSS grid support or Flexbox support and do some offset grids or make something very unique. While still maintaining a layer of the Core blocks, with our utility styles on top of that. So essentially you&#8217;re getting the best of both worlds. I think eventually we won&#8217;t need the utility styles. I think for now it is our glue till we get to where Core is going to be, maybe a year or two down the road, I think we&#8217;ll be at a very cool place in WordPress where we can really extend the Core experience and in a fashion that makes us do all these unique things that we&#8217;re doing within our library, but within Core. But for now they&#8217;re necessary to ensure the structure of these patterns and come up with some really creative looks.</p>



<p>[00:16:05] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I&#8217;m just going to put Extendify over on one side for a moment, and I&#8217;m just going to talk about blocks and the WordPress block landscape at the moment. If we rewind a few years, nobody had used the block at all. They didn&#8217;t exist, and suddenly they came WordPress 5.0, we had the promise of Gutenberg. It was pretty basic at the time, but as things have matured, more and more people have started to use it. And I just wanted to have a little bit of a conversation about how you feel this ecosystem is growing. From somebody that obsesses about WordPress, like I imagined the three of us do. We&#8217;re immersed in this all the time, and so we see people talking about it and it&#8217;s all very relevant, but I am not working for a company that are trying to push the boundaries with blocks. So my question to both of you is do you see the sea change happening? Is there a general industry move in WordPress towards blocks? Is this slow? Is it steady or is it at breakneck speed? What&#8217;s really happening? And I guess you&#8217;re positioned perfectly because you&#8217;ve got a company, and you can see the numbers going through your checkout each day. So that&#8217;s my question really. How is this environment, the block environment, how is it all maturing?</p>



<p>[00:17:21] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> What&#8217;s interesting Nathan is blocks are relatively new to WordPress, right? It&#8217;s been a few years and they&#8217;ve been gaining adoption, but it&#8217;s not a new paradigm when it comes to site creation or creating layouts and pages and things. So a block-based editing experience. I think it&#8217;s obvious to most of us in terms of what the experience should be, and it&#8217;s taken several different iterations to get there and to continue to make them progress, and we&#8217;re still not there yet, there&#8217;s still a lot of exciting features and functionality on the horizon. But that&#8217;s kinda how I think about blocks. And even early on, this is the question of, would they be adopted? It was obvious that they would, because this is a paradigm that&#8217;s used in many different situations and is clearly better than the alternative that we had at the time, so. There&#8217;s a transition period as functionality catches up. People will become more comfortable with it and build solutions on top of it. Like we have with Extendify, that extend the Core functionality, pun intended there. But yeah, it&#8217;s a natural evolution and one that&#8217;s exciting to be a part of and we&#8217;re excited to have it continue progressing.</p>



<p>[00:18:23] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> What about you Rich, are you bullish about the future? Are there things on the horizon which you can see and think, wow, we&#8217;re just scratching the surface here. Because I imagine a lot of the listeners are content to use blocks. Maybe they&#8217;re not, maybe they&#8217;re really dead set against it, but, I know what I can do with them right now, but I&#8217;m pretty sure that in, two years time I&#8217;ll be able to do a lot more, and somebody like you probably knows a lot more about that than I do.</p>



<p>[00:18:47] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> I mean it&#8217;s no secret. I&#8217;m pretty bullish about Gutenberg and blocks and full site editing and WordPress in general. Blocks are interesting. You know, they started a couple years ago, very small. Like my first block, I think was probably a block that you could just highlight text with. It was just text with a background color.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s been a couple of years now, blocks are getting more interesting. We&#8217;re seeing some new chart type blocks where you can create graphical representations of data in such, I think, blocks that are more oriented towards actual jobs that are being done. It&#8217;s something that Chris and I, and the team talk about a lot is, getting the jobs to be done. And then, and those kinds of blocks are going to be more interesting and more prevalent, I think in the near future. But at the end of the day, a block is just one component of your site. It&#8217;s not the whole experience, you know. Extendify we&#8217;re really leaning in on this holistic site building experience, we&#8217;re leaning in on full site editing. Even WordPress is leaning more in that direction. And it&#8217;s the full site editing is coming to fruition, and block themes are coming around.</p>



<p>So I think we really are just scratching the surface of what WordPress is going to look and feel like in, you know, three years, four years even, I think there&#8217;s a lot of change and a lot of progress, and I&#8217;m super stoked about the direction WordPress is going and just this time to be in the midst of it all. I think we&#8217;re just incredibly blessed to be in the midst of this revolution of Gutenberg and WordPress, and I&#8217;m just thrilled.</p>



<p>[00:20:08] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Yeah, it really is very exciting times. I&#8217;m kind of imagining a future where we have app like functionality in blocks and they can achieve incredibly complex things. All you have to do is click a button and drag in a block, and it will do those incredibly complicated things. And it seems very exciting to me.</p>



<p>The next question really is all about Extendify solution and how we might interact with that within a WordPress install. So forgive me for asking a set of very basic questions because we&#8217;re on the outside and you obviously work in this every day. It&#8217;s pretty trivial what I&#8217;m going to ask, but how do we get Extendify how does that become part of our WordPress website? What&#8217;s the process</p>



<p>[00:20:45] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> Yeah, so we launched a standalone plugin just recently. That&#8217;s the easiest way for users to get access to the full Extendify library of patterns and full page layouts, search for Extendify in the plugin directory. You&#8217;ll find it there and can get access to it. Free users, everyone can get 10 imports of patterns or layouts, the base patterns or layouts each month. So they can continue using it, and testing it out and seeing how it fits within their workflow. And we have a paid subscription that gives users access to pro patterns, which is a premium set of patterns that we have, and unlimited usage of the entire library as well. That&#8217;s how people can check out Extendify.</p>



<p>[00:21:26] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> You have a very simplified pricing structure. Sign up for the pro and you&#8217;re good to go. Was there a sort of deliberate attempt to keep it more or less free of tears? You&#8217;ve got one site license, which is called pro and then you&#8217;ve got pro on limited where it&#8217;s everything.</p>



<p>I was really curious about that because we often see a table of pricing and there&#8217;s maybe seven or eight different rows, potentially. You&#8217;ve just gone for free, pro unlimited. And the pro unlimited is limitless. And the pro is just one site, unlimited, but for that one site. That&#8217;s curious pricing. Just fascinating. Who came down on that?</p>



<p>[00:22:04] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> We want to become an indispensable tool for anyone building sites on WordPress, whether it&#8217;s someone doing it for themselves, creating a site that they want to create for themselves or building sites on behalf of clients and putting both beautiful and effective and well-built products out there. So we did want to keep it simple, especially at the start we wanted people using the product. Want people using it for free and sharing their feedback with us. And we want people using it on multiple sites and sharing that feedback with us and getting that constant loop of information. That&#8217;s how we improve. So we consider ourselves early, still, you know, we&#8217;ve been at it for a little while, but there&#8217;s a long road ahead of us and a lot of exciting stuff we wanted to do. And that really relies on people using the product and us getting that information back from them. We really prioritize that element of it, having people use the product and us learning from it so that we can continue building something better and better meeting the needs of our users.</p>



<p>[00:22:57] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So returning then to how we actually interact with it. We install the plugin. My understanding is you just drop in an API key or something like that. It&#8217;s basically setting less there&#8217;s not a lot to configure. You install it, show it your license key, and everything&#8217;s just right there without you having to think. Am I right in that?</p>



<p>[00:23:15] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> You don&#8217;t even need a license key if you&#8217;re just using the free version so everyone can use it, without registering and try it out. We want people to try it out and see how it works. And again, going back to the feedback, share what they&#8217;ve found with us and share what they&#8217;d love to see more of with us. We always love to get that feedback. But yeah, once you had your license key, if you&#8217;re a paid subscriber, then that unlocks the unlimited access to the library and you&#8217;re good to go. So, in a lot of ways, it is very simple in terms of how the user interacts with it.</p>



<p>I think one thing that&#8217;s cool and I would encourage people to try is switching their theme, and switching their styles of their site and see how the library, the patterns, the layouts, all adapt to that. That&#8217;s where we don&#8217;t have settings in the library. You don&#8217;t need to pick a primary color and set up your preferred font, et cetera, everything adapts to whichever theme you&#8217;re using.</p>



<p>And we try to make it so that it should just work for people. And it&#8217;s, easier said than done but we work hard to make sure it works well across a variety of different setups and installs.</p>



<p>[00:24:14] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I think the promise of these kinds of tools is so remarkable. The actuality, and I can speak from deep personal experience. I have the design skills of a potato. I&#8217;m prodigiously bad at making things look good. And so the idea of being able to click something, import a design really straightforwardly is brilliant. My problems begin from that moment on. In that I wish to modify things and to change things and make it suit the branding of the website. I might want to just move this left a little bit or put some rounded corners on there.</p>



<p>Can we get into that a little bit, talk about how easy it is to customize, and I do want you to be as brutally honest with yourselves as you can be here, you know, is it a easy system to work with? And of course, and I mean, Gutenberg your blocks and patterns just come in and you are left with the design system that Gutenberg has got at the moment. Does it have limitations or are you happy to say yep, try this out, you&#8217;ll be able to achieve everything.</p>



<p>[00:25:13] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> Yeah, I&#8217;ll take this one. We mentioned earlier about our utility style system. So that coupled with, some creative pattern building, lets our library adapt to your themes styles, pretty well, like Chris hinted at it&#8217;s a lot of work. It was a very huge challenge to tackle and something we&#8217;re still working at to improve, but for the most part, when you open up the library and added a full page layout, for example, it should adapt to your site. My goal when building this out was if you want to add a landing page to your site, you can go through this library, pick your favorite one, add it, and there just adapt it to your site. You don&#8217;t have to go in and remove all the wild colors that some of these other solutions out there will hard-code into their styles. And it kind of adapts and looks great right out of the bat. The one thing, going in on Core blocks, that can get challenging is we are relying a little bit more on what Gutenberg provides. 5.9 has added whole lot of different functionality, especially around, doing border radiuses or borders around group blocks and different types of topography settings. And I think Cora will continue to move down that direction. But for the meantime, some of those things are a little janky right now, but like I mentioned earlier, when we find those things, we tackle it, we go into Core, we write the issues and if we can, we put up the PR to try to help resolve that.</p>



<p>[00:26:30] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> Yeah we don&#8217;t lock anything down, but our goal is that you Nathan, if you add a pattern to an existing site that you have, that you&#8217;re happy with the style and the branding, you don&#8217;t have to do those modifications. You don&#8217;t have to figure out what size the font should be. And, if it should be a rounded corner or not, or what color the button should be, you shouldn&#8217;t have to do those tasks every time.</p>



<p>You&#8217;re more than welcome to. You can certainly use, Extendify and create a terribly ugly site if you try hard enough. We don&#8217;t stop anything there but the idea is that you shouldn&#8217;t have to.</p>



<p>[00:27:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> With the library as it is at the moment. What&#8217;s the taxonomy going on there? How are we sort of navigating because I can see that currently this number, I&#8217;m sure is subject to change probably in an upward direction. Currently there are 1,400 plus site patterns. 70 plus full page layouts. That&#8217;s a lot, that&#8217;s a lot to, for me to consume. How do you make it easy for me to discover and browse the patterns and libraries and all of the things that you&#8217;ve got in there?</p>



<p>[00:27:31] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> As of right now, so we&#8217;ve got two different key mechanisms to filter down. So the first is your site type. Basically selecting the type of site you&#8217;re building, the industry that you&#8217;re building in. And this is unique to what we&#8217;re building, but essentially you can say yeah, I&#8217;m building a gym website or a restaurant website and right out of the gate, you&#8217;ll have all the patterns filtered to support those industries the best. You&#8217;ll have copy, a preset for those industries and you&#8217;ll have images that are also preset. So we&#8217;re also attacking the speed of getting to your, getting your site published even faster by doing that, so you&#8217;re not just having place a loader imagery, if you don&#8217;t want it. Which is pretty cool, and also very challenging thing that we accomplished. And the second piece is we do have the typical content type categories. So you can add hero areas or headlines, texts, different galleries. We have those kind of filters in place. We&#8217;re experimenting with a few other mechanisms to help filter. And as we add more patterns, I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;ll figure out a few other clever solutions as well.</p>



<p>[00:28:33] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> So you were just saying there, forgive me if I&#8217;ve misunderstood, but you were saying that, I think that the images that you bring in as placeholders for want of a better word, not placeholders, but something which is already in situ, they can remain on the site. We&#8217;re allowed to publish those to the web? We have the license for that?</p>



<p>[00:28:51] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> Yeah. So we&#8217;ve actually curated a few collections of different site industries behind the scenes that are pulled from Unsplash. So those are all available open for anyone to use. Yeah.</p>



<p>[00:29:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> In terms of the growth of the product, you clearly, your invested in this, you&#8217;re enjoying the experience, early days. The company is obviously growing. You&#8217;ve talked about the staff and whatnot. The roadmap for the future will be something I&#8217;d like to talk about.</p>



<p>But just before that, I don&#8217;t want you to feel that you need to throw numbers at me here, but is Extendify turning out to be a successful business? And the reason I&#8217;m asking that is not so that you can bare your soul simply that people, if they&#8217;re going to throw their weight behind this and build 10, 15, 20, a hundred client sites, they want to know you&#8217;re going to be around.</p>



<p>[00:29:40] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> Yeah one thing we have not talked about. When we started out building Extendify, we raised some outside funding and outside capital from investors, both in and outside of the WordPress space to support what we were building. We wanted to make sure that we were able to build a real business behind this and not have it be a side project that was at risk of not continuing.</p>



<p>So we have funding to do that. We have a world-class team that we&#8217;re hiring for actually. So if anyone is interested in, in what we&#8217;re doing and passionate about the future of Gutenberg and WordPress, we&#8217;d love to, to talk to you. But Extendify is growing really well. If anything, we&#8217;re trying to increase our focus and continue to hire and build a team that can take us forward to where we wanna be.</p>



<p>[00:30:27] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay. In terms of the roadmap for the feature set, and what have you, do you have any blue sky thinking? Is there anything that you would like to achieve in the near term? And again, it comes back to customers. If they become customers, it&#8217;s nice to think that the product is going to mature over time. So I just wondered if you had anything to add there.</p>



<p>[00:30:47] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> Yeah, definitely. To start, we really honed in and focused on our pattern collection. And right now those are pretty solid. We&#8217;ve got some really unique, beautiful patterns out there. Next we&#8217;re going to start combining those and coming out with improved page layouts. So full page layouts so you can add think landing pages, whole pages for restaurant menus. We want to make sure we can help you get that job done. And after that, we&#8217;re extending even further up the chain. So we&#8217;ve got patterns, layouts now, full site designs. We want to help you get a complete site done quickly, and we&#8217;re coming up with some experiments behind the scenes that we&#8217;re working through that really are very promising and very exciting. And thinking through some guided experience, for getting these sites set up. Particularly around folks who aren&#8217;t very familiar with WordPress, I think that&#8217;s the area that we will lean into. And then throughout that process, we&#8217;ll be integrating with additional functionality for these jobs to be done with appointments or with events, thinking through the type of patterns that were really help folks be successful online.</p>



<p>[00:31:48] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> In terms of that roadmap, are you still at a point where helpful suggestions are welcome? Or have you solidified that? I&#8217;m just curious to know if any customer in the recent past has said, I wish you would do this, and you&#8217;ve thought actually, we must do that because that&#8217;s a brilliant idea. Or are you firmly focused on what your own plans are that you&#8217;ve already decided?</p>



<p>[00:32:09] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> Oh no, we&#8217;re definitely always listening.</p>



<p>[00:32:10] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> We&#8217;ve had customers, both free users and paid subscribers reach out let us know that, hey, XYZ would be helpful. This type of pattern. Sometimes people even send us a screenshot of what they&#8217;re trying to do. And that is really energizing to us. We love it. It&#8217;s awesome when someone asks for something, you build it, and then it gets used right away and it solves their pressing need for them. We have a long backlog of different patterns, layouts, designs, et cetera to add and continue to make the library fuller and better, but that feedback is awesome to get. Yeah, definitely eager to hear anyone&#8217;s experience with Extendify and what we could to do make their site editing Gutenberg experience better.</p>



<p>[00:32:53] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Obviously you&#8217;ve got this suite of really beautifully designed patterns and what have you. I was just curious whether you had any options to save things that you&#8217;ve already done or sync things back up? Is it purely, is what we&#8217;ve got, this is Extendify . Take what you&#8217;ve got and download it onto your site and modify if you choose. Or is there any way outside of WordPress normal way of doing things? Any way of syncing things, having a design library which is just for you or potentially your clients, any of those kinds of things?</p>



<p>[00:33:26] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> That&#8217;s on the horizon, Nathan. So today that is not functionality that exists within Extendify, but the the idea of saving presets or a collection of patterns or layouts that you use often. Curating a selection of patterns or layouts and making those available to clients so that they can continue to leverage the tool and get the benefit of it, but do so in a more controlled way that you&#8217;ve curated for them. That&#8217;s all on the horizon. Those are things that we&#8217;re excited to do. So that&#8217;s a good idea.</p>



<p>[00:33:55] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Okay, there we go. I think I&#8217;ve asked all the questions that I wish to ask today. If people have been interested by what it is that you&#8217;ve said today, if they&#8217;re curious to check out Extendify, where&#8217;s the best place for them to find you guys? Let&#8217;s go Rich first and then Chris.</p>



<p>[00:34:12] <strong>Rich Tabor:</strong> Yeah. So I&#8217;m online. My personal account on Twitter is Richard underscore Tabor. I share a lot of Gutenberg, and a lot of interesting blocks I find in and a lot of the stuff we&#8217;re working on behind the scenes at Extendify. We&#8217;ve got Extendify on Twitter as well @extendifyinc. We do a lot of interesting pieces there, we share a lot of patterns that we&#8217;re building stuff we just released and that&#8217;s where you could follow it to keep up with the latest product updates.</p>



<p>[00:34:36] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> I will put those in the show notes and Chris.</p>



<p>[00:34:40] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> Yeah. So on Twitter, I&#8217;m @chrislubkert. And. for Extentify, the best way to do it is just check out the plugin. Search for Extendify, add it to your site, play around, see what it&#8217;s like, and definitely share any feedback with us that you have. You can always reach us at, hey at extendify dot com or Rich or I individually at Rich at Extendify or Chris at Extendify, we love to hear from folks. So please check it out and let us know what you think.</p>



<p>[00:35:02] <strong>Nathan Wrigley:</strong> Thank you very much, both of you indeed. I appreciate you coming on the podcast, but also I appreciate the fact that you&#8217;re trying to do the difficult work of making WordPress a better solution in the future, even though we don&#8217;t quite know what that looks like perfectly yet, you&#8217;re giving it your best, and I really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on the show today.</p>



<p>[00:35:20] <strong>Chris Lubkert:</strong> It&#8217;s fun to be a part of. Yeah. Thanks Nathan.</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, 09 Feb 2022 15:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Nathan Wrigley";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:122:"WPTavern: WordPress Community Support Program Recommends Cautious Spending Until In-Person Events Can Renew Revenue Stream";s: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=129694";s: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:133:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-community-support-program-recommends-cautious-spending-until-in-person-events-can-renew-revenue-stream";s: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:3476:"<p>WordPress Community Support (WPCS), the subsidiary of the WordPress Foundation that handles financial and legal support for official WordPress events, has <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/02/07/2022-wordpress-community-support-financial-update/#respond">published</a> an overview of the program&#8217;s current finances and a summary of 2020.</p>



<p>Harmony Romo, a financial wrangler at Automattic, reported that WPCS ended the year with approximately $1.2M of cash on hand. $293,000 of the total represents unused Global Sponsorship funds that were rolled over from 2020. Current estimated operating expenses are $276,000. The total cash also includes $216,374 in prepaid expenses that were allocated in 2020 for WordCamps Asia, Atlanta, and US. </p>



<p>Newly published WordPress Foundation financials for 2020 show the WPCS program ended with a net loss, which has qualified for a refund of $50,708.</p>



<p>The WordPress Foundation itself has a lean operating budget, with 2020 expenses totaling $3,438 and donations totaling $10,787. As the subsidiary handling events, WPCS &#8216;s primary expenses are Meetup.com fees, which total $55,000 per quarter or $220,000 per year. The program will be carefully auditing Meetup groups later in the year to remove those that are inactive, as WPCS is billed for each group.</p>



<p>The main takeaway from the recently published financials is that WPCS&#8217; finances are heavily dependent on corporate sponsorships. With the exception of a handful of in-person WordCamps and meetups, WordPress events have largely been on ice since March 2020. Sponsorship revenue dries up when most events are held virtually, as these types of events tend to offer a less meaningful return for companies and WPCS cannot justify the same sponsorship tiers offered in previous years. </p>



<p>The <a href="https://wptavern.com/wordpress-global-sponsorship-program-will-not-include-wordcamps-for-2022">proposal</a> for the 2022 Global Community Sponsorship program did not include funding for WordCamps again this year, due to the unpredictability of hosting in-person events. The program was also significantly pared back from multiple tiers (ranging from $40,000 – $160,000) to a single package billed at $10,000 USD per quarter, due to lower volunteer engagement among those who administrate sponsorships.</p>



<p>&#8220;WPCS does have an adequate amount of cash on hand to meet the current needs of the program, so as we proceed, we should do so cautiously until there is a solid return to in-person events and thus a reliable revenue stream,&#8221; Romo said. &#8220;Responsible expense decisions have allowed the program to endure and stay flexible as in-person events slowly return from hiatus.&#8221;</p>



<p>There are six upcoming in-person WordCamps are on the schedule for 2022 so far. In the absence of Global Sponsorship Program funding for WordCamps, organizers have been told they need to be prepared to raise 100% of the funds for their events. While I don&#8217;t think lack of finances is fueling the controversial drive to restart in-person events while pandemic deaths are still high in many areas of the world, getting camps on the books for 2022 is undoubtedly critical to recapturing corporate sponsorship funds. The Global Sponsorship Program changes that were proposed in November 2021 are currently being finalized and the 2022 version of the program should be published soon.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Wed, 09 Feb 2022 05:57:59 +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:"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: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:63:"WPTavern: Block Editor Sidebar Panels Are the New Admin Notices";s: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=129698";s: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:74:"https://wptavern.com/block-editor-sidebar-panels-are-the-new-admin-notices";s: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:3794:"<p class="has-drop-cap">There is a problem. Well, it is not an <em>OMGBBQ</em> problem, but it has the potential to become one. Maybe by calling attention to it, I will set off a landslide of copycats who will see this as another trick of the marketing trade, implementing it in their own projects. I am torn, but it would be a disservice to our community to not provide a place for them to share their thoughts.</p>



<p>I am always looking for exciting new plugins or even those old ones that I have missed. In particular, I love to see what others are building on top of the block editor.</p>



<p>Several months ago, I activated my first plugin that used an editor sidebar panel to advertise its pro upgrade. There were no usable options. It was simply an ad, so the decision to deactivate and delete it was a no-brainer. I did not need anything taking up valuable real estate on the post-editing screen. I do not remember its name; it was on the site and off again in moments. A few months later, I saw another plugin with a similar panel.</p>



<p>I have simply ignored those extensions. They were somebody else&#8217;s issues. But, when the problem comes knocking at your own door, it is tough to not know it is there.</p>



<p>I hate to be the bad guy who calls out WordPress businesses for trying to make a buck. I have been there and tried to walk the tightrope between putting food on the table and creating a positive user experience with my products &#8212; <em>said the guy who is now employed as a writer</em>.</p>



<p>However, can we not do this?</p>



<img />Sidebar panel with disabled options and a pro upgrade ad.



<p>This panel seemed to appear suddenly on the Tavern&#8217;s post editor not long ago, and it has been an annoyance ever since. I dug around to find that this was a <a href="https://www.exactmetrics.com/introducing-exactmetrics-7-3-1-exclude-any-page-from-tracking">new pro option</a> added to the ExactMetrics plugin last month. Users of the &#8220;lite&#8221; version just get the panel &#8212; <em>free of charge</em>.</p>



<p>There are a few choices when faced with such a situation. Learn to live with it, deactivate the plugin, or disable the panel via the preferences menu.</p>



<img />Preference menu overlay.



<p>At least the editor has some built-in noise control. I am not sure how many users are even aware that it is possible because it is almost hidden. It takes three clicks to get there (Options &gt; Preferences &gt; Panels) and another click to switch a panel off.</p>



<p>The JavaScript for the panel still runs on every load of the editor. And, clearing local browser storage means it will reappear &#8212; <em>I will blame that one on WordPress for not storing preferences via user meta</em>. But, at least panels can be hidden.</p>



<p>WordPress users have enough noise with plugins shouting at them at every turn. It is easy for them to become desensitized to the barrage of admin notices, a part of their daily existence. I do not even click the dismiss button for some at first glance. I let them sit, untouched, wondering if they will simply disappear into the ether without my direct interaction. Other times, I <a href="https://wptavern.com/toolbelt-tidies-wordpress-plugin-and-theme-admin-notifications">install Toolbelt</a> and let it tuck them away.</p>



<p><em>But, this new thing?</em> The post editor was a place of solace, an escape from the commotion allowed through the admin notices hook elsewhere. It was a quiet room for focusing on content.</p>



<p>At the very least, this form of advertising has given me the necessary kick in the pants to perform a full audit of the Tavern&#8217;s plugins. We are in the process of cleaning house, and I have already tossed the first into the trash heap.</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, 09 Feb 2022 01:58:08 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:14:"Justin Tadlock";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:67:"HeroPress: From Assistant Language Teacher To A Life With WordPress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:56:"https://heropress.com/?post_type=heropress-essays&p=4364";s: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:186:"https://heropress.com/essays/from-assistant-language-teacher-to-a-life-with-wordpress/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=from-assistant-language-teacher-to-a-life-with-wordpress";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:11:"description";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:37394:"<img width="1024" height="512" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/020822-min.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Pull Quote: I have so much to be grateful for, and a lot of what I owe goes to WordPress." /><p>I arrived in Japan a little over a decade ago to experience the country, its culture, and all it had to offer in all its glory.</p>
<p>This was a singular goal for me since primary school, and I pursued it without putting much thought as to how I’d live there if I ever made it to Japan.</p>
<p>I just knew I needed to experience living in Japan one way or another, and the ticket to do it was through teaching English as an “assistant language teacher”, ALT for short. So that’s what I did.</p>
<p>A very cliche story for many of us foreigners who happen to find their way here.</p>
<p>I put in the work to get a proper TESL/TESOL certification, passed an interview with one of the big ALT dispatch companies, and before I knew it I had a one-way ticket to Japan!</p>
<blockquote><p>I was going to live the “dream” as an assistant language teacher teaching English to kids in junior high schools in Japan.</p></blockquote>
<p>The city I was placed in was Sapporo, Japan’s 5th largest city, located in northern Japan on the island of Hokkaido. Sapporo is a bustling urban area with a population of approximately 1.9 million people.</p>
<p>I couldn’t have been luckier since I was secretly crossing my fingers hoping not to get placed in the countryside.</p>
<p>But after arriving, I would soon come to realize that the hefty price tag this path would lead me on was not toward the dreamy and adventure-filled Japan lifestyle I originally envisioned.</p>
<p>So let’s take a hard right and switch gears a bit to talk about money, a juicy topic that never fails to get everyone’s ears to perk up.</p>
<p>I’ll give it to you straight.</p>
<p>At the height of my ALT career, I earned ¥2,812,043 JPY ($24,443.20 USD). This was before taxes.</p>
<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image5.jpg"><img /></a>For ALTs in Japan, these numbers shouldn&#8217;t come as a surprise since salaries are pretty much more or less within this range.
<p>After taxes, this came out to be ¥1,788,400 JPY/yr ($15,545.36 USD). That’s ¥149,033 JPY/mo, so approximately $1295.41 USD/mo.</p>
<p>Rent was about $400 USD. I also had monthly student loan payments I needed to pay. Tack off another minimum payment amount of $200 USD, which doesn’t include costly transfer fees and money lost through the exchange rate.</p>
<p>Let’s not forget about utilities, transportation, food, health insurance, and the good old Japanese pension plan foreigners are obligated to participate in.</p>
<p>The amount my monthly salary dwindled to after basic expenses and taxes ranged between $200-$400 USD.</p>
<p>I eventually “graduated” from an ALT to being directly hired as a solo native English teacher at a private high school, but the raise (if you can even call it that) in pay was minimal.</p>
<p>Let’s just say that the first half decade of my time here in Japan was filled with many dark days, angst, and anxiety.</p>
<p>That was until I discovered WordPress.</p>
<h2>Growing Up</h2>
<p>I grew up in a low income family and am the eldest of four brothers.</p>
<p>My father’s highest level of education was a high school diploma. My mother was an immigrant from the Philippines with only some college education.</p>
<p>Although she never finished her college education, my mom had stable employment at a respectable job serving as the breadwinner of the household.</p>
<p>My father, on the other hand, frequently jumped from one gig to another.</p>
<p>He was the type of person who would rather spend his time doing something absolutely useless rather than figure out a way to help feed four mouths and put food on the table.</p>
<p>My mom would often bring up the discussions of money with my dad, and those would inevitably end up in some sort of argument. Arguments which I would often overhear.</p>
<p>At such an early age, I was massively aware of our financial situation and what that implied in terms of living. I knew that the things we’d be able to buy and do would be limited if we didn’t have money.</p>
<blockquote><p>I knew that my mom worked hard, always putting her children first. I couldn’t say the same for my father.</p></blockquote>
<p>In fact, he was too stubborn for his own good. He was always so full of himself and wanted his own way in whatever job he did, so there were many times he’d find himself unemployed.</p>
<p>I often found myself angry at my father mainly for not getting his priorities straight. He never took accountability for anything.</p>
<p>Money can always somehow be earned. You can always work for it, and you’ll have it. But time is something that can never be recouped, and he wasted so much of it doing trivial things.</p>
<p>I’ll never forget the time when I realized how embarrassed and ashamed I was of him.</p>
<p>In high school, I was accepted to attend this big conference called NYLC (National Young Leaders Conference) and I was able to fly across the US to experience democracy in action and meet members of Congress in Washington DC.</p>
<p>In one of our meet-and-greet sessions, I was with two friends, and we were able to meet with a senator. The experience was exciting and at one point the topic of our fathers’ occupations came up.</p>
<p>One friend said his dad was a cop. My other friend mentioned his dad was a retired navy veteran.</p>
<p>When it came around to me, I didn’t immediately answer. I actually scratched my head and let out a sort of nervous laugh.</p>
<p>“Oh, my dad? Hahah. He uhh.. He…”</p>
<p>The friend beside me turned to me and laughed, “You don’t know what your dad does?! Hahah”</p>
<p>I reactively laughed along, “Hahaha, yeah… um..”</p>
<p>Mind you, I was a sophomore in high school and for the first time in my life I was having a discussion with a member of congress, someone who in my mind was this grand figure. Someone important. This is what I thought and to be in front of this person and say that my dad didn’t have a job, that he didn’t do anything for a living — that was embarrassing.</p>
<p>My hands were sweating profusely as trying to come up with something to say was so nerve wracking. I didn’t want to make something up, but at the same time, I didn’t want to say my dad was unemployed either.</p>
<p>I did eventually manage to come up with an answer. I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty but it was all I had.</p>
<p>“My dad works with computers.”</p>
<p>This was true. Kind of.</p>
<p>“Oh, really?” the senator said. “And what sort of things does he do with computers?”</p>
<p>I started sweating again as I didn’t anticipate the followup question. I somehow was able to soldier on though.</p>
<p>“Well, he’s an assistant in a computer lab, and he maintains the computers there…”</p>
<p>“Ah, I see. Interesting.” the senator replied.</p>
<p>And that was that. The discussion finally moved on. And while that interaction was probably only a few minutes, it felt like an eternity.</p>
<p>Here’s the story behind the full truth.</p>
<p>At the time, my dad was a volunteer at my younger brothers’ elementary school to watch over the school library during after school hours, and it would be for an hour or two.</p>
<p>He figured that since he didn’t have a job, he’d try to be “useful” by volunteering to be the after school library parent and at the same time be in a position to easily pick us all up.</p>
<p>What he really did during his volunteer time, since the library was almost always empty, was he installed KaZaA (a peer-to-peer file sharing application) on all the school computers and illegally downloaded music. It’s all he ever did during his time there.</p>
<p>Looking back on this, I find it to be unbelievable, hysterical even, that this is what he did. He could’ve used the web to do something more productive like search for a new job, or learn something useful.</p>
<p>But, no. Instead he chose to download music on all the school computers all the time. He was always so busy going from one computer to the next to check on the download status of the mp3s that were downloading.</p>
<p>He’d then go to each computer to burn the mp3s on CDS using a software called Nero Burning Rom.</p>
<p>Oh how so busy my father was…</p>
<blockquote><p>This was the image that was running through my mind when I was asked what my father did for a living.</p></blockquote>
<p>This was only one of the hundreds of instances of how my father behaved and was the root of many arguments in the house. There was always shouting. Crying. Slamming of doors. Periods of not saying anything to each other for days. This was a pattern that went on for years. It was so mentally taxing for everyone.</p>
<p>My brothers and I couldn’t stand these arguments to the point we couldn’t wait to move out.</p>
<p>When a recurring toxic behavior continues for so long, trust erodes, and eventually breaks. And that’s exactly what happened.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how my mom put up with him for so long (we’re talking 25+ years long), but they eventually divorced. It was for the best actually. My father lost his wife. And lost his sons as well.</p>
<p>After that meet-and-greet experience, I knew for a fact that I never wanted to be like my father. Never. If there was one good thing my father bestowed upon me and my brothers it was that he served as the perfect role model of what not to be in life. It sounds harsh, but this was our reality.</p>
<p>I made a promise to myself that if I ever had a family, I would do everything within my human capacity to provide the best possible life, that I would be a father and husband they could say they’re proud of, and that I would always do whatever it takes to live the life we want.</p>
<p>You could say this little micro-moment is representative of the cause for my drive to continually work hard and remember what my real priorities in life are, and why I do the things I do.</p>
<p>It was like my mind was instantly re-wired to think and act differently after that moment.</p>
<p>From that point, everything I did was done with precise intent. I always made sure that my time was spent moving toward a goal. No matter what I was working on, I made my time count.</p>
<h2>University life</h2>
<p>I was never a straight A student in my life, but I wasn’t below average in my studies either. I always felt I had to work two or three times harder than everyone else to reach the baseline of anything.</p>
<p>I worked my butt off to get accepted into UC Irvine, the university of my choice. I got in by a hair, but under probationary conditions. My writing level wasn’t up to the UC standards so I needed to sit out on my first year of courses for my major, which was Japanese. Instead, I had to take and pass this intro writing class for the first semester.</p>
<p>It was really stressful because if I didn’t pass, I’d be out. And I remember really struggling with the class. I eventually passed. Barely.</p>
<p>For me, it just felt like a never ending cycle of struggling.</p>
<p>Japanese studies and the level of pacing required to keep up with the curriculum was too fast for me. I ended up switching majors to East Asian Cultures. The more time spent retaking courses, the more student loan debt I was piling on.</p>
<p>It took me five years to graduate, but I made it somehow. I was a first-generation college graduate, and while that was great, I had a little over 40K in student loan debt waiting to be paid off.</p>
<blockquote><p>Living in Orange County with a degree in East Asian Cultures, I could say there weren’t exactly many jobs out there for me.</p></blockquote>
<p>With my looming student loan payments creeping up from deferment, I really needed a job. That’s when I discovered it was possible to work in Japan teaching English.</p>
<p>It was harsh times. I was living in the living room of a house with seven other people, and my part-time gig as a barista wasn’t cutting it, so moving to Japan to teach English didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.</p>
<p>I applied, interviewed, and got accepted to one of the big dispatch companies in Japan, and I was off!</p>
<p>Little did I know I was just simply disembarking off one struggle bus, and hopping onto the next one.</p>
<h2>Japan Life</h2>
<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image13.png"><img /></a>For the first few years of my time in Japan, I used Tumblr to photo blog about my life in Sapporo.
<p>So here I was in Japan as a freshly minted ALT and I had no clue what was going on.</p>
<p>It was the first time to live in a new country, work in a new country, and have a full-time job.</p>
<p>All the Japanese I studied in university didn’t do much for me since speaking was what was essential here. I was basically starting from zero in this new foreign land.</p>
<p>I brought along all the saved money I had when coming here, but apparently it was not enough to cover the basic living expenses I needed for two months. I borrowed a loan from the company I worked for to help me out a bit.</p>
<p>I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t really have much of a choice either. Payments for the loan were taken out of my salary automatically. I probably didn’t see my first full salary until the latter part of my first year on the job.</p>
<blockquote><p>To say living was hard would be an understatement.</p></blockquote>
<p>Even after getting my first full salary, I already came to realize that I really needed to save whatever amount I could to stay afloat. In addition to my normal ALT job, I worked two other English-teaching side jobs as well.</p>
<p>This wasn’t “living the life”. This was surviving. My time was spent being too busy trying not to be poor.</p>
<p>I was tired, exhausted, and to a certain extent a little depressed.</p>
<p>Hokkaido winters last for a good half year here, and I greatly underestimated my ability to hold out for the first season.</p>
<p>I couldn’t afford proper winter clothes, which are essential for surviving Hokkaido winters. So I always just layered up on all the t-shirts I had when I was living in my 1LDK apartment.</p>
<p>I didn’t turn on the heater to avoid expensive gas costs (which I knew I couldn’t afford to pay anyway). I’m not sure how I survived, but I was freezing every morning and evening. I was only ever warm when I was at my schools, or any indoor environment that wasn’t my apartment to be honest.</p>
<p>Whenever I was invited out to eat with colleagues, the thought of whether I could afford to do that was always at the back of my mind. To maintain my social sanity, I opted to bite the bullet many times and paid up. But it would always be back to paltry living for up to several weeks after.</p>
<p>This naturally translated to not having very many friends. The very few people that I could actually call my friends ended up finding better jobs back in their home country, so they left Japan. It was lonely.</p>
<p>There were many times when I walked, what added up to be many kilometers, to and from my assigned schools just so I could save a few hundred yen on transportation costs. This would pay for a small “meal” I’d pick up from the convenience store and that would be my dinner.</p>
<p>During my university days I was a casual social smoker. But after living in Japan for a bit, this horrible habit amplified into consuming a pack a week. I don’t smoke anymore though.</p>
<p>I’m not going to lie, smoking helped me cope with my days. But I also did it for the practical purpose of curbing my appetite so I could save on meals. There were also times when I would stave off my hunger with only peanut butter and protein shakes.</p>
<blockquote><p>Yet somewhere amidst all this chaos, I met a partner, got married, and we had our first child.</p></blockquote>
<p>Time had flown by so fast without me even realizing it and financially I was still in more or less the same situation I was when I first got here.</p>
<p>I was not happy with this. My partner was also anxious about it too. In a way, I felt somewhat guilty for bringing my own burdens into my partner’s life. It’s not how I envisioned myself entering a relationship. I always wanted to be in a financially stable position before starting a family. But what we plan is not always what life has in store for us, right? My partner and I had a few heavy discussions that made me reevaluate my plans.</p>
<p>Was I really on the path to reliving my childhood and becoming like my father? The difference between me and him was that I wasn’t doing useless and unproductive activities during my free time. Or, was I? Or, maybe I was just focusing my time on the wrong things.</p>
<p>To stay grounded, I constantly reminded myself of my why, and with the birth of my first child, there was a switch that flipped.</p>
<p>Life was no longer just about me.</p>
<p>This in turn started a domino effect of me taking big moves to make a change. A big change.</p>
<h2>Learning How To Code</h2>
<p>After going through a whole lot of soul-searching and career tests, it was clear that I wanted to break into tech in some form or another. It was a field that was much more suited toward my personal interests and natural talents.</p>
<p>I knew that if I wanted to have any sort of chance of breaking in, I’d have to do a lot of studying, networking and resume-building. Since I was coming from a non-tech background with nearly zero experience, this was obviously going to take some planning and a lot of time.</p>
<p>After being directly hired by a private high school, I had a little bit more free time and autonomy during my work day to do what I want.</p>
<blockquote><p>You could bet your bottom dollar I was on my computer educating myself on everything there was on how to get a tech job.</p></blockquote>
<p>I quickly learned there were so many different avenues to get started and it was totally overwhelming. So I decided to start out with the basics and thought I’d go back to revisiting my HTML &amp; CSS skills first.</p>
<p>My first encounter with these languages goes back to when I had a Xanga account. Using its “Weblog”, I’d often mess around with the HTML formatting when writing posts and I’d always be fascinated with what kind of changes were made when using different tags.</p>
<p>I jumped right in by taking some free courses on Codecademy. I took its HTML, CSS, &amp; JavaScript courses, but I didn’t feel like I was making progress toward anything. I think most of it had to do with the fact that everything I was learning was contained on and restricted to the platform. Additionally, there was a lot of “handholding” involved while going through each coding exercise. Eventually, I moved away from the platform to try others.</p>
<p>It’s also worth mentioning that during this time, I wasn’t immediately sure as to which area in the industry I wanted to get into, or rather, which area would suit me best.</p>
<p>I ended up learning a bunch of programming languages and taking many different courses on various platforms. Platforms that really excelled my learning included Udemy, Lynda (now LinkedIn Learning), The Odin Project, and Code College.</p>
<p>The first programming language I spent some serious time studying was Python. The book I used for learning it was Learn Python The Hard Way by Zed Shaw. A lot of my fundamental programming knowledge came from this language and book. Other programming languages &amp; frameworks I learned and tried out included Django, jQuery, Swift, PHP, Ruby, Ruby on Rails.</p>
<p>Frameworks I touched upon included Bootstrap, Foundation, Materialize, PureCSS.</p>
<p>I also became comfortable using my Mac Terminal, setting up test environments, different CLI tools, and version control tools like Git &amp; GitHub. I even got into web design for a bit, explored the Adobe Suite, and learned the business side of freelancing and entrepreneurship.</p>
<p>I was literally all over the place for my first couple years of learning and trying to find my niche.</p>
<p>Eventually, it was through a freelancing course that suggested I should start a personal brand, and invest in a personal website. And that made sense. I was planning on creating an online portfolio anyway, so I decided to finally invest in web hosting and a domain. The suggested platform to build a site on was of course WordPress.</p>
<p>As I delved deeper into the section of the course that discussed different aspects of WordPress, what struck me the most was that the instructor pointed out how there were many career options in this field.</p>
<p>Since WordPress is open-source, folks are able to freely get under the hood of the software, understand the code, make contributions to improve it, modify it, and even push out their own custom solutions to make available for public use. Because of this, profitable businesses have been made around a single WordPress plugin or theme.</p>
<blockquote><p>Careers aren’t limited to being just a web developer in the WordPress world. You could be a designer, digital marketer, content creator, support technician, SEO expert, and the list goes on with many more options.</p></blockquote>
<p>Unlike most traditional jobs where experience is acquired after getting the job, with WordPress you can create your own experience. You do not need permission to start contributing. You also don’t need a university degree or Ph.D to land a career in WordPress. All you need is curiosity and a desire to learn.</p>
<p>This little nugget of a fact about WordPress that I never realized intrigued me.</p>
<p>I started to explore more about the history of WordPress, learned about its community, and its mission: democratize publishing.</p>
<p>I’m a big believer in purpose, and for me, that mission is what makes WordPress great.</p>
<p>WordPress believes in empowerment, the means to express yourself freely, and the idea of sharing &amp; building upon ideas.</p>
<p>Not to mention that, at the time, it powered over 30% of all websites. Fast forward to present day and that percentage is now 43.3%.</p>
<p>It was clear to me that the ambition of WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg (and CEO of Automattic Inc.) is to make the web a better place both through its open source software and the community.</p>
<p>Many of the values and beliefs of the WordPress brand aligned so well with my own that I knew almost instantly that this was the road for me.</p>
<p>When thinking about what I really wanted out of a career, I realized that there’d be nothing more fulfilling than to be a part of a crew that democratizes publishing.</p>
<p>By this time, my web development skills and learning were well honed-in and exclusively focused on WordPress and I definitively knew this was the route I wanted to take.</p>
<p>Whether it be through freelance web development, or a web development agency, the future of my career would be with WordPress.</p>
<h2>WordPress Life</h2>
<p>Throughout this whole journey, there was a book I read called “The 4-Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss and there was this one quote regarding the value of money that particularly struck me.</p>
<p>“Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it. I call this the ‘freedom multiplier.’”</p>
<p>When coming across this quote, I paused for a bit and it made me reevaluate my own situation and the number of W’s I controlled (which were none).</p>
<p><strong>The What (aka the work)</strong> — I wasn’t in control of what I wanted to do. Teaching English was not what I wanted to do. It was a means to pay bills. I should mention that it wasn’t so much that I disliked teaching, but rather it was the poor (or should I say toxic) working conditions that eventually steered me clear from continuing on.</p>
<p><strong>The When (aka the time)</strong> — I wasn’t in control of when I wanted to do it. Being at a school on a set schedule from 8am to 5pm M-F, and every other Saturday, was not something I enjoyed.</p>
<p><strong>The Where (aka the place)</strong> — I wasn’t in control of where I worked. Like with any job associated with a brick &amp; mortar establishment, you need to go to the place to work. That means the radius for where you can live in relation to the place of work is limited. I didn’t enjoy living in the area I was in at the time, nor the small apartment my family of three was cramped in.</p>
<p><strong>The Who (aka the people)</strong> — I wasn’t in control of whom I worked with. In an office environment, you don’t get to choose where your desk is and with whom you’re situated around. In my case, I hardly talked to anyone because 1) I didn’t want to be there in the first place, and 2) no one really cared to talk to me. I had literally zero colleagues that I could call an actual colleague, a “colleague” being a person you get along with at work at the most basic level.</p>
<p>In any case, this helped me put my own situation into clearer perspective, and served as the main motivator for me to keep on trekking.</p>
<blockquote><p>I knew there would be only one of two web development career paths I’d take: freelancing or working with a company.</p></blockquote>
<p>Both were viable paths since my only goal was to be in a position that allowed me to grow my skills further.</p>
<p>In a way, I was already sort of freelancing and had a project already in progress with a hair salon. I managed to convince my stylist to let me build their website just so I could get some work under my belt.</p>
<p>In the meantime, I also researched which companies I’d be interested in applying to and listed them up. There were quite a few that had my attention, but to start off, I figured I’d aim high and see if there were any positions at Automattic first.</p>
<p>I read many great stories (on HeroPress actually!) of how some folks made it into Automattic and their journey to get there. It was really inspiring reading those stories, along with the different stories of other contributors as well.</p>
<p>I was looking for a junior frontend position but there weren’t any posted at the time. I did see there was an opening for a Happiness Engineer position (support technician) which seemed very interesting. It involved helping people, working with WordPress, and a whole lot more. It was everything that I knew I’d enjoy doing, so after reading the job description, I decided I’d go for it.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I wanted to also become more involved with WordPress and learn more about the community.</p>
<p>I started helping out in both the WordPress.org and WordPress.com support forums. I contributed to the forums every day whenever I had a chance. I’d hop on in the mornings before work, sometimes during my breaks while at work, and then again in the evenings.</p>
<blockquote><p>Contributing in this way helped me learn so much about the fundamentals of WordPress and the kind of things people wanted to do with it.</p></blockquote>
<p>It also felt good to know whenever I’d get positive responses from the people I helped after solving their issues.</p>
<p>However, I wanted to do more. I noticed there was a WordCamp coming up and it was being held in Kyoto. WordCamp Kyoto 2017 would be my first WordCamp that I ever attended.</p>
<p><a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image2.jpg"><img /></a></p>
<p>Traveling was still a big expense at the time (remember I was still on a teacher salary) but I convinced my wife that this was important and I needed to go to this. Fortunately, I was able to find a good deal on both a flight and hotel, so it was off I went!</p>
<p>The Japanese character, 縁 (えん), pronounced as “en”, was the theme of this event. The character has many meanings but in the context of this event, it took on the meaning of “connection” or “connect to” as the official catchphrase.</p>
<p>Honestly, I can’t think of any other way to summarize my first WordCamp experience than with this single word, connection.</p>
<p>My time spent at my first WordCamp is a story for another time, but to sum it up, my experience was 100% positive. I learned a lot through the talks that were given. I also contributed to the translations of some plugins and themes, which was a new way of contribution for me. I was also able to network with many members of the Japanese WordPress community as well.</p>
<blockquote><p>It felt good to be a part of something positive, and from that point I was hooked.</p></blockquote>
<p>WordCamp Tokyo was the next WordCamp being held that year, and you bet I attended that one too. Like what I did in Kyoto, I learned, contributed, and networked.</p>
<p><a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image3.jpg"><img /></a></p>
<p>Later that year, I applied to Automattic. After passing an initial resume screening, I went through two different project assignments, two interviews, and finally a trial before making it through. The whole process took three months in total!</p>
<p>For nearly a month though, my days started at 6am and ended at 1am when I was doing my trial on top of my normal full-time job as a teacher and parenting.</p>
<p>I could go on about how arduous that process was, but it would only add another lengthy chapter to this already massively long essay, so I’ll save it for another time.</p>
<p>In short, my days were long and tiring, but what kept me going every day was remembering the promise I made to myself back in DC, and the thought of a brighter future for me and family.</p>
<p>If the trial didn’t pan out, I was completely ready to hop right back on my freelance hustle, but considering how far I came to this point already, a part of me also really wanted to get this job.</p>
<p>I remember getting a ping in the evening in Slack for my final interview which lasted a couple hours, and then finally receiving word that I was being recommended to HR for hire. It was nearly 12am by that time and I still had work the next morning, but I couldn’t sleep at all because I was just way too psyched. The next evening we celebrated with pizza &amp; a much needed craft beer <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f642.png" alt="🙂" class="wp-smiley" /></p>
<p><a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image1.jpg"><img /></a></p>
<h2>Present Day</h2>
<p>It’s fascinating to think how my lifestyle dramatically changed ever since discovering WordPress.</p>
<p>Revisiting Tim Ferriss’ freedom multiplier concept, I could say that I was now doing something that I loved. I was no longer constrained by a fixed time schedule. I had the choice to work wherever I wanted. And the colleagues and members of the WordPress community I interact with on a daily basis are some of the most friendly, talented, and passionate groups of folks I know.</p>
<p>I’ve been able to travel to several locations to meet with amazing people because of WordPress.</p>
<p>July 2018 — I traveled to Shirahama, Japan for my first team meetup. One of the highlights there was that I led a small WordPress workshop for kids, which was a lot of fun. Our team meetup was actually <a href="https://news.yahoo.co.jp/byline/yatsuzukaeri/20180813-00092521">featured as a story in Yahoo Japan News</a>!</p>
<p><a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image12.jpg"><img /></a></p>
<p>September 2018 — I attended WordCamp Tokyo 2018.</p>

<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image6.jpg"><img width="300" height="225" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image6-300x225.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="WordCamp Tokyo 2018 Banner" /></a>
<a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image7.jpg"><img width="300" height="225" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image7-300x225.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="Paulo and WordCamp attendees" /></a>

<p>October 2018 — I attended my company’s first Grand Meetup in Orlando, Florida.</p>

<a href="https://heropress.com/essays/from-assistant-language-teacher-to-a-life-with-wordpress/image14/"><img width="300" height="232" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image14-300x232.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="" /></a>
<a href="https://heropress.com/essays/from-assistant-language-teacher-to-a-life-with-wordpress/image10/"><img width="300" height="225" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image10-300x225.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="" /></a>
<a href="https://heropress.com/essays/from-assistant-language-teacher-to-a-life-with-wordpress/image8/"><img width="300" height="300" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image8-300x300.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="" /></a>
<a href="https://heropress.com/essays/from-assistant-language-teacher-to-a-life-with-wordpress/image4-4/"><img width="300" height="225" src="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image4-300x225.jpg" class="attachment-medium size-medium" alt="" /></a>

<p>April 2019 — I flew to Seoul, South Korea <a href="https://happinessengineer.blog/2019/04/19/team-meetups/">for my second team meetup</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image9.jpg"><img /></a></p>
<p>September 2019 — Orlando, Florida for my second Grand Meetup.</p>
<p><a href="https://heropress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image11.jpg"><img /></a></p>
<p>November 2019 — I traveled back down to Tokyo to attend WordCamp Tokyo 2019. I was also set to attend WordCamp Asia, which was going to be held in Bangkok, Thailand in 2020, but it was unfortunately canceled as the global pandemic had begun.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Not only has WordPress allowed me to leave a meaningful impact on others in a variety of ways, but it has also allowed me and my family a lifestyle in Japan that I wouldn’t have otherwise thought was possible.</p>
<p>We’ve since moved out of our tiny 2LDK apartment and now live in a house conveniently located in the city and close to a major subway line.</p>
<p>We’re no longer penny-pinching like we used to when we go out to do our grocery shopping.</p>
<p>When I work, I usually switch between working from home, working from a cafe, or from a coworking space. I find I’m usually most productive when I’m working from a cafe or nice coffee shop, so I go out when I can.</p>
<p>My wife has been able to quit her job (one which she really disliked) and now has time to pursue her real passions.</p>
<p>We’ve been able to let our son experience and participate in a wide range of extracurricular activities like skiing, piano lessons, club basketball, and club soccer. Skiing is my son’s favorite, so during winter, we usually go at least twice a week since the slopes aren’t that far from us.</p>
<p>We also had our second child in the latter part of last year, and so I’m currently taking advantage of a 6-month parental leave (fully paid) to spend quality time with my baby girl and family. My father-in-law half-jokingly told me recently that if anyone took that amount of time off in a Japanese company they’d probably be told to just quit.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>I have so much to be grateful for, and a lot of what I owe goes to WordPress.</p>
<p>My journey is far from over though, and there’s still a lot I want to do to give back.</p>
<p>I’m nowhere near as knowledgeable as other folks who have been with WordPress since the beginning. In fact, I came in around when WordPress was at version 4.6 I believe.</p>
<p>However, I’m committed to sharing everything I’ve learned that has helped me get to where I am today.</p>
<blockquote><p>I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the vast amount of free information that has been published on the web about WordPress.</p></blockquote>
<p>And now, with how far WordPress has come along, it doesn’t have to take a lifetime to learn how to build a website anymore. You can be up and running in a day.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, not all newcomers “get” WordPress right away. I’ve come to realize this through the 20,000+ support interactions I’ve had so far in my daily work with WordPress users. So in that regard, I feel there’s still a lot of improvement that can be done on the documentation and education front, which is an area I’m hoping to contribute more to in the coming year.</p>
<p>As a former teacher, with a knack for taking complex ideas and breaking them down into easily understandable explanations, my quest is to democratize simplicity &amp; minimalism for site creators just getting started with WordPress so that they can build their sites with ease, and get on with doing what they do best.</p>
<p>While I was able to leave my life of teaching English behind me, my passion for helping others through education has never left, and my hope is to continue educating others about WordPress for as long as I can.</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, 08 Feb 2022 23:00:04 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:12:"Paulo Aquino";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:9;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"WPTavern: Convesio Raises $5M to Expand Docker-Powered Hosting Platform";s: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=129645";s: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://wptavern.com/convesio-raises-5m-to-expand-docker-powered-hosting-platform";s: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:2166:"<p>WordPress hosting company Convesio has <a href="https://convesio.com/convesio-5m-funding/">raised $5 million</a> from private investors. This funding round includes some of the company&#8217;s original investors who participated in <a href="https://wefunder.com/convesio/">Convesio&#8217;s 2019 Wefunder crowdfunding campaign</a>, which brought in more than $1 million from 800+ investors.</p>



<p>“I started Convesio because legacy hosting providers have not evolved their technology, struggled to provide high uptime, and lacked the capability to scale WordPress on demand,&#8221; Fenelli said. </p>



<p>Convesio aims to make enterprise level hosting more accessible to customers with smaller budgets. Its Docker-powered platform allows sites to auto-scale up and down as necessary. It will automatically deploy multiple containers to handle higher loads and bills additional containers at an hourly rate. </p>



<p>&#8220;Traditional hosts put you on a plan to handle the highest level of resources your website needs, even if you only need them 5 hours a month,&#8221; Fanelli said. &#8220;It’s like leasing a Ferrari to use it for your daily commuting because you also take it to the track for a few laps once a month.&#8221; </p>



<p>Convesio is aiming to take on the larger, more established hosting companies by ‘productizing’ scalability in order to keep costs down. The company boasts that customers can deploy a WordPress site with load balancers, a database cluster, and redundant file system in under a minute, without hiring a SysAdmin. Convesio&#8217;s target market is agencies, designers, and developers. </p>



<p>&#8220;Agencies are a one-to-many sale, easier to support, and early adopters of technology,&#8221; Fanelli said when launching their first funding campaign. &#8220;All these reasons make them a really good fit for what we do. They also have to manage a lot of WordPress sites, so issues like speed, performance, scaling etc are all compounded when you have 100 sites.&#8221;</p>



<p>With this second round of funding, Convesio plans to hire more staff, boost sales and marketing, and accelerate development.</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, 08 Feb 2022 04:31:51 +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: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: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:73:"WPTavern: Creating Slides With the Carousel Slider Block WordPress 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=129633";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:84:"https://wptavern.com/creating-slides-with-the-carousel-slider-block-wordpress-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:5049:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Over the weekend, Virgiliu Diaconu asked me to check out his <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/carousel-block/">Carousel Slider Block</a> plugin, a project he has maintained for three years. It has slowly garnered more than 5,000 active installs since its release.</p>



<p>I get emails like this every day. More often than not, the projects are fundamentally broken or are a bit too spammy for my taste. Like so many others, I ask myself, <em>Could this be one of those diamonds in the rough?</em> I am always optimistic enough to hold out the tiniest sliver of hope.</p>



<p>I should preface this review by saying that I have a general dislike of sliders and carousels. They are often used to hide away content, forcing site visitors to take additional action to find it. Or, they begin to automatically slide before users finish reading the first panel. I tolerate them on some sites if used to tidy inconsequential content.</p>



<p>However, I know a lot of people like them. The question I needed to answer was whether this was a solid implementation. The TLDR version is it handles far better than others I have seen.</p>



<p>What makes Block Slider Carousel a solid plugin is that it is, <em>mostly</em>, WYSIWYG. It also does not complicate the experience more than it has to. There is one fixable problem, which I will get to. Overall, creating a carousel full of slides was straightforward.</p>



<p>Users merely need to insert the Carousel Slider block in the editor to create a new carousel. The UI is similar to the core Row block when inserting slides &#8212; click the &#8220;+&#8221; icon. From there, users can add any other block within each:</p>



<img />Initial carousel insertion.



<p>I added a screenshot of this default setup to show that the plugin feels almost native to WordPress. There is no management via a separate custom post type screen. The slides do not all stack atop one another, looking nothing like their final output on the front end. And it does not have a dizzying array of configuration settings.</p>



<p>The primary difference between the editor and front end is the horizontal scrollbar shown on the post-editing screen, used for navigating the carousel. Once a few slides are added, it appears below the outer Slider Carousel block:</p>



<img />Slider Carousel with simple image slides.



<p>I would love to see that replaced with the previous/next arrows and dots navigation in the editor view if either of them is enabled. The plugin allows users to toggle both on and off.</p>



<p>The block&#8217;s options are the baseline controls expected from such a plugin. Users can control the number of shown slides, how many to show on scroll, and the animation speed. It includes toggles to loop back around at the end of the carousel and an auto-play option.</p>



<p>There is an RTL mode, which was not immediately clear was working correctly. Switching it on did not seem to make any changes in the editor. However, the slides are shown in reverse order on the front end.</p>



<p>The block has a separate panel for controlling the number of slides on smaller screens. Users can manually set the breakpoint or leave it to the default of <code>768px</code>.</p>



<p>The biggest problem I ran into with the plugin was that it overwrote block margins within the slides. As shown in the following screenshot, the Heading, Paragraph, and Buttons blocks have no space between them:</p>



<img />No spacing between blocks.



<p>The theme I am testing uses the new &#8220;block gap&#8221; feature in WordPress 5.9 to handle vertical spacing. However, with the way the CSS is written in the plugin, it was likely an issue in previous versions. Carousel Slider Block&#8217;s styles zero out block margins with a high level of specificity.</p>



<p>This issue is only in the editor. If you can get past not knowing exactly how each slide will look until previewing or publishing, it is not too rough of an experience. But, this should be an easy fix for the plugin author. I removed the offending code without issue.</p>



<img />Corrected spacing between blocks.



<p>And my sanity was restored &#8212; <em>I am a stickler for decent spacing.</em></p>



<p>A welcome addition would be color options for the arrow and dot navigation and features like padding, border, background, and block spacing. This would make it easier for end-users to customize the carousel container.</p>



<p><em>Would I use this plugin?</em> Knowing myself, I would likely build a custom block, overengineering it when there is a perfectly acceptable solution at hand. Of course, I do not use sliders. However, I would be comfortable handing it over to a client if I still did such work. Plus, the plugin&#8217;s front-end CSS is lightweight enough to overwrite for custom designs.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/carousel-block/">Carousel Slider Block for Gutenberg</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:"Tue, 08 Feb 2022 02:06:11 +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: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:64:"WordPress.org blog: WP Briefing: Episode 24: Three Goals in 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:53:"https://wordpress.org/news/?post_type=podcast&p=12176";s: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:66:"https://wordpress.org/news/2022/02/episode-24-three-goals-in-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:9158:"<p>In episode 24 of the WordPress Briefing, the Project&#8217;s Executive Director reviews three big-picture goals for the year: Increased Gutenberg adoption, support of all open source alternatives, and stewarding the open source ethos.</p>



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



<h2 id="credits">Credits</h2>



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



<h2 id="references">References</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/01/21/big-picture-goals-2022/">Big Picture Goals 2022</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/26/preliminary-roadmap-for-6-0/">Preliminary Roadmap for 6.0</a> (Gutenberg Phase 2)</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2021/06/a-new-design-is-coming-to-wordpress-news/">A New News Design</a></li><li><a href="https://wpmake.tumblr.com/">Making WordPress</a>: Unofficial aggregator for all&nbsp;<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/">Making WordPress blogs</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="transcript">Transcript</h2>



<span id="more-12176"></span>



<h2 id="episode-24">Episode 24</h2>



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



<p>Hello everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project. Some insight into the community that supports it and get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I&#8217;m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>01:07</p>



<p>A couple of weeks ago, I published a post about the big picture goals for the WordPress project in 2022. As I was thinking through our planned releases for the year and looking out toward what would spell success for WordPress over the next three years, three things really lined up in both sets of answers for me.</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>01:23</p>



<p>I provided some detail on how we can work toward these goals in the post, which I will link for you in the show notes, but I also wanted to take some time to explain why I feel we have to work toward these goals this year. So these all build on one another. To refresh your memory of the three big focuses, they are one to drive adoption of the new editor in WordPress, support open source alternatives for site building necessities, and three, open source stewardship.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>01:52</p>



<p>So the first one; is driving the adoption of the new WordPress editor. Early on in the start of the Gutenberg Project, folks could not go two days without hearing me talk about the phases of adoption and how those line up with the phases of Gutenberg, and who would need our support the most in each of those phases.</p>



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



<p>I have always believed that what we would be shipping at this point in our project would prove the plausible promise of what we were doing in phase one. That&#8217;s definitely what I&#8217;m seeing from what was shipped in 5.9, as well as what we plan to ship in May with 6.0. And the people who need the most support right now are absolutely our users, your clients, no matter whether they were not keeping up with WordPress developments or simply were waiting to see what all the fuss was about.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>02:37</p>



<p>There will be people who look to you as someone who has been here a while to help them make sense of what they&#8217;re seeing. And what I find so exciting about this adoption, sort of, work in the WordPress project is that this is the time when we as practitioners of WordPress, no matter whether you are a designer or a developer or builder, business coach. This is the time when we get to guide others through the hardest parts of our learning processes.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>03:07</p>



<p>The process of helping people to learn new technologies relies not only on your hard-won expertise but also on the belief that the future is worth fighting for. Enabling someone’s success is an investment in the future and investment for that person or for WordPress or your community. All investments are welcome here.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>03:28</p>



<p>Fortunately, table stakes are just that you care. And speaking of future investments, the second focus is open source alternatives for site building necessities. So things like images, forms, stores, themes, etc. It literally just things you need to build a site. I would like to start by saying that I am completely aware of the fact that 99% of WordPress users will never care about open source freedoms and philosophies in the same way that WordPress maintainers and contributors care about open source freedoms and philosophies.&nbsp;</p>



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



<p>You could substitute the name of any other open source project right there, and the statement would still be true. And yet, I will always believe that people should have the rights and freedoms that open source brings to them even if they do not know they are there. And so it makes all the sense in the world to me that as a project and open source community, we should strive to make choosing Open Source as easy as possible.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>04:33</p>



<p>And finally, open source stewardship is one of the focuses for this year. This one is obviously about supporting open source as a concept and maintaining WordPress as a project. But I also think that it is relevant to our current global circumstances. Open Source suddenly became very visible to the public eye last year following the Log4J vulnerability, and ever since then, I&#8217;ve been hearing consistent concern over how We make sure that WordPress is sustainable moving into the future. Fortunately, this is a topic that&#8217;s near and dear to my heart. And I have been delighted to see so many community members bringing that conversation to the forefront.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>05:14</p>



<p>There is a lot that is done in the WordPress project to keep us from the tragedy of the commons. But that work honestly never ends. Not only does it not end, but as we get bigger, there is more and more that we can and should be doing to keep us around for the long term. And, of course, for the keen readers of my posts, there&#8217;s a bonus focus.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>05:39</p>



<p>The bonus focus is, of course, that WordPress turns 20 years old next year. This year, we will also be seeing some preparatory work for that major milestone as well.</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>05:56</p>



<p>So that brings us today to our small list of big things. There is a redesign of the News Page coming. We&#8217;ve been talking about this over on make.wordpress.org/design for a bit since like June of last year or something. But it&#8217;s coming in the next few weeks. I&#8217;ll share a link to the GitHub repo in case anyone has any specific things that they see as they are reading through all of our many news stories that come out on that particular page. I think it&#8217;s beautiful, and I&#8217;m very excited to take a look at it.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>06:30</p>



<p>The second thing is that planning is underway for WordPress 6.0; that release that we&#8217;re doing in May. I&#8217;ll add the project page link to the show notes. I&#8217;ve had a few raised hands for that release squad. But if you&#8217;re interested in participating in the release, I encourage you to keep an eye out on make.wordpress.org/core for updates and any news about how to get involved.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>06:53</p>



<p>And my third thing is actually that, in general, there are a lot of opportunities to contribute right now. There are discussions about projects, goals, and dreams happening all over the place. I&#8217;ll link in the show notes below the unofficial project “firehose” where you can see all the headlines and quickly find discussions that might be interesting to you.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Josepha Haden Chomphosy&nbsp; </strong>07:18</p>



<p>And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I&#8217;m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I&#8217;ll see you again in a couple of weeks.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Mon, 07 Feb 2022 12:00:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:15:"Chloe Bringmann";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:145:"Gutenberg Times: Gutenberg Changelog #60 – Restricting Customization in a Full-Site Editing World, Gutenberg 12.5 and Roadmap for WordPress 6.0";s: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=20378";s: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:113:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-60-restricting-customization-in-a-full-site-editing-world/";s: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:92476:"<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack and Grzegorz Ziolkowski discuss with their guest Matias Ventura restricting customization in a full-site editing world, Gutenberg 12.5 and Gutenberg changes coming with WordPress 6.0. </p>



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



<span id="more-20378"></span>



<p><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-60-restricting-customization-in-a-full-site-editing-world#shownotes">Show Notes </a>/ <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-60-restricting-customization-in-a-full-site-editing-world#transcript">Transcript</a></p>



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



<p><a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1285533518">Twitch Stream session</a> with <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong></p>



<p><a href="https://github.com/ryanwelcher/gutenberg-block-level-locking">Demo Code on GitHub</a></p>



<p><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>



<ul><li>Dev Note: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/08/locking-blocks-in-wordpress-5-9/">Locking Blocks in WordPress 5.9</a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/29864">Tracking issue: On Locking and TemplateLocking</a> (#29864) March 2021&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/26128">Add template lock attribute to column and group</a> (#26128) October 2020</li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/27597">Proposal: robust permissions system for FSE theme templates </a>(27597)</li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/37489">Exploration around multi-entity permission management</a> (#37489)&nbsp;</li></ul>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/26/preliminary-roadmap-for-6-0/">Preliminary Roadmap for 6.0 (Gutenberg Phase 2)</a> by Matias Ventura</p>



<p><strong>Gutenberg 12.5</strong></p>



<p><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/03/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-5-february-2nd/">What’s new in Gutenberg 12.5? (February 2nd)</a> by Fabian Kägy</p>



<p><a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-12-5-introduces-global-styles-variations-preserves-adjacent-button-styling-and-adds-alpha-transparency-to-color-pickers">Gutenberg 12.5 Introduces Global Styles Variations, Preserves Adjacent Button Styling, and Adds Alpha Transparency to Color Pickers</a></p>



<p><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/27075">Consider a standardized way to modify hover/focus/active states for blocks</a> (Issue 27075)</p>



<p><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283720638/">Gutenberg Developer Hours </a>Feb 22 at 11am  ET / 16:00 UTC</p>



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



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Hello and welcome to our 60th episode of the Gutenberg Changelog Podcast. In today&#8217;s episode, we will talk about Restricting Customization in our full-site editing world. Gutenberg 12.5 and what&#8217;s on the plate for Gutenberg&#8217;s Phase 2, coming to WordPress 6.0. I am Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator at the Gutenberg Times and WordPress developer advocate. And I&#8217;m here with my co-host Grzegorz Ziolkowski, JavaScript developer at Automattic and WordPress core contributor. Howdy Grzegorz, how are you today?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Hello! I&#8217;m good. Thank you. So last week we celebrated WordPress 5.9 release. That&#8217;s a huge one, yeah, we did it. So it took five years to bring blocks everywhere on the WordPress site. And everyone now can switch themes and play with the new kit on the block, which is a block theme concept. So I&#8217;m really excited about that and I see also a lot of excitement in social media and people are trying that out and yeah, it&#8217;s mind blowing how everything changed.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And I&#8217;m so thrilled to welcome our guest today, Matias Ventura sometimes called the spark of Gutenberg, well he is its principal architect. So last time we had Matias on the Gutenberg Times Show was November 30th, 2018. Just before we all headed out to Nashville for WordCamp US, and just before the release of 5.0, so thank you for joining us today at this one, after this wonderful release for full-site editing in core.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Hello, hello. Thank you for having me back. Like before 5.0, that&#8217;s a while back. It feels both like yesterday and forever ago.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I feel the same way, so many years and then we had a pandemic in between which kind of made the years even longer. So it&#8217;s a great pleasure to have you and the project has grown and matured so much. So it&#8217;s really mind-boggling how far it has come. And so the first version, minimal viable product MVP, the beta version or whatever you call it, of the full-site editing experience has been released. How are you feeling about it and what are the first insights from users?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah, I feel really relieved that we got to this point, is being one of the main promises of the project to, like Greg said, like to bring blocks everywhere essentially. And this is the release that marks, I think will mark like a historical milestone where we finally were able to bring everything out to people. So, it&#8217;s a huge celebratory milestone for me, the work from so many people over so many years is finally, in a way it also just the beginning, because once you put things out there is when you really start seeing how people interact with it, the feedback, the things to change. So in a way it&#8217;s just the first step, but it&#8217;s also the culmination of a lot of work. So it has that both elements to it, I guess.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. I feel that too. And I&#8217;m delighted, there&#8217;s so much chat around full-site editing. And listeners, long time listeners here on the Changelog know that we have been talking about it for at least two years. So, but people care greatly about it and they definitely see the potential and also, the theme developers are excited. So, but before we talk what comes to WordPress 6.0, and I just realized we have the 60th episode and we&#8217;re talking about WordPress 6.0 so that&#8217;s a coincidence. So shall we briefly go over the locking mechanism for block themes, the site editor and the blocks. It was part of a question on Twitter Matias and you had some great examples of what a developer already can use to lock down the parts.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: I think it also speaks to both the ambition and expanse of the project, that we&#8217;re just celebrating all these new tools, all these extensibility tools, all these design elements that people have to play with our site. And now we&#8217;re focusing on locking them down, but there&#8217;s a reason to that. It&#8217;s like the WordPress project is really about all of these use cases. And while it&#8217;s been important to bring a lot of these tools to end users, people that are just starting their site on their own and be able to modify things that before were really locked down to them. That&#8217;s really important to really democratize access to all of these stuff. But at the same time, WordPress is used for very different kinds of sites and people that maintain sites for others like site builders, or agencies or freelancers are also users of WordPress, and these release also has tools for them.</p>



<p>And some of those tools are precisely about restricting and locking down and controlling what these tools are, when and how these tools are exposed to users. There&#8217;s many, I think it&#8217;s like from my perspective, this is the first time that WordPress has so much control and granular control over this when it comes to themes. So I&#8217;m quite excited, but I think we haven&#8217;t done a proper job at bringing that into focus, because we have something like the theme.json tool that was introduced in 5.8 and improve a lot for 5.9, that really allows a site maintainer, a theme developer to have a lot of control over what appearance tools are exposed in the interface, not just in terms of registering color palettes and the presets that people are used to, but also in really saying, &#8220;Okay, I don&#8217;t want the paragraph block to have any of these typography tools.&#8221;</p>



<p>You cannot control the line height, you cannot control the font size, you can only change the color and pick them on this presets. You can do all sorts of combinations there, and I think that, that really gives a lot of power to the site maintainer to really control that experience. But the cool thing is that since all the blocks are using these same APIs, it just works with every block, not just core blocks, but also third-party blocks that use these APIs. So that&#8217;s a way to really scale the ability to control essentially how all blocks work, without the developer needing to do anything specific for like a third-party block from, I don&#8217;t know, WooCommerce or anything, it should just work. And that&#8217;s just one part of it, we also have the other API that you mentioned locking, which works at a block level.</p>



<p>You can really restrict when a block can be moved, removed, or inserted in any area of the&#8230; like in a block theme essentially anywhere you can have a side bar that&#8217;s entirely locked down to editors, and you can imagine all the combinations that you can have with that. And these lock in mechanisms essentially turn the editor instead of being like blocks that you can move all around, the blocks are sort of set in there and you&#8217;re just editing the text or manipulating some of the attributes, essentially what is exposed. And if you combine this with a theme.json, you can say, okay, now you&#8217;re just modifying the attributes that the theme allowed to modify, like only choosing presets for a heading for example, or stuff like that. And I think it&#8217;s a really cool set of features that work really well together. And I don&#8217;t think we’ve done a lot of outreach around how they can be combined. We talk a bit about theme.json, and I think there&#8217;s some content out there about locking, but the combination of the two with specific use cases I think can be pretty powerful.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. This is also a year that needs further research because I can envision some use cases. People would like to put some parts of the site in their read only mode, so you can&#8217;t even change attributes like you could right now. And all of those features are hidden for now because it&#8217;s not something that for the default use case on the site are necessarily like individual block locking could be, if you would block that during designing your template, how would you change it inside? So it&#8217;s something that needs further thinking, but it&#8217;s there, it&#8217;s just, you need to know how to get to it. And we will talk about that today. That&#8217;s why we also introduce some features to look at the codes so people can just be more familiar and change like they do surgery of the HTML, just to ensure that you can add also today.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah, exactly. Right now that works essentially with a code editor, you need to modify the attribute in the code editor. Eventually there will be a UI for this and this UI can also be, the idea is that this will be controlled by user roles. So maybe if you&#8217;re a site administrator, you can just using the UI itself, you can go and lock the different things that you unlocked, and you will have direct UI to do that. But an editor or an author, when they get there, they wouldn&#8217;t see the UI itself. They would just get the&#8230; whatever is locked, is locked and they cannot change it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. There also had been a, from the beginning actually, or very early in the project, the concept of a block template where you can say, &#8220;Okay, for a custom post type, I have only a certain amount of blocks that come into the page for it.&#8221; And you only can use certain blocks and you only can change the content for instance, that locking API has been in the site already, or in the product already, but it was not exposed to non-developers. Yeah. And I think getting that a little bit higher on the user interface, instead of having to write code about it, I think that&#8217;s a great development for later. I&#8217;m not sure actually we&#8217;ll make it in 6.0, but because that&#8217;s a huge undertaking by itself I would think, because you need to go through all those concepts.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. I think it can be like, it&#8217;s very close because it&#8217;s also how the whole project evolves. Some of these tools are added just through code initially, you mentioned, the templates have had locking mechanisms since 5.0, this new tool really expands it to block so, and since blocks can be edited in the code editor, now this becomes available for more people. And the next step is really just to expose it in the UI. There&#8217;s really, there needs to be some work there to really finalize the design, but in terms of effort is not too much to just have it there. We also want to have it on the list view, the panel on the side where you can see all the list of locks, and there it would be very easy for a site administrator to just click on a lock icon and just determine exactly what needs to be locked.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, that sounds excellent. So I just want to also know dear listeners that Ryan Welcher actually walked through some of the demos of that in his Twitch Stream on February 3rd. And he also shared the code for his demo on a GitHub repository. So we&#8217;ll show the link in the show notes. That is definitely for developers of course, but we also will share some of the links and documentation for the things that Matias and Grzegorz just mentioned.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: And I just want to add that also, since this works at the block level, patterns themselves can be locked down in different ways, so you can create patterns where certain elements are locked. So it really expands that initial set of locking that we had for templates to essentially anything, like anything can be manipulated that way now.</p>



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



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: That is to summarize the options then that you will see in the show notes in the links. So it&#8217;s possible to lock in usual block, but also the template of inner block. So if you, when you have a group, so you can lock down what&#8217;s inside the group and there is also some work to bring some more robust permission systems for all of that. So, when you have navigation block, which is in some entity, reusable block and all those concepts, so they can have different permission levels. And in general, it needs to be laid out in a nice way so we have a coherent system.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: It&#8217;s cool that you mentioned reusable blocks, because there&#8217;s been some feedback, I think ever since 5.8, that it&#8217;s too easy to modify reusable blocks in a way. And for some people that&#8217;s great, that&#8217;s what the experience they want, for many others that&#8217;s not. And the ability to lock things down, like you can just lock a reusable block down and the UI would honor that experience. So it&#8217;s also something that addresses those issues because everything is blocks ultimately.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes. And I think it&#8217;s really important to emphasize that you need to first have it all wide open before you actually know what you need to lock down. And if the features are not in the system yet, it&#8217;s hard to make those locks work. So it&#8217;s kind of the chicken and egg thing, and we know what the chicken is and we know what the egg is, but yeah, what comes first is actually it needs to be open before we can lock it down.</p>



<h3 id="phase-2-for-wordpress-6-0"><strong>Phase 2 for WordPress 6.0</strong></h3>



<p>And now I&#8217;m really happy to go to the preliminary roadmap of Gutenberg phase 2 for 6.0. But just because we were on the topic of Adoption and all that, can we take that section first for those who want to see if I want, do I want to really adopt it yet? And what are the possibilities? So one thing was that the theme.json file is actually not only for block themes, it&#8217;s really also a great feature to use for non-block themes or as we sometimes call them plastic themes. And that&#8217;s already in 5.8, but I really found it a much easier way to switch off gradients, disable custom colors, orphans, disable Duotones with just a few lines of codes. What do you see here for 6.0 for the classic themes?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. Well, there&#8217;s a lot of refinements still to be done on theme.json, it&#8217;s an ongoing process, more things to control, more things to configure like we discussed. There&#8217;s some work going on Duotone, that still needs to be done like theme.json works, but the UI doesn&#8217;t necessarily work. There&#8217;s still the chance of making some of the&#8230; exposing some of the theme.json interface in, like the Customizer for classic themes or some other view, that&#8217;s something that would need to be explored because right now the UI for theme.json is global styles, which you get in the site editor, so there&#8217;s some work there to be done.</p>



<p>I think the thing that I&#8217;m most interested about for gradual adoption is, we managed to learn like this, we&#8217;ve been calling it the focus template part on the&#8230; sort of to refer to it somehow, which is essentially a view in the site editor that allows you to focus on a single template part, like a header part, or a side bar, or a footer or anything really that you can create. This view works with like the&#8230; it has responsive handles and so on. And it&#8217;s a nice experience just to deal with a specific part of the site, and there&#8217;s no reason why this cannot be open. In fact, we actually shipped some functions, some PHP functions to call one of the header template part or the footer, or some other template part in PHP. So you can use them in your PHP template files just fine. But what we don&#8217;t have yet is that if you do that, but you don&#8217;t get access to the site editor, there&#8217;s really no way for the user to edit the content of the template part.</p>



<p>So that&#8217;s something that would be nice to open up in 6.0. So essentially, if you have a normal PHP theme, you can use these functions and then somewhere in the UI, the user can go and just get this focus template part mode. So they wouldn&#8217;t go into the full-site editor, because that&#8217;s not how these things work. They would go into this focus areas to just handle blocks there. So it&#8217;s essentially a different kind of widget area where it&#8217;s visually rich and it&#8217;s visually more like what you see is what you get essentially.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. It&#8217;s yeah, I understand that. So another item on your roadmap are the explorations on dynamic templates for blocks. That&#8217;s sounds really interesting. So what do you envision there?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah, so this is like the other part is if say a theme wants to start adding some block templates, I don&#8217;t know. Do you want to turn your archive into something that&#8217;s editable or even vice versa? You have a block theme and you&#8217;re using it for a site, but you say you have like a, I don&#8217;t know, you&#8217;re running the New York Times and you have a specific page that is really dynamic and you don&#8217;t want it to be editing the site editors, so you end up using a PHP template for that, that sort of combinations. Because I think we&#8217;ve talked a lot about block themes and classic themes, that&#8217;s not really, it&#8217;s a very primitive split, like in reality, things are just very flexible and they will be more flexible. And that&#8217;s part of this gradual adoption sort of bucket, is that you can have some templates that are entirely dynamic like PHP driven, others that are configurable in the site editor and any mix in between.</p>



<p>It&#8217;s interesting to see some of the work that the WooCommerce team is doing, but I think there are some plugins as well that they, when these plugins that have a lot of templates that historically they were added as PHP templates that you could customize in a theme, but otherwise the plugin also ship some of them, that what they are doing is that they are wrapping some of the dynamic parts of these templates in essentially server render blocks. So you get like, you can edit the product template of a WooCommerce site, but maybe the templates, the part that displays products, that&#8217;s just driven by PHP. So you get a place called the render site editor, but you can customize around it. And once WooCommerce has the necessary blocks to represent that template just with blocks, maybe they update that. But it&#8217;s like, it shows sort of the flexibility of you don&#8217;t need to turn everything into blocks.</p>



<p>In some cases you might say, &#8220;Oh, like here, this is going to render a chart based on, I don&#8217;t know, the weather forecast or whatever it is, I don&#8217;t care about users interacting with this in any way in the site editor.&#8221; And that&#8217;s where you can let just regular PHP templates handle that part, but maybe the user can customize around that or the text above and below using the editor. All of those combinations I think are really going to become more prominent, because I think that cases where you just have a purely one theme in one site or the other are going to be, for some sites are going to be rare because you have different kinds of combinations.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, that&#8217;s good to hear that there&#8217;s still a place for classic PHP themes, especially when you have complex sites because you, well, WordPress runs on PHP, but there are the hooks in to get the block part of it, and part of the template. That&#8217;s really interesting. Thank you.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Can you say that, like working in a similar way, how block patterns work? So, for the block themes, like the other way around, you can want, to port some of the functionality and then you would just wrap that into a pattern or whatever new we add. And then just take this snippet that&#8217;s generated on the fly with whatever you need and just get embedded into the template.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah, exactly. It&#8217;s sort of like PHP Mbits in a way. And it&#8217;s like that the only traders is that you don&#8217;t get editing capabilities, which will be totally fine for many use cases. So it&#8217;s sort of like exactly the opposite of patterns in a way, it&#8217;s like a PHP Mbit that you don&#8217;t get the block interface for it because it doesn&#8217;t need to. It&#8217;s just like a single block that you can move around because it&#8217;s part of the block system, but you cannot introspect or edit its specific details. And I think that&#8217;s going to be like, again it&#8217;s very easy to create one of these PHP Mbits because that&#8217;s how WordPress works. So it&#8217;s just going to be there, it can be previewed, or you can show a placeholder, like that&#8217;s going to be, the options there are really wide open I think.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So to bring it a little bit to the point of the controversy out there, or fear out there, the block themes actually are not getting rid of PHP developers. They actually give the PHP developers now so much more tools at the hand for flexibility, so they can really mix and match all the block parts into their theme. So I really love that idea and I&#8217;m glad that you&#8217;re here in the show to, going to set me straight and all my ideas and that, it goes really further. So then a lot of new features and enhancement in your preliminary roadmap, what are the highlights for site editor, layouts and blocks? And are there features you are particularly excited about the tiers?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. So in a way this release, I think I mentioned it, to me it&#8217;s more like the culmination of the phase 2. This is where we get to do at least the things that we set out to do. It doesn&#8217;t mean that it will be finished by any means or like that, we will continue to work on this for many years, but what I&#8217;m particularly interested about is going back to patterns and the things we can do around patterns, which we haven&#8217;t paid a lot of attention to in the&#8230; Like there&#8217;s been some work in the last couple releases, but since we introduced patterns there haven&#8217;t been like big major iterations on them.</p>



<p>And one of the key things for me is bringing patterns more into the template creation flow because blocks are sometimes a bit too granular for that experience. Like if you&#8217;re laying out a page or a template, you want to say, &#8220;Okay, I want to first define this header section, then this main section. Maybe with a sidebar, like this footer section or whatever is in the middle and so on when you&#8217;re creating a homepage.</p>



<p>So you&#8217;re really dealing with patterns first. And then maybe you&#8217;re tweaking the pattern with its blocks and so on. But you&#8217;re not creating from scratch like, &#8220;Oh, this is a group. And then this other group. And then this cover, and then this&#8230;&#8221; Like, that&#8217;s a bit too granular. Which can be fine for a theme developer, but for a user it&#8217;s really more about the patterns. Maybe even the patterns that the theme registers so you can very quickly piece together this sort of page.</p>



<p>And we don&#8217;t have&#8230; Right now, like patterns are there in Inserter, but the discovery is not super sophisticated. And from the canvas itself, you need to search for a pattern and so on. So it&#8217;d be nice if&#8230; And some of the proposals are that, if you&#8217;re in the root of a template, what opens when you click on the Inserter are just patterns. Like the quick Inserter that you get in between the pages, but focus on patterns and on sections that are&#8230; If you&#8217;re starting blank, the first thing is probably going to be a header. So we can connect that with a sort of semantic template parts, there are already headers and you can choose among these headers.</p>



<p>And if this is connected with a patterns directory, you can see among all the headers that are available in the directory as a starting point. And this could even expand to, you might be able to say, &#8220;Oh, I really like the header from this theme. And I want to use that.&#8221; And since everything is compatible, everything is just blocks, you&#8217;ll be able to say, &#8220;To explore and only see the headers from all the themes in the directory.&#8221; So you can pick one of those and then sort of assemble your site through those pieces.</p>



<p>So that experience is really what I&#8217;m interested about in exploring more. This sort of like section based building of site. And patterns are a key ingredient to that.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Indeed, yes. There wasn&#8217;t a discussion of&#8230; That sounds really fabulous. There was also a discussion out there, is there ever going to be a way to actually save block patterns from the editor? So you design a certain way&#8230; Like you do with reusable blocks, that you can just highlight it, make reusable block, and then it&#8217;s available for every other editor. Can you also do this for block patterns? Is that on the roadmap?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah, we actually had it in one of the plugin releases. I don&#8217;t know if you remember, but I think Ryad had done it, I think, right around the time of 5.0. You were able to both save reusable blocks and save patterns. You used the same mechanism, it was just, when you inserted them it would just do different things. Because it&#8217;s essentially the same, like you can insert a reusable blog and detach it from that sort of reusable instance and you get the pattern. So that was just the shortcut for that.</p>



<p>I think the tricky thing was that it was not clear when were you saving one thing or the other. And so it was more of a UX problem than a technical one. And I think that&#8217;s still the case. Now, that we have a proper&#8230; Because I think at the time we didn&#8217;t have patterns as a dedicated UI. So now that we have a dedicated UI for patterns, those concepts can make more sense. So it&#8217;s something to explore.</p>



<p>But I think we still need to do some work on this. Again, what does a pattern represent for sections? If you can say that a pattern has sort of like a semantic value, that it belongs to a header or a footer and so on. How does the directory react to that? Because we don&#8217;t have that layer of categorization in the directory right now that represents areas of the site. I think we need to do some work there to surface exactly what are the needs, what are the details? But yeah, it&#8217;s definitely on the table.</p>



<p>I think another sort of connected piece to this is that patterns can also be super useful for creating pages. So that&#8217;s something, like an additional&#8230; Like pages can sit between the regular post editor and the site editor, in the sense that sometimes when you&#8217;re building a page, especially like a landing page or something, patterns can be better than just blocks. In some other cases you might want just like, I don&#8217;t know, a blank page, I just want to write. But it&#8217;s an interesting&#8230; Pages, I think, provide an interesting place to sort of connect the two experiences. Like an experience more focused on pattern or an experience more focused on blocks.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And there has been almost immediately since the block editor came out, some of the plugins already provide kind of full page layouts that they have into it. So there&#8217;s quite a few things that will make it into core in a different way, probably. But&#8230; Yeah.</p>



<p>But I also see on the roadmap, there&#8217;s one thing, that is to use patterns also for transformations. So right now, when you add a pattern to a post, well, a page and it&#8217;s detached from it&#8217;s being a pattern. Yeah, kind of all the blocks are&#8230; Yeah. But if you want to replace a block pattern, you need to have it be together so you can replace the content immediately and all kind of things. Yeah.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. And this is also crucial for this. Like when we&#8217;re talking about the header area, that&#8217;s a very clear case where it should be possible to say, &#8220;Oh, I like this theme, but I want to choose a different pattern for the header.&#8221; And that pattern might come from the theme itself, or it might from the directory, or it might be something that a user created. But that experience needs to be possible.</p>



<p>For headers, it&#8217;s somewhat easier because the blocks, even the inner blocks are semantics. You might have a site title, navigation block, tagline, and so on, site logo. And these blocks are transferable between any&#8230; Like they just deal with data outside a content.</p>



<p>For generic patterns that are just like a combination of blocks, we had some explorations and we need to continue around like how can you map certain&#8230; Like, say you have a pattern with an image and you have&#8230; You could have multiple patterns that combine text and images, so you can transfer some of the content and see how it looks on different places. But the fact that you don&#8217;t have necessarily a container for the pattern makes it, in some cases, more difficult. You need patterns that are either already by default used in a group or stuff like that, so that you can manipulate them that way.</p>



<p>But I think it&#8217;d be interesting to consider this addition of like sections. So that you can treat the section and say, &#8220;Okay, transform all these blocks on this section to this other pattern.&#8221; And sometimes it might not be a one-to-one mapping. Like maybe there are more blocks in one pattern than another. And those things need to be accounted for. But at the very least we should&#8230; We have some stuff there that already works for headers and footers, but we need to really expand these and connect it with the directory and then see how that can of work on&#8230; Because eventually it&#8217;d be nice if you can just lay a couple paragraph, add an image, and then you say, &#8220;Oh, I really want to display this in a more interesting way.&#8221; That you can just multi-select the paragraphs and the image, and you will get options of patterns that use, at the very least, these amount of elements. Like these different part of an image but laid out in a different way. And that is where patterns can also be a transform utility.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. It could also open up a lot of possibilities for plugins and themes, to actually offer all these different variations of things. At the fly, a user doesn&#8217;t have to know what they want.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah, exactly.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: &#8230; before they scroll the patterns. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Which is really the limitation. If you think about it, that&#8217;s the limitation right now with pattern, is that you need to think about before you added your content. You need to say, &#8220;Okay, I want to try this layout.&#8221; And then you write your content. Which is fine in some cases, but in others you would be like, &#8220;Oh, I just want to get this content out, this image out. And now I want this to be a pattern.&#8221; So that should also be a possibility.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. That&#8217;s how I produce my pages, that&#8230; So this is my content, how can I make it snazzy and all that? Yeah. Excellent.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: It&#8217;s interesting that we are talking all those ideas. Like they are crazy comparing to classic themes, wherein you go to the theme directory and you check some tags. Like I want to have one sidebar, like one column, and the content inside and maybe some other characteristic, but that&#8217;s it.</p>



<p>And basically you just get a huge list of themes and you need to go one-by-one and like activate, check how it works. And here, it&#8217;s there. And on every template you can have like parts of different themes combined which have&#8230; Because of style variations, you can have unified look and feel. It&#8217;s like there are so many possibilities that that opens, which is like the work I think for the next 10 years, at least, just to explore all that.</p>



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



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. I think, in&#8230;</p>



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



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: No. Go ahead. Go ahead.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. So if your listeners kind of&#8230; The mind is blown. Let&#8217;s hear what Matias has to say about the decoupling of templates from specific themes. That opens it up really wide.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. I think it&#8217;s really the, sort of in a way, I think the topic of 6.0 is going to be to unleash some of these restrictions that for now are like self-imposed. Right now when you switch a block themes, your template parts and all of those things don&#8217;t carry over, your global styles don&#8217;t carry over. This is just like an artificial restriction. Like there&#8217;s no&#8230; Like it&#8217;s completely viable. And it&#8217;s part of the goal that those things do transfer, if you want them to. Like if you want to switch things but retain your header, like switch things but keep your global styles, or like try different layouts but keep your styles, or just change your styles. Like there&#8217;s many combinations there that should be possible.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s really about unrestricting these things and decoupling the templates from the theme. Like you can combine from different themes. You can create your own and transfer. Maybe you really like how the block archives from a theme look and you want to just install that and keep everything the same. All of those possibilities are really there. Like right there.</p>



<p>We need to formalize the user experience around it and remove these restrictions that are really, right now, are keeping things more familiar to how things used to work. But part of the cool thing is that, now&#8230; The way I see it is that, all of these themes, all of these types of themes are compatible with each other. Like the theme JSON, just works in any of these themes. The templates are just blocks, they can be combined, they can be composed. So that part of compatibility is really what I think is going to be the biggest area of exploration that we have ahead.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: And always keep in mind, don&#8217;t get scared that all will be locked down again after it&#8217;s all over.</p>



<p>Yeah. So you had also quite a few things that you envision for the editor in 6.0. What stands out for you? Some of them are really pushing the experience further, but are there any, I say, new things? Or what stands out for you?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Well, I think like for the&#8230; There&#8217;s a lot of work that needs to be done to improve the template browsing experience. Even there, there are some restrictions that we impose that are artificial. Like when you create a new template, you can choose from an archive, single page. You have a few options. But you don&#8217;t have all of the options that WordPress should allow. You should be able to create, I don&#8217;t know, a specific category page for a specific category that you publish, like your travel category.</p>



<p>All of those things are, again, at the tip, it&#8217;s right there to do, we just are not exposing it properly. And we need to work on that to make that more viable, because that&#8217;s also something that unleashes a lot of that kind of power. Like maybe, you just install a theme and you say, &#8220;I want to modify a bit like my category page for this specific category.&#8221; You can do that right in the interface, or for a specific post type or for whatever it is. That&#8217;s something that needs to happen at the editor UI level.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s also some work around the three main ingredients of the site editor, like the global styles, the templates and the navigation. Those three elements, there&#8217;s some design explorations about how to better communicate this sort of hierarchy. That these are important and you can access these in this way.</p>



<p>For the navigation it&#8217;s important because you might have like a collapse navigation behind like a hamburger menu or whatever. And you shouldn&#8217;t need all these clicks to get to your navigation. There should be a way to just see the site structure without having to interact with a template that has a visible site structure. You might even have a site that has a hidden site structure. Like it doesn&#8217;t render a menu, but it has subpages and permalinks and so on. So you still need access to those kind of things. So that&#8217;s part of the editor work that needs to happen.</p>



<p>There&#8217;s also some that didn&#8217;t quite make it to 5.9, but it&#8217;s already in the plugin now, the style variations. Being able to switch style variations on the fly, that&#8217;s going to be really powerful. Especially right now, again, we&#8217;re restricting what you see to what is bundled with a theme. But there&#8217;s no need to do that. You could just go there and open like a style directory, where you see styles from all of the themes and you pick whatever you like. And it doesn&#8217;t have to be bundled with the theme, you can just access that from the directories.</p>



<p>So a lot of that work on the editor itself is essentially like managing how we open up some of these options and how we manage the access to them.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Excellent. Excellent. Now, in your roadmap document, there are also a few things that are&#8230; Regarding for blocks. Blocks were, it&#8217;s kind of the first phase of things, but they always have been evolving. Are there anything that you like to point out and where you want to talk about?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. Yeah. I think in a way, I think we got to a point&#8230; The cool thing about, also, the 5.9 release is that now blocks are everywhere. So any improvements we do to blocks are just improving things everywhere. So any improvements we do to the UI, to the interactions, to all the things that&#8230; Some of them are still not quite there, we need better interactions across the board, but those benefits just compound because they just affect everything now. The investment we do on blocks it really scales really well, I think to the&#8230;</p>



<p>So I&#8217;m interested in the&#8230; Obviously, we need to continue to improve the navigation block, which is one of the most complex in terms of interactions. And we&#8217;re going to get a lot of feedback now that it&#8217;s out there, on the things that are confusing or too hard or tricky to do. We need to improve how plugins interact and extend this.</p>



<p>Again, to use the example of WooCommerce, if you want to add a cart, how does that interact with the block? How do you show it there? Like WooCommerce is already doing stuff, but it&#8217;s a bit idiosyncratic. We don&#8217;t have proper APIs really exposed for people. Like we have the APIs, but they might not be the most ergonomic. So we need to think about those things. How can a plugin target a specific area of a template to add a specific block?</p>



<p>And then what happens if the user moves it elsewhere? Which is part of the interesting thing, like now users are not constrained to where a plugin decided to show. Like sharing buttons. Maybe the user wants to move sharing buttons to the top, or to the bottom, or below the comment stream or wherever it is, they are able to do that. But the plugin also needs to be able to give like default specific location. All of those things are related to the blocks and the block&#8217;s APIs that we need to explore.</p>



<p>And then I&#8217;m also interested in like some basics. Like we have some restrictions on quotes, on lists where you cannot nest like more than paragraph blocks inside. But it would be nice to just get rid of those, like improve them. We have the signs for the table block also that are really nice that we need to get through. We have a bunch of blocks being developed for handling comments, as well like in themes, like how to lay out the comment stream and so on.</p>



<p>So it&#8217;s really continuing to improve everything around blocks. I think, maybe one really important highlight is probably allowing the feature image to be used in like covers.</p>



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



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: That&#8217;s one that we really need to get to. Like we wanted to do it in a way that was very&#8230; That allow not just the cover block, but essentially like media and text or groups or anything else that you could deal with. And also third-party blocks. If a third-party block wants to say, &#8220;I want the user to be able to use the feature image here.&#8221;</p>



<p>But trying to solve that in a very generic way, I think is also blocking. Not having it on covers, which is really, like it would be really powerful today. So maybe we should just need to make it available on covers while we figure out how to make it available everywhere.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. The hero image kind of design for a post and pages is certainly something that had a great majority of themes and that is still not available. Yeah, I also like the media and text for post query loops, yeah, where you have the featured image on the left side and then the text, the headline or something on the right side. I know that, for instance, the New York Times actually has that pattern. Yeah.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. I think yeah. I think that one in a way is a little less pressing, because you can achieve essentially a similar layout to media and text with columns, so you can just use the feature image block there. But it&#8217;d be nice if it just worked with, it&#8217;s simpler to get the media and text.</p>



<p>You can also replicate media and text with patterns. So there can be a lot of like post query loop patterns that are just about that, so it&#8217;s a bit more flexible. But the cover is really like, you cannot replicate it without….</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That&#8217;s right.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: So that&#8217;s probably like the biggest quality of life improvement if we can do that.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. What&#8217;s still missing in 5.9 is&#8230; And there were some attempts to get it in, but then taking out as the typography for blocks and selections. Was that kind of stifled when the release team kind of decided to take the webphone’s API out from getting into core?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. So there are a few pieces. Like the typography tools did make it into 5.9. The typography tools are all there and they&#8217;re connected within JSON and so on.</p>



<p>We don&#8217;t have the Webphone&#8217;s API. So to add like new phone, families and local files and so on, that&#8217;s going to be a big part of 6.0. And also the other thing that we didn&#8217;t quite get to is, like better handling for responsive phones, essentially. Being able to pick a size, but allow it to be modified properly in the different context. A theme can do that with functions and so on, but the end user cannot. So integrating that better into the interface is part of the exploration.</p>



<p>The tricky thing there is to not be overwhelming again. They can be really&#8230; A lot of these concepts can really be difficult to process, to interpret them, to understand them. So the more we can just make it work by default. And then if you really know what you&#8217;re doing, you can dive into more specific options. But otherwise, just trying to make it work.</p>



<p>This is also super important for patterns because patterns can be inserted in different context. Maybe you insert a pattern in a narrow column. Like what happens there? We have some allowances there to say, what is the desired width of a pattern, so that we can filter them out. But still, a pattern might be the sign&#8230; It needs to be the sign in a flexible context because that&#8217;s the nature of the web. And a pattern cannot supply custom CSS, so it cannot supply media queries or anything to handle that.</p>



<p>Also, media queries wouldn&#8217;t work there because it doesn&#8217;t depend on the view. It going to depend on the container. Maybe content queries could work, but what we&#8217;re trying to do is to embrace more of these intrinsic web design principles, where you just define the properties of the container, how it should cascade, how it should be modified by the&#8230; And that also applies to phones. And now CSS has those tools so we just need to find ways to incorporate them in ways that make sense, like good defaults. All of that is going to be very important.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Responsiveness is still something that&#8217;s kind of missing throughout the whole blog editor universe. But I see that that is definitely a focus also for 6.0.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. I wouldn&#8217;t say it&#8217;s missing. I would say that we have like the very early steps towards it.</p>



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



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: &#8230; we do have like&#8230; No, because the column block does handle. Like when you collapse it, it collapses like the&#8230; I saw there was a video that a designer shared with like, just building a theme from scratch. And what they build just work by default on mobile.</p>



<p>What you don&#8217;t have is like really granular control over things. And that&#8217;s what we, it would be nice to expand. But at the very least, things flow generally well, if you&#8217;re using the row container. All of those flex containers just generally work. The same with the navigation and collapsing into the hamburger menu or giving you those kinds of options. I think there&#8217;s going to be a in part, little work of exploring when some of these tools need to exist on a specific block, like the navigation. And when it&#8217;s a property of the containers and more broadly that, those kind of cases. Yeah, and I think always, eventually you always have the route of just adding your own CSS and media queries. That&#8217;s also important to highlight. That&#8217;s not locked away. A thing can always add extra CSS if they need to.</p>



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



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: It&#8217;s always an option.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. But you have that not only the separation between users and developers now, you also have the separation between a user and a designer who wants to use the site editor without touching code. So there is that granular &#8230; So responsiveness needs to happen everywhere for the user, but when they change something, it needs to happen also. So there was one bug that exchanged or illustrates that, is the featured image and the query block is all responsive, but when you change the size of the feature image, it goes outside the narrow container. Yeah. So, but I can see a user just change the size of it. But it&#8217;s not, it needs to be caught, so it still is responsive when it&#8217;s even smaller.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah, I think that&#8217;s a great example of how we need to make blocks really resilient to these changes and then sometimes wanting control over how these things flow, is because the blocks have bugs. And if we fix those bugs, the need goes away. So that&#8217;s a good way to say, &#8220;Okay, we don&#8217;t overwhelm people with options. We just fix the bugs.&#8221; And most of the time things should work. But it&#8217;s a great point that also, again, the audiences are really expanding. Now there&#8217;s this new &#8230; Designers can now design a full theme using the site editor. That&#8217;s a new use case for WordPress that we need to &#8230; And again, these are users, just as an end user that is just using a theme is a user. There are different levels of users and builders.</p>



<p>And I think that&#8217;s the beauty of WordPress as well, is that maybe you start as a user, but you start using the tool and you have a good eye and you develop and you have some design background. And then you start doing that for others. And so you become a designer of block themes because the tools allow you to ramp up slowly. I think there&#8217;s a lot of gaps there, because you can go from just a user that likes to write on their site, to someone that&#8217;s creating blocks. There&#8217;s a lot of things in between and a lot of ramps up that people can take. I think that was a cool thing about the query block, which is an advanced block into like &#8230; You need to understand again, what is a query, what is being queried, what are these objects and posts and so on? But it can also be a ramping point to understanding how the software works, which is also part of the mission of WordPress which is given not just the tools, but the access to the software, people.</p>



<p>And that means that understanding how things work, being exposed to some of these internals, sometimes just in the UI, like the query block, you don&#8217;t need to dive into code to start understanding that. But if you play with a query block and then you see a PHP query, there is going to be a degree of familiarity with how things work, what it does, that is going to connect some dots to people. And it can become a ramping point for someone that wants to become a developer or wants to become a designer and so on. So I&#8217;m really excited about those sort of gaps in between. I think we need to do a better job at providing, ensuring that there&#8217;s no &#8230; That there are actually ramps and not cliffs. So if you start, want to go from creating patterns in the UI to creating a block, right now, that gap is too big. You need to go from using an intuitive tool, just with a graphic UI, to now opening developer tools and installing packages and stuff that you don&#8217;t really &#8230; The gap is too big.</p>



<p>But I think we can think about ways that, &#8220;Okay, what happens if you start using the HTML editor first as a way to define how a block works? What happens if you can export that code that you&#8217;re editing into a bundle of files. And then you can see your JavaScript files for the first time from what you did, and you start connecting some of the dots?&#8221; I think there&#8217;s a lot of possibilities there even for education and learning and teaching.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Same thing applies to theme JSON. How easy can you change just one thing? And you see it immediately. There is no build, there&#8217;s a build step, nothing. But you just add the text point in the text editor of the theme, JSON, and you see it immediately, if you change your color or an underline or a font. Yeah. So I really like that as well. All right.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: So in fact, there is a build step, but it&#8217;s invisible for the end user, because it happens on the server. But that&#8217;s the goal. This is what Matias is talking about. So, that&#8217;s the thing that needs to happen. It&#8217;s still there, but it&#8217;s hidden and you can unwrap it as soon as you progress with your learning of programming concepts.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. And that&#8217;s also why the exporting is also so important. You should be able to export your global style settings and see that theme, JSON. Maybe it feels a bit alien or you don&#8217;t understand what&#8217;s going on, but it&#8217;s there. You can do that. You can introspect the internals of how the software is working. And I think that&#8217;s important to give that visibility. So ore ways to export and also to import, transfer things to other sites and so on. All of that I think is important.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. And some of the things are already exportable and some of them will come in 6.0. And I think that&#8217;s one. So yeah, I&#8217;m really excited about the next version, which I see is scheduled for something like end of May?&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: I think so. Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Two months before is beta. So it&#8217;s going to be in April pretty much. Yeah. Beginning of April, we probably know what&#8217;s going to come in 6.0, and I&#8217;m really excited about that. I know that quite a few pieces have already been finished or are not finished by any &#8230; Nothing is ever finished. But it will be, the first version is already in the latest plugin. So if there&#8217;s anything else you want to add to 6.0 topic or you, Grzegorz, I would want to move to the plugin release so we can go through the change log. Do you have any &#8230; Yeah. Okay, so let&#8217;s get started.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. I think the only thing that I would add is that this now it&#8217;s an interesting part where we need to listen to a lot of the feedback. And that kind of feedback would come in many different ways like from hosts, from agencies. All of that needs to be &#8230; We&#8217;ve been developing this for a while, but the reach again, the Gutenberg plugin I think is around 300,000 installations, which pales in comparison to how many times was 5.9 downloaded, I don&#8217;t know, five minutes after the release. So now we should be getting a lot of feedback that we need to process and incorporate into 6.0. So I think that&#8217;s the other understated thing from the preliminary roadmap, is that it is going to be influenced a lot by this feedback.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Is just looking at the stats? It looked like it.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Oh, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haac</em>k: First of all encounters.</p>



<p>Yes, 5.9 has been downloaded now 16 million times. Yeah. So it&#8217;s in a lot of people&#8217;s hands, if they want to explore it. Of course, nothing happens when they don&#8217;t have a block theme. Enable it right now. All right.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: For WordPress, just to give the reference for WordPress 5.8, it was over 100 million downloads.</p>



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



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: And it&#8217;s only for the use case, when someone goes to the website and clicks the download button, because you can also get installation from the host or whatever else, which isn&#8217;t counted.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: I think it should count how to install. I think how to update.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, it counts to downloads. So if you have a client, if you have an update button on your website, 6.0 is out, click here to update, that&#8217;s the download. That&#8217;s also the WPCLI downloads that happen and updates, or when you have a manager like Main WP or Managed WP or Google, GoDaddy&#8217;s managed tools, they download it all to your site and those downloads are counted. Yeah. I don&#8217;t know what the hosts do if they just deploy it from their own sites, from their local CDNs. But yeah, we can find out.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: I think it depends.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: 108 million downloads was really big. Yeah.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="what-s-released-gutenberg-12-5"><strong>What’s Released &#8211; Gutenberg 12.5</strong></h3>



<p>All right, so this week&#8217;s release was organized by Fabian Kagy and who was in our last episode as a guest. And he also prepared the release notes on the make blog. So Grzegorz, do you want to lead us into what&#8217;s new in Gutenberg 12.5?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: 12.5. Yeah, so we already mentioned some of those things like Mattias talked about, switching global style variation. So that&#8217;s the new feature. So maybe Mattias, you could just explain was why it&#8217;s so huge.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: I think it&#8217;s a pretty packed release in terms of features, going back into the pace of especially after a couple releases, being more about stabilizing things for 5.9. The style switcher is probably the most exciting, the ability to just on the fly, change theme, JSON. And again, if you think about all the things that theme JSON can do, because it&#8217;s not just colors and fonts, it&#8217;s also each aspect of how a blog is displayed. You can change how quotes look, how different blocks look and package that into these theme JSONs. So changing theme JSON can be as drastic is changing a full theme, but it&#8217;s just a quick click away. You don&#8217;t need to install or download anything. It&#8217;s just a theme JSON file. And this is just the initial UI. I think it&#8217;s important to get it there, but it&#8217;s going to be more exciting when we start sharing things between themes, because it will also force to establish some more, either conventions or good practices for how we name some presets or colors, which have been ongoing conversations. I think we need to start establishing some of those.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So how would a theme developer enable his theme to switch out variations?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: I think right now, you add a folder called Styles and you put your theme, JSON files inside that folder.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: So you have one theme, JSON, the main one in the root directory and then you have Styles folder and have multiple theme JSONs that you name differently, so they&#8217;re not already &#8230; Okay.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah, everything magically happens behind the scenes. The user goes to the editor site, editor page and then just goes to where the global stars are in the sidebar. And next to the currently selective variation, you will have link saying other variations. You could select that and you can just preview all other variations and pick with the one that fits better for you.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Kael had this in some of his videos, he that, how 2022 changes dramatically when it just changed the style out.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. We have it in the main video for 5.9. It&#8217;s a tease towards the next &#8230; The variations exist. I think they are available somewhere, but you cannot switch between them with the UI right now. If you install the plugin, you will be able to do that. I think the aim is to have the bundle with 2022, these variations, so that you can &#8230; And in 6.0 just with the same theme, you can get these very different looks of it. And it&#8217;d be nice if as a community in general, we need to start thinking about how to bring this into the theme showcase and directory experience, because you should be able to browse the directory and say like, &#8220;Oh, this theme, but with these other styles&#8221;, or be able to browse that and get that dynamic impression of how everything can change. We need to really think about the experience around that.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. You use, preview the theme inside the directory and just applies everything on the fly. So you see how this site looks with this theme active. That would be great.</p>



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



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: It&#8217;s also cool, even the other way, because you can imagine sending your theme JSON, so that you can preview patterns with your styles. You can browse the pattern directory using your own site styles so that you already know how it&#8217;s going to look, because the theme JSON is really easy to transport. You&#8217;re not installing or executing any code.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. The theme directory, Munir Kumal actually, has a few different ways to showcase the theme directory on his Gutenberg hub. And I think there&#8217;s a lot more discussion to be happening to actually enable that what you had just said, about the styles to the changing. So yeah, what&#8217;s also now in 12.5 is that the code editor is now also available for the site editor. So if you want to tweak something on the code or some attribute or something like that, you could now use the code editor in the site editor as well. That also is in the &#8230; We also mentioned the featured image in the query loop, but the vision that we had with the cover block, it&#8217;s not yet there, but it&#8217;s now, at least the size, the actual, so the controls are now the same for the placeholder, as well as the featured image. And there&#8217;s also now a size selector in the sidebar that was missing before.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. I think that exposes a lot of the generated thumbnails that you might have for a feature image, which was again, another feature gap that is being overcome. And this is really the spirit of the focus on blocks, is that again, we can improve shows the feature image, and it&#8217;s going to improve all the themes, that are using this block. And so that&#8217;s really when you start seeing these compound effects, of just improving these block, just improves all the themes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, also has the danger that it also breaks themes.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Oh yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>:&nbsp; But yeah, so I don&#8217;t want to belabor that right now.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: In general media, it was very tricky in context of the query loop, also how there&#8217;s authors, because there also could be something missing, so we need to have a fault for that. So I&#8217;m great that this is worked on, and finally there is a workaround when there&#8217;s no data. Yeah. I guess for features that&#8217;s basically that, and we also have a list of 14 enhancements.</p>



<h3 id="enhancements"><strong>Enhancements</strong></h3>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, there are more. They&#8217;re only block library.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Grzegorz Ziolkowski: Only block library as usual. For the query loop, there were multiple other changes. So now this is really exciting that you have better filtering options. So before we could also pick one author, now we can select a few of them, which gives you more options. And the other thing is you can use taxonomy. So that&#8217;s even powerful because taxonomy is that everyone has a lot of them on their site, and they just can narrow down the results to some of them and combination of them now.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. You can have multiple sections on your website and just show particular categories, and then style those images. Yeah. We mentioned that two weeks ago that it&#8217;s in the works. So I&#8217;m thrilled that these enhancements now are in the plugin and there were also some transform &#8230; Now you can transform the core site logo and the core site title, transform it. So if you have in a header, you use either one of them and then you can just transform the other one. You don&#8217;t have to delete them.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: This one is a bit controversial because it&#8217;s not a real transfer, because there are separate blocks and they have different data inside. However, the use case is pretty valid, because it helps you much quicker to craft your header.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, it&#8217;s easier because there&#8217;s only one click away. If you want to do it just with blocks, you have to remove the older block and then you need to add another block. So it&#8217;s a lot more steps. So that&#8217;s why I think it&#8217;s a good thing. And now you also can have text labels on your hamburger menu or as the techies call it, the overlay menu. So you can point people to the hamburger menu and say, &#8220;Here is my menu&#8221;, because it seems to be still after, I don&#8217;t know, 15 years of mobile website, still a handicap, that people don&#8217;t know how to find the navigation of a site on a phone. All right, then the next thing that I see is the and selected states for the palette editor. And I tried to test this, but I think there is a need that the themes actually need to switch in, as opt into that, and also offer the switch between the two and the colors for that. Well, how does that work?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: I think this is just about the UI elements. They didn&#8217;t show you when you were hovering, more focusing. It&#8217;s not about changing the hover and focus.</p>



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



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: I think it can be a bit misleading if you read the entry.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. So the use case, when you have a blog that has not only text color balance, or background color, lean color, and there is &#8230; Can be now even more of them. And when you hover over it and there is this model or overlay popover maybe, and which allows you to change the color, in the past you have an indicator, which one you are editing, so you could get lost easily. And now it&#8217;s fixed and you have this hover effect and you know what you are doing.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right. Yeah. I totally got it mixed up with the other feature that a lot of designers actually need hover space for the buttons and that&#8217;s not working it.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: All right. But that&#8217;s coming. Yeah. I saw a PR for that, I think. Yeah. All right. Well, I&#8217;m glad that this was changed. So we have the post block modal for the site on the post editor?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah. I think this is just improving a bit the display of the &#8230; When you open the editor and someone else is editing there and you get this, the takeover screen, it can now show you who is actually with the Gravatar and so on. It&#8217;s a nicer design of that.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah and the message also has changed. It actually tells you, &#8220;You&#8217;re not kicking them out and all their work is destroyed. Now telling you, &#8220;Yes, their content will be saved when you kick them out.&#8221;</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. That&#8217;s a temporary measure until we go to the phase three of modern work, which is collaborate everything.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yes.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That a bit of way though. So I&#8217;m glad for the current fix or &#8230;</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: We&#8217;re all looking forward to that, like you said.</p>



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



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: It&#8217;d be nice to wrap up the phase two and start getting into those.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. But you&#8217;re not done. Nothing is ever done. So there were some changes to the buttons block? It preserves the styling of the adjacent button when you add a new one. This is actually a nice interface to….</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah that&#8217;s really nice. Before, if you had these, I don&#8217;t know, a list of buttons and you had customized them all with gradients and border raise or whatever it is, and you would insert, wanted to add a new item, it would just look like the default, so you need to do that work all over again. Now it just inherits from the neighbor. So it really speeds up. And it&#8217;s a nice again, quality of life improvement there. It&#8217;d be nice I think, if it also points out that we need better tools for modifying how all the buttons look at the same time, in a group of buttons. You can, maybe it&#8217;s through multi selection or by selecting the wrapper, or even by selecting a single button and having an apply to all thing. We need to explore some options there too.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. Good thinking. Yes, and what I consider a quality of life change as well is the identifying the side, front page, in the link UI search results for the navigation block. So you see which one is the homepage because not all the pages are &#8230; Yeah, from general settings, we can switch to a page as a front page, but in the list, they might have a different name. You don&#8217;t recognize that. So this is really nice to have.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Yeah, and the cool thing is that it just works on all the link UI. So it should work on buttons, on inline links, on the navigation block and so on.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. And there&#8217;s also, in addition to the site editor&#8230; Actually, this feature existed before, for the post editor, which is copy all content, which is added to the menu that can be opened in the header on the top right side. It just takes all the content and you can apply, paste it to another&#8230; Tap, just copy to other site or whatever. You can also save it to HTML file and just start creating your own template and theme-based on templates. Some of those features that we discussed, they are possible. You just need to use low-level tools that are out there. In fact, you could do that, also by using select all keyboard shortcut and selecting all blocks and just using copy shortcut, which is common-c. That would also work. It&#8217;s just more convenient way of doing that.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah. But for that, what you said with the control + a, and control + c and b, wouldn&#8217;t you be in the code editor to actually do this?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: No, not necessarily. No, yeah. But you just need to have one of the blocks selected, so the selection can be expanded on that.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: The first common-a selects the whole block. And multiple common-as expand the selection.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah, good point.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: But it&#8217;s a good point that the discoverability of these things is not always great. So I think there&#8217;s, it would be nice if the first time you press control + a, there was a snack bar notification or something at the bottom that says, you can select all, even an actual link that allows you to select all by clicking the UI, or that tells you if you press more common-a it will select all. The same with copy, we have the&#8230; If you just have the cursor on a block and you press control + c, it will show up, the entire block has been copied, but there could be also an action there in that notification that says, I want to copy all. Because that&#8217;s, it can be a more contextual way to surface that copy all tool that otherwise people might not ever discover in the ellipsis menu.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Good point.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: We need some sort of gamification system. Once you unlock all of those features, you just get some badges or something like that. So you know that there are some hidden gems you still need to discover.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Absolutely. If I don&#8217;t know that there was a copy all content, I think there are a few people out there who also didn&#8217;t know that, but I can&#8230; That&#8217;s a good point with&#8230; Gamification sounds a little buzzword-y, but it&#8217;s have context sensitive additional ideas presented. I think having a standardized way to do this before anything happens in that way would be really helpful because as soon as is extensible, some other plugin developer might get some idea to put some notes in there and they definitely need to be&#8230;</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: It&#8217;s also related to the tips system that we have. We had this rotating set of tips that used to show in the inserter. Now I think we have the&#8230; Because the site editor now has a loading stage and it takes a bit of time. It&#8217;s a good place to show some of these tips, while you&#8217;re waiting for it to load it can tell you, did you know that you can copy all content on this? Because you&#8217;re forced to be staring at that screen in a way, and it can be a good place to rotate some of these tips.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: And I&#8217;m also convinced that it&#8217;s a good moment to teach people how to use software because they&#8217;re frustrated, right?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: That&#8217;s what games do. And it seems to be working pretty well.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: But that&#8217;s also some software does. When there&#8217;s something going on, it&#8217;s like, do this, do this, so you can do this.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: We have the tip for the slash inserter, because otherwise it&#8217;s very, also, hard to discover, but that&#8217;s also a good one. And there were many more like that you can press space to indent, a list if you have the cursor at the beginning, those kind of things that are not necessarily obvious.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: I get a lot of&#8230; I do this on Twitter, I think every two months or something like that, somebody tweets, oh, I hate it that I can&#8217;t do control + h2 or something like that to get a header in. It&#8217;s that, and recently there was one person who has a process where they have to change, coming over from Google Docs, they have to change all the headers, 60 of them into h + 3s. And he was going in there and doing that with the toolbar, and I showed him that it just put the cursor on the front of the line and hit three pound signs and space, and then it&#8217;s already a&#8230; So he doesn&#8217;t have to select anything, so these are really cool tools. Yeah, Greg, you could have used some of that teaching moments for the create block scripts when they were waiting to download the node modules, but you took it away because now it&#8217;s only one minute and 30 seconds to get your block created without downloading all the scripts and files. It&#8217;s really cool. Just pointing that out. All right. What&#8217;s next?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: So there is one interesting feature, for the color and the panel that has it. Now when you pick a color, you can also apply, it&#8217;s very technical name, alpha channel, which translates to that you can make parts of your blocks transparent. Which is pretty exciting because in the past, every block you would have to apply separate feature, like the cover block, for instance, you could make the background transparent, but now it&#8217;s just next to the color we are picking. So this one is really cool.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, that&#8217;s exciting. Especially when you have something on top of the cover block and you want it a different color, but just to let it stand out a bit, with borders. That is really cool, I like that. There is also something for REST API? Grzegorz, can you explain that a bit?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yeah. There&#8217;s an API that runs behind the scenes for the new style variation features. So it&#8217;s nothing fast. It&#8217;s just something to make it work.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: But that would also be something that a plugin could tap into later on if they wanted to change, here I have a plugin where you can make everything that you have in yellow, change all the variations. Okay. And the next one is that you now can tell the local environment wp-env the installed path, on the command line. That&#8217;s cool, otherwise, before, you had to navigate to that directory where you wanted to do that. I find that it&#8217;s really important that there is now the classic menus into the menu switcher, because that should probably be put back to 5.9 because that&#8217;s a missing piece for the navigation block in 5.9. And also they always allow accessing the post type for the navigation page, so they can actually change some of the navigation.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: But I guess you need to know the URL for the post type to get there, right? Because it&#8217;s not something that is exposed by default. I mean, you can do it yourself with a plugin.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Right. This wasn&#8217;t so much about the post type getting to the page. It was more like when you are an administrator, it would show you are not allowed to access that page. So it didn&#8217;t consider the administrator&#8217;s high privilege. Overlord position. So, even if you wanted to go there, you couldn&#8217;t do anything there.</p>



<h3 id="bug-fixes"><strong>Bug Fixes</strong></h3>



<p>Grzegorz Ziolkowski: I just wanted to mention that we are now in the bug fixes section. The last two items.</p>



<p>Birgit Pauli-Haack: Right. I skipped over that. But, yes?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: These are part of that gradual adoption, as well, is how does&#8230; Which, we still have work to do. How does a classic theme get some of these new benefits from the navigation editor, UI, and screens and so on. And this one is one of those, I think it&#8217;s related to accessing this page from a classic theme as well. Again, these are going fast in 5.9.1, but otherwise, bigger improvements are going to be landing on the plugin.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Of course. But because it&#8217;s a bug fixing section, those are things that were surfaced very early last&#8230; Between the release and now, and the fixed merge, so this is definitely going to be in 5.9.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: And, speaking of classic themes, there is also fixed dual-tone feature. So it works properly in those scenarios like we discussed when you just embed, for instance, header and footer, which is blog based. And then you can use those features and now everything should be correct.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Now that works again in classic theme. These were the bug fixes that stood out to me. Anything else you wanted to discuss there that needs to go into 5.9 or something else?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: No.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: If you&#8217;re interested in all the bug fixes, definitely go to the release notes and the changelog and look through, if you find yours. There is also a project board and a Gutenberg repo on GitHub about what goes into WordPress 5.9. So you can see what is actually slated for the next release. Then we go and skip over the performance section and land at the documentation section.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="documentation"><strong>Documentation</strong></h3>



<p>And there have been quite a few updates especially to the glossary. Now there are a few new terms come with FSE. So we definitely need to update that. There&#8217;s also a new documentation page for the use look edit context hook. What is that about?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: I would have to check because there are so many hooks that are in a very similar way.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: But if I look at that, it only adds a short description of what that hook actually does. So it&#8217;s in the documentation a little bit clearer.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yes. It wasn&#8217;t documented before. But it&#8217;s something that, you can use this hook when you are writing, edit implementation of your block. So you are a block developer, then you might want to use that hook when you have a nested component and you want to use the same properties that I exposed to the added function. So it&#8217;s basically nice shortcut.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Excellent. Thank you. And there&#8217;s also documentation now for the version 1 versus version 2 theme JSON documentation. There were multiple questions, the people that use the theme JSON version one after 5.8. What has changed for version 2? And now we have an answer to that. There is a document that experimental selector requires server side block registration.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: This one is tricky because, like everything that is prefaced by __experimental in general, shouldn&#8217;t be used or is discouraged for usage with third-party plugins. However, we know that people are doing that, so this is just clarification so people know what they&#8217;re doing. I know that people use very nice patterns that they just guard those features so they&#8217;re prepared for the case when this is renamed in the future, which is fine. And if someone wants to use it this way, it&#8217;s okay. But it is very important that many features for global size need to be required for the block to be registered on the server, because the processing requires many of those characteristics of the block. And for the theme.JSON, I want to just make it clear that it&#8217;s not that you necessarily need to be on version 2 already. It&#8217;s just, this documentation helps you to move if you or were adopting very early and you have version 1, it&#8217;s just all the names that you need to change to be on the latest one and to also take advantage of new features that are there.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Thank you. Yes. Just a little caveat that __experimental means no documentation, no backwards compatibility, use at your own risk. And it might break.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: And here we are, it&#8217;s documented.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Well, it&#8217;s only that if you use it, but yeah. It can change any moment now.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: It&#8217;s an interesting dynamic because we also want to get feedback on this, so it&#8217;s a dynamic of not encouraged to use, but also, the feedback is needed, otherwise it would never become a stable API.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Exactly. But I think we need to be much better in documenting things like that if you want it to be used. You get really into the trouble when you are not making them backwards compatible, but that is also, it&#8217;s a new feature, or a new thing. You don&#8217;t want the technical legacy of backwards compatibility attached to it before it&#8217;s even released to the user. So, it&#8217;s a conundrum. Yes. I agree with that. What&#8217;s next on our list is code quality.</p>



<h3 id="code-quality"><strong>Code Quality</strong></h3>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Yes. There were a couple of changes that&#8230; Escape, some of the properties it&#8217;s just for, more the hygiene, than there rather is something that was wrong. Some of them led to unexpected bugs. Some things were double escaped because of that. We always take care of this type of work and making sure that there&#8217;s, sometimes you prefer to be more secure than you need to be, just to ensure that we don&#8217;t have to patch that later.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yeah, but one I want to point out was allow for HTML in the title, I think. That is from the beginning of WordPress. Some people put additional HTML wire plugin into the title and that was temporarily removed. So it&#8217;s coming back. So don&#8217;t fret, but I need to see if that&#8217;s going back into 5.9. 5.9.1, sorry.</p>



<p>All right. I don&#8217;t have anything else that I see there. We seem to be on the end of going through the changelog.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="what-s-in-active-development-or-discussed"><strong>What’s in Active Development or Discussed</strong></h3>



<p>In the section of what&#8217;s in active development, or discussed, I only have one thing that I want to point out, that is, I heard from a few designers that they&#8217;re missing the hover, focus, active states. And we talked about it. I have in the show notes, then the issue that Kjell Reigstad who is the designer on 2022 has created an issue where the discussion happens. So if you are really interested in that and you have some time go and chime in on the discussion, because that&#8217;s the next stage, how that is going to be handled. All right? Yeah.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So I think with that, we all have a wonderful show today with new things, back things, old things, new things. It&#8217;s really cool. And thank you so much for joining us Matias. I had a wonderful time with you discussing all the things. Is there anything that you wanted to say, a last word that you didn&#8217;t get in because we were all talking?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: No, not really. Just thank you very much for having me back after all these years, it&#8217;s fun to discuss these things, to both celebrate the work done so far and to look into the future, what&#8217;s coming. Just really happy that 5.9 shipped and that the work continues with 6.0.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Wonderful. And if people want to get in contact with you, what is the best way to do that?</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: I&#8217;m usually hanging around slack. You could also find me on Twitter. I think it&#8217;s matias_ventura.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That&#8217;s right. That&#8217;s correct. Yeah. All right. Okay.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Oh, and my website is just matiasventura.com.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: That&#8217;s a good one.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: That&#8217;s a good one.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Highly recommend it.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Yes. And if you always wondered, what is this Gutenberg thingy? There&#8217;s a wonderful post there. What&#8217;s the title of it? The Ship of Theseus?</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: The Ship of Theseus.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Oh, yeah. Yeah. The Ship of Theseus. Gutenberg or the Ship of Theseus, yeah.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: Exactly. If you want to start there, you get a lot of ideas about the vision of it. All right. Before the end of the show, I wanted to point out that there is on Tuesday, the first Gutenberg developer hours on Meetup. And we have an expert panel that will answer all your development questions or know where to find them. So Fabian Kägy is going to be there. Nick Diego&#8217;s there as well as Tammie Lister to meet with the participants, we had to close it down a bit with 66 people are registered. We are not getting to all the questions, but we will. So there is a waiting list if you want to be registered there, but I also want to point out there&#8217;s a next one coming February 22nd. Also Tuesday 11:00 AM Eastern 1600 UTC. Put that on your calendar if you didn&#8217;t get in the Tuesday event.</p>



<p>As always, the show notes will be published on gutenbergtimes.com/podcast. And this is episode 60, six 0. 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@guttenbergtimes.com">changelog@guttenbergtimes.com</a>. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Matias. It was a great pleasure. Again, I&#8217;m so thrilled.</p>



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Likewise.</p>



<p><em>Birgit Pauli-Haack</em>: It&#8217;s goodbye for me, dear listeners. And I&#8217;ll see you in two weeks, or I&#8217;ll hear with you, talk to you in two weeks.</p>



<p><em>Grzegorz Ziolkowski</em>: Thank you very much. That was a great show.</p>



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



<p><em>Matias Ventura</em>: Bye bye.</p>



<p> </p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sun, 06 Feb 2022 02:05:01 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:104:"Gutenberg Times: Locking down design and blocks, Gutenberg 12.5, Learn.WordPress – Weekend Edition 202";s: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=20308";s: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:109:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/locking-down-design-and-blocks-gutenberg-12-5-learn-wordpress-weekend-edition-202/";s: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:23561:"<p>Howdy, </p>



<p>How have you been after the WordPress 5.9 release? Are you waiting for things to to calm done and 5.9.1 comes out? Yeah, me, too. </p>



<p>When I was working with customers and their sites, I would always wait for the next point release before I upgraded theirs sites to the new version. Yes, even after I tested the Beta and RC candidates on test or staging sites. </p>



<p>With so many new features coming in, not all bugs can be caught in time. Behind the scenes, everyone is working already on 5.9.1 with plenty of fixes, and they aim for a Feb 16 release. We&#8217;ll have further details next week. </p>



<p>The contributors appreciated the time and the work of those who report the bugs.  To quote Linus&#8217; Law: &#8220;Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow&#8221;. </p>



<p>Below you&#8217;ll find a ton of links to articles, additional tools and updates.  You don&#8217;t have to consume it all in one sitting. It&#8217;ll be in your inbox all week. Grab your favorite beverage and enjoy. </p>



<p>Yours, 💕<br />Birgit</p>



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<div class="wp-container-620514617ea0a 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/#gutenberg-12-5">Gutenberg 12.5 </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#building-themes-custom-blocks-and-extending-the-block-editor">Building Themes, Custom Blocks and extending the block editor</a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#using-the-block-editor-with-our-without-the-site-editor">Using the Block Editor with our without the Site Editor </a></li><li><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/feed/#wordpress-social-learning-events-and-meetups">WordPress Social Learning Events (and Meetups)</a></li></ul></div>
</div></div>




<p>The last few days, I was hearing and reading about developers&#8217; needs to disable block editor features and make sure blocks in block templates are not removed or altered by content creators. I found quite a few resources and instead of sharing them here I put them in a separate post. </p>



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							<div class="ngl-article-featured"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/how-to-disable-theme-features-and-lock-block-templates-for-full-site-editing-in-wordpress/" target="_blank" rel=""><img src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/LoveLocks-BridgeinParis-Matthew-Benton-web.jpg?w=652&ssl=1" /></a></div><div class="ngl-article-title"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/how-to-disable-theme-features-and-lock-block-templates-for-full-site-editing-in-wordpress/" target="_blank" rel=""><span>How to disable theme features and Lock Block Templates for Full-Site Editing in WordPress</span></a></div><div class="ngl-article-excerpt">After the release of WordPress 5.9, quite a few people aired their concern that too much freedom for users editing the site design, select colors or to modify blocks might&hellip; <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/how-to-disable-theme-features-and-lock-block-templates-for-full-site-editing-in-wordpress/" class="ngl-article-read-more">Read more.</a></div><div class="ngl-article-date">9 Feb 2022</div>							</div>
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<h2 id="gutenberg-12-5">Gutenberg 12.5 </h2>



<p><strong>Fabian Kägy</strong> volunteered to run this week&#8217;s Gutenberg plugin release. He also wrote the release notes: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/03/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-5-february-2nd/">What’s new in Gutenberg 12.5? (February 2nd)</a>. And Kudos to first time contributor who joined during the last release cycle:&nbsp;Alan Jacob Mathew,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/iman82gm">Iman GM</a> <a href="https://github.com/imangm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@imangm</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/jorcontreras23">Jorge Contreras</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/knilkantha">Nil Koirala</a></p>



<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> gave is a whirl is well and here is his review: <a href="https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-12-5-introduces-global-styles-variations-preserves-adjacent-button-styling-and-adds-alpha-transparency-to-color-pickers"><strong>Gutenberg 12.5 Introduces Global Styles Variations, Preserves Adjacent Button Styling, and Adds Alpha Transparency to Color Pickers</strong></a></p>



<p>Yesterday, Grzegorz Ziolkowski and I welcomed Matias Ventura on our <strong><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-60-restricting-customization-in-a-full-site-editing-world/">Gutenberg Changelog episode 60.</a></strong> We discussed restricting customization in a full-site editing world, Gutenberg 12.5 and what’s to come in WordPress 6.0 for the block editor. We had a great time and I learned a lot. </p>



<a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/podcast/gutenberg-changelog-60-restricting-customization-in-a-full-site-editing-world/"><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>




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<p>Now that WordPress 5.9 is released it is time to look into the future. <strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> published a new call for exploration for the FSE-outreach program: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/02/02/fse-program-exploration-all-things-media/"><strong>FSE Program Exploration: All Things Media</strong></a>. McCarthy had again a set on instructions to go through and listen to your comfort level and report back on bugs. Then she asked you to imagine how the new WordPress Images directory could be integrated into the Media library and the Site editor. </p>



<p><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> heeded the call, dove right in and shared his experience in his post on the WPTavern: <a href="https://wptavern.com/fse-program-the-media-experience-and-its-future-in-wordpress"><strong>FSE Program: The Media Experience and Its Future in WordPress</strong></a></p>



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<h2 id="building-themes-custom-blocks-and-extending-the-block-editor">Building Themes, Custom Blocks and extending the block editor</h2>



<p><strong>Luis Felipe Zuguini</strong> wrote a very detailed technical walk through how block themes work. You&#8217;ll find it on the Gutenberg Times. </p>



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							<div class="ngl-article-featured"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/how-theme-blocks-work-with-full-site-editing/" target="_self" rel=""><img src="https://i0.wp.com/gutenbergtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Screen-Shot-2022-02-03-at-14.52.08.png?w=652&ssl=1" /></a></div><div class="ngl-article-labels">gutenbergtimes.com</div><div class="ngl-article-title"><a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/how-theme-blocks-work-with-full-site-editing/" target="_self" rel=""><span>How Block Themes work with Full-Site Editing</span></a></div><div class="ngl-article-excerpt">In this post, you&#8217;ll learn more about how block themes are built. I&#8217;ll share what I learned about building a block theme while I was testing Twenty Twenty-Two, the new&hellip;</div><div class="ngl-article-date">4 Feb 2022</div>							</div>
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<p><strong>Ganesh Dahal</strong> posted <strong><a href="https://css-tricks.com/a-deep-introduction-to-wordpress-block-themes/">A Deep Introduction to WordPress Block&nbsp;Themes</a></strong> on the CSS-Tricks. Their social media team <a href="https://twitter.com/css/status/1489616561010794503">tweeted</a> &#8220;Block themes? Full-site editing? WordPress 5.9 was a huuuuge release and <strong>Ganesh</strong> <strong>Dahal</strong> did a bang-up job explaining what it means for WordPress developers moving forward.&#8221;</p>



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<p>We have mentioned the create-block scaffolding tool, available in the Gutenberg repo to get started on your first single block plugin. <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> just published <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@ryanwelcher/dynamic-block-template"><strong>The Dynamic template</strong></a> on npm to scaffold a dynamic block. </p>



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<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/salcode">Sal Ferrarello</a></strong>&#8216;s new plugin <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-xray-attributes/"><strong>Block x-Ray Attributes</strong></a> adds a section to the Document sidebar of the editor and displays the attributes for the currently selected block. This is very helpful during development.</p>



<p>Here is Justin Tadlock&#8217;s <strong><a href="https://wptavern.com/look-under-the-hood-with-the-block-x-ray-wordpress-plugin">Look Under the Hood With the Block X-Ray WordPress Plugin</a> </strong></p>



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<p>More Theme Generator Goodies: <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/herb_miller">Herb Miller</a></strong> published an app to <a href="https://blocks.wp-a2z.org/about/fse-themes-summary/generate-fse-child-theme/"><strong>Generate Child Themes for any of the Block theme </strong></a>in the repository. Check it out! </p>



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



<p>The Gutenberg Components are available for developers that write plugins for all areas of the site. They provide a standardized interface and lower significantly the cognitive load for the user to have to learn new interfaces with every additional plugin in the Admin section. This documentation page covers <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/how-to-guides/platform/custom-block-editor/">Building a Custom block editor</a> and you also find a <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/how-to-guides/platform/custom-block-editor/tutorial/">Tutorial Building a Custom Block Editor</a></p>



<p><strong>Converting Widgets to Block</strong> is a series of Videos, <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> Twitchstreamed and then uploaded to YouTube</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls1_XTfQJmg">Converting a widget to a block. Part 1</a></li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E4pcubPkEo">Converting a widget to a block. Part 2</a></li></ul>



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



<p><a href="https://senseilms.com/wordpress-course-theme/"><strong>Sensei 4.0 &#8211; the learning management system (LMS) by the makers of WooCommerce and Jetpack,</strong></a> has been released. In his post, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/ronnieburt">Ronnie Burt </a></strong>announce the arrival of a block-based theme ready for full-site editing. &#8220;You can use the Site Editor added in&nbsp;WordPress 5.9&nbsp;to edit the Lesson and Quiz templates, giving you endless flexibility.&#8221; Burt wrote. </p>



<p>Justin Tadlock picked up the story<strong><a href="https://wptavern.com/sensei-lms-4-0-includes-new-block-based-learning-mode-course-theme"> Sensei LMS 4.0 Introduces New Block-Based Learning Mode Course Theme</a></strong>. He wrote: &#8220;Sensei is one of the first plugins to offer this kind of separate, in-app FSE-enabled theme.&#8221;. The plugin is available for free, and you can study the source-code, if you want. </p>



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



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/kjellr">Kjell Reigstad</a></strong>, lead designer of the Twenty-Twenty-Two theme, built a theme that makes your site look like Twitter. In his post <strong><a href="https://kjellr.com/2022/01/28/building-twitter-with-wordpress-5-9/">Building Twitter with WordPress 5.9</a></strong> he tells us how. </p>




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



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




<h2 id="using-the-block-editor-with-our-without-the-site-editor">Using the Block Editor with our without the Site Editor </h2>



<p><strong>Jamie Marsland</strong> tasked two of his daughters, Meg and Lily, both WordPress beginners, to build the same page &#8211; one with Elementor and one with the block editor. It&#8217;s fun to watch, and also painful. No matter which editor you use, getting started &#8216;intuitively&#8217; is hard. </p>



<p>The video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng_wFkMd95c"><strong>WordPress Gutenberg versus Elementor &#8211; The £20 Prize Beginners Challenge!</strong> </a>is available on YouTube. </p>



<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng_wFkMd95c"><img /></a>



<p><strong>Learn.WordPress Resources to help you get started! <a href="https://twitter.com/courtneyr_dev">Courtney Robertson</a></strong> shared these links on Twitter the day of the WordPress 5.9 release. </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/simple-site-design-with-full-site-editing/">Simple Site Design with Full Site Editing</a> a self-pace online course</li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/how-to-use-the-list-view/">How to use the List View</a> </li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/how-to-style-your-site-with-global-styles/">How to Style Your Site with Global Styles</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/how-to-create-a-menu-with-the-navigation-block/">How to Create a Menu with the Navigation Block</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/using-block-patterns/">Using Block Patterns</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/finding-new-blocks-with-the-block-directory/">Finding New Blocks with the Block Directory</a></li><li><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop/using-the-block-widget-editor/">Using the Block Widget Editor</a></li></ul>



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



<p><strong><a href="https://twitter.com/get_dave">Dave Smith</a></strong>, developer at Automattic and contributor to Gutenberg, posted two videos on YouTube to teach you more about the new <strong>Navigator Block</strong></p>



<ul><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzDCCNjF9mg"><strong>Migrating classic menus to block based menus in WordPress 5.9</strong></a></li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY3f8sHcAPA"><strong>Use a different menu on mobile with the Navigation block in WordPress 5.9</strong></a></li></ul>



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



<p><strong>Anne McCarthy</strong> published the answer to so many questions by <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/comparing-patterns-template-parts-and-reusable-blocks/"><strong>Comparing Patterns, Template Parts, and Reusable Blocks</strong></a>. She explains the difference of the three entities a WordPress user has in the block editor toolbox to reuse content and designs in various contexts</p>



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



<p><strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUklhzALumk">First Look: A WordPress 5 9 + Full Site Editing Demo</a> </strong>&#8211; Join GoDaddy Pro&#8217;s <strong>Courtney Robertson</strong> and <strong>Marcus Burnette</strong> as they chat about the new features of version 5.9 and set up a simple home page LIVE using the new FSE process.</p>



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



<p>Do you want to know what WordPress Full Site Editing (FSE) and block themes are?<strong> Ellen Bauer </strong>posted a new video: <strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQAJPIsLMDY">WordPress Full Site Editing (FSE) &amp; Block Themes explained</a></strong>. She explained the concept of Full-Site Editing and the new features and block theme that arrived with WordPress 5.9.</p>



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



<p>In his newest video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AIuhvHCnlY"><strong>What’s New In WordPress 5.9</strong></a>, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/joyofwp">Bud Kraus of JoyofWP</a></strong>,  walks you through the new Full -Site editing features. It&#8217;s a mix between demo and tutorial. He shows you how to get your site building tasks done.</p>



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



<p><strong>Joe Casabona</strong> asks <a href="https://wpreview.io/who-is-full-site-editing-for/"><strong>&#8220;Who is Full-Site Editing for?&#8221;</strong></a> &#8211; I prefer not to spoil anything, he does have an answer. I did chuckle at the &#8220;It&#8217;s not a Bad Beta&#8221; sub header 3/4 in his post.</p>



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



<p>If you know what to get going  with block themes, <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/MehtaTrishan">Trishan Mehta</a></strong> lists his choice of <a href="https://passionwp.com/wordpress-block-themes/"><strong>12 WordPress Block Themes for Full Site Editing</strong></a> on PassionWP&#8217;s website. </p>



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



<p><a href="https://twitter.com/webtng"><strong>David McCan</strong></a> wrote a <a href="https://www.webtng.com/kadence-and-stackable-gutenberg-blocks-comparison/"><strong>Kadence and Stackable Gutenberg Blocks Comparison</strong></a>, and give in-depth view in two plugins that have been available since the first version of the Block Editor arrived at WordPress Core.  </p>



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



<p>Joining Classic Widgets, Classic Editor, there is now the <a href="https://www.spacedmonkey.com/2022/01/31/announcing-the-classic-menu-block-plugin/"><strong>Classic Menu Block</strong></a> by <a href="https://twitter.com/thespacedmonkey"><strong>Jonny Harris</strong> </a>available to easy your site&#8217;s menus into the block-based era. &#8220;The classic menu block, allows you to embed all the existing menus you have set up on your site, using the existing core function, <code>wp_nav_menu</code> by rendering the block’s output in PHP,&#8221; Harris wrote.</p>



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



<p>After giving you a sneak preview on the new <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/superlist-block/">Super List Block</a> plugin last week, developer <strong>Aurooba Ahmed</strong> share more details in her article <a href="https://aurooba.com/superlist-block/">&#8220;<strong>Nest blocks inside lists and easily create a grid of content with the Super List Block&#8221;</strong></a>. She explains how the Grid Block simplifies your content creation over multiple group block and gives you also responsiveness for small screens. </p>



<p><strong>Matt Medeiros</strong> posted his walkthrough using the plugin on YouTube <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6RX6r23u98"><strong>Superlist block | WordPress plugin overview</strong></a>.</p>



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



<p>A new plugin arrived in the WordPress repository: <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wavy-divider/"><strong>Wavy Divider Plugin</strong></a> by <strong>Kevin Batdorf</strong>, the Project Lead Developer at Extendify. With it, you can &#8220;generate and add a simple wavy divider to anywhere on your page, giving you the ability to separate blocks of content with an impressive, professional-looking design element.&#8221; Batdorf wrote.  <br /><br /><strong>Justin Tadlock</strong> posted a review on WPTavern: <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wavy-divider/"><strong>Creating Content Dividers With the Wavy Divider WordPress Plugin</strong></a></p>



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



<h2 id="wordpress-social-learning-events-and-meetups">WordPress Social Learning Events (and Meetups)</h2>



<p>Earlier this week, I had the great pleasure to participate in the <a href="https://thewpminute.com/wp-minute-live-learning-wordpress/"><strong>WPMinute Twitter Space on Learning WordPress</strong></a>, hosted by <a href="https://twitter.com/mattmedeiros"><strong>Matt Medeiros</strong></a> and <strong><a href="https://twitter.com/schutzsmith">Daniel Schutzsmith </a></strong>and with <a href="https://twitter.com/hauwazhiya"><strong>Hauwa Abashiya</strong></a> from the Learn.WordPress team and <a href="https://twitter.com/jcasabona"><strong>Joe Casabona</strong></a>, who coaches site builders. Listen to the show and follow the links in the post. </p>



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



<p><strong>February 7, 2022, 12pm (noon) ET / 17:00 UTC </strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283323367/"><strong>Taking Control Over the Editor for Client Builds</strong></a> with Fabian Kägy via WordPress Social Learning Spaces</p>



<p><strong>February 8th, 2022 11 am / 16:00 UTC (full)</strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283412026/"><strong>Gutenberg Developer Hours</strong></a> with Birgit Pauli-Haack and expert panel via WordPress Social Learning Spaces: Tammie Lister, Nick Diego and Fabian Kägy </p>



<p><strong>February 9th, 2022 5pm ET / 22:00 UTC </strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283371670/"><strong>Using Block Patterns</strong></a> with Wes Theron via WordPress Social Learning Spaces</p>



<p><strong>February 14, 2022 – 4 pm ET / 21:00 UTC </strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283237147/"><strong>Exploring Theme Blocks</strong></a><strong> </strong>with Wes Theron via WordPress Social Learning Spaces</p>



<p><strong>February 21, 2022 &#8211; 12 pm (noon) ET / 17:00 UTC</strong><br /><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283644263/"><strong>Hello Blocks! Coding a custom block</strong></a> via WordPress Social Learning w/ Wes Theron and Ryan Welcher. </p>



<p>February 22, 2022 &#8211; 11 am ET / 16:00 UTC<br /><strong><a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283720638/">Gutenberg Developer Hours</a></strong> with Birgit Pauli-Haack and expert panel via WordPress Social Learning Spaces</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, 05 Feb 2022 19:26:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:18:"Birgit Pauli-Haack";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:106:"Gutenberg Times: How to disable theme features and Lock Block Templates for Full-Site Editing 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:35:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/?p=20336";s: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:117:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/how-to-disable-theme-features-and-lock-block-templates-for-full-site-editing-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:10116:"<p>After the release of WordPress 5.9, quite a few people aired their concern that too much freedom for users editing the site design, select colors or to modify blocks might be the opposite of what customers want.  Especially more complex websites with many editors and departments who produce content need guard rails to enforce publishing standards and adherence to brand color schemas and design systems. </p>



<p>Below I list of documentation links and code examples for the myriad of ways to restrict access or choices for users. As WordPress 5.9 is only a beta version of the Full-Site editing experience, you also can participate in linked discussion on GitHub for development still in progress. </p>



<h2 id="locking-block-templates-and-block-patterns">Locking Block Templates and Block Patterns</h2>



<p>Developers can register block templates (a collection of blocks, with lock attributes) for instance for custom posts types. More about it in the <a href="https://href.li/?https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/reference-guides/block-api/block-templates/">Block Editor Handbook</a>. This feature has been available for a few years now. It’s not directly related to FSE. The lock mechanism can also be applied to Block Patterns. </p>



<p>With WordPress 5.9 documentation you can find the DevNote: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/08/locking-blocks-in-wordpress-5-9/">Locking Blocks in WordPress 5.9</a>. It describes the settings for the block attributes &#8220;lock&#8221; and how you can control, adding, inserting as well as moving or removing blocks. </p>



<p>There are discussion held on GitHub repository, that could use your input, if you are developing sites that need guard rails.</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/29864">On Locking and TemplateLocking (a Tracking Issue)</a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/26128">Learn more about the TemplateLock attribute to column and group</a></li></ul>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/09/core-editor-improvement-curated-experiences-with-locking-apis-theme-json/">Core Editor Improvement: Curated experiences with locking APIs &amp; theme.json</a></blockquote>
</div>



<h2 id="demo-on-locking-block-templates-patterns-and-via-theme-json-by-ryan-welcher">Demo on Locking Block Templates, Patterns and via theme.json by Ryan Welcher</h2>



<p><a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1285533518">In this week&#8217;s Twitch Stream session</a>, <strong>Ryan Welcher</strong> demonstrated how Locking Blocks and block templates works. </p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<div class="toolbelt-video-wrapper"></div> 
</div>



<p>Welcher also share the <a href="https://github.com/ryanwelcher/gutenberg-block-level-locking">link to his plugin</a>, built of testing and educational purposes. </p>



<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hNXRdfYx7g "><img /></a>



<h2 id="permission-system-for-fse-theme-templates">Permission System for FSE theme templates.</h2>



<p>In discussions, contributors look at the relevant aspects on how to handle permission for various sections on themes, templates, and template parts. </p>



<ul><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/37489">Multi-entity permission management</a></li><li><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/27597">Proposal: robust permissions system for FSE theme templates</a></li></ul>



<h2 id="disable-user-design-controls-for-blocks-and-block-themes">Disable User design controls for blocks and block themes</h2>



<p>The theme.json file is the place where you can configure the user controls for gradient, color choices, font settings or background colors. </p>



<p>Anne McCarthy posted a video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPU-sT96f2g">Connecting The Dots: Using duotone in theme.json to customize your image blocks</a></p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<div class="toolbelt-video-wrapper"></div>
</div>



<p>Here are a few, this might not a comprehensive yet. </p>



<p>If you want to use <strong>theme</strong>.<strong>json</strong> in a classic theme, but you don&#8217;t want to allow access to the template editor, add <code>remove_theme_support( 'block-templates' )</code> to your functions.php file. Hat tip to <a href="https://twitter.com/ryanwelcher/status/1489613396651786247"><strong>Ryan Welcher </strong>for this tweet.</a> </p>



<p><strong>Carolina Nymark</strong> wrote in her course on building theme for full-site Editing about <a href="https://fullsiteediting.com/lessons/global-styles/#h-enable-or-disable-features"><strong>Enabling and Disabling features in theme.json</strong></a></p>



<p>Thanks to <strong>David Gwyer</strong>&#8216;s  <a href="https://www.themegen.app/">block theme.json Generator</a>, I could to set all the settings to zero or false or to empty arrays to removing color, border, typography, and spacing controls. </p>



<p><em>I have not tested all settings below, so use at your own risk. </em></p>



<h3 id="colors">Colors</h3>


<pre class="wp-block-code"><div><code class="hljs language-javascript"><span class="hljs-string">"color"</span>: {
      <span class="hljs-string">"background"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"custom"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"customDuotone"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"customGradient"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"defaultGradients"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"defaultPalette"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"duotone"</span>: [],
      <span class="hljs-string">"gradients"</span>: [],
      <span class="hljs-string">"link"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"palette"</span>: [],
      <span class="hljs-string">"text"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>
}

</code></div><small class="shcb-language" id="shcb-language-1"><span class="shcb-language__label">Code language:</span> <span class="shcb-language__name">JavaScript</span> <span class="shcb-language__paren">(</span><span class="shcb-language__slug">javascript</span><span class="shcb-language__paren">)</span></small></pre>


<h3 id="border-controls">Border Controls</h3>


<pre class="wp-block-code"><div><code class="hljs language-javascript"><span class="hljs-string">"border"</span>: {
      <span class="hljs-string">"color"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"radius"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"style"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"width"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>
    },</code></div><small class="shcb-language" id="shcb-language-2"><span class="shcb-language__label">Code language:</span> <span class="shcb-language__name">JavaScript</span> <span class="shcb-language__paren">(</span><span class="shcb-language__slug">javascript</span><span class="shcb-language__paren">)</span></small></pre>


<h3 id="typography">Typography</h3>


<pre class="wp-block-code"><div><code class="hljs language-javascript"> <span class="hljs-string">"typography"</span>: {
      <span class="hljs-string">"customFontSize"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"dropCap"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"fontFamilies"</span>: [],
      <span class="hljs-string">"fontSizes"</span>: [],
      <span class="hljs-string">"fontStyle"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"fontWeight"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"letterSpacing"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"lineHeight"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"textDecoration"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"textTransform"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>
    }</code></div><small class="shcb-language" id="shcb-language-3"><span class="shcb-language__label">Code language:</span> <span class="shcb-language__name">JavaScript</span> <span class="shcb-language__paren">(</span><span class="shcb-language__slug">javascript</span><span class="shcb-language__paren">)</span></small></pre>


<h3 id="spacing">Spacing</h3>


<pre class="wp-block-code"><div><code class="hljs language-javascript"> <span class="hljs-string">"spacing"</span>: {
      <span class="hljs-string">"blockGap"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">null</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"margin"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
      <span class="hljs-string">"padding"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
}</code></div><small class="shcb-language" id="shcb-language-4"><span class="shcb-language__label">Code language:</span> <span class="shcb-language__name">JavaScript</span> <span class="shcb-language__paren">(</span><span class="shcb-language__slug">javascript</span><span class="shcb-language__paren">)</span></small></pre>


<p><strong>Have you found additional tweaks you apply to keep design choices safe? </strong>Please share them in the comments.  </p>



<p><em>Featured Image: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/83914470@N00/10481132656" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&#8220;Locks on Bridge, Paris.&#8221;</a>&nbsp;by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/83914470@N00" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Matt Benton</a>&nbsp;is licensed under&nbsp;<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse&atype=rich" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CC BY-NC-SA 2.0</a></em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 05 Feb 2022 17:47:27 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s: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: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:74:"WPTavern: Creating Content Dividers With the Wavy Divider WordPress 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=129554";s: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:85:"https://wptavern.com/creating-content-dividers-with-the-wavy-divider-wordpress-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:3681:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Kevin Batdorf, the Project Lead Developer at Extendify, released the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wavy-divider/">Wavy Divider plugin</a> earlier this week. It is described as &#8220;a colorful, fun, lightweight divider block to energize your website with character and pizazz.&#8221;</p>



<p>As someone who believes every Friday should be officially titled &#8220;Fun Friday,&#8221; how could I not install and activate it?</p>



<p>I have not seen many block plugins employ a random design option before, and Wavy Divider may be the first. Its foremost setting is a &#8220;shuffle waves&#8221; control. When a user clicks it, the divider is regenerated with new locations for its peaks and valleys.</p>



<img />Adding the first Wavy Divider.



<p>I have mixed feelings about the shuffling option. One side of me wants to know what I am getting before I hit the button, and the other is pleasantly enjoying the randomness of it all. Users who prefer tight control over each point where each wave rises or slopes down might want to look elsewhere.</p>



<p>The plugin is not entirely a jumble of unpredictability. It offers a handful of other options for users to exert some control over its output. There are toggles for the divider&#8217;s smoothness and direction. The former switches between the default wavy style and its straight-lined rigid counterpart. The latter moves the wave flow from the bottom to the top and vice versa.</p>



<p>Users can set the divider&#8217;s height, points, and opacity. There is also a color option.</p>



<p>If you really want to get creative, your best option is mixing and matching it with the core Group and Cover blocks. The plugin&#8217;s documentation walks users through <a href="https://github.com/KevinBatdorf/wavy-divider#gradients">creating a mirrored gradient</a> effect by using two dividers inside a Group. I followed the directions and built a gradient river that flowed across the screen:</p>



<img />Two dividers inside of a Group block with a gradient.



<p>In the right hands, it is entirely possible to buff out some of the roughness, putting a professional sheen on top of it all.</p>



<p>I threw together an intro section for a fitness or adventure blog. The goal was to create the appearance of a site owner with personality. However, better designers will use it to piece together something unique to their brands.</p>



<img />Adventure blog intro section with bottom divider.



<p>Half the fun of this plugin is trying out-of-the-ordinary combinations with other blocks. The other half is discovering new shapes via the shuffle option.</p>



<p>You can also use the plugin for your next low-budget horror film&#8217;s cover art (<em>this was absolutely an experiment <strong>gone weird</strong> when testing this plugin, but I figured I would share anyway</em> ):</p>



<img />



<p>There is a little something for anyone with an imagination or enough time to repeatedly click the &#8220;shuffle waves&#8221; button until they land on that perfect wave shape. As I said, it is Friday, and we should all let loose and have a little fun.</p>



<p>I tend to bookmark projects with well-structured code for my own edification, and Wavy Divider fits that mold. For developers who want relatively simple examples of block development to study, it would be hard to go wrong using it as a starting point. The code is <a href="https://github.com/KevinBatdorf/wavy-divider">available on GitHub</a>.</p>



<div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wavy-divider/">Wavy Divider</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:"Sat, 05 Feb 2022 02:18:10 +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: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:61:"Gutenberg Times: How Block Themes work with Full-Site Editing";s: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=20216";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:72:"https://gutenbergtimes.com/how-theme-blocks-work-with-full-site-editing/";s: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:23887:"<p>In this post, you&#8217;ll learn more about how block themes are built. I&#8217;ll share what I learned about building a block theme while I was testing Twenty Twenty-Two, the new default theme now shipped with WordPress 5.9, featuring the full-site editing experience. For this walk-through, I ran <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentytwo">trunk Twenty-Twenty-Two</a>, with <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg">trunk Gutenberg</a> and WordPress 5.8.2.</p>



<p>You can just upgrade to WP 5.9, and the experience should be the same for you. The theme is now available in the <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/twentytwentytwo/">WordPress.org Theme Repository for download</a>.</p>



<p>Activating Twenty-Twenty-Two gives us this:</p>



<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/DbEalrK_a4anZSBUhSAD4F69W8EyPYb3LXbuIStrNlGKxZh_g1YH2CPBsxcaLCE7tLlYUsi-Gqx_Zo2XQWEBnXnlbtG-R2nwtE46h9G4Z0tkM_ftsERAhsQbXM5ik2JnrmMEIBou" alt="" />



<p>This looks about right. That’s the default Twenty-Twenty-Two home page.</p>



<h2 id="defining-a-block-theme"><strong>Defining a block theme</strong></h2>



<p>All the magic starts in the theme.json file. When this file is present in the active theme, the <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/template-editor/">template editor</a> becomes available. This was a feature added in WordPress 5.8.</p>



<p>Next, the presence of <code>templates/index.html</code> determines if the site editor interface should be made available in place of the Customizer. </p>



<p>One interesting bit of the <code>functions.php</code> file is that the developers call <code>add_theme_support( 'wp-block-styles' )</code>, <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/how-to-guides/themes/theme-support/">according to the handbook</a>, to “opt-in to slightly more opinionated styles for the front end”. This will include a couple of block-specific styles listed <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/blob/trunk/packages/block-library/src/theme.scss">here</a>. It’s mostly default styling that makes some blocks (e.g. Image) look better.</p>



<p>To demonstrate, I added one Image block and defined the caption. This is how it looks on the editor:</p>



<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/CausjW9WHXgHvitsq5ypwQwznnfvdos4Iy8JJXJRuu-t_axkN6ABJhExdXXijYyQsJ1kK-P_neF6RNcZboVVTSEXfwB1H-S6okTglO2GyDo9LfSMEzhIQPT_-qYpIvVWiwZdAe_P" alt="" />



<p>Below you can see how it looks on the live site. Left is without <code>wp-block-styles</code>. Right is with it included. Notice how the caption is center-aligned, with smaller font size and gray-colored. Using <code>wp-block-styles</code> makes the end result look exactly like the preview.</p>




<img />



<img />




<p>The developers enqueued fonts inside the <code>twentytwentytwo_get_font_face_styles</code> function, which is called when the user opens the editor or the frontend of the site. But make no mistake: all of the styles need to be enqueued for the editor and front end – not just font-face ones. That&#8217;s what makes them look the same!</p>



<p>At the end of the <code>functions.php</code> file, there’s a required call to <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentytwo/blob/trunk/inc/block-patterns.php">/inc/block-patterns.php</a> so we can get block patterns registered. More on that later.</p>



<h2 id="how-block-theming-works-theme-json"><strong>How block theming works theme.json</strong></h2>



<p>There’s a file called <code>theme.json</code> that defines some properties, most notably styles and settings. I’ll walk you through all the properties defined in Twenty-Twenty-Two, and there’s a <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/how-to-guides/themes/theme-json/">handbook page about it</a> if you want more information.</p>



<p>We’re using <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentytwo/pull/217">version 2 of the specification</a>, which comes with some adjustments, like removing the custom prefix. Version 2 is officially supported on 5.9, matching the theme’s required version.</p>



<p>One of the most important parts of the theme lives inside settings. We define preset color pallette; typography presets (such as font families and sizes); spacing unit options, as well as custom CSS variables that can be used both inside and outside of <code>theme.json</code>. </p>



<p>All the entries defined in this property are exposed through CSS variables that are used inside stylesheets, block patterns, and blocks themselves.</p>



<p>Aside from presets defined in settings there are also &#8220;supports&#8221; options to enable or disable certain controls based on the theme developer&#8217;s preferences both at the global and individual block levels.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For example, it could be that the content creator should be limited to only selecting from the predefined theme colors and so the custom color control would be disabled in the theme.json settings file with something like this:</p>


<pre class="wp-block-code"><div><code class="hljs language-json shcb-code-table shcb-line-numbers"><span class="shcb-loc"><span>{
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>    <span class="hljs-attr">"version"</span>: <span class="hljs-number">2</span>,
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>    <span class="hljs-attr">"settings"</span>: {
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>        <span class="hljs-attr">"color"</span>: {
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>            <span class="hljs-attr">"custom"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>        }
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>    }
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>}
</span></span></code></div><small class="shcb-language" id="shcb-language-5"><span class="shcb-language__label">Code language:</span> <span class="shcb-language__name">JSON / JSON with Comments</span> <span class="shcb-language__paren">(</span><span class="shcb-language__slug">json</span><span class="shcb-language__paren">)</span></small></pre>


<p>The Twenty-Twenty-Two theme doesn’t have many restrictions as it’s meant for the general population. It does turn off DropCaps, though.&nbsp;</p>


<pre class="wp-block-code"><div><code class="hljs language-json shcb-code-table shcb-line-numbers"><span class="shcb-loc"><span>{
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>    <span class="hljs-attr">"version"</span>: <span class="hljs-number">2</span>,
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>    <span class="hljs-attr">"settings"</span>: {
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>       <span class="hljs-attr">"typography"</span>: {
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>          <span class="hljs-attr">"dropCap"</span>: <span class="hljs-literal">false</span>,
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>            …
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>        }
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>   }
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>}
</span></span></code></div><small class="shcb-language" id="shcb-language-6"><span class="shcb-language__label">Code language:</span> <span class="shcb-language__name">JSON / JSON with Comments</span> <span class="shcb-language__paren">(</span><span class="shcb-language__slug">json</span><span class="shcb-language__paren">)</span></small></pre>


<p>There are also many default design control settings inside the styles property. They’re applied to blocks, global color settings, HTML elements, global spacing, and global typography settings. This section gives Twenty-Twenty-Two its unique feeling because here the default design control settings are defined and are enqueued to the CSS that’s pushed to the browser.</p>



<p>Then, one can use all the properties defined in <code>theme.json</code> inside their style files by using the power of CSS variables, as Gutenberg will inject them into the file. The variable path is a reduction of the actual property path. Something like:</p>


<pre class="wp-block-code"><div><code class="hljs language-css shcb-code-table shcb-line-numbers"><span class="shcb-loc"><span><span class="hljs-selector-tag">body</span> {
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>  <span class="hljs-attribute">color</span>: <span class="hljs-built_in">var</span>(–wp–preset–color–primary);
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>}
</span></span></code></div><small class="shcb-language" id="shcb-language-7"><span class="shcb-language__label">Code language:</span> <span class="shcb-language__name">CSS</span> <span class="shcb-language__paren">(</span><span class="shcb-language__slug">css</span><span class="shcb-language__paren">)</span></small></pre>


<p>Enables a block to read theme configuration on the live site.</p>



<h2 id="templates-and-template-parts"><strong>Templates and template parts</strong></h2>



<p>The difference between Templates and Template Parts is that the former is a full-page template (be it custom or not), such as home. Both templates and parts can use — block patterns.</p>



<p>Templates are rendered when viewing specific sections of the site (404 pages or post archives are good examples), and obviously, you can define custom templates that might be picked for specific postTypes, such as post or page.</p>



<p>Template parts are almost the same, except that instead of defining a whole page, they are part of a specific section of the template. In Twenty-Twenty-Two’s case, header and footer.</p>



<p>Twenty-Twenty-Two includes a couple of templates and template parts. These are defined inside <code>theme.json</code>. The purpose of defining templates in theme.json is to determine which <code>post types</code> the template should be available for use on. For example, the Page (Large Header) template is limited only to pages whereas the Blank template is made available for use as the template for both posts and pages.</p>



<p>Similarly template parts can be defined as intended for use as a header or footer in <code>theme.json</code>.</p>



<p>Some specifics about the templates in Twenty Twenty-Two:</p>



<ul><li><strong>404</strong> uses the header and footer parts, along with a hidden pattern called hidden-404, which cannot be selected inside the Patterns selector;</li><li><strong>archive</strong>, is using the Query block just like the home and index templates uses it. The difference between the three is that home has a bigger header than index, and archive has an additional block indicating that the user is browsing the post archives;</li><li><strong>page and single</strong>, that have some variations (large header, no separators) but their purpose is to display a page or a single post. The difference between the two is that the page template does not display metadata, such as the date, author and terms;</li><li>There is also a <strong>blank template</strong> so one could create a page or post from scratch. It only has a post content block. This template allows users to define a single-page website. <a href="https://2022.wordpress.net/film/">Here’s an example</a> from the demo that uses it.</li></ul>



<p>The template parts are pretty basic:</p>



<ul><li><strong>footer,</strong> which is basically a Group block with padding and a theme pattern (footer-default) inside;</li><li><strong>header</strong>, with the Site Logo and Site Title blocks, and a Navigation block to the right;</li><li><strong>header-small-dark</strong> and <strong>header-large-dark</strong>, that include the header template part — a template part that uses a template part 🤯 — at the top and hidden-bird and hidden-heading-and-bird theme patterns, respectively.</li></ul>



<p><strong>Kjell Reigstad</strong>, designer of the Twenty-Twenty-Two theme explained the hidden-heading-and-bird pattern a bit more: <em>“This is a little trick we used to ensure that changes the user makes to the main header and navigation stay in sync throughout their entire site. I don’t think most other themes will need to do this, but it works well for Twenty Twenty-Two.”</em></p>



<h2 id="how-block-and-patterns-in-general-work"><strong>How block (and patterns in general) work</strong></h2>



<p>Twenty-Twenty-Two has 66 block patterns, so I’m not going to describe them here. Instead, let’s see <em>how</em> they work.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Inside <code><a href="https://github.com/WordPress/twentytwentytwo/blob/trunk/inc/block-patterns.php">inc/block-patterns.php</a></code>, Twenty-Twenty-Two registers block pattern categories using the <code>register_block_pattern_category</code> function. That function accepts an associative array with the slug of the category, along with its name. </p>



<img />



<p>After that, it registers each block pattern by calling <code>register_block_pattern</code>, passing the slug of the pattern and another associative array with a few properties:</p>



<ul><li>title;</li><li>categories (at least one of the defined above, except if it’s a hidden pattern);</li><li>blockTypes, that declare in what kind of blocks I can insert this pattern to;</li><li>content of the pattern, formed of one or more blocks.</li></ul>



<p>All that is wrapped into a function that is called after the init action. </p>



<p>One thing that caught my attention is that the contents of the pattern, essentially HTML, is defined inside the PHP file instead of a pure HTML file. I believe that’s for dynamic content (e.g. translations, dynamic URLs). There are <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/36751">plans to change how that works</a> and make it a better developer experience, though! Stay tuned. </p>



<p><em>The <a href="https://gutenbergtimes.com/the-wordpress-block-patterns-resource-list/"><strong>WordPress Block Patterns Resource List</strong></a> has a lot more information about Block Patterns. </em></p>



<h2 id="putting-it-all-together"><strong>Putting it all together</strong></h2>



<p>Next Gutenberg kicks in. It is the glue that applies the theme definitions, its overrides, and injects the blocks into the used templates.</p>



<p>When you override a global style that is defined in theme.json or by WordPress core, a new post with the <code>wp_global_styles</code> type is created. The differences from the original global styles are&nbsp;saved as a custom post type. Here’s what happens when you modify global typography settings:</p>



<p class="has-secondary-color has-light-background-background-color has-text-color has-background has-normal-font-size">MariaDB [wordpress]&gt; <br /><code>select post_content </code><br /><code>from wp_posts </code><br /><code>where post_type = 'wp_global_styles';</code></p>



<table><thead><tr><th>post_content&nbsp;</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>{&#8220;styles&#8221;:{&#8220;typography&#8221;:{&#8220;fontSize&#8221;:&#8221;var:preset|font-size|huge&#8221;}},&#8221;isGlobalStylesUserThemeJSON&#8221;:true,&#8221;version&#8221;:2} </td></tr></tbody></table>Result set for above SQL statement



<p>Blocks are defined as HTML comments, such as:</p>


<pre class="wp-block-code"><div><code class="hljs language-htmlbars shcb-code-table shcb-line-numbers"><span class="shcb-loc"><span><span class="xml"><span class="hljs-comment">&lt;!-- wp:spacer {"height":112} --&gt;</span></span>
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span><span class="xml"><span class="hljs-tag">&lt;<span class="hljs-name">div</span> <span class="hljs-attr">style</span>=<span class="hljs-string">"height:112px"</span> <span class="hljs-attr">aria-hidden</span>=<span class="hljs-string">"true"</span> <span class="hljs-attr">class</span>=<span class="hljs-string">"wp-block-spacer"</span>&gt;</span><span class="hljs-tag">&lt;/<span class="hljs-name">div</span>&gt;</span></span>
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span><span class="xml"><span class="hljs-tag"><span class="hljs-tag"><span class="hljs-comment">&lt;!-- /wp:spacer --&gt;</span></span></span></span>
</span></span></code></div><small class="shcb-language" id="shcb-language-8"><span class="shcb-language__label">Code language:</span> <span class="shcb-language__name">HTMLBars</span> <span class="shcb-language__paren">(</span><span class="shcb-language__slug">htmlbars</span><span class="shcb-language__paren">)</span></small></pre>


<p>The first part defines the block name, and the object inside the comment stands for the block properties. From there, you can add, modify, and delete blocks inside the editor. The changes are saved within the chosen template. The contents that are “wrapped” by comments are the actual markup bits that are rendered on the live site. Of course, those comments are filtered away before the content hits the site&#8217;s front end.</p>



<p>When modifying the contents of a template (i.e. adding, removing, or modifying blocks), you get a full copy of the template as a new post with the wp_template type, along with all your changes. When changes are cleared, meaning the template is reverted to its original form, the post is deleted and the original template is used instead.</p>



<p>When a user modifies a block that also touches a WordPress General Setting options, like the for “Site Title” block, the site_title option is also updated in the options table.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<div><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p>MariaDB [wordpress]&gt; <br /><code>SELECT option_value </code><br /><code>FROM wp_options </code><br /><code>WHERE option_name = 'blogname';</code></p>
</div></div>



<table><thead><tr><th>option_value &nbsp; </th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>This is changed from the editor!</td></tr></tbody></table>



<p>The same thing happens for posts. When you change the contents of a Post Title block, the post itself is changed. Imagine the following post, inside the site editor:</p>



<img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/meKd3Z9QoH3Q8HeKepMyLqRfaXOsPKY-nNiyTCtPoJkXgw8bTn5nhopwcoY6yt4qFmR6zDXyP5FLb2aN1gChFRKS2SDzIL6j4MyVw8wnt4bARx4AVyV6sEiBrWq-pPkJBL-FZgin" alt="" />



<p>When you change “Hey there!” to “Something else”, that’s what you would get inside the tables:</p>



<div><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container">
<p>MariaDB [wordpress]&gt; <br /><code>SELECT post_title <br />FROM wp_posts <br />WHERE post_type = 'post';</code></p>
</div></div>



<table><thead><tr><th>post_title</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Something else</td></tr></tbody></table>



<p>Pretty magical ✨ </p>



<p><em>On a side note: I’m uncertain whether it is a good option to let such changes happen. People might mistakenly assume that this is part of the template and not part of the post itsel</em>f.</p>



<p>After the changes are saved and the site looks how the user wants, it’s rendering time!</p>



<p>The following paragraphs are an oversimplification of the process, but they should give you a nice overview.</p>



<p>First thing, the <code>gutenberg_maybe_inline_styles()</code> function is enqueued within <code>wp_head</code> and <code>wp_footer</code> actions so that styles are injected. This is where most of the styling, including block styles, global styles, and their overrides are applied. Something similar happens for scripts and external stylesheets. Note that, at this moment, CSS is not yet sent to the browser.</p>



<p>Then, <code>gutenberg_add_template_loader_filters</code> hooks into the <code>wp_loaded</code> action. Inside that function, a for-loop enqueues a filter that runs for every possible template:</p>



<p class="has-border-background-color has-background"><code>add_filter( str_replace( '-', '', $template_type ) . '_template', 'gutenberg_override_query_template', 20, 3 );</code></p>



<p>Note how it calls <code>gutenberg_override_query_template</code> as a target. Inside it, the corresponding template for the page the user is requesting is resolved and the <code>template-canvas.php</code> file is returned as the result of the filter. That file is the final bit:</p>


<pre class="wp-block-code"><div><code class="hljs language-php shcb-code-table shcb-line-numbers"><span class="shcb-loc"><span><span class="hljs-meta">&lt;?php</span> $template_html = gutenberg_get_the_template_html();<span class="hljs-meta">?&gt;</span>
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>&lt;html <span class="hljs-meta">&lt;?php</span> language_attributes(); <span class="hljs-meta">?&gt;</span>&gt;
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>    &lt;head&gt;
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>        &lt;meta charset=<span class="hljs-string">"&lt;?php bloginfo( 'charset' ); ?&gt;"</span> /&gt;    
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>        <span class="hljs-meta">&lt;?php</span> wp_head(); <span class="hljs-meta">?&gt;</span>
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>    &lt;/head&gt; 
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>    &lt;body <span class="hljs-meta">&lt;?php</span> body_class(); <span class="hljs-meta">?&gt;</span>&gt;
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>        <span class="hljs-meta">&lt;?php</span> wp_body_open(); <span class="hljs-meta">?&gt;</span> 
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>        <span class="hljs-meta">&lt;?php</span> <span class="hljs-keyword">echo</span> $template_html; <span class="hljs-meta">?&gt;</span> 
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>        <span class="hljs-meta">&lt;?php</span> wp_footer(); <span class="hljs-meta">?&gt;</span>
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>    &lt;/body&gt;
</span></span><span class="shcb-loc"><span>&lt;/html&gt;
</span></span></code></div><small class="shcb-language" id="shcb-language-9"><span class="shcb-language__label">Code language:</span> <span class="shcb-language__name">PHP</span> <span class="shcb-language__paren">(</span><span class="shcb-language__slug">php</span><span class="shcb-language__paren">)</span></small></pre>


<p>As shown inside the code, it calls <code>gutenberg_get_the_template_html</code>. That function does a few things, but most importantly:</p>



<ol><li><code>do_blocks</code>, which grabs all blocks, parses them and return their content;</li><li><code>wptexturize</code>`, to escape all special characters into their safe HTML entities.</li></ol>



<p>And that’s it! <code>gutenberg_get_the_template_html</code>‘s result gets echoed inside the &lt;body&gt; tag, wp_head and wp_footer functions render their respective content and voilà: your page gets loaded!</p>



<p>That’s how FSE with Gutenberg works, in an oversimplified way in January 2022.</p>



<h2 id="resources">Resources</h2>



<ul><li><a href="https://kinsta.com/blog/twenty-twenty-two-theme/">A Deep Dive into Twenty Twenty-Two and WordPress Block Themes</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/07/theme-focused-changes-and-filters-in-wordpress-5-9/">Theme-focused changes and filters in WordPress 5.9</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/07/state-of-the-customizer-with-block-themes-in-wordpress-5-9/">State of the Customizer with block themes in WordPress 5.9</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/04/block-themes-a-new-way-to-build-themes-in-wordpress-5-9/">Block themes, a new way to build themes in WordPress 5.9</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/08/updates-for-settings-styles-and-theme-json/">Updates for Settings, Styles, and theme.json</a></li><li><a href="https://fluffyandflakey.blog/2017/09/04/gutenberg-posts-arent-html/">Gutenberg Aren&#8217;t HTML by Dennis Snell</a> </li></ul>



<p><em>Big Thank you to Daisy Olsen, Kjell Reigstad, and Jeff Ong for their review of this post. </em>&nbsp;</p>



<p></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Sat, 05 Feb 2022 02:05:00 +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:19:"Luis Felipe Zaguini";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:111:"WPTavern: CMS and E-Commerce Churn Data Shows WordPress Maintaining Market Lead, Shopify Gaining on WooCommerce";s: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=129527";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:121:"https://wptavern.com/cms-and-e-commerce-churn-data-shows-wordpress-maintaining-market-lead-shopify-gaining-on-woocommerce";s: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:3252:"<p>Rick Viscomi, one of the maintainers of the HTTP Archive, <a href="https://twitter.com/rick_viscomi/status/1486951830328389635">tweeted</a> some interesting data from a report he is working on that tracks churn for different JavaScript frameworks and CMS&#8217;s over a specified period of time. He detected  the changes using the open source <a href="https://www.wappalyzer.com/">Wappalyzer</a> project. The first graph he shared shows shows data from 8 million websites, 12 months apart for any that changed tech stacks, visualizing the movement to/from frameworks. </p>



<p>A large chunk of the 32K+ sites that migrated to React came from Handlebars.js, Mustache, and Ember.js.</p>



<div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f440.png" alt="👀" class="wp-smiley" /> Working on a new thing with <a href="https://twitter.com/HTTPArchive?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HTTPArchive</a> data.<br /><br />Checking 8M websites 12 months apart for any that switched tech stacks and visualizing where they're going to/from.<br /><br />React ate every other JS framework's lunch on over 32k sites. Mostly from Handlebars.<br /><br />(thread) <a href="https://t.co/iuKpzGcFs9">pic.twitter.com/iuKpzGcFs9</a></p>&mdash; Rick Viscomi (@rick_viscomi) <a href="https://twitter.com/rick_viscomi/status/1486951830328389635?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 28, 2022</a></blockquote>
</div>



<p>As the market leader, WordPress was also the recipient of quite a bit of churn from other CMS&#8217;s, primarily Drupal and Joomla, followed by Wix, Squarespace, and TYPO3. Viscomi found that WordPress picked off 9K sites from competitors but also lost ground to other CMS&#8217;s. </p>



<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s leaking quite a bit to other CMSs too, but not as much as it&#8217;s taking in,&#8221; he said.</p>



<div><img /><a href="https://twitter.com/rick_viscomi/status/1486951834732408832">CMS churn data</a> from Rick Viscomi</div>



<p>Where are sites migrating to away from WordPress? They are primarily going to Drupal, Wix, and Squarespace, followed by a wide array of smaller, less popular, but growing, website builders like Duda and Tilda. Viscomi found that WordPress is involved in 79% of these migrations, either being replaced or replacing another CMS.</p>



<p>Tracking e-commerce platform churn, Viscomi said, &#8220;WooCommerce is more or less breaking even in the trades, but Shopify is gaining a lot of ground, especially from WooCommerce.&#8221; The e-commerce space is much more competitive with Shopify right on heels of WooCommerce. </p>




<img />



<img />
<a href="https://twitter.com/rick_viscomi/status/1486951843825688580">E-commerce churn data</a> from Rick Viscomi



<p>It would be interesting to get an overview of the most popular sites that moved to a new platform and dig in deeper on why their engineering teams decided to make the move.</p>



<p>Viscomi said his data ignores any technologies that were not detectable in January 2021, as well as any site that removed a technology without a replacement from the same category. He plans to share all of the queries with an interactive version of the charts in an upcoming post on the HTTP Archive.</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, 04 Feb 2022 23:13:26 +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:18;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:59:"WordPress.org blog: The Month in WordPress – January 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:35:"https://wordpress.org/news/?p=12180";s: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/2022/02/the-month-in-wordpress-january-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:12504:"<p>There are a few significant moments in the history of the WordPress project. January 2022 is one of them, with the release of WordPress 5.9! But that’s not all. Read on to learn more about the latest updates and achievements from the community.</p>



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



<h2 id="wordpress-5-9-josephine-is-here">WordPress 5.9 Joséphine is here</h2>



<p class="has-text-align-center"><img width="405" height="274" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Iq09sZdu0Npal6XWBF6Bbfqb8AWizWVPCUtCqxgU4T-1E3uWM1bmZ7cDEHA0RJlEaFTPN5jAAXwHfx-x52rIC2Gac55j96fhUSdFlHyEmFtooRM9_NmuLyRJ-_ujotnKAAYzBEBh" /></p>



<p>Meet <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/01/josephine/">WordPress 5.9 Joséphine</a>. Named in honor of the acclaimed jazz singer, Joséphine Baker, this is one of the much-awaited releases. Version 5.9 brings full site editing to WordPress, among other exciting updates!<strong> </strong><a href="https://wordpress.org/download/"><strong>Download WordPress 5.9</strong></a><strong> and try the new features! </strong><br /><br />Check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/10/wordpress-5-9-field-guide/">WordPress 5.9 Field Guide</a> to learn more. Lastly, everyone’s invited to participate in a retrospective of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/27/wordpress-5-9-simone-retrospective/">WordPress 5.9 Joséphine</a> release!</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center"><p><strong>Are you interested in contributing to WordPress core?</strong> Join the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQBWTW">#core</a> channel, follow the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">Core Team blog</a>, and check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/handbook/">team handbook</a>. Also, don&#8217;t miss the Core Team’s weekly developer chat on Wednesdays at <a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?hour=20&min=00&sec=0">8 PM</a> UTC.</p></blockquote>



<h2 id="gutenberg-releases-versions-12-3-12-4-and-12-5-are-here">Gutenberg releases: Versions 12.3, 12.4, and 12.5 are here</h2>



<p>The Core Team launched three new versions of Gutenberg since last month’s edition of the Month in WordPress.</p>



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/02/03/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-5-february-2nd/">Gutenberg 12.5</a> brings global styles variations and Query Loop block enhancements, along with the Code Editor view to the Side Editor. Moreover, inserting new buttons is now easier than ever!</li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/19/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-4-19-january/">Gutenberg 12.4</a> was released on January 19, 2022. This version includes accessibility improvements, suggestions for assigning categories, keyboard shortcuts for the Site Editor, and more.&nbsp;</li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/05/whats-new-in-gutenberg-12-3-5-january/">Gutenberg 12.3</a> was released on January 5, 2022. This release brings new blocks, like the Author Name, Comments Next Page, and Comments Previous Page blocks, and many other cool updates!</li></ul>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center"><p><strong>Want to get involved in developing Gutenberg? </strong>Follow <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/">the Core Team blog</a>, contribute to Gutenberg on <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/">GitHub</a>, and join the <a href="https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02QB2JS7">#core-editor</a> channel in the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/chat/">Make WordPress Slack</a>. Follow the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/tag/gutenberg-new/">#gutenberg-new</a> tag for details on the latest updates.</p></blockquote>



<h2 id="team-updates-proposals-announcements-and-more-for-2022">Team updates: Proposals, announcements, and more for 2022</h2>



<ul><li>Executive Director Josepha Haden<a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/27/proposal-2022-major-release-timing/"> shared a proposal</a> on 2022 major release timing. </li><li>In the <a href="https://wordpress.org/news/2022/02/episode-24-three-goals-in-2022/">latest episode of WP Briefing</a>, Josepha Haden Comphosy reviews the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/01/21/our-three-big-ideas-for-2022/">three major areas of focus</a> for the WordPress project in 2022. She also shared the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/01/21/big-picture-goals-2022/">big-picture goals for 2022</a>.</li><li>The Core Team <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/31/ensuring-proper-attribution-for-contributions-to-wordpress-on-github/">made a proposal</a> regarding proper attributions for contributions to WordPress on GitHub. Although the proposal has since then been withdrawn, it&#8217;s still a discussion and comments are welcome.</li><li>Check out the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/26/preliminary-roadmap-for-6-0/">preliminary roadmap</a> for WordPress 6.0 (Gutenberg Phase Two). </li><li>Core Team members <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/26/proposed-improvements-to-the-core-editor-chat-agenda-and-format/">proposed improvements</a> to the Core Editor chat agenda and format. </li><li>The Accessibility Team made some <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/2022/01/22/accessibility-team-meeting-notes-january-21-2022/">major goal proposals for WordPress 6.0</a>.</li><li>The Polyglots Team shared a proposal for a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2022/02/01/proposal-milestone-template-for-polyglots-locale-teams/">milestone template for polyglots locale teams</a>.</li><li>The <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2022/01/20/polyglots-monthly-newsletter-january-2022/">January 2022 edition</a> of the Polyglots monthly newsletter is out!</li><li>The Community Team shared an <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/02/03/open-invitation-diverse-speaker-training-group-wpdiversity-zoom-call/">open invitation for the Diverse Speaker Training group</a> Zoom call.</li><li>Although the WordPress Photo Directory hasn’t fully launched yet, you can now <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/submit/">submit your images</a>. You can also contribute in other ways, as there’s <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/01/13/wordpress-photo-directory-call-for-volunteers/">currently a call for volunteers</a>.</li><li>Openverse has now a redesigned user interface and includes support for audio files. Check out <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/openverse/2022/01/25/everything-you-need-to-know-about-openverse-and-the-wordpress-photo-directory/">this post</a> to learn what&#8217;s new.</li><li>The Community Team will be hosting <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/02/02/community-team-goals-2022-open-discussion-sessions/">open discussion sessions</a> to collaborate on its goals for 2022. </li><li>The January 2022 edition of the <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/01/14/meetup-organizer-newsletter-january-2022/">Meetup Organizer Newsletter</a> was published.</li><li>The Community Team shared a <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/01/10/proposal-mandatory-safety-measures-for-in-person-wordpress-events-in-2022/">proposal for mandatory safety measures</a> for in-person WordPress events taking place this year.</li><li>The Training Team published its <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/training/2022/02/02/february-2022-team-sprint/">February 2022 Team Sprint</a>.</li></ul>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center"><p><strong>Take the course on Learn WordPress to </strong><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/course/simple-site-design-with-full-site-editing/"><strong>learn about the full site editing features</strong></a><strong> in WordPress 5.9!&nbsp; Also, help spread the word about </strong><a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/social-learning/"><strong>social learning spaces</strong></a><strong> on </strong><a href="https://twitter.com/WordPress/status/1487180438347128836"><strong>Twitter</strong></a><strong>!</strong></p></blockquote>



<h2 id="feedback-testing-requests-share-your-thoughts-on-wordpress-5-9-josephine">Feedback/Testing requests: Share your thoughts on WordPress 5.9 Joséphine</h2>



<ul><li>There’s currently a call for testing <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/01/27/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-android-19-1/">WordPress for Android 19.1</a> and <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/01/24/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-ios-19-1/">iOS 19.1</a>, along with <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/01/10/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-android-19-0/">Android 19.0</a> and iOS 19.0.</li></ul>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center"><p><a href="https://forms.gle/Hf7E2JJokfnNLprG7"><strong>Share your feedback</strong></a><strong> on the release of WordPress 5.9 Joséphine.</strong></p></blockquote>



<h2 id="wordcamp-europe-2022-wants-volunteers-photographers-and-media-partners">WordCamp Europe 2022 wants volunteers, photographers and media partners</h2>



<ul><li>WordCamp Birmingham, Alabama has been postponed until April or May.</li><li>The WordPress Foundation <a href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/news/2022/what-is-the-wordpress-foundation-and-why-does-it-exist/">published a post</a> explaining more about the nonprofit’s mission and why it exists.</li><li>Don’t miss the following upcoming WordCamps: <ul><li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f1e8-1f1ff.png" alt="🇨🇿" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://prague.wordcamp.org/2022/">WordCamp Prague</a>, Switzerland on February  26, 2022 (online)</li><li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f1e8-1f1ed.png" alt="🇨🇭" class="wp-smiley" /><a href="https://geneve.wordcamp.org/2022/"> WordCamp Genève</a>, Switzerland on April 9, 2022 (in person)</li><li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f1ec-1f1f7.png" alt="🇬🇷" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://central.wordcamp.org/wordcamps/wordcamp-athens-attica-greece-2022/">WordCamp Athens</a>, Greece between April 9 and 10, 2022 (in person)</li><li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f1e6-1f1f9.png" alt="🇦🇹" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://vienna.wordcamp.org/2022/">WordCamp Vienna</a>, Austria from April 23 to 24, 2022 (in person)</li><li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f1ea-1f1fa.png" alt="🇪🇺" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2022/">WordCamp Europe</a> in Porto, Portugal from June 2 to 4, 2022 (in person)</li><li><img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/72x72/1f1fa-1f1f8.png" alt="🇺🇸" class="wp-smiley" /> <a href="https://us.wordcamp.org/2022/">WordCamp US</a> in San Diego, CA USA from September 9-11, 2022 (in person)</li></ul></li></ul>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote has-text-align-center"><p><strong>WordCamp Europe 2022 opened a new call for </strong><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2022/join-the-wceu-volunteers-team/"><strong>volunteers</strong></a><strong>, </strong><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2022/capture-wceu-on-camera/"><strong>photographers</strong></a><strong>, and </strong><a href="https://europe.wordcamp.org/2022/join-us-as-a-media-partner/"><strong>media partners</strong></a><strong>!</strong></p></blockquote>



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



<p><strong><em>Have a story that we could include in the next ‘Month in WordPress’ post? Let us know by filling out </em></strong><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/month-in-wordpress-submissions/"><strong><em>this form</em></strong></a><strong><em>.</em></strong></p>



<p><em>The following folks contributed to January 2022’s Month in WordPress: </em><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/anjanavasan/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>anjanavasan</a><em> </em><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/harishanker/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>harishanker</a><em> </em><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/rmartinezduque/" class="mention"><span class="mentions-prefix">@</span>rmartinezduque</a><em> </em><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/lmurillom/">@lmurillom</a> <em><a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/webcommsat/">@webcommsat</a> and <a href="https://profiles.wordpress.org/nalininonstopnewsuk/">@nalininonstopnewsuk</a></em></p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 04 Feb 2022 19:41:03 +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:12:"Anjana Vasan";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:77:"WordPress Foundation: What is the WordPress Foundation and Why Does it Exist?";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:41:"https://wordpressfoundation.org/?p=217645";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:97:"https://wordpressfoundation.org/news/2022/what-is-the-wordpress-foundation-and-why-does-it-exist/";s: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:3006:"<p>The WordPress Foundation is a non-profit organization with the mission to democratize publishing through open source, General Public License (GPL) software. Established in January 2010, the Foundation strives to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the software projects we support.</p>



<p>The WordPress Foundation has a <a href="https://milestonesbook.wordpress.com/2015/11/25/the-wordpress-foundation/">unique history</a>. While it’s true that the organization is eponymously named, our work extends beyond the WordPress project. In this article, we’ll cover just that: what the WordPress Foundation stands for and why our mission matters.</p>



<h2 id="the-heart-of-the-matter-open-source">The heart of the matter: open source</h2>



<p>“If you believe (as I do) that software constitutes at once some of the core tools and core rules for the future of how human beings work together to create wealth, beauty, new ideas, and solutions to problems, then understanding how open source can change those processes is very important,” says Steven Weber in <em>The Success of Open Source</em>.</p>



<p>Imagine if you couldn’t use the various software that is fundamental to technology right now, be it WordPress, Linux, Android, or something else. Many of the tools we use may not be as commonly available without open source, as intellectual property rights could restrict that access.</p>



<p>But open source challenges the idea of property, as Weber explains in his book:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-plain"><p>“The conventional notion of property is, of course, the right to exclude you from using something that belongs to me. Property in open source is configured fundamentally around the right to distribute, not the right to exclude. If that sentence feels awkward on first reading, that is a testimony to just how deeply embedded in our intuitions and institutions the exclusion view of property really is.”</p></blockquote>



<p>At its core, open source is based on the power of community and collaboration. By bringing people together, these projects leverage the combined perspectives and knowledge to create something more remarkable—and available to <em>everyone</em>—than what we can achieve individually. </p>



<p>The WordPress Foundation is here to ensure that open source software is part of the future. Human beings may have limited life spans, but our efforts don’t have to. Our organization wants to ensure that the source code for projects like WordPress will survive beyond the current contributor base, so we may create a stable web publishing platform for generations to come.</p>



<div class="wp-container-6205ed582b1c7 wp-block-buttons">
<div class="wp-block-button"><a class="wp-block-button__link" href="https://wordpressfoundation.org/donate/"><strong>If you want a future where open source exists, you can help. </strong><strong>Donate</strong><strong> to the WordPress Foundation.</strong></a></div>
</div>



<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, 04 Feb 2022 17:07:20 +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:"Anjana Vasan";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:115:"WPTavern: WordPress Ramps Up Social Learning Events on Full Site Editing, Project Aims for 500 Block Themes in 2022";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"guid";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=129465";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:125:"https://wptavern.com/wordpress-ramps-up-social-learning-events-on-full-site-editing-project-aims-for-500-block-themes-in-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:3567:"<p>WordPress is hosting a live online event tomorrow called &#8220;<a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283228078/">Beginner&#8217;s Guide to Full Site Editing</a>.&#8221; Within three minutes of WordPress&#8217; Twitter account <a href="https://twitter.com/WordPress/status/1489346729933737986">tweeting</a> about it, all 70 spaces were booked and the waiting list kicked in. </p>



<p>As part of the project&#8217;s <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/01/21/big-picture-goals-2022/">big picture goals for 2022</a>, WordPress will be ramping up community efforts to help site builders learn how to use open source tools to get their sites up and running. One aspect of that goal involves publishing more educational content to <a href="https://learn.wordpress.org/">learn.wordpress.org</a>. Another part of that effort is hosting virtual social learning spaces through the project&#8217;s meetup group.</p>



<p>WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy identified specific metrics the community team is aiming for in 2022:</p>



<ol><li>Ship LearnWP learning opportunities (1 workshop/week, 6 courses/year)</li><li>Increase the number of social learning spaces (4 SLSs/week)</li><li>Block theme contribution drive (500 block themes in the repo).</li></ol>



<p>WordPress.org currently has <a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/tags/full-site-editing/">47 block themes</a> that support FSE and they continue to trickle into the official directory. <a href="https://wptavern.com/what-arent-more-wordpress-theme-authors-creating-block-themes">There doesn&#8217;t seem to be a mad rush to create block themes</a>, but this could be due to theme authors&#8217; lack of skills and reluctance to give up established, more efficient workflows. </p>



<p>During the 2021 State of the Word, Matt Mullenweg said he wanted the number of available block themes to be at 5,000. This figure seemed more aspirational after he pared it down to &#8220;300 or ideally 3,000 of these block themes” before the project enters the Collaboration phase.</p>



<p>Getting WordPress users up to speed with FSE goes hand-in-hand with growing a larger collection of free block themes. WordPress&#8217; Facebook and Twitter accounts have been more active than in previous years, with marketing posts advertising new features with images and videos. It is helping familiarize more people with the major changes introduced in 5.9.</p>



<p>Based on the response to tomorrow&#8217;s event, there seems to be a demand for beginner&#8217;s FSE content. The session will cover block themes vs. theme blocks, styles, block patterns, and templates/template parts. More than 40 people are still waiting for spots. (When spots open up people on the waiting list get a place automatically.) This is a session that would benefit from being run multiple times to accommodate the large number of people wanting to learn  the basics of how to use FSE.</p>



<p>If you want to learn more about creating block themes, you don&#8217;t have to wait for a WordCamp to get an interactive walkthrough. The &#8220;Zero to Block Theme&#8221; series is covering the basics for theme developers. It continues on with a <a href="https://www.meetup.com/wordpress-social-learning/events/283557865/">new session on Friday</a> (with spots still available) and previously recorded sessions linked in the notes. This is part of WordPress&#8217; big picture goals for the ecosystem in 2022, which prioritize providing tools and training for building block themes.</p>";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:7:"pubDate";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:31:"Fri, 04 Feb 2022 02:25:31 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i:21;a:6:{s:4:"data";s:13:"
	
	
	
	
	
	
";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";s:5:"child";a:2:{s:0:"";a:5:{s:5:"title";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:71:"WPTavern: FSE Program: The Media Experience and Its Future 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:30:"https://wptavern.com/?p=129460";s: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://wptavern.com/fse-program-the-media-experience-and-its-future-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:6187:"<p class="has-drop-cap">The FSE Outreach Program is back with another round of testing. Anne McCarthy asks for volunteers to test and <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/test/2022/02/02/fse-program-exploration-all-things-media/">provide feedback on media-related features in WordPress</a>. Anyone is welcome to contribute, and feedback is open until February 23.</p>



<p>This round of the program includes two tasks. The first has users explore today&#8217;s media-related experience. The second asks what they would like to see in the future.</p>



<p>&#8220;Like last time, the focus of this exploration is to think with a more long term, &#8216;wishful thinking&#8217; perspective in order to gather useful insights that will help inform the design of media related experiences going forward,&#8221; wrote McCarthy in the announcement.</p>



<p>As always, I dove right in with the hope that any discovery would make its way upstream to help mold the future experience.</p>



<h2 id="task-1-exploring-the-possibilities">Task #1: Exploring the Possibilities</h2>



<p>I altered this task slightly. The call for testing asks that volunteers explore what is currently possible with the core media-related blocks. However, I work with these every day, so I know most of the ins and outs of the system.</p>



<p>Instead, I explored the <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/">WordPress photo directory</a> &#8212; my favorite place on the internet right now &#8212; and see what new images have landed. I visit Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash far less often these days, and I am sure that I can do away with them altogether as the directory gets more CC0-licensed media.</p>



<p>I downloaded a <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/4061fad192/">picture of a giraffe</a> by Marcus Burnette. Then, I attempted to add a couple of different Scotch-tape/Polaroid effects via custom block styles. The following is a screenshot of one of them:</p>



<img />&#8220;Scotch tape&#8221; effect via a custom block style.



<p>I am happy that I went off-path in this stage of the exploration. I learned a lot about the inner workings of blocks in the editor and that styling the <code>::after</code> pseudo-element is problematic. WordPress uses it to add a blue border around selected elements. So, I just wiped that out, at least for my custom styles. I am 100% sure that will come back to bite me at some point.</p>



<p>WordPress has come a long way in balancing the block-editing experience for users and allowing theme authors to style a WYSIWYG canvas. However, there will likely always be these edge cases where the two will be at odds.</p>



<p>Since I was already there tinkering around in the editor, I tested various combos of custom block styles and duotone filters:</p>



<img />Duotone filter used with custom block style.



<p>It is hard to remember that there was a time when this was impossible in WordPress.</p>



<h2 id="task-2-my-vision-for-media">Task #2: My Vision for Media</h2>



<p>The second task of the exploration calls for volunteers to think about the long-term picture. <em>What features do you want to see? How can the experience be improved?</em></p>



<p>Quickly moving up the ranks of my wish list is WordPress Photos integration. Now that the directory is nearing 1,000 images after less than two months into its soft launch, it is clear the community is backing the project. Finding images without ambiguous licensing terms goes hand in hand with WordPress&#8217;s vision of an open web. Users merely need easy access to them.</p>



<p>When laying out an idea for a theme design earlier this week, I realized how much I wanted to see more image filters. One of the patterns I was working on included a comic, watercolor-like background image. I grabbed a <a href="https://wordpress.org/photos/photo/7161f71a64/">photo by Patrick Boehner</a> &#8212; yes, once again, it was from WordPress photos. In a minute or so, I had imported it into <a href="https://www.gimp.org/">GIMP</a> and applied the &#8220;waterpixels&#8221; filter to it.</p>



<img />Applying a watercolor-like filter to image.



<p>There was a distinct style I was going for with the design, but users cannot easily recreate it from within WordPress. It may be possible to implement this filter via a custom block style, and I may very well attempt it if this particular theme idea ever comes to fruition.</p>



<p>However, I would like to see a range of filters available to users. If this is too much for core, perhaps a standard filter-registration system for developers might be in order. This is just me thinking out loud at the moment. I do not know what that system would look like, but it is on my mind. I have little doubt that some user out there is thinking the same.</p>



<p>The addition of existing block design controls would also help. Implementing the border options across the range of media-related blocks is low-hanging fruit. Captions should be a dedicated block with a range of typography and color controls. Padding and background color options for the <code>&lt;figure&gt;</code> wrapper around images would allow users to &#8220;frame&#8221; their photos:</p>



<img />Image block wrapper with padding and background color.



<p>Outside of the previous ideas, there is at least one obvious wish-list item. I want to use my post&#8217;s featured image in any image-related block. I have long requested the ability to drop them inside of a Cover, for example.</p>



<p>There are less-obvious ideas too. It may be time that we <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/27617">rethink the concept of a featured &#8220;image.&#8221;</a> In my previous life as a full-time theme designer, one of the scripts I had built and shaped over the years was a &#8220;media grabber.&#8221; Essentially, it allowed theme authors to get audio or video from the post content and display it in various places, such as alongside excerpts on the homepage.</p>



<p>There is no longer an easy way to use that PHP script in block-based HTML theme templates. It would require a third-party block plugin (none exist as far as I know) or a core feature.</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, 04 Feb 2022 01:39:26 +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: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:75:"Post Status: Post Status Excerpt (No. 44) — Small Wins With Small Plugins";s: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:61:"https://poststatus.com/?p=93133&preview=true&preview_id=93133";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}s:4:"link";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:34:"https://poststatus.com/excerpt/44/";s: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:43428:"<p class="has-drop-cap">In this episode of Post Status Excerpt, David talks with <strong>Collins Agbonghama</strong>, the Founder of <strong>ProfilePress</strong> and the author of a few other WordPress plugins. Collins shares <a href="https://poststatus.slack.com/archives/C0413T6GD/p1641546394000700">what he called a &#8220;small&#8221; win in <strong>Post Status Slack</strong> early in January 2022</a>: he acquired a plugin (now <strong>LoginWP</strong>) for &#8220;5 figures&#8221; and was able to break even on a revamped, commercial &#8220;Pro&#8221; version after only four months. David and Collins talk about this accomplishment and consider how similar opportunities may exist for other WordPress entrepreneurs.</p>



<p><strong>Why This Is Important:</strong> Often you hear about large product acquisitions between relatively large companies in the WordPress space, but not so much the smaller ones — even though they can be just as impactful on people's livelihoods, especially for independent developers and freelancers.</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://wordpress.org/news/2021/12/people-of-wordpress-collins-agbonghama/">People of WordPress: Collins Agbonghama</a></li><li><a href="https://heropress.com/essays/wordpress-saved-my-life/">WordPress Saved my Life</a></li><li><a href="https://thewpminute.com/interview-with-collins-agbonghama-of-profilepress-formerly-wp-user-avatar/">Interview with Collins Agbonghama of ProfilePress (Formerly WP User Avatar)</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/w3guy">Collins Agbonghama</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/dimensionmedia" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">David Bisset (Twitter)</a></li><li><a href="https://twitter.com/post_status" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Post Status (Twitter)</a></li></ul>



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<h3><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/wordfence">Wordfence</a></h3>



<p>Who can afford downtime, a black mark on their brand’s reputation, or the SEO impact of getting hacked? That’s why so many WordPress sites rely on the real-time protection provided by Wordfence Premium. Now, Wordfence Central offers Premium subscribers a powerful and efficient dashboard to manage security for all their sites from one central location. Try Wordfence today!</p>



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



<p>EP 44</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong></p>



<p>So speaking with you today is a pleasure. Can you tell me, well, I am from I'm from the, as you probably already have figured out from our communication earlier.</p>



<p>I'm from the United States. I live in Florida. I'm from the east coast. Can you tell me where you are in terms of the current.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> I'm from Nigeria. I live in Nigeria, actually, Nigeria is in Africa. Then I live in new city called Legos. Yeah. I think it's actually one of the most popular city in Africa. Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Is there and how are the WordPress meetups in that area of Africa in Nigeria?</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> Oh, my team, we have the biggest community or meetup in Africa. Yeah, we do have the, I think, a yearly WordPress conference or the meetup. So, although I haven't really attended the last one. They did. I wasn't really chance, I was actually out of the city.</p>



<p>So I could do that then. And it's supposed to do one last year, but because of the COVID situation, that got postponed. Other than that, we do . Little meetups here and there in NIGOs in Abuja and whatever, although I have not personally really attended them, but I do see the announcements on their post on stuff like that. And now local WordPress on slack.</p>



<p>We do have a WordPress slack community. Actually. I think it's utterly the biggest in Africa. Yeah. So.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Interviewed or spoke with Mary Jo a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure if you know her. But okay, great. Cause it's a big continent and it's a big country, but I didn't want to make any assumptions, but we were talking about wpafrica.org.</p>



<p>And the websites she's put up in her hopes for getting WordCamp. Africa over there some day was a very encouraging I'll share that link in the show notes for people because I, where you're from and where she's from are close enough that I think it's worthwhile to make that connection to our readers.</p>



<p>Thank you for being a Post Status member. What I wanted to, what I wanted to talk to you about today was you shared what you called a small win last Friday on January 7th. And before we get into that, though, can you just briefly tell me I should say a little bit about your background, but how many WordPress plugins that you.</p>



<p>Currently, like have in your possession or what you like, give us an idea of what your WordPress plugin developer and business scope is. So we know that going in,</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> so actually started off teaching WordPress on plug-in development on blogs, like on-site point. So to close on that invite, to. And then smashing magazine in that proceeded to digging my own WordPress and actually to solve my own problems, then accident accurate factors because I had wrote a tutorial on side point on our two DG custom log-in from then I had people, come into in comment session, stating the ones, the two out to be Tony to a plugin they could install on their WordPress site. That was our beautiful, perfect verse. And over the years I had this situation, actually use Sandy for Miami marketing as my immediate marketing software. For sure. One of the problems I encountered with it was Eastern morality wordPress posts are to good to the platform, you know, to craft the process in newsletter to central message bedbugs.</p>



<p>So I was not like hi by that auction mix, this whole process. Then I discovered the API has a the mentor or an end point for sending the may to a Butte, a plugin called sending of loopy. I try to Butte the plugin from start to finish in and realized I could actually extend this particular plugin to support or the email marketing platform. That was out in Optune was born too, which may love team who send</p>



<p>bob stone opt-in forms or lead capture forms that, you know, you put in your name you're email . And when you click on send it will synchronize to your platform, then another part of the plugin is actually for Sandy, automated newsletter. From your WordPress, as you form your WordPress sites to your email marketing subscribers, it's actually kind of similar to newsletter Bolivia.</p>



<p>We actually came into the market for newsletter glue and the likes that, or do we, we don't do just email automation. That can send you WordPress post stats on images. We also do lead capture. Yeah. So that's pretty much the two plug-ins and yeah. Yeah. And I think so our school beauty, a couple of adults.</p>



<p>During the early days of easy digital downloads, I did a couple of add-ons for them. And I think there was a time is the clothes or tech parts in plugins. And they decided to acquire one of my add-on in</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> what if your, one of your EDD plugins that you made was acquired?</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> Yeah. Yes, it was not quite that.</p>



<p>I think it's called license free downloads. Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Who acquired? Also Pippin acquired a plugin that you wrote for EDD.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> Yeah. So they wanted all plugins to sit in their website to be unofficial. I don't know, created by them. I spoke them. And then, so they reached out to me and said, if I would be keen.</p>



<p>in selling the items to them to do takeover on the maintenance. And I said, yes. Yeah. Also you're smart. The option of deciding not to say to them on Austin, you're set on selling it. You're safe. Yeah. So that was that was one option, but I just paid for them to acquire it. Yeah. So I also made the plugin called nippy.</p>



<p>That's really sort of like an umbrella site for a couple of payment gateways. Then our selling on WooCommerce and payment gateways, like to check out stripes, paper, and the likes.But over time, actually phase out on the stripes Boone tree. And to check out because of lack of sales in living, Jocelyn WooCommerceus to check out blogging on the EDD paddle gateway plugin.</p>



<p>So. Two years ago. Yeah. Two years ago I sold the business to WP manage the JAG. The folks behind showing four months if you're in CRM and you are in support. So</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> you were quite busy.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> Yeah. So currently Monday. Oh, fabulous. logging WP, which was formerly known as Peter's Login Redirect</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> yeah. So yeah, log-in WP is actually what, we're, what we're here for today.</p>



<p>You made like, I, like I mentioned earlier, you made a post in Post Status slack business channel on the 7th of January, and I'll read it off here. So people don't have to go hunting for it. It says you're sharing a small win. You said three years ago, I acquired Peter's login. Redirect. Now renamed log-in WP plugin.</p>



<p>You said for five figures and continued to maintain it for free and then four months ago. So that was three years ago now, four months ago that would put this in September ish of last year. You revamped the code and UI and launched a pro version called LA. And then you gave the URL to logic, wp.com, which we'll put in the show notes then you're.</p>



<p>And then you said after that app, you're happy to announce that it broke even. And now in terms of now moving forward, looking for, to profit. And you had some doubts that it might either was the right investment at the time. And then you had a couple of great responses from the post status community in terms of.</p>



<p>I think the biggest surprise there was that you broke even on five figures in four months. I'm looking at the log-in wp.com right now. If no one is familiar with the plugin it, the tagline is on the website. It says redirect users to different URLs after they log in, log out and register.</p>



<p>And it has. According to your site here, it has over 100,000 active install. So I'm assuming that's the free version. Mostly. But the plugin offers log into redirection posts for, you know, after somebody has registered developer friendly placeholders, lots of integrations with commerce easy digital downloads profile press, and the list goes on and on.</p>



<p>So that's why we're here in a nutshell. And that's why I wanted to talk to you because that small win. First of all, I don't think it's that small. But it is a win and it's a wind that a lot of other people love to hear stories about. Yeah. And so I wanted to just pick your brain for a few minutes here, in terms of first of all, what attracted you to acquire this plugin three years ago in the first place?</p>



<p>Did you think three years ago that this was going to be something that you were going to be able to eventually turn into a revenue generator? Or did you just acquire the plugin just because you needed a sidebar.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> Actually we'll be, we've been getting requests of ideas and pro fact-based.</p>



<p>We get customers asking us. They want to conditionally redirect users after they login. Perhaps based on the user role or different criteria, but mostly based on the users look like we have a couple of users that using some lender, lenders as their lending management system, you know, which vendors there. Yeah. Their are teachers and their students too.</p>



<p>We get a lot of requests for asking if we could implement a feature that allows students to get you directed to a particular page. Then maybe the teachers get redirected to on that page, you know, based on the user</p>



<p>And I discovered the there's actually another plugin called Peter's Login Redirect that does exactly what I was actually going to build into WordPress. So I reach out to ??. And he was open to on our position. We agreed on the C and she probably plugged in to me. So I continue maintaining the plug-in with each time, we'll get a request for condition after logging, who will comment maybe direct.</p>



<p>And I think Alex had discovered community, which was even when we commented documentation or knowledge base on websites for people looking for without, so over time we started getting requests for, with devish on, based on the courses students have. Take, for example, if your students have completed or is enrolled into core state, they want to use us to be dedicated to a certain page.</p>



<p>And if they give me the ability to cause B once you, your user to do that, you'll be directed to another page to get us some of those feedbacks on improve plugging. Yeah. So I started off selling that in the feed function and I was actually surprised that. It was really new. I think it got quite a number of installs we got a, quite a number of SES forms, especially from the land. That's pretty much the gist of what we have. We have users using from one, our plugins that we integrate with bots, the users from negative blend that actually makes up a majority of the the customer base .</p>



<p>Yeah. So that's what I found.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Interesting too. So just to kind of summarize the story a little bit, if I understand this correctly you acquired. This was the free plugin you acquired from Peter, right? You, it was free at the time when you acquired it. So, but once you acquired it, you started because you had the free plugin, people were making requests, like feature requests or enhancement requests.</p>



<p>And you saw a lot of Learndash requests in there. And then is it those requests that kind of fueled what is going to go into the pro version of the plugin? That sounds like.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> Yeah, that's correct. And also Russell got requests for redirecting back to the previous pitch, say from a user, is visiting a setting page.</p>



<p>Then they click on the login link in the navigation menu also. And after logging the ones, they use that to be redirected back to the pages they are on. So I'll tell you it's that into the plugin to and that has also gotten quite a number from cs too. Yeah, right? Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So in slack, you don't use it in slack because the learn dash thing is very interesting to me.</p>



<p>The strategy here just seems to be, you had a free plugin, you're getting requests about LearnDash, which you said before, you didn't really have a lot of experience. It's not like you were a big learn dash user. You knew what yeah. You don't use LearnDash, but these people using this free redirect plugins says, Hey, could you, we would love to have this functionality and this functionality specifically for these things, including learn dash a lot of learn dash.</p>



<p>So that was kind of one of the big. One of the big features you wanted to put into the pro plugin, right? That's what I was reading out here in slack. So when it comes to other plugin developers I think there's a lesson to be learned here. Maybe it sounds like to me that for people trying to.</p>



<p>Find a way sometimes building the plugin is the easiest part for a developer. I think sometimes the hardest it feel free to agree or disagree, but sometimes it's coming up with something people want to use and eventually would probably want to pay for those ideas. And people start off with like the plugin like itself, but this plugin hooks into learn dash and A lot of other integrations as well.</p>



<p>So it kind of kind of enhances LearnDash, it's not really a, you know, you can use it for learn dash. You don't have to, it's not as much a standalone plugin as much a like a learn dash extra plugin or, you know, for people that just want it for LearnDash. Do you think that's a good strategy for plugin developers to kind of think less or just, or give more consideration to other WordPress platforms like LearnDash or.</p>



<p>Whatever else too, to see what's missing. And is, do you think that's a good market to go after, like you kind of did?</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> I think like for my story, I stumbled upon the market accidentally. . Right. So if I'm to advise the plugin developer, how I advise them to actually stickly niche that has beginning of market.</p>



<p>The for those to run, you get, you know, quite in off season to maybe carve out your development cost or, you know, just assay probably as is site e-comm or something that was not necessarily something you want to focus on. Syntech.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> So you, so it might be a good idea. I mean, you said you stumbled into it accidentally, but you, not everyone is, has the time or the patience or the free plugin already acquired to stumble into that accidentally.</p>



<p>So, what I w so if somebody is looking for a niche market and S so one of the places can you share with us, like one of the places that you got, I think you mentioned this in slack, one of the places that you got, some of your ideas from. I don't want to sh I don't want to steal your thunder, but but I do think you got with one of the places.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> Yeah. So basically see communities, for example, your Facebook group, Facebook. Yeah. You could look around your groups.</p>



<p>And significant blue dodgy or if they sell their positions that solved that problem. Yeah. You could also look around where this community lack on the WordPress community and also on twitter too, to get ideas from those places. Yeah. So you look for that. Yeah. I belong to quite a number of WordPress related groups. I try to see if I can the solutions to some of that problem</p>



<p>yeah. Although I normally don't do that often, but back in the days I used to, you know, look at problems users are facing through DAS solutions for those particular problems and see if it will flash on. And if at the end of the day, it doesn't really get any trash on it, and move onto the next thing.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> W, you know, that's been, that's not the first time I've heard that, but I think it has to be repeatedly reminded that look for S look for something that's repeatedly being mentioned as an itch or, well, look for something that people are complaining about and see if you can fix it.</p>



<p>And that doesn't require creating a new plugin. But if somebody, like you said, you were in Facebook, was it a learn dash Facebook? Yeah. Okay. So it would Lauren dash Facebook group, for example, you see what people are either complaining about, or they keep asking the same questions over and over again, obviously LearnDash is probably looking at that too, but because you're, I'm guessing because you're a smaller, faster developer that you can create that kind of integration with the plugin that you have.</p>



<p>I think that's pretty smart. You said also not just Facebook boob groups, but Twitter and Reddit where your other places you were looking, but you, I should say Browns.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. So, I normally do community like Facebook group. Ready time to that in the evenings before I'm also at night before I go to bed, just to see what people are talking about. You know, was it the news over. Was actually happening in the community. And also I belong to because of belonging to the marketing software, Facebook group stream, and just look around and see what people are talking about. Yeah. So that physically. I get most of my exits</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> That's fantastic. And I think you kind of have to go with where the regular users go. Oftentimes I think a lot of developers kind of, I don't know, I think maybe they're looking in the too high up in terms of what problems to solve sometimes, you know, like these like monstrous integrations and sometimes it's the simple itches other.</p>



<p>Watch what the developers to scratch. I'm just going, I'm just simply, still amazed at that again in about a, what was it? You broke even on this plugin five figures and four months. And just for those who are going to look at the site later, I'll spoil it for you. There is a simple, log-in WPS simple pricing.</p>



<p>It looks like it's per site and it's $49 standard for one year, one license for one site. And the agency has unlimited sites for $99 per year. I'm just bringing these prices because these prices are actually very reasonable for like a particular plugin. So that in itself, if you've already made, if you've already broke, even in four months, And we're not talking, it's not like this plugin costs like a million dollars per purchase and that's oh yeah.</p>



<p>It's easy to make up money in four months. So you must be getting, and you don't have to reveal numbers here, but you must be getting some great you must be getting a lot of traction to be able to do it in that, that quickly. How do you advertise, how did you advertise the pro version of log-in WP?</p>



<p>Did you use the free plugin for that? Or did you go back to these Facebook groups and what I mean. What was your general marketing plan? Once you figured out these people, once you figured out this solution you made was going to be good for these people.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> So what I did was after bloody probation I anchored in to the???</p>



<p>That's been emotional ID. Then I also created a website for the product. And wrote a few documentation and actually started doing a little bit of content marketing, although that hasn't really brought seizing yet, yet, but majority of the, sales or marketing, although we see that from the free version. Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> What do you think about the WordPress?</p>



<p>Plugin ecosystem today. I mean, you just like everyone else sees acquisitions by large companies. Large companies hosting companies are they're large companies. They take these big plugins, but they also take small developers to sometimes some developers have talked about. You know, there, there are these large companies putting lots of money and people toward these plugins and they feel like maybe their opportunities are reduced greatly because now, you know, five years ago, seven years ago, a lot of people were still small.</p>



<p>A lot of developers are small shops. And now if you decided to make a certain plugin, for example, That happens to be similar to a large, you know, plugin that's made by a larger company. That's a tough nut to crack. As I like to say, do you think there's still room in the WordPress plugin ecosystem for developers to have the kind of success that you said you accidentally fell into it?</p>



<p>So I'm going to use your words, but do you think developers can still have these happy accidents in the space.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> I'll be honest. Backing it is when you creative, a WordPress Plugin. Publishing to any one place repository and maybe sit out almost other stuff. Most many times, oftentimes the plugin will grow organically and you've already gotten up to 1000 or thousands of installation activities so that our child, but I told him the same, like before actually we really very hard to grow and stand out from the crowd. Yeah. So now these, you actually really need to have it big marketing budget. Yeah. Content marketing. Yeah. And also promote promoting the plugin.</p>



<p>And also if you breed it, plugin actually takes, I think our months for you to go from so. 500 active installation or a thousand active installation, unless maybe he gets people back. Some of the major WordPress, Blockstack, maybe WPTarvern, Post Status and the likes. Trying to grow in new plugin, actually be very difficult, have seen a lot of in about plugging out to struggle with it.</p>



<p>Typical example is actually the guy that, so that owns home Slice WP. Yeah, then also on a couple of other plugins plugging or touching it. So it's really very difficult, but so that's actually the states or the secretion of tips. When you work for some plugging markets, do you just need to have money to spend on marketing and even spending it on marketing and trying to trying to promote.</p>



<p>Many times max, even months need any results. So it's really incredibly to be the new WordPress plugin.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Do you think that you would have had the same kind of success if you started fresh or do you think you had to acquire Peter's log-in redirect plugin because it already was in the plugin repo.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> There is a number of plugins that does exactly what we were doing. Logging of loopy in the WordPress plugin repository, but many times if you search for, let's see you might not even see them in the first week because yeah, they're hating, we built down the paging. WordPress Search results. So it's, I really don't, it's actually very difficult.</p>



<p>Yeah. So that actually this decision of if you a new WordPress program, I'm not sure I would have had the same level of success. Yeah. Which I'm acquiring a new plugin. It's our basically was piggybacking on the already existing user base on trying to upset the probation. If I didn't acquire the plugin, I'm not sure I would have liked to seen such a success at all. So that's why they decided reality.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Yeah. Sad reality because yeah, it's very hard to get brand new plugin to have traction now in the WordPress plugin system. So a lot of strategies I've seen, not just yours. I have been to acquire a plugin that has a lot of installations. And also you also mentioned there was something very interesting was the plugin search, which I, that's not the first time I've heard that either. Where if you happen to rank high in a particular search word, for whatever reason you obviously tend to get more attention. So it's almost. There is an algorithm in the WordPress plugin, repo for searches that you enter. That's been, it's kind of being watched by a lot of people.</p>



<p>We, you know, the secret sauce that algorithm is only held by very relatively few people. So, to obviously not gain the system but yeah, if you appear at the top, for some reason, when someone types in a good keyword, they're more than likely to check out your plugin and then they're more than likely to install it.</p>



<p>And. More than likely to see your pro integrations and then upgrade. So that makes perfect sense. I</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> okay. I have a suggestion for the WordPress plugin repo.</p>



<p>It should be really absolutely days if they go, they could add on like a filter for popular plugins, new plugins. Yeah. That would allow for a lot of now plugins to get more visibility .</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Yeah, they do have a featured plugins area on their homepage, but that featured plugins is I think cherry picked because right now it's classic editor, it's kismet jet pack and classic widgets. I mean, it's all automatic. Or similar really related stuff.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> I would love the filter to be in the section. Lets say you are looking for a SEO plugin. After tapping in the ASU, in the search post, the results you'll get less. The feedback will be, less see, on the side bar. Well, this century is what's really cool. You know, sits out, back, open up plugins that new plugins. That will be really excellent.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Well, I know some people are probably getting this information, you know, I'm putting it into their spreadsheets.</p>



<p>I know that they're there. And I would like to, as you like to see that information come out in the public. And not keep it to some selves. Maybe we'll see that maybe assumed, but I agree with you what I wanted to tell people about, because I haven't heard you give a lot of interviews. I at least maybe I missed all these wonderful interviews you've given, because this is the first time I've heard your voice.</p>



<p>I do, however, have read your, this is your first one. Oh God man. I'm so sorry. I should not have been your first podcast. I re yeah. Believe me. Anybody who talks to you in the future. We'll is much, much better. I thought you did the WP minute, but we'll get to that in a second. I do want to point people though, when they're, when they finish listening to you want to learn more about you, you did an excellent hero press essay.</p>



<p>I'm not sure when it was this thing does not have a date on it, but it looks like it was probably early 2019. I'm guessing by the comments. You did w I'm going to put it in the show notes for this podcast. It's called WordPress saved my life. And I think if people want to learn more about your history with the net and with the web and then WordPress and in particular, I mean, you directly said in the post WordPress saved my life.</p>



<p>Apparently you were able to make enough revenue to live pretty comfortably in Nigeria things. Plugin works and your premium plugin profile press and all of that. So I encourage people if you like listening to Collins, first of all, ping him and post out of slack or on Twitter and tell him he should be doing more interviews because he's a smart man, but then also read the hero press as well to get some background on it.</p>



<p>One thing I did want to ask you about though, before time runs out for both of us For your w three w three guy handle. Is that, what, how did you come up with that? This isn't the last question. I'm just curious.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> Oh, okay. Oh, and back in the days while I was trying to learn web development, actually, learned, a lot of.</p>



<p>What I know, like HTML CSS from w three schools. Yeah. So we replace the schools with guys who have been using that that's been running for so long.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. It makes sense. Then when you said w three schools, I'm like, oh yeah, of course. I remember w three schools. They're still around.</p>



<p>Yeah. But I remember early days when I was learning stuff like you, I would Google something and w three schools was notoriously, always the top. Ranks in Google and that caused some controversy in terms of they were, I don't know if they were gaming the system or whatever, but it, nevertheless, it didn't matter.</p>



<p>It didn't matter to me the information was there. And at the time it was really good. Was that in stack overflow for me were the two things that got me going way, way back. Yeah. So that's cool. The other link I do want to send you, I do want to ask you real quick about this. So we did mention, we did, I just mentioned now talked about profiles.</p>



<p>And I'm going to blink in the show notes here, and it was something that happened. Let's see. It's hasn't, it's like mid last year. All of that, and I'm not, I don't want to go into the story of the background. First of all, the link I'm going to share the WP minute article is going to ha is going to explain it.</p>



<p>It's sharing an interview with you and Matt, and we kind of covered it in post status as well, but there was some confusion in the community when you acquire this was another acquisition, correct. And then he made some changes to the. That didn't sit well with some people that didn't sit well with some people.</p>



<p>And I know that must've been a difficult it couldn't have been an easy experience to have that kind of feedback come at you especially since a lot of people probably didn't know you. I didn't know you honestly. And that's kind of the reason why I wanted. I always like to talk to people eventually that I, that are doing things in the community because you don't want to be the F you don't want to hear the first thing someone is doing, not knowing them.</p>



<p>And then you hear about this and then you don't know anything about them. So what do humans typically do? They typically think, oh, they just assume soon bad intentions. Right? And I know you didn't have any bad intentions, but now that we have a year. Almost a year has passed since then. And you've, you're continuing to update the plugin, I think.</p>



<p>Right? Yeah. Yeah. What would, what were the lessons that you would feel you took away from that experience and what could plugin developers potentially learn? What knowledge can you bestow going through that particular learning, learning experience with the profile press. Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> So I would like to put it out there that there isn't acquire the WP user avatar plugin, or basically the cost we've.</p>



<p>We genuinely, were requests for to create a feature that allows them to let start user upload custom profile data. And also for them to. You know, yeah. Basically to have a custom. user profile. So wanted to be the future into posts. Then I discovered there was a plugin that actually does that. And even more, it has incubation with job boards and stuff like that.</p>



<p>So, similar to what I did similar to map which w login VP pushed the auto and was willing to. To say the plugin on. Then I acquire the plugin. Then I revamped the plugin as I, or I rebranded the plugin as four factors. I really didn't know.</p>



<p>Oh, I did not remove any feature from the plugin. Yeah. What, in hindsight, I change most of the complaints or reports that I took. You release a simple plugin on, I needed to do really very complex plugin for that. I really apologize. I never really thought it was going to. So, you know, John's going to this situation will be that messy, but I think it's being over six months of sooner and at the heat of the moment, our, the peak of the situation we had we had the issue of the plugging drops from four point five to</p>



<p>Yeah.to eight point two, one or 1.5 on stock. Yeah. But over time, we'll start fixing many of the bugs then, you know, trying to do add back the bow. I use that time .We've gradually improve the review on about rating on the plugin from 1.5 to three. And we've continually I more on features that we get a lot of feature requests on with listened to many of those teacher requests and really to the plugin, you could check the plugin and see some of the recent reviews of cost of users.</p>



<p>So many of them, you didn't know what actual account that's done. Division-wide many users were really very upset. Yeah. For that. I really apologize.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> These things happen, especially since things move so quickly in the WordPress ecosystem and plus, so plus once something catches on Twitter, sometimes it explodes. Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> I actually wanted to revert, but I told you want to do with artistic changes, but I spoke to a couple of friends and the advice, some advice there, you know, regard to that. In the heat of the more mental in that particular, during that time we had some genuine customer messaging telling us or us seeing more features to be included like adding a payment feature on improving on the member direction and stuff like that. So we already have people that have already upgraded and loved the plugins.</p>



<p>And so trying to revert back to 10 to really, you know, make the situation even more messier. So I'd said to, you know, live it contentfully, there was another plugin or two that for the old plugin on. So people that were disappointed or that didn't love the change, this most of the, actually the name of the plugin is one user avatar.</p>



<p>We'll talk about actually using any customization or actually losing any features in some, the old plugged into that was actually the plugin actually act a light immigration deck for all disciplines. Yeah. So I think that actually is the situation.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Yeah. And I understand here, and I'll just read the quote here from the WP minute here.</p>



<p>It says to, to kind of wrap things up on this, it says, because I think your situation, it, a lot of times people feel alone in some of the challenges that they face dealing with. Plug-ins especially if you work remotely. And especially, I'll be honest with you. I mean, you being in Africa, I wouldn't be surprised if you if someone working in Africa versus someone working.</p>



<p>New York New York. There's a lot of people they're writing plugins and writing software and so forth. And maybe in certain places in another country somewhere there, there isn't many. I mean, sometimes you feel a physical presence sometimes, you know, It does add to being lonely or being left out, or at least it looks that way on Twitter or something.</p>



<p>You know, it looks like, you know, you have all these or these comments or coming in the ratings and all that on wordpress.org, but you did make a good point here. And I just wanted to repeat what you said on the WP minute Lincoln. Of course, we'll include this in the show. Moats show notes. And you said maintaining free plugins.</p>



<p>Unpaid labor. And it's very demanding. You get droves of users demanding help, and then even if you do help them, you can get criticized for doing so. And as soon as you offer a paid version to help offset the cost of development and maintenance for the free version you get criticized. And that's true.</p>



<p>That's you're only as good as your last job and you own what's the expression I'm looking for. I'll think of this in a second. Cause I'm going to have to edit this part cause like, only, oh good things do not. Oh, good things. Don't go on punished. Is sometimes an expression that I use, so you're trying to do good, but sometimes people are just nasty regardless if you give them something for free or not, but I really appreciated the.</p>



<p>The story that you left in post status slack. I really appreciated it because it, the more developers share their stories, especially in places like post-data slack, which I believe is a great environment, especially in the business area to act and to actually share those wins. Because if you don't share those wins Collins, then especially, you know, some people like if I were you and I had this thing that happened to me last year, and I had a little egg on my face.</p>



<p>There I keep using the expressions that I don't know if I was a little embarrassed if I was a little embarrassed by something that that happened to me that I did that happened to me just by chance. I'm not sure if I would be so brave to stick my head out in a community, but fortunately you, you are, and post status is a great place for that and that this win about log-in WP about making a financial.</p>



<p>Success in terms of just breaking even and show in such a short period of time is fascinating. And I can't wait to share this win with the WordPress community where we'll make a mention of it in a newsletter. And whenever people hear this podcast I, this is your first one. I'm glad it's in this positive light because these plugin developers a lot of.</p>



<p>Are still unclear about where to find their ideas and using you as inspiration, I think is a really good thing they should be doing so kudos to you. And yeah. And I'm going to say you're brave too, because you decided to talk with me and I didn't I'm you and for your first podcast, and if you knew me at all, you probably would not have picked me as your first person to talk to you on a podcast, but.</p>



<p>I would like to have you back on though, maybe sometime later this year to talk more about some of the things that Mary and I were talking about, like, the WordPress community in Africa and how people are making such strides over there, what you have seen because you're physically there firsthand to see some of these things.</p>



<p>And I think it's important for the entire global community to be, to know each other better and to know what's going on and not be focused. Other places in the world. But thank you very much for speaking with me. Is there, what are the best places for people to follow your work on your comments on the web?</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> I'm actually I'm actually active on twitter @w3guy then on Facebook or my Facebook.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> that's okay. Yeah. I'm not going to pry into your Facebook life. I really don't.</p>



<p><strong>Collins Agbonghama:</strong> And I also own also on the best non blog@wtguide.com. And you're going to share down there my blog. Yeah.</p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Yeah. You're going to share that in the, and I'll put it in the show notes as well. Great. </p>



<p><strong>David Bisset:</strong> Thank you very much for your insight. Really appreciate it. And I'm going to look forward to seeing more of your small wins.</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:"Thu, 03 Feb 2022 18:22:23 +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:94:"WPTavern: German Court Fines Website Owner for Violating the GDPR by Using Google-Hosted Fonts";s: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=129401";s: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:105:"https://wptavern.com/german-court-fines-website-owner-for-violating-the-gdpr-by-using-google-hosted-fonts";s: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:2835:"<p>In late January, a Munich regional court <a href="https://rewis.io/urteile/urteil/lhm-20-01-2022-3-o-1749320/">ruled</a> that a plaintiff was entitled to injunctive relief and damages of 100 € from an undisclosed website owner for passing on the visitor&#8217;s IP address to Google through the use of Google Fonts.</p>



<p>Since it is possible to use the fonts without connecting to Google, the court deemed this a violation of Europe&#8217;s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) because Google Fonts exposes the visitor&#8217;s IP address:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>The defendant violated the plaintiff&#8217;s right to informational self-determination by forwarding the dynamic IP address to Google when the plaintiff accessed the defendant&#8217;s website.<a>7</a></p><p>The automatic transmission of the IP address by the defendant to Google was an inadmissible encroachment on the plaintiff&#8217;s general personality rights under data protection law, since the plaintiff in this encroachment was undisputedly not in accordance with&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://rewis.io/gesetze/tmg/p/tmg-13/" target="_blank">Section 13 (2) TMG</a>&nbsp;old version, Art. 6 (1) a ) GDPR has consented.</p></blockquote>



<p><a href="https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_google_fonts_api_mean_for_the_privacy_of_my_users">Google Fonts FAQ</a> discloses the data collection under a section about user privacy and states that it caches responses to minimize requests and serve the fonts faster. It does not specify exactly what data is collected but seems to imply that the information it collects is necessary to serve the fonts: </p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>The Google Fonts API is designed to limit the collection, storage, and use of end-user data to only what is needed to serve fonts efficiently.</p></blockquote>



<p>The German court&#8217;s ruling threatens a fine of €250,000.00 for each case of infringement or, alternatively, six months imprisonment, if the site owner does not comply and continues to provide Google with IP addresses through their use of Google Fonts.</p>



<p>More than <a href="https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/Google-Font-API">50 million</a> websites use the Google Fonts API. Many site owners may not even know they are using them. </p>



<p>In consideration of those who may be subject to European courts, WordPress plugins and themes that use Google Fonts should offer a user-friendly option to self-host the fonts. If you want to continue using Google Fonts in a more privacy respecting way, there are many <a href="https://gomakethings.com/how-to-self-host-google-fonts/">tutorials</a> for <a href="https://wplift.com/how-to-host-google-fonts-locally-on-wordpress">self-hosting the fonts </a> instead.</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, 03 Feb 2022 05:34:00 +0000";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}s:32:"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";a:1:{s:7:"creator";a:1:{i:0;a:5:{s:4:"data";s:13:"Sarah Gooding";s:7:"attribs";a:0:{}s:8:"xml_base";s:0:"";s:17:"xml_base_explicit";b:0;s:8:"xml_lang";s:0:"";}}}}}i: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:141:"WPTavern: Gutenberg 12.5 Introduces Global Styles Variations, Preserves Adjacent Button Styling, and Adds Alpha Transparency to Color Pickers";s: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=129378";s: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:150:"https://wptavern.com/gutenberg-12-5-introduces-global-styles-variations-preserves-adjacent-button-styling-and-adds-alpha-transparency-to-color-pickers";s: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:8054:"<p class="has-drop-cap">Gutenberg 12.5 landed in the WordPress plugin directory earlier today. I have already been excited about at least one new enhancement, global styles variations. However, this is a beefy update with several developer and user-centric features.</p>



<p>With WordPress 5.9 now out into the wild, it looks like all hands are back on deck as we gear up for 6.0&#8217;s release in May. Last week, I covered <a href="https://wptavern.com/looking-ahead-to-wordpress-6-0-the-early-roadmap">the early roadmap</a>, and some of the items from that list are already in this latest Gutenberg update in some shape or fashion.</p>



<h2 id="global-styles-variations">Global Styles Variations</h2>




<img />



<img />
Switching between theme style variations.



<p>Theme authors can now create <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35619">multiple <code>theme.json</code> variations</a> and place them into their theme&#8217;s <code>/styles</code> folder. Then, users can switch between the various presets to something that suits them best.</p>



<p>The new feature promises to be one of the highlights of the WordPress 6.0 release, and the default Twenty Twenty-Two theme will eventually ship multiple variations of its own.</p>



<p>I dove into the feature in <a href="https://wptavern.com/global-style-variations-skins-for-themes-have-landed-in-gutenberg">more detail in a post</a> last week. Gutenberg project lead Matías Ventura <a href="https://wptavern.com/global-style-variations-skins-for-themes-have-landed-in-gutenberg#comment-413989">expanded on this</a> in the comments:</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Getting this early in the cycle so we can iron out the experience and mechanics. I expect it to be really good in a few iterations. I&#8217;m particularly looking forward to breach the theme-bundle wall, since all these variations are inherently compatible with every block theme out there!</p></blockquote>



<p>While I share Ventura&#8217;s enthusiasm about the feature, I am not sure we can break the theme barrier with 6.0. The idea here is that such variations would be interchangeable between themes. I do not see that happening, given the current state of the global styles system.</p>



<p>Most of <code>theme.json</code> is standardized, but many authors use the <code>settings.custom</code> property. This allows them to set any number of custom values, which are often referenced via the theme stylesheet.</p>



<p>There is also that little problem of <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/29568">not having a standard naming scheme</a> for features like colors and typography.</p>



<p>Because neither of these things will always be the same between any two themes, switching variations will not always be pretty. It is a lofty goal, and perhaps it is worth attempting to see what is possible. However, the concept feels like the pursuit of dropping the theme system altogether for one giant cookie-cutter default.</p>



<p>Variation-switching is best left to individual themes. Allow theme authors who build their custom systems on top of <code>theme.json</code> to manage the user experience and expectations. We should focus on building tools to help them execute their vision while not worrying about a user &#8220;installing&#8221; their JSON variation inside a wholly different project.</p>



<h2 id="new-buttons-preserve-adjacent-button-styling">New Buttons Preserve Adjacent Button Styling</h2>



<img />New Button block&#8217;s style matches the previous.



<p>WordPress makes it relatively easy to duplicate a Button, but it is hidden away under the options drop-down in the toolbar. That is a two-click action compared to simply hitting the &#8220;+&#8221; icon to insert a new Button block. Before Gutenberg 12.5, this would result in the new one getting the default style treatment. It is one of those minor annoyances until you start working with several buttons at once.</p>



<p>The latest release automatically <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/37905">duplicates the adjacent Button block&#8217;s style</a> when inserting the next one. This is a far better experience.</p>



<p>However, it does not take us as far as we need to go. <em>What happens if you decide to change the design for every Button later?</em> You have a lot of work ahead of you modifying each one. There is an open ticket to <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/38267">copy one style to all others</a> in the Buttons block group.</p>



<h2 id="users-can-add-transparent-colors">Users Can Add Transparent Colors</h2>



<img />Transparent color lets background show through.



<p>Users can finally <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/37731">control the alpha transparency</a> of custom colors at the block level. The feature works for text, background, link, and border color options. This enhancement <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/18095">closes a ticket</a> first opened in October 2019.</p>



<p>There are some color pickers where it is not enabled. This includes the custom palette section in the global styles panel and icon-related colors for the Social Links block. The same is true for the Cover block overlay color, but it has a separate opacity control altogether.</p>



<h2 id="post-featured-image-size-option">Post Featured Image Size Option</h2>



<img />Cropped and equal-sized featured images in a Query Loop block.



<p>Gutenberg 12.5 <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/38044">introduces a new option</a> that allows setting the Post Featured Image block to use a WordPress or theme-defined image size. It seems like a trivial change, but it is a hop forward for block theming.</p>



<p>Theme authors have been filtering the <code>post_thumbnail_size</code> hook to handle this. However, that method gets complicated when dealing with multiple post queries with varying image sizes.</p>



<p>I have only been <a href="https://wptavern.com/fse-outreach-round-2-building-a-custom-homepage-with-gutenbergs-site-editor">mentioning this for going on a year</a>. I have written about it over and over and over, trying to get anyone to listen. If we want more designers hopping aboard the block-based theme development train, they need control over featured images. Far too many layouts rely on specific sizing to look their best.</p>



<p><em>Now, if we could only use the featured image inside of Cover and Media &amp; Text blocks…</em></p>



<h2 id="copy-all-site-editor-content">Copy All Site Editor Content</h2>



<img />Copying all content from the site editor.



<p><em>Today I learned</em> that there is a &#8220;Copy all content&#8221; button in the post editor&#8217;s options menu. I do not know how long it has been there, but that is kind of neat. I have been needlessly trying to select all content &#8212; sometimes with a measure of success &#8212; via the content canvas. Even those of us who spend nearly every waking hour in the editor can learn a new trick once in a while.</p>



<p>That copy-content option has now been <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/37781">added to the site editor</a> as part of an initiative to bring feature <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/21245">parity between the two editors</a>.</p>



<h2 id="code-view-in-the-site-editor">Code View in the Site Editor</h2>



<img />Opening the code editor.



<p>Continuing with feature parity between the post and site editors, users can now <a href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/37765">switch to the code view</a> in the site editor.</p>



<p>Technically, this is called the &#8220;code editor,&#8221; but <em>there be dragons</em> ahead for anyone who attempts to edit anything. At least if they expect anything other than the dreaded &#8220;this block contains unexpected or invalid content&#8221; message. I would sail into calmer waters and avoid it for anything other than reading or copying.</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, 03 Feb 2022 01:24:19 +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: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:58:"Post Status: This Week at WordPress.org (January 31, 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:61:"https://poststatus.com/?p=93112&preview=true&preview_id=93112";s: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:60:"https://poststatus.com/this-week-in-wporg-january-24-2022-2/";s: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:9497:"<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://make.wordpress.org/core/2022/01/26/preliminary-roadmap-for-6-0/">Preliminary Roadmap for WordPress 6.0</a> (Matias Ventura)</li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/project/2022/01/21/big-picture-goals-2022/">Big Picture Goals for 2022</a> (Josepha Haden Chomphosy)</li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/01/21/our-three-big-ideas-for-2022/">Our Three Big Ideas for 2022</a> (Josepha Haden Chomphosy)</li><li><a href="https://wordpress.org/themes/twentytwentytwo/">Twenty Twenty Two</a> (New Core Theme)</li></ul>



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



<div class="wp-block-spacer"></div>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/accessibility/2022/01/08/accessibility-teams-goals-for-wordpress-6-0-and-beyond/">The Accessibility Team’s Goals for WordPress 6.0 and Beyond</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/02/02/community-team-goals-2022-open-discussion-sessions/">Community Team Goals 2022: Open Discussion Sessions</a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/01/10/proposal-mandatory-safety-measures-for-in-person-wordpress-events-in-2022/"></a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/community/2022/01/24/updated-guidelines-for-in-person-wordcamps-and-meetups-2022/">Updated Guidelines for In-Person WordCamps and Meetups in 2022</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/hosting/2022/01/10/wordpress-5-9-and-php-8-0-8-1/">WordPress 5.9 and PHP 8.0-8.1</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2021/12/01/help-contribute-to-social-media-materials-for-5-9-release/">Help contribute to social media materials for the 5.9 release</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2022/01/25/social-media-drafting-update-for-5-9/">Social media drafting update for 5.9</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/meta/2022/01/13/wordpress-photo-directory-call-for-volunteers/">WordPress Photo Directory: Call for Volunteers</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/updates/2022/02/01/plugin-review-team-31-january-2022/">Plugin Review Team: 31 January 2022</a></li></ul>



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



<ul><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/01/24/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-ios-19-1/">Call for Testing: WordPress for iOS 19.1</a></li><li><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/mobile/2022/01/27/call-for-testing-wordpress-for-android-19-1/">Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 19.1</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/2022/02/02/fse-program-exploration-all-things-media/">FSE Program Exploration: All Things Media</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/themes/2021/12/10/gutenberg-themes-week-of-dec-5/"></a><a href="https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2022/01/31/gutenberg-themes-week-of-january-24th-2022/">Gutenberg + Themes: Week of January 24th, 2022</a></li></ul>
