WordPress Neuigkeiten

  • WP Briefing: Episode 75: WordCamp Asia 2024 Unwrapped (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/episode-75-wordcamp-asia-2024-unwrapped/) March 18, 2024 Brett McSherry

    WordCamp Asia 2024 was a dynamic three-day celebration of collaboration, diversity, and innovation in the WordPress project. This week, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shares her insights and experiences from the event, which featured one of the largest Contributor Days in the region, a variety of speakers, engaging panel discussions, and workshops. Josepha offers her thoughts on the latest topics being discussed within the community and forming the future of WordPress.

    Credits

    Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/chanthaboune/)
    Editor: Dustin Hartzler (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dustinhartzler/)
    Logo: Javier Arce (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/javiarce/)
    Production: Brett McSherry (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/bjmcsherry/)
    Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

    Show Notes

    • WordCamp Asia 2024 (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/)
      • Contributor Day (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/contributor-day/)
      • WordCamp Asia Playlist (https://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/playlist?list=PL1pJFUVKQ7ETpYuALlCQPikuKEuihFsvU)
    • Small List of Big Things
      • WordPress 6.5 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/category/releases/) is on target for release on March 26, 2024.
      • Get involved with WordPress events:
        • Find events near you on events.WordPress.org (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/) and WordCamp Central (https://central NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/)
        • Learn more about organizing your own local event (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/organize-an-event/)
      • Proposal: Non-editable Footer for all Event Website Pages (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/2024/03/06/proposal-non-editable-footer-for-all-event-website-pages/)
    • Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org (wpbriefing null@null WordPress NULL.org).

    Transcript

    [00:00:00] Josepha: 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’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. 

    [00:00:29] (Intro music) 

    [00:00:40] Josepha: I have returned from WordCamp Asia and struggled my way through some truly aggressive jet lag, so that means it’s time for a little WordCamp wrap-up. I spoke with a couple hundred people at the event, and I came away with a few topics that seemed to be on everyone’s minds. Those topics are: making business in WordPress, the business of making WordPress, and how to communicate both sides a little better.

    [00:01:04] Josepha: So first, let’s start with making business in WordPress. This comes up at every event, and that honestly just makes sense. WordPress is a tool that people use to power their businesses across our global economy, and sometimes the businesses are closely related to WordPress itself. They are creating custom themes or plugins, building WordPress powered commerce sites for clients, or offering any number of agency services. But there are also businesses that are a little less close: restaurants, museums, local governments, schools. But it was clear that they all rely on the software just as much as the other.

    So, it was nice to see some sessions that focused specifically on business matters in WordPress. And I heard so many people tell me about a conversation they had had earlier in the day with someone who helped them figure out their pricing or advised them on early errors they made in their business journey and generally helped them feel a little less lost.

    I always love seeing this. Hearing how people are accomplishing their goals because of connections they made at one of our events, it’s enough to keep me coming back for years.

    [00:02:10] Josepha: The next thing that came up a lot was the business of making WordPress. I don’t know if that came up a lot because of the sorts of conversations that people are willing to bring to me these days or because there was overwhelming interest in knowing how we keep all these trains on their tracks. But either way, it was refreshing to be able to have so many conversations about the invisible work that goes into a project like this. There was a Contributor Day that hosted over 600 people, if I recall correctly, which makes it the largest Contributor Day in the area to date. 35 percent of those people had never attended a Contributor Day before, so there were a lot of people who were discovering the WordPress community for the first time.

    And for folks who’ve been here for a long time, it’s so easy for us to forget how much there is to learn at first. Even if you happen to show up with a skill set that fits a contributor team’s needs exactly, you still have to learn where we collaborate, how distributed contribution works, and all these rules and guidelines about open source freedoms and copyleft.

    [00:03:10] Josepha: And then also you have to come to terms with the fact that we define and design all of our spaces and programs with belonging in mind. I mean, for every one question that you get answered, there are going to be six new ones that you didn’t know you had yet. So I came away from a lot of these conversations with the reminder that it’s important in so many ways for us to talk about the work that we do, even when it’s boring, even when we think it doesn’t really matter, because a lot of people have questions about how this works, how it runs, and how they can be part of making sure that it’s around for the long-term.

    And the final thing that came up all over the place last week was how to communicate these things better. It’s easy to forget that folks who listen to this podcast don’t actually make up like a hundred percent of the people using WordPress; that’s on me. So just cause I’ve said here that, you know, enterprise is our next big space for biz dev or that, our primary growth markets are APAC, or that events are our best tool for brand expression.

    [00:04:08] Josepha: Like, just because I said it doesn’t mean that everyone heard it. And we absolutely have to get those messages to more people, more frequently, and with more certainty. You’ll hear often from WordPress pundits that rising tides lift all boats, and the bigger the pie, the more the slices. We believe fully in the spirit of coopetition here, that we are all better together.

    But I can’t shake the feeling that we’re mostly just talking to ourselves about it. It’s hard to get outside our own little bubble, but I believe completely that doing so is the best thing for our project in the long term. Not only so that we can continue to grow and provide access to the opportunities we know we offer but also so that we can do more to dignify our profession.

    WordPress developers are not taken seriously, and yet you all are some of the smartest and most compassionate people I’ve ever met in my career. And I’d like to see how we can fix that perception together. And so that’s it. Those are the big, big, giant, old topics that came up a lot in conversation last week.

    [00:05:14] Josepha: Don’t forget that you can catch up on all the sessions via the live stream, or if you are feeling inspired to contribute, reach out to the community team and see what sorts of meetup events you can host. 

    [00:05:24] (Music interlude) 

    [00:05:32] Josepha: Which brings us now to our small list of big things. I have two big things and one slightly less big thing, but they’re all fairly big.

    So, the first thing on the list is that the latest version of WordPress, WordPress 6.5, is on target for release on March 26th. That’s, I think, a couple weeks from now. So keep an eye out for that. In the event, I mean, we have auto-updates everywhere, and probably you are on a WordPress-specific host and, so you won’t necessarily need to do anything. But if you have any desire or concerns about seeing the software a little bit ahead of time, you can always go and download the beta, give it a quick test or the release candidate, give that a quick test. See if there’s anything that’s not functioning as you expected it to function, and let us know if it’s not. But yeah, there are auto-updates. You don’t have to go out and proactively do anything if you don’t want to, that’s just in case you do want to. That’s coming up March 26th. 

    [00:06:27] Josepha: The next thing is that I want to give everybody a general call-in for event contribution. So, WordPress events is where I entered the community. It is one of the most affirming and life-changing types of contribution I’ve ever done because you get to see a bunch of people succeed in their own goals because of something that you were able to tell them. It’s like teaching, but with people who elected to be there. So we have a lot of opportunities, for contribution by volunteering at events, either as volunteering at the event itself or to volunteer to organize it. We have small-scale, easy-to-do meetups, but we also have slightly larger WordCamps that can be done. If you have any hope for doing that or are just kind of interested. I’ll leave a link for you in the show notes. 

    [00:07:19] Josepha: And then the final thing on here is that we actually have a pretty substantial proposal out at the moment. It’s for non-editable footers on all event website pages. This might not sound interesting to you, but it actually is kind of interesting. So, it’s been proposed to add a non-editable footer to all of the event website pages moving forward. So that’s everything that would be displayed on a WordCamp or on any of the new formatted event sites that we have. This proposal intends to meet two goals. One, it fills any legal requirements a site or country might have about displaying the privacy policy and other items. And two, it brings visibility to the new events.WordPress.org website, where a community member can find more events in their area. The last day to respond to that proposal is March 20th, which I think is two days from now. I think it’s on Wednesday and this is airing on Monday. So, I’ll have a link to that in the show notes as well in case you have any thoughts about it.

    [00:08:15] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. And if you like what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you ended up with questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. 

    [00:08:43] (Music outro) 

  • WordPress 6.5 Release Candidate 2 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordpress-6-5-release-candidate-2/) March 12, 2024 Lauren Stein

    The second release candidate (RC2) for WordPress 6.5 is ready! 

    This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC2 on a test server and site.

    While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.5 is the best it can be.

    You can test WordPress 6.5 RC2 in four ways:

    PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester (https://wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/) plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
    Direct DownloadDownload the RC2 version (zip) (https://wordpress NULL.org/wordpress-6 NULL.5-RC2 NULL.zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
    Command LineUse the following WP-CLI (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cli/) command:
    wp core update --version=6.5-RC2
    WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 RC2 WordPress Playground instance (https://playground NULL.wordpress NULL.net/#%7B%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20%7B%20%22php%22:%20%228 NULL.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20%7D,%20%22features%22:%20%7B%20%22networking%22:%20true%20%7D,%20%22steps%22:%20[%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data NULL.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata NULL.wordpress NULL.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20%7D,%20%22options%22:%20%7B%20%22activate%22:%20false%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D%20]%20%7D) (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.

    The current target for the WordPress 6.5 release is March 26, 2024. That’s a mere two weeks away! Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/6-5/), and check the Make WordPress Core blog (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/) for 6.5-related posts (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/tag/6-5/) in the coming weeks for further details.

    What to expect in WordPress 6.5 RC2

    Thanks to the many contributors testing up to this point, this release includes approximately 20 bug fixes for the Editor and 30+ tickets for WordPress Core (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=03%2F05%2F2024 NULL. NULL.03%2F12%2F2024&resolution=fixed&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=summary&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id). For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC1, you can browse the following links: 

    • GitHub commits for 6.5 (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6 NULL.5?since=2024-03-05&until=2024-03-12) since March 5
    • Closed Trac tickets (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=03%2F05%2F2024 NULL. NULL.03%2F12%2F2024&resolution=fixed&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=summary&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id) since March 5

    Update on content overrides for synced patterns

    As synced patterns evolve and improve, every enhancement must continue to provide the best experience possible. With this in mind, WordPress 6.5 will not include the ability to override content in synced patterns (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/03/07/unblocking-wp6-5-font-library-and-synced-pattern-overrides/). This allows more time for feedback and testing to ensure it can really shine. Expect this feature to debut in the next major release!

    Contribute to this release

    WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

    Get involved in testing

    Testing for issues is critical to ensuring WordPress is performant and stable. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/28/help-test-wordpress-beta-3/) will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/15/help-test-wordpress-6-5-beta-1) for more details on getting set up.

    If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/) of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/newticket) if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/tickets/major).

    Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/) and join the #core-test channel (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/messages/core-test/) on Making WordPress Slack (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/).

    Search for vulnerabilities

    From now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.5 (scheduled for March 19), the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/security/2024/02/12/welcoming-2024-with-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page (https://hackerone NULL.com/wordpress) and in the security white paper (https://wordpress NULL.org/about/security/).

    Update your theme or plugin

    For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users. 

    Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.5 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file (https://developer NULL.wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/) to 6.5.

    If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/).

    Help translate WordPress

    Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages (https://translate NULL.wordpress NULL.org/projects/wp/dev/).

    Release the haiku

    RC2, a bridge,
    From development to launch,
    One more step forward.
    submitted by @huzaifaalmesbah (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/huzaifaalmesbah/)

    Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dansoschin/), @get_dave (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/get_dave/), and @audrasjb (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/audrasjb/).

  • Highlights from WordCamp Asia 2024 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/highlights-from-wordcamp-asia-2024/) March 9, 2024 Reyes Martínez

    Over 1,300 attendees gathered at the Taipei International Convention Center in Taiwan for WordCamp Asia 2024 (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/). This three-day event emerged as a vibrant celebration showcasing the collaboration, diversity, and innovation that drive the world’s most popular web platform.

    The Asian WordPress flagship event started with a dedicated Contributor Day, followed by two days of engaging talks, panels, hands-on workshops, and networking. Notable guests, including WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/matt/) and Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/chanthaboune/), joined the diverse lineup of speakers (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speakers/). Popular topics featured cutting-edge web technologies and trends, use cases, open source dynamics, and more. WordPress enthusiasts seized the opportunity to gain insights from international and local industry experts and to learn about the project’s future.

    Converting walled gardens into community gardens

    On March 8, Josepha Haden Chomphosy took the stage (https://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/live/UK7FnaEeTrU?si=0H6eEEijj4tDWm_t&t=30830) for an insightful journey comparing and contrasting the “walled” and “community” gardens in software ecosystems, drawing an analogy between closed and open source platforms. After exploring both concepts, she posed an important question to the audience.

    What would it take for someone to move from a walled garden to a community garden?

    Open source software, symbolized by community gardens, represents freedom from copyright restrictions and usage limitations. Unlike proprietary software (described as walled gardens), the core value lies in long-term empowerment, giving people control and ownership of their digital presence.

    Acknowledging the longstanding values held by WordPress and its open source community for two decades, Josepha focused on the importance of caring for foundations that make us strong, managing what distracts us, and nurturing growth by embracing new opportunities. She celebrated the strengths of the WordPress community and how its shared ethos furthers a thriving ecosystem.

    Slide from Josepha Haden Chomphosy's presentation showing colorful flowers on a blue background and the quote, "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow" by Audrey Hepburn.

    Quoting artist and activist Audrey Hepburn, Josepha expressed that, much like a community garden, the power of contributions—whether through time, knowledge, or product use— sustains and maintains shared spaces like WordPress.

    In the Q&A portion (https://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/live/UK7FnaEeTrU?si=pjg0nkwla-d7mP69&t=32274) of her presentation, Josepha addressed inquiries about community involvement and contributions. Highlighted resources included the WordPress job board (https://jobs NULL.wordpress NULL.net/) for opportunities within the ecosystem and the Data Liberation (https://wordpress NULL.org/data-liberation/) project, emphasizing its role in fostering a more open web and helping the transition out of proprietary platforms.

    Q&A with Matt Mullenweg

    WordCamp Asia concluded with a live audience Q&A session featuring WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg. Attendees gained insights into the future of WordPress, including ongoing projects like Data Liberation (https://wordpress NULL.org/data-liberation/), community inclusion initiatives (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/handbook/wordcamp-organizer/first-steps/inclusive-and-welcoming-events/community-inclusion-initiatives/), artificial intelligence (AI), and more.

    The atmosphere was filled with excitement when Matt revealed that this year’s State of the Word will take place in Tokyo, Japan, on December 16, 2024.

    Additional questions from this session will be addressed in an upcoming post on the Make WordPress Project blog (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/project/).

    Stay connected

    WordPress events (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/) enable technologists, open source enthusiasts, and community members around the globe to meet, share ideas, and collaborate to drive WordPress and the open web forward.

    Don’t forget to mark your calendars for WordCamp Europe (https://europe NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/) (Torino, Italy), WordCamp US (https://us NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/) (Portland, Oregon, United States), and next year’s WordCamp Asia (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2025/) in Manila, Philippines!

    Thank you to the WordCamp Asia (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/) organizers, volunteers, and sponsors who made this event possible, and to @angelasjin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/angelasjin/), @dansoschin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dansoschin/), @eidolonnight (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/eidolonnight/), @bjmcsherry (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/bjmcsherry/) for collaborating on this post.

  • The Month in WordPress – February 2024 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/the-month-in-wordpress-february-2024/) March 6, 2024 Reyes Martínez

    February saw significant progress towards the upcoming WordPress 6.5 release and final preparations for WordCamp Asia. The results of the annual WordPress survey were released, and discussions began on the next steps for the Data Liberation project. Read on for the latest happenings in the WordPress space.

    Get ready for WordCamp Asia

    The stage is ready for the first WordPress flagship event of the year in Taipei, Taiwan. WordCamp Asia 2024 will kick off on March 7, promising three days of learning, networking, and inspiration.

    This year’s schedule (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/schedule/) features an extensive lineup of speakers, including guests Josepha Haden Chomphosy (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speaker/josepha-haden-chomphosy/), Ben Thompson (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speaker/ben-thompson/), Noel Tock (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speaker/noel-tock/), and JU-CHUN KO (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speaker/ju-chun-ko/). To conclude the summit, attendees can engage with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speaker/matt-mullenweg/) in a Q&A session. Find out how to submit your questions (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordcamp-asia-2024-qa-with-matt-mullenweg/).

    Can’t make it to Taipei? Watch the event live stream on the WordPress YouTube channel (https://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/wordpress).

    https://wordpress.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/ (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/)

    Countdown to WordPress 6.5

    WordPress 6.5 is on track for its much-anticipated release on March 26. Following last month’s beta releases, the first release candidate (RC1) (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordpress-6-5-release-candidate-1/) is now available for testing—marking another milestone in the development cycle.

    This major release will add finesse and fine-tuning to how you control your site-building experience, with lots to explore specifically for developers. Get a detailed overview of highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-1/).

    Stay on top of the latest updates in WordPress development with February’s edition of What’s New for Developers? (https://developer NULL.wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/10/whats-new-for-developers-february-2024/)

    New in the Gutenberg plugin

    Two new versions of Gutenberg shipped in February:

    • Gutenberg 17.7 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/14/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-7-14th-february/) introduced multiple performance improvements, refinements to the link control UI, and shadow support for more blocks, among other notable highlights.
    • Gutenberg 17.8 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/28/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-8-28-february/) focused on stability updates. New features included a grid layout variation for the Group block, bulk export of patterns, and the ability to browse and try alternative templates from the editor’s sidebar.
    Decorative blue background with text "Core Editor Improvement: Power in the Details." (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/10/core-editor-improvement-power-in-the-details/)

    Beyond major features, many small yet mighty updates are coming in WordPress 6.5 that will make a big difference in your WordPress experience. Read more » (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/10/core-editor-improvement-power-in-the-details/)

    Team updates

    • Results of the 2023 annual WordPress survey (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/2023-annual-survey-results-and-next-steps/) were announced last month.
    • An update on the Data Liberation project (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/19/data-liberation-next-steps/) informs the next steps of this initiative and how to contribute to current conversations.
    • The Community team shared key findings from the 2023 WordPress meetup survey (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/2024/02/09/2023-wordpress-meetup-survey-key-findings/).
    • Meet the new cohort (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/2024/02/16/contributor-mentorship-program-second-cohort-2024-q1/) of the Contributor Mentorship Program.
    • The Photos team posted recommendations for improving alternative texts (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/photos/2024/02/02/alt-text-for-wordpress-photos/) when submitting images to the Photo Directory.
    • Following discussions on the evolution of the Outreach Program, a new outreach group (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/27/connect-with-the-github-outreach-group-to-request-feedback-or-further-testing/) has been created on GitHub. This group will provide expertise and feedback to those seeking additional testing or perspectives on a new feature or solution.
    • Core team members introduced the WordPress Core Trac Sustainability Focus (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/22/introducing-the-wordpress-core-trac-sustainability-focus/), a part of the Sustainability team’s effort to enhance the sustainability of the WordPress codebase.
    • A new release of WP-CLI is now available (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cli/2024/02/08/wp-cli-v2-10-0-release-notes/).
    • Learn WordPress is regularly updated with new tutorials, online workshops, and more learning resources. Check out what’s new (https://learn NULL.wordpress NULL.org/learn-wordpress-newsletter-march-2024/).
    • The latest edition of People of WordPress features Sunita Rai (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/people-of-wordpress-sunita-rai/), a content marketer and volunteer translator from Nepal.
    https://wordpress.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/ (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/)

    Requests for feedback and testing

    • Your help testing WordPress 6.5 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordpress-6-5-release-candidate-1/) is key to ensuring everything in this release is the best it can be. New to testing? Read this post (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/15/help-test-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) for more details on getting set up.
    • The Training team is discussing how to bring accessibility-first approaches (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/training/2024/02/20/discussion-bringing-accessibility-first-approaches-into-content-development/) into their content creation and processes. Feedback is open until March 9.
    • Version 24.3 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/updates/2024/02/27/mobile-team-update-february-26th-2/) of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is ready for testing.

    WordPress events

    • WordCamp Europe 2024 is looking for photographers (https://europe NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/call-for-photographers-is-now-open/).
    • The WordPress Kerala Photo Festival wrapped up with great success. The event received over 1,500 images (https://wordpress NULL.org/photos/t/wpkeralaphotos/) from 163 participants, contributing to the Photo Directory passing the 15,000 photo milestone. Winners were announced in this post (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/kerala/2024/photo-festival/winners-of-the-kerala-wordpress-photo-festival/).
    • Don’t miss these other WordPress events happening soon:
      • 🇨🇷 Women WordPress Day (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/sanjose/2024/women-wordpress-day/), Costa Rica, on March 8
      • 🇨🇭 Switzerland Community Day (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/switzerland/2024/community-day/) on March 23
      • 🇪🇸 WordCamp Torrelodones (https://torrelodones NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/), Spain, on March 23-24
    • Find out more local events or apply to organize one on the Events page (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/).

    Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/month-in-wordpress-submissions/) to let us know.

    Subscribe to WordPress News

    Join other subscribers and receive WordPress news directly in your inbox.

    Subscribe (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/?post_type=post&p=17030)

  • WordPress 6.5 Release Candidate 1 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordpress-6-5-release-candidate-1/) March 5, 2024 Lauren Stein

    The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.5 is ready for download and testing!

    This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC1 on a test server and site.

    Reaching this phase of the release cycle is an important milestone. While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.5 is the best it can be.

    You can test WordPress 6.5 RC1 in four ways:

    PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester (https://wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/) plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
    Direct DownloadDownload the RC1 version (zip) (https://wordpress NULL.org/wordpress-6 NULL.5-RC1 NULL.zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
    Command LineUse the following WP-CLI (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cli/) command:
    wp core update --version=6.5-RC1
    WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 RC1 WordPress Playground instance (https://playground NULL.wordpress NULL.net/#%7B%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20%7B%20%22php%22:%20%228 NULL.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20%7D,%20%22features%22:%20%7B%20%22networking%22:%20true%20%7D,%20%22steps%22:%20[%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data NULL.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata NULL.wordpress NULL.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20%7D,%20%22options%22:%20%7B%20%22activate%22:%20false%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D%20]%20%7D) (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.

    The current target for the WordPress 6.5 release is March 26, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/6-5/), and check the Make WordPress Core blog (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/) for 6.5-related posts (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/tag/6-5/) in the coming weeks for further details.

    What’s in WordPress 6.5 RC1?

    Thanks to the many contributors testing up to this point, this release includes more than 20 bug fixes for the Editor and more than 40 tickets for WordPress Core (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F27%2F2024 NULL. NULL.03%2F05%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id).

    Get a recap of WordPress 6.5’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-1/). For more technical information related to issues addressed since Beta 3, you can browse the following links:

    • GitHub commits for 6.5 (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6 NULL.5?since=2024-02-27&until=2024-03-05) since February 27
    • Closed Trac tickets (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F27%2F2024 NULL. NULL.03%2F05%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id) since February 27

    Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? These recent posts cover some of the latest updates:

    • Introducing Plugin Dependencies in WordPress 6.5 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/03/05/introducing-plugin-dependencies-in-wordpress-6-5/)
    • Unification of the Site and Post Editors in 6.5 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/03/05/unification-of-the-site-and-post-editors-in-6-5/)
    • Updates to the HTML API in 6.5 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/03/04/updates-to-the-html-api-in-6-5/)
    • Interactivity API in 6.5 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/03/04/interactivity-api-dev-note/)
    • I18N Improvements in 6.5 (Performant Translations) (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/27/i18n-improvements-6-5-performant-translations/)
    • WordPress 6.5 adds AVIF support (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/23/wordpress-6-5-adds-avif-support/)
    • Core Editor Improvement: Power in the Details (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/10/core-editor-improvement-power-in-the-details/)
    • Core Editor Improvement: Robust Revisions in the Site Editor (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/01/22/core-editor-improvement-robust-revisions-in-the-site-editor/)
    • All 6.5-related developer notes (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/tag/dev-notes-6-5/)

    How you can contribute

    WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

    Get involved in testing

    Testing for issues is critical to ensuring WordPress is performant and stable. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/28/help-test-wordpress-beta-3/) will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/15/help-test-wordpress-6-5-beta-1) for more details on getting set up.

    If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/) of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/newticket) if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/tickets/major).

    Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/) and join the #core-test channel (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/messages/core-test/) on Making WordPress Slack (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/).

    Search for vulnerabilities

    From now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.5 (scheduled for March 19), the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/security/2024/02/12/welcoming-2024-with-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page (https://hackerone NULL.com/wordpress) and in the security white paper (https://wordpress NULL.org/about/security/).

    Update your theme or plugin

    For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users. 

    Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.5 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file (https://developer NULL.wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/) to 6.5.

    If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/).

    Help translate WordPress

    Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages (https://translate NULL.wordpress NULL.org/projects/wp/dev/). This release milestone (RC1) also marks the hard string freeze (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/polyglots/handbook/glossary/#hard-freeze) point of the 6.5 release cycle.

    Release the haiku

    What’s this? RC1?
    Three weeks left until it’s done.
    Come and test. It’s fun!

    Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dansoschin/), @courane01 (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/courane01/), @hellosatya (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/hellosatya/), @huzaifaalmesbah (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/huzaifaalmesbah/)

  • WordCamp Asia 2024: Q&A with Matt Mullenweg (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordcamp-asia-2024-qa-with-matt-mullenweg/) March 4, 2024 Dan Soschin
    WordCamp Asia 2024

    WordCamp Asia 2024 is just a few days away—starting on March 7 in Taipei, Taiwan. This unique three-day summit will feature a distinguished lineup of speakers, numerous networking opportunities, and a closing Q&A experience with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The live Q&A session will be streamed for WordPress enthusiasts worldwide, beginning at 3:30 p.m. Taipei Standard Time (7:30 a.m. UTC) on Saturday, March 9, 2024.

    Watch the event live stream on the WordPress YouTube channel (https://youtube NULL.com/wordpress) or visit the event website (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/) for more details.

    What: Q&A Session with Matt Mullenweg
    When: March 9, 2024 at 7:30 a.m. UTC (Start of live stream)
    Where: Taipei International Convention Center
    (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/location/)
    Streaming: Watch the live stream (https://youtube NULL.com/wordpress) on the WordPress YouTube channel.

    Have a question for Matt?

    If you want to participate, please submit your question via Slido from March 7 until about 6:00 a.m. UTC on Friday, March 8. Slido is now closed.

    Given the expected volume of submitted questions, only some will be answered live, while others will be covered in a follow-up post published after the event on make.wordpress.org/project (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/project).

    See you in-person and online on March 7!

    谢谢!


    Thank you to @rmartinezduque (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/rmartinezduque/), @eidolonnight (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/eidolonnight/), @cbringmann (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cbringmann/), and @bjmcsherry (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/bjmcsherry/) for reviewing this post.

  • WP Briefing: Episode 74: Kickstart (Or Level-Up) Your Contributor Journey (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/episode-74-kickstart-or-level-up-your-contributor-journey/) March 4, 2024 Brett McSherry

    Explore the impact you can make on WordPress without coding in this WordPress Briefing episode hosted by Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy. She’ll guide you through diverse non-coding contributions suitable for all skill levels, including content translation, photo submissions, event organization, and software testing. Listen and discover how you can enhance the WordPress community in ways that align with your interests and expertise.

    Credits

    Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/chanthaboune/)
    Editor: Dustin Hartzler (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dustinhartzler/)
    Logo: Javier Arce (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/javiarce/)
    Production: Brett McSherry (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/bjmcsherry/), Chloé Bringmann (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cbringmann/)
    Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

    Show Notes

    • WordCamp Asia 2024 (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/)
      • Contributor Day (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/contributor-day/)
    • WordPress Photo Directory (https://wordpress NULL.org/photos/)
    • Polyglots (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/polyglots/)
    • WordPress Support Forums (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forums/)
    • Upcoming WordPress Events (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/)
    • Make WordPress Testing (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/)
    • Learn WordPress (https://learn NULL.wordpress NULL.org/)
    • Small List of Big Things
      • 2023 Annual Survey Results and Next Steps (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/2023-annual-survey-results-and-next-steps/) 
      • Gather Press Pilot Program (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/2024/01/22/proposal-pilot-program-to-test-gatherpress-on-the-wordpress-org-network-as-a-meetup-alternative/) 

    Transcripts

    [00:00:00] Josepha: 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’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. 

    [00:00:29] (Intro music) 

    [00:00:40] Josepha: At the end of this week, WordCamp Asia is happening. It’s one of our largest events dedicated to WordPress, and it will cover a wide range of topics. From advanced concepts like running thriving businesses to more beginner things like building your first theme, there is bound to be something for you at this event.

    For folks who have the opportunity to attend in person, you might also be going to your first-ever Contributor Day. Now, as much as I want there to be something for everyone there, I recognize that it’s a little more frenetic than your average WordPress event. It’s not any less welcoming than the event that has like a schedule and, tracks, and rooms.

    [00:01:19] Josepha: But in my experience of any group of open source contributors, they get really excited when they are tackling problems together. And that’s most of what happens at a Contributor Day. It can make it a little difficult to see how you can join in. But never fear; the crew at the WordPress Briefing has you covered. We’ve got a couple of ways you can contribute immediately, no code required, and a handful of good next steps when you’re feeling comfortable and ready to level up.

    For total beginners, so you’ve got a WordPress site, or you know, you’re about to launch one. And you’re here to learn and meet people and hopefully find someone who answers the questions you feel too shy to mention in public.

    So these two ways of contribution are for you. First, you can contribute photos. WordPress has a photo directory for openly licensed photos, which are included in Openverse searches. Users can submit photographs to be used by folks all over the world. There are some basic guidelines, such as no faces or identifying characteristics. It can’t be overly edited or processed, but even photos taken on a smartphone are accepted. Because we understand that the best camera is the one you have on you.

    [00:02:30] Josepha: You can also contribute translations. If you speak a language other than English, you can visit translate.WordPress.org and help translate not only the WordPress software but also plugins, themes, and other parts of the WordPress project into your native language. Since more than half of all WordPress installations are in non-English languages, adding or improving translations is really impactful. We are actually at WordCamp Asia trialing a new self-serve translation day process. So that’s a great place to have a double impact.

    [00:03:03] Josepha: So those are your two completely code-free ways that you can contribute, completely beginner friendly ways to contribute at Contributor Day coming up later this week. And then for your next steps, so say that you’ve had your site for a while, you are an absolute expert in the admin, you’ve had to answer a few tough questions for yourself, you’ve watched a lot of tutorials, and so now you’re thinking of ways you can share that knowledge.

    [00:03:29] Josepha: Here are a few ways that you can exercise your new knowledge and really solidify it in your brain.

    Firstly, you can contribute help. Supporting other WordPress users is a great way to give back to WordPress. This can involve answering questions, providing guidance, or even providing the right resources to users. You can check out the WordPress support forums for more information, and they actually have a dedicated support team as well that works toward making sure that WordPress users have answers to the questions they are asking. You can head over to WordPress.org/support/forums and just pick an appropriate area for you, something that you are currently an expert in, and start answering questions. Start contributing.

    [00:04:10] Josepha: Second thing you can do is you can contribute patterns. So WordPress has a dedicated Patterns directory, which stores a list of Block patterns. So custom designs that were created using blocks in Gutenberg that then can be used across any WordPress site, anyone’s WordPress site. You can submit those patterns, any pattern that you built, to the directory, and then they can be used by people all around the world. Basically, like anything with WordPress, if you put it in there, it can be used by anyone all around the world. 

    The third thing is that you can contribute events. This is one of my favorite ways to contribute. Organizing in person events to an extent has no code requirement to it, but also it does kind of require that you have a good understanding of your local community and have a willingness to get out there and build your network. 

    WordPress is where it is today thanks to its excellent community and all the lovely in-person events that happen all over the world. They bring our community together, and anyone can contribute by helping to organize just a small gathering or support an in-person event.

    [00:05:13] Josepha: The fourth way that you can level up your contributions is to contribute by breaking things. I know that sounds weird, but testing the software to see where it breaks is actually a really valuable contribution. It’s as easy as downloading the WordPress beta tester plugin and the test reports plugin to a WordPress installation, Preferably a testing one, not one that’s currently publicly in use. But you can test out the newest version of WordPress before the release and provide useful feedback to the development team. 

    And the fifth way that you can level up your contribution is to contribute learning. Not that you are learning as a contribution, but what one person can learn through a tutorial or documentation, another person has to learn through discussion and hands-on learning.

    This team, the folks over at learn.WordPress.org, they are the official team and official learning platform and resource for WordPress. They host video tutorials. Yes, but also host live online workshops, courses and even provide lesson plans on different topics related to WordPress. So if you are an educator or otherwise really like to help spread knowledge around, pass around the knowledge that has been hard-earned by you, this is an excellent opportunity.

    [00:06:28] Josepha: And of course, if you are brave and afraid of nothing, then you can just go to Contributor Day and move from table to table until something sounds interesting to you. You don’t have to have a plan. Your whole plan can absolutely be to wander until you are found.

    [00:06:45] (Music interlude) 

    [00:06:52] Josepha: That brings us now to our small list of big things. It’s actually a very small list today. I’ve got two things on it.

    [00:07:00] Josepha: The first is that a couple of weeks back, we published the results from the 2023 annual survey. So, each year, we collect some high-level data about trends and themes across this vast ecosystem of users and site builders, people who extend WordPress core, and contributors who build WordPress core to help inform decision-making and provide valuable feedback on the project status. I looked at the results from our last survey. We had a bit of an increase in the respondents, not as much as we would have liked, but still a little bit greater number than we had in the past couple of years. And I have a lot of questions myself about what we are doing compared to what we are being asked to do and so go take a look at the blog post that has some highlights from it. It’s got a couple of contextual pieces of information in there as well, and come with your questions to WordCamps around the world or ask them in community meetings as you find them. 

    [00:07:58] Josepha: And then the second thing is actually that we have kind of a pilot program going on. There’s a proposal out right now about GatherPress. It’s a group of community leaders that have built a tool, a community plugin, to help gather WordPress events a bit better and a bit more “open source-ely”. It’s open currently to anyone who is running a WordPress meetup group that is interested in learning more about how a WordPress-first and open source first community gathering tool might look.

    [00:08:32] Josepha: I’ll have a link to the proposal in the show notes that’ll give you more detailed information and give you an opportunity to figure out how you can join that pilot and help us figure out whether it will work or not ultimately for WordPress. 

    And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser or fellow brand new WordCamper. But if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at wpbriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy.

    [00:09:13] Josepha: Thanks again for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. 

  • WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-3/) February 27, 2024 Lauren Stein

    WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 is here and ready for testing!

    This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended you evaluate Beta 3 on a test server and site.

    You can test WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 in four ways:

    PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester (https://wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/) plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
    Direct DownloadDownload the Beta 3 version (zip) (https://wordpress NULL.org/wordpress-6 NULL.5-beta3 NULL.zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
    Command LineUse the following WP-CLI (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cli/) command:
    wp core update --version=6.5-beta3
    WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 Beta 3 WordPress Playground instance (https://playground NULL.wordpress NULL.net/#{%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20{%20%22php%22:%20%228 NULL.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20},%20%22features%22:%20{%20%22networking%22:%20true%20},%20%22steps%22:%20[%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data NULL.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata NULL.wordpress NULL.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20},%20%22options%22:%20{%20%22activate%22:%20false%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20}%20]%20}) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. 

    The current target date for the final release of WordPress 6.5 is March 26, 2024. That’s only four weeks away! Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/6-5/), and check the Make WordPress Core blog (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/) for 6.5-related posts (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/tag/6-5/) in the coming weeks for more information.

    Catch up on what’s new in WordPress 6.5: Read the Beta 1 announcement (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) for details and highlights.

    How to test this release

    Your help testing the WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 version is key to ensuring everything in the release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This detailed guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/28/help-test-wordpress-beta-3/) will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/15/help-test-wordpress-6-5-beta-1) for more details on getting set up.

    If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/) of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/newticket) if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/tickets/major).

    Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/) and join the #core-test channel (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/messages/core-test/) on Making WordPress Slack (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/).

    Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta/RC

    Between Beta 1, released on February 13, and the final Release Candidate (RC) scheduled for March 19, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/security/2024/02/12/welcoming-2024-with-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page (https://hackerone NULL.com/wordpress) and in the security white paper (https://wordpress NULL.org/about/security/).

    Beta 3 updates and highlights

    WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 contains more than 45 updates to the Editor since the Beta 2 release, including more than 35 tickets for WordPress Core (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F21%2F2024 NULL. NULL.02%2F27%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id).

    Each beta cycle focuses on bug fixes; more are on the way with your help through testing. You can browse the technical details for all issues addressed since Beta 2 using these links:

    • GitHub commits for 6.5 (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6 NULL.5?since=2024-02-21&until=2024-02-27) since February 21
    • Closed Trac tickets (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F21%2F2024 NULL. NULL.02%2F27%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id) since February 21

    Double the haiku for Beta 3

    Find a Beta bug,
    it will help the team a lot,
    and improve WordPress!
    – submitted by @lada7042 (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/lada7042/)

    In code, dreams are bold,
    WordPress’s story unfolds,
    Beta journey’s told.
    – submitted by @huzaifaalmesbah (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/huzaifaalmesbah/)

    Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dansoschin/), @swissspidy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/swissspidy/), @adarshposimyth (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/adarshposimyth/), @davidbaumwald (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/davidbaumwald/)

  • WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-2/) February 20, 2024 Lauren Stein

    WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 is now ready for testing!

    This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended you evaluate Beta 2 on a test server and site.

    You can test WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 in four ways:

    PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester (https://wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/) plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
    Direct DownloadDownload the Beta 2 version (zip) (https://wordpress NULL.org/wordpress-6 NULL.5-beta2 NULL.zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
    Command LineUse the following WP-CLI (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cli/) command:
    wp core update --version=6.5-beta2
    WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 Beta 2 WordPress Playground instance (https://playground NULL.wordpress NULL.net/#{%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20{%20%22php%22:%20%228 NULL.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20},%20%22features%22:%20{%20%22networking%22:%20true%20},%20%22steps%22:%20[%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data NULL.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata NULL.wordpress NULL.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20},%20%22options%22:%20{%20%22activate%22:%20false%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20}%20]%20}) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. 

    The current target date for the final release of WordPress 6.5 is March 26, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/6-5/), and check the Make WordPress Core blog (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/) for 6.5-related posts (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/tag/6-5/) in the coming weeks for more information.

    Catch up on what’s new in WordPress 6.5: Read the Beta 1 announcement (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) for details and highlights.

    How to test this release

    Your help testing the WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 version is key to ensuring everything in the release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This detailed guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/15/help-test-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5.

    If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/) of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/newticket) if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/tickets/major).

    Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/) and join the #core-test channel (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/messages/core-test/) on Making WordPress Slack (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/).

    Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta 2

    Between Beta 1, released on February 13, and the final Release Candidate (RC) scheduled for March 19, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/security/2024/02/12/welcoming-2024-with-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page (https://hackerone NULL.com/wordpress) and in the security white paper (https://wordpress NULL.org/about/security/).

    Beta 2 updates and highlights

    WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 contains more than 50 updates to the Editor since the Beta 1 release, including 40+ tickets for WordPress core (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F14%2F2024 NULL. NULL.02%2F19%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id).

    Each beta cycle focuses on bug fixes; more are on the way with your help through testing. You can browse the technical details for all issues addressed since Beta 1 using these links:

    • GitHub commits for 6.5 (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6 NULL.5?since=2024-02-14&until=2024-02-20) since February 14
    • Closed Trac tickets (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F14%2F2024 NULL. NULL.02%2F20%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id) since February 14

    A Beta 2 haiku

    Help out with testing
    Contribute! Make an impact
    Let’s find all those bugs

    Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dansoschin/), @huzaifaalmesbah (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/huzaifaalmesbah/), @rajinsharwar (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/rajinsharwar/), @swissspidy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/swissspidy/), @courane01 (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/courane01/).

  • WP Briefing: Episode 73: Inside the Interactivity API (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/episode-73-inside-the-interactivity-api/) February 19, 2024 Brett McSherry

    In the latest WordPress Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses the Interactivity API, a new foundational tool that helps developers create memorable interactive front-end experiences. She is joined by special guests and sponsored contributors Ryan Welcher and Mario Santos, who share more about this impactful addition to the WordPress developer experience.

    Credits

    Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/chanthaboune/)
    Guest: Mario Santos (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/santosguillamot/)
    Guest: Ryan Welcher (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/welcher/)
    Editor: Dustin Hartzler (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dustinhartzler/)
    Logo: Javier Arce (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/javiarce/)
    Production: Brett McSherry (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/bjmcsherry/)
    Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

    Show Notes

    • Create block template for the Interactivity API (https://www NULL.npmjs NULL.com/package/ null@null wordpress/create-block-interactive-template)
    • GitHub tracking issue changes in the API (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/discussions/52906)
    • Interactivity API docs (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/tree/trunk/packages/interactivity/docs)
    • Interactivity API Movies demo (https://wpmovies NULL.dev/)
    • Interactivity API GitHub discussions (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/discussions/categories/interactivity-api)
    • Ryan Welcher Codes (https://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/c/ryanwelchercodes)
    • Small List of Big Things
      • Online monthly Docs Team Contributor Day (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/docs/2024/02/01/online-monthly-docs-team-contributor-day-february-27-2024/)
      • Share your feedback about the new WordPress Events Page! (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/2024/01/16/share-your-feedback-about-the-new-wordpress-events-page/) 
      • Improving block development documentation: 2023 recap and a look ahead (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/08/improving-block-development-documentation-2023-recap-and-a-look-ahead/)

    Transcripts

    [00:00:00] Josepha: 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’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. 

    [00:00:29] (Intro music) 

    [00:00:40] Josepha: I have with me today a couple of guests, Ryan Welcher and Mario Santos, who have joined me to talk about the Interactivity API. This is an API that we’ve been working on for quite a while, and it’s a fascinating thing. It’s really specifically user-facing in its functionality but makes a lot of work streamlined for everyday developers, whether you are building something for yourself, for your family, or for a client. This whole project probably is gonna really speak to you. 

    [00:01:10] Josepha: Hi, guys, and welcome to the show. First-time guests, both of you. Right?

    [00:01:15] Ryan: Yes. First time for me.

    [00:01:17] Mario: Thanks for inviting us.

    [00:01:18] Josepha: Yeah. Well, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, like your name, what you do with WordPress, how you contribute to the project, something like that?

    [00:01:27] Ryan: I can go first. My name is Ryan Welcher. I’m a developer advocate and sponsored by Automattic. Then, I contribute full-time to the WordPress project by creating documentation, doing live streams, creating videos, and just generally trying to be helpful in in the space to help engineers and extenders work with the various APIs in WordPress.

    [00:01:46] Josepha: I love the just generally trying to be helpful part. Mario, what about you?

    [00:01:52] Mario: He really is. He really does it.

    [00:01:54] Josepha: I know.

    [00:01:55] Mario: I’m Mario Santos. I’m also a sponsored contributor, and I’m more focused on the project management and developer. I consider myself a mix of both. Right now I’m working on projects that are focused on improving the developer experience especially. That can go from the Block API to the Interactivity API; that is the topic today.

    [00:02:16] Josepha: Very nice. Very nice. Just lots of helping that everyone’s trying to do. I think that’s a good thing.

    So, we’re talking about the Interactivity API today. And, Mario, I believe it was almost a year ago that you first put this proposal out into the WordPress project. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about just, like, where the idea of this came from? Like, I know it wasn’t originally called the Interactivity API, but, like, what was you said you do some a bit of product, a bit of development. Like, what was it about this idea that was so important to you?

    [00:02:48] Mario: Yeah. Sure. So, basically, well, the proposal came, like, one year ago, but it has been in the works, like, for many years, I would say. Just to give a bit more context, previously, before being a sponsored contributor, I was working at a startup called Frontity Framework, and we were building a React framework to enable rich user experiences on top of WordPress.

    [00:03:13] Mario: So basically, it was a framework for headless WordPress. And at some point, we became sponsored contributors, the idea was to bring those user experiences to those rich and cool websites that lead to WordPress. So, you don’t need an external framework to create them, and you can do that directly in WordPress. So that’s where the idea of the Interactivity API comes from. From there, we started exploring different possibilities and tailoring it more to WordPress to ensure it works with its APIs.

    And I think after many many months working on that, the Interactivity API is the result.

    [00:03:54] Josepha: I just wanted to note that you started that answer with, like, the proposal was about a year ago, but the work had been happening for a long time. I think that’s generally true, and it’s not something that we always really acknowledge. This happens with patents also. This is going to be a strange tangent, but this is how we do in in my brain. This is how my brain works. So frequently, you’ll see a brand new product, but the patent for it was, like, 30 years beforehand, like, way before you ever see anything. And I think that’s kinda how this works also with software development. Like, the idea, has been going for a long time.

    [00:04:27] Josepha: The problem was identified a long time ago. And by the time you see something that helps to solve the problem or bring a new set of features to you, like, you didn’t know, but it had been being worked on for, like, five years or something. And I think that’s such a fascinating thing. That’s always apparent to me, but I think it’s not really apparent for a lot of people in the, in I don’t know, who use software.

    I was gonna say in the space, quote, unquote, but that’s not even it. Like, it’s the people who are using software. We don’t know how long anything’s been under development. We just know that at some point, a magical thing appeared, and we get to use it. 

    [00:05:03] Josepha: So speaking of the problems that we have identified that we’re trying to solve with this. Like, was there an inherent problem that you all were trying to solve as you were coming up with this idea around the Interactivity API itself?

    [00:05:16] Mario: I would say that trying to summarize it, it covers many things, but the main problem was that creating those kinds of interactions in the client was kind of difficult. You had to manage many things many tools, and each developer could come up with different solutions, and maybe they don’t combine well together. So, the idea is to provide an extended way so developers don’t have to take care of many things. They just have to take care of the interactions they wanna create. And ensuring that it works well with the WordPress way, it works well with the block system, and any block created with this Interactivity API can communicate with each other. You can combine those blocks, and you are not gonna encounter any problem. So, I would say that the main issue we were trying to solve is that there wasn’t a standard solution. There were different approaches taken by different developers, and that could create some issues. So, until now, Gutenberg has been mainly focused on the editor side and how blocks are created. And this is a first attempt to to cover the part of the front end, the interactions that users may want to create in the front end.

    [00:06:31] Ryan: It solves a ton of problems. But, I mean, coming from someone like, I have a fair amount of agency experience. I’ve been, you know, you’re working on large projects. And every time someone solves a problem, they solve it slightly differently. And that’s problematic because you switch teams or, you know, someone else picks up the code base, and all of a sudden, now they have to learn your custom system that’s slightly different from the one that I built last week and the one that, you know, someone else built two weeks earlier. And this takes the guesswork out. It takes the sort of the plumbing out of the equation. One of the reasons I really loves working with WordPress when I started working with WordPress was that when I was building for clients, I didn’t have to worry about building the CMS. I didn’t have to worry about building a menu system or figuring out how to handle media.

    [00:07:10] Ryan: I just had to do the things that that client was paying me to do. Like, I just had to make their site look the way that they wanted it to. And with the Interactivity API, I think there’s a bit of that where I don’t have to worry about figuring out how am I gonna get all these pieces to talk to each other on the front end. It’s all there. I just have to connect the dots, and it makes it very, very simple.

    I’m building the site right now for a workshop that I’m gonna be giving a WordCamp Asia, which is a a shameless plug. Sorry.

    [00:07:33] Josepha: Coming up so fast, y’all. WordCamp Asia is, like, two weeks away.

    [00:07:37] Ryan: I’m so excited. I have so much work to do.

    But I’ve built an entire voting system on a website where people can pick what we’re going to be talking about in my workshop, and I built it in the Interactivity API, and it took me, you know, probably five hours. And that’s me trying to learn some things and mess around with it. And to do that without the Interactivity API would have probably been an entire React-based, you know, completely outside of WordPress. I would have loaded one thing on the page and had it build out my whole application, and now I’m doing it with blocks and I’m doing it with a block theme. So if I wanna move those blocks around. I can move the blocks around. I can change anything that I wanna change inside of WordPress the way I would normally, and all that in interactivity just still works. And that’s It’s awesome. I just I love it. I can’t like, the Interactivity API, not my website. 

    [00:08:26] Josepha: But also both. Like, it can be both. 

    [00:08:28] Mario: I wanted to say that I think it’s a great point. I like to think about it like having the best of both worlds. Right now, we have modern frameworks like React, Vue that are used to create these cool websites.

    And I think the Interactivity API plus WordPress brings everything together. Like, you can create those cool user experiences while keeping the full power of WordPress, its management system, the Block editor, and to be honest, I don’t think there’s anything like that out there. Like having the best of both both worlds because we are still working with blocks, and that’s amazing. 

    [00:09:04] Ryan: Given that it’s still, it’s not even been released yet. Like, it’s coming very soon. But.

    [00:09:08] Josepha: Yeah. This is all still in the Gutenberg plugin. So, like, if you don’t know what we’re talking about, get the Gutenberg plugin.

    [00:09:16] Ryan: But just how mature the API is now, considering it is still kind of not even fully released, it’s only gonna get better? I just think it’s awesome.

    So, kudos to Mario and your team for doing all this stuff.

    [00:09:28] Mario: Thank you. Kudos to everyone involved.

    [00:09:32] Josepha: So, I’ve a question that I think probably, Ryan, you can start with, but then also probably, Mario, you’re gonna have some opinions on also. In this conversation so far, we’ve done a lot of, like, when you want to have these interactions and also when you want to have these cool experiences. For folks who actually do not know what the Interactivity API is yet, and they don’t know what we’re talking about when we say these interactions like, what exactly are we talking about from a user perspective?

    Like, what types of things will users be able to see when they are experiencing the Interactivity API’s features and functionality.

    [00:10:07] Ryan: I think it’s a great question. From a user standpoint, it’ll just look like your regular website, I think. Depending on what you’re doing. So, like the interactions that we’re talking about is when you’re in the browser and you wanna click a button and expand something, for example, or you wanna click an image and have the lightbox pop-up, which is in core now, that’s driven by the Interactivity API, but these interactions are basically when a user wants to interact with something, what it does. That’s a really generic way of saying it. 

    [00:10:34] Josepha: Our current favorite example and, Ryan, it sounds like you also have another example. But our current favorite example is like a movie collection site, you know? And so, like, when we’re talking about what the Interactivity API is going to power, it’s things like, when you favorite a series of movies, and then you can, and it just updates that on the fly, and you’ll be able to in essentially real-time as instant as reasonably possible based on your computer and stuff.

    [00:11:03] Josepha: Like, then look at your list of things that you favorited or things like that. Like, for folks who don’t understand interactive site like, all of us know that that, like, if you get on a site, you have interacted with it. But when we’re talking about Interactivity API, we’re talking about types of direct actions users can take. Right? 

    [00:11:19] Mario: I would say yes.

    They are just only triggered by some actions. It could be scrolling, clicking, or, or whatever. But, it can go from a simple example like drop down or a popover to more complex things like the movies demo, where you can navigate and the page is not reloading, and that allows you to play a trailer. It starts in a pop-up, and you can keep navigating through different pages, and the trailer keeps playing without reloading. Another example could be instant search; like you start typing the search, and it directly updates the list of films, in this case, that are shown, those kinds of things that happen In the browser. 

    [00:12:00] Josepha: And Ryan said you, you said that you, like, built a whole survey system, A whole polling system. 

    [00:12:06] Ryan: Yeah, a voting system. So there’s a series of buttons, each one representing a certain topic, and people can vote, and it tallies the amount. So each, I’m calling them recipes, has amount of time associated with it, and then so you vote until you run out of time, at which point, like in its tracking it all, and it’s showing you how much time you voted, how much is left, and once you’ve run out of time it blurs like it disables all of the voting buttons so you can’t add more because you run out of time.

    [00:12:30] Ryan: So if you remove one, you can add again. It’s very, very powerful. And, like, before the Interactivity API, you would have to have, I would have built that whole thing in React, and it would have been one single application that just get loaded on a page. And I just think it’s amazing. And, like the, the ability to create what are called, like, single page applications or what have always sort of been called SPAs or single page applications where you’re not reloading the browser every single time you click on a link.

    You have to do some things to make that work, but that’s just available to you and in WordPress. That’s amazing. I just think that’s so neat. I mean, it’s already powering things like the Query Loop block has the ability to move pagination without reloading the page, which is, sounds like a sort of a like a okay, great, like sort of, you know, mundane thing but imagine you had two or three different query loops sitting on your homepage and you wanted to be able to paginate through each one and not refresh the page. That’s a fantastic user experience that now is just enabled and otherwise was not possible prior to the Interactivity API.

    [00:13:28] Josepha: I feel like the Query Loop block was, like, a three-year project four years ago. And I had forgotten about it, which is surprising because I was so concerned with it when we were working directly on it all the time. But yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly the kind of example. 

    So we’ve talked about kind of the user thing and people who are gonna build stuff for clients. But, like, if you’re a contributor and you want to figure out more about either how to use this or how to expand on what is already there.

    [00:14:01] Josepha: We already talked about how it’s in the Gutenberg plugin. It’s kind of experimental over there. But, like, do you all have like, good first bugs? Things that can be worked on in there? Or is there, like, an experiment zone where people can just be like, this is what I tried with the Interactivity API until it broke? How do people work with that?

    [00:14:20] Mario: I would like to clarify first, it’s right now, it’s private in, it’s a private API in WordPress core in 6.4, And it’s public in Gutenberg, but it’s gonna be a public API already in WordPress 6.5. So, yes. Anyone can start testing it.

    The best way to get involved is first sharing what interactions you want to see. I mean, everyone has different ideas, and we will love to know the interactions that people want to create using the Interactivity API, so that would be the first step. Then, test it, create your own blocks or site, and send feedback what do you like what you don’t like. Raise issues, and for that, we are mainly using GitHub. We created a new category in GitHub in the Gutenberg plugin discussions, and we try to to keep everything there.

    [00:15:13] Mario: So if you have any questions any feedback, you can share it there. You can also find more discussions about the road map, the change log, many things that are going on right now. And, yeah, I would say those are the ways of getting involved, and I can also expect, maybe Ryan can tell you more here, to start working more on tutorials or videos or whatever. And for me, personally, I would love to see the community working on that as well.

    [00:15:43] Ryan: Yeah. I can, yeah. I think that from a contributor standpoint, especially those who are trying to get into contributing, because, I mean, it’s not not complicated. Let’s put it that way, like the Interactivity API. And that’s not meaning to be a barrier to anyone, but a great place to start is documentation. A great place to start is going through those docs and making sure they’re up to date and, you know, saying, oh, well, that’s supposed to do this, so let me go try that. And if it works, great. If it doesn’t, you know, file a bug, update the documentation, that’s a great way to get started. It’s gonna familiarize yourself with the code base and what it’s supposed to do. And then, sort of, just through osmosis, you’ll start to pick up more about it. And for anyone starting to contribute to the WordPress project in general, I would say starting with documentation or unit testing is a really, really great way to kinda, dip your toe in the water and not feel too frustrated. And tutorials and demos and show us what you’re building. We wanna see it. I mean, send it to me, and I will show everyone that I know.

    [00:16:40] Ryan: I mean, we wanna see what what people are building with it and because, you know, just like WordPress, I always use this example, but, like, people used to hack WordPress until we got a hook added for that particular thing that they were adding. So, if we don’t know what people are building or wanting to build with it, we can’t make those things happen. So knowing what people are building, how they’re building, and what they can’t build, what they’re running into, what issues they’re running into is the best way to contribute. So, so people smarter than me can build it for you. 

    [00:17:08] Josepha: I love that call out, frankly.

    So there’s, you know, the theory of tech adoption. And for things like the Interactivity API where we’re still kind of in the early adopter phase like, Ryan, you’re an early adopter. You’re doing everything you think you want to be able to do until it breaks. And, like, I love, like, test it till it fails as a concept of how to get involved in something because, like, you’re just experimenting, and we encourage experimentation in open source and in open source software and certainly in WordPress. And so, like, it is an unusual thing to think of, like, the best way that I can give back to this project, that I can contribute to this project and make sure that it continues to succeed long term is by using it until the wheels fall off and then tell people what made the wheels fall off.

    Like, that is a change in thought, But you’re right. Like, it’s a very old school open source idea to just get in there and see where it breaks, and tell us. That’s it. That’s all we need. And I love it.

    [00:18:08] Josepha: But I just passed my 9-year anniversary being a sponsored contributor, and I was in WordPress for a little bit before it. And so, like, I’m officially the old guard of us, and so the fact that I’m, like, so excited about the fact that people are gonna come in and break Mario’s stuff. Mario, don’t be scared. It’s how it works. But also, like, I do find that very exciting.

    [00:18:31] Mario: I’m willing to see how people break things; that’s what we need. I totally agree with your reasoning.

    [00:18:38] Josepha: Exactly. So I do have kind of, just, like, a final question for y’all. If there were one thing that you wanted the people who are listening to the WordPress Briefing to know about the Interactivity API, like a hidden gem, a little secret trick. Like, what would it be?

    [00:18:57] Mario: For me, the most exciting part of the Interactivity API is the functionality the client-side navigation enables because there are many, many things there. And I’m sure that there are many things we haven’t thought about yet, and the community will come up with some ideas and that would be amazing.

    [00:19:17] Ryan: For me, the thing is, I love how integrated it is with WordPress, and I know a lot of thought has gone into that without getting too into the weeds. The reasons the decisions that were made were made was so all the hooks and filters and all that goodness that we’ve had for 20 years is still gonna work. And with the HTML API, the tag processor stuff that’s going on behind the scenes, it’s just so cool. It works so well with WordPress. It just works and that’s probably it for me.

    When I work with it, I’m not having to do any weird janky filtering or stuff that, like, you know, the things that I want to do are not hindered by the Interactivity API. The rather, I’m able to do more things because of it.

    [00:19:58] Mario: I prefer Ryan’s answer.

    [00:20:00] Mario: It’s something really important and it’s something we usually take for granted that it just works with WordPress APIs and the Block Editor, but if you think more about it, it’s amazing. Like, It’s what makes it really powerful, I I believe.

    [00:20:15] Josepha: For what it’s worth, I think that’s true for a lot of, like, the R&D type things that we’re working on in the project right now. Right? Across Our ecosystem, like WP Playground. It is mind-boggling how progressive that is as a concept, and we currently have, like, you know, 25 ideas about what we could do with it, and we’re currently working on, like, five because we’ve got two and a half developers on it or something.

    But, like, the expectation that it will just work is there for everybody who has, is not part of the R&D process, but for everyone else who’s, like, been watching its development over time, shocking. Shocking that it works at all. Not because it wasn’t supposed to work, but because, like, if someone had asked you five years ago if it was gonna be possible to run WordPress development environments locally and then also just export it and import it into whatever host you want. Like, without a host, without a server, we would all think that you were nuts. 

    [00:21:22] Josepha: Amazing what’s happening there and, like, some of the things that we’re seeing, people who are, like, researching with AI in the WordPress space doing? Equally shocking. All of these things. Like, had you said anything to me about it five years ago, I’d be like, well, that is a mystery. So, every once in a while, I do have wild ideas about things that I wish we could do with our software. And so yesterday, I went and looked at a prototype for something that someone built based on a wish that I had in 2019. In 2019, I was like, you can play Skyrim on an Amazon Dot using just your voice. So like, why can’t we build a website?

    [00:22:01] Josepha: And then in 2021, someone prototyped that for me. It was ridiculous. It was very bad. It was hilarious. But, also, like, it took 35 minutes to create a ‘Hello world’ page, which was ridiculous.

    And now, like, what we’re looking at, the research that I keep seeing from that AI space is people saying, like, I’m gonna put in a plain text prompt. I need a website as a yoga instructor who also makes custom hats. Right? And then, like, poof. You have this thing that kinda looks like a website with your basic functions and features using the blocks that we have created for WordPress. Like it’s fascinating how far it’s come. And that’s in 2021. It was literally impossible the last time that I was talking about it with anyone, equally literally impossible. Everyone’s like, plain language prompts for stuff, like that is just a pipe dream. Get away from us.

    And now I keep seeing, like, these demos of the research, and it’s not as far away as we all thought it was. For all these things, Playground, Interactivity API, The AI research is being done. Like, we’re just a walking R&D group over here in WordPress, and I love it. It’s fascinating. We’re just making the impossible possible every day, and I think that’s really cool.

    [00:23:16] Ryan: So cool.

    [00:23:18] Josepha: Sorry. I got really sidetracked. Do y’all have anything that you wanted to be sure to share about either the Interactivity API or anything that’s coming up? Something you wanna make that our listeners know? 

    [00:23:29] Mario: I would just like to emphasize that we love feedback. Please share your feedback. If you test it, yeah, if you think it’s bad feedback, share it with us as well.

    That’s especially the feedback we like. I don’t like this part. That’s great. We we want to know because the idea is that it serves all purposes for this kind of interactions. 

    That nothing new, but I would like to emphasize that part.

    [00:23:56] Josepha: You know what? There’s nothing new under the sun. It’s fine. You’re good. You should always tell people what you need.

    [00:24:01] Ryan: If you’re interested in getting started with the Interactivity API and just don’t have any idea where to begin, there’s actually a pack there. There’s a Create Block template. So the Create Block package allows you to to quickly scaffold blocks.

    And there’s a template that’s part of the Gutenberg repository. It’s been published on it and NPM. And it will scaffold a very simple block out for you and it’ll give you, it’ll show you all the plumbing and how all the pieces work together. So, I think that’s a fantastic place to get started. It’s a very simple block. It just basically shows and hides a message, but it’s all done via the Interactivity API, but it’s a really, really great sort of, like, like, ‘Hello world’ style. I’m gonna shamelessly self-promote myself at WordCamp Asia. I’ll be at WordCamp Asia this year doing a workshop where I will be doing some stuff with your Interactivity API. But, if you’re there and you wanna chat more about the Interactivity API, I am all ears, and I love talking about this stuff.

    [00:24:51] Josepha: Cool. Ryan, Mario thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a wonderful conversation.

    [00:24:58] Ryan: Thank you.

    [00:24:58] Mario: Thank you.

    [00:25:01] Josepha: So I hope that you all find that whole project as fascinating as I find it. The Interactivity API is, I know, something that we’ve kind of been talking about for a while. It showed up specifically in State of the Word, and it’s hard to understand how important, how vital that work is going to be until you really get your hands on it.

    So I recommend you get in there. You take a look at it. I think also Ryan has a few live streams that he does, and he’s planning on a couple for the Interactivity API coming up. And so just keep an eye out for all of that as we go. 

    [00:25:37] (Music interlude)

    [00:25:49] Josepha: Now that brings us to our small list of big things.

    Today, it’s a bunch of feedback and documentation. So, first things first. Did you know that the Documentation Team holds an online monthly Contributor Day on the fourth Tuesday of every month. It’s just an online docs day, and I love it. So, the next one that’s coming up is February 27th. We’re looking for folks to help. So show up, figure out how to get some docs done, and make the WordPress project easier to follow, one bit of documentation at a time. 

    [00:26:16] Josepha: The next thing that I have is a request for feedback. So, we announced in December that we have a new centralized WordPress events landing page on WordPress.org, and we wanted to give more visibility to all kinds of WordPress events across the globe. But as always, we really could use your feedback about what is useful for you, what you had hoped to see, what you didn’t see. So, leave your comments with any relevant feedback about how you would improve those pages and the text on it. If you’re missing anything relevant, if there are ideas that you have for what could be there, all ideas are welcome. 

    And then, the third thing that I have on our list today is another documentation thing. So, over the last year, a group of contributors have been working to improve the block development onboarding experience within the Block Editor handbook. That contains over 400 published pages, and the effort in 2023 to kind of overhaul that and make it easier was just the beginning. So, it’s a daunting task. It’s big. It’s complex, but improving documentation is one of the easiest ways to contribute to the WordPress project, especially If there are just quick fixes like typos or formatting. Feedback on the existing content, such as the new block tutorial, is invaluable. And so, if you have not taken a look at those yet, wander over to the show notes, click a link or two, take a look, get some feedback to us. 

    [00:27:41] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you like what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

    [00:28:09] (Music outro)

WordPress News

  • WP Briefing: Episode 75: WordCamp Asia 2024 Unwrapped (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/episode-75-wordcamp-asia-2024-unwrapped/) March 18, 2024 Brett McSherry

    WordCamp Asia 2024 was a dynamic three-day celebration of collaboration, diversity, and innovation in the WordPress project. This week, Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy shares her insights and experiences from the event, which featured one of the largest Contributor Days in the region, a variety of speakers, engaging panel discussions, and workshops. Josepha offers her thoughts on the latest topics being discussed within the community and forming the future of WordPress.

    Credits

    Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/chanthaboune/)
    Editor: Dustin Hartzler (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dustinhartzler/)
    Logo: Javier Arce (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/javiarce/)
    Production: Brett McSherry (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/bjmcsherry/)
    Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

    Show Notes

    • WordCamp Asia 2024 (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/)
      • Contributor Day (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/contributor-day/)
      • WordCamp Asia Playlist (https://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/playlist?list=PL1pJFUVKQ7ETpYuALlCQPikuKEuihFsvU)
    • Small List of Big Things
      • WordPress 6.5 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/category/releases/) is on target for release on March 26, 2024.
      • Get involved with WordPress events:
        • Find events near you on events.WordPress.org (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/) and WordCamp Central (https://central NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/)
        • Learn more about organizing your own local event (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/organize-an-event/)
      • Proposal: Non-editable Footer for all Event Website Pages (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/2024/03/06/proposal-non-editable-footer-for-all-event-website-pages/)
    • Have a question you’d like answered? Submit them to WPBriefing@WordPress.org (wpbriefing null@null WordPress NULL.org).

    Transcript

    [00:00:00] Josepha: 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’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. 

    [00:00:29] (Intro music) 

    [00:00:40] Josepha: I have returned from WordCamp Asia and struggled my way through some truly aggressive jet lag, so that means it’s time for a little WordCamp wrap-up. I spoke with a couple hundred people at the event, and I came away with a few topics that seemed to be on everyone’s minds. Those topics are: making business in WordPress, the business of making WordPress, and how to communicate both sides a little better.

    [00:01:04] Josepha: So first, let’s start with making business in WordPress. This comes up at every event, and that honestly just makes sense. WordPress is a tool that people use to power their businesses across our global economy, and sometimes the businesses are closely related to WordPress itself. They are creating custom themes or plugins, building WordPress powered commerce sites for clients, or offering any number of agency services. But there are also businesses that are a little less close: restaurants, museums, local governments, schools. But it was clear that they all rely on the software just as much as the other.

    So, it was nice to see some sessions that focused specifically on business matters in WordPress. And I heard so many people tell me about a conversation they had had earlier in the day with someone who helped them figure out their pricing or advised them on early errors they made in their business journey and generally helped them feel a little less lost.

    I always love seeing this. Hearing how people are accomplishing their goals because of connections they made at one of our events, it’s enough to keep me coming back for years.

    [00:02:10] Josepha: The next thing that came up a lot was the business of making WordPress. I don’t know if that came up a lot because of the sorts of conversations that people are willing to bring to me these days or because there was overwhelming interest in knowing how we keep all these trains on their tracks. But either way, it was refreshing to be able to have so many conversations about the invisible work that goes into a project like this. There was a Contributor Day that hosted over 600 people, if I recall correctly, which makes it the largest Contributor Day in the area to date. 35 percent of those people had never attended a Contributor Day before, so there were a lot of people who were discovering the WordPress community for the first time.

    And for folks who’ve been here for a long time, it’s so easy for us to forget how much there is to learn at first. Even if you happen to show up with a skill set that fits a contributor team’s needs exactly, you still have to learn where we collaborate, how distributed contribution works, and all these rules and guidelines about open source freedoms and copyleft.

    [00:03:10] Josepha: And then also you have to come to terms with the fact that we define and design all of our spaces and programs with belonging in mind. I mean, for every one question that you get answered, there are going to be six new ones that you didn’t know you had yet. So I came away from a lot of these conversations with the reminder that it’s important in so many ways for us to talk about the work that we do, even when it’s boring, even when we think it doesn’t really matter, because a lot of people have questions about how this works, how it runs, and how they can be part of making sure that it’s around for the long-term.

    And the final thing that came up all over the place last week was how to communicate these things better. It’s easy to forget that folks who listen to this podcast don’t actually make up like a hundred percent of the people using WordPress; that’s on me. So just cause I’ve said here that, you know, enterprise is our next big space for biz dev or that, our primary growth markets are APAC, or that events are our best tool for brand expression.

    [00:04:08] Josepha: Like, just because I said it doesn’t mean that everyone heard it. And we absolutely have to get those messages to more people, more frequently, and with more certainty. You’ll hear often from WordPress pundits that rising tides lift all boats, and the bigger the pie, the more the slices. We believe fully in the spirit of coopetition here, that we are all better together.

    But I can’t shake the feeling that we’re mostly just talking to ourselves about it. It’s hard to get outside our own little bubble, but I believe completely that doing so is the best thing for our project in the long term. Not only so that we can continue to grow and provide access to the opportunities we know we offer but also so that we can do more to dignify our profession.

    WordPress developers are not taken seriously, and yet you all are some of the smartest and most compassionate people I’ve ever met in my career. And I’d like to see how we can fix that perception together. And so that’s it. Those are the big, big, giant, old topics that came up a lot in conversation last week.

    [00:05:14] Josepha: Don’t forget that you can catch up on all the sessions via the live stream, or if you are feeling inspired to contribute, reach out to the community team and see what sorts of meetup events you can host. 

    [00:05:24] (Music interlude) 

    [00:05:32] Josepha: Which brings us now to our small list of big things. I have two big things and one slightly less big thing, but they’re all fairly big.

    So, the first thing on the list is that the latest version of WordPress, WordPress 6.5, is on target for release on March 26th. That’s, I think, a couple weeks from now. So keep an eye out for that. In the event, I mean, we have auto-updates everywhere, and probably you are on a WordPress-specific host and, so you won’t necessarily need to do anything. But if you have any desire or concerns about seeing the software a little bit ahead of time, you can always go and download the beta, give it a quick test or the release candidate, give that a quick test. See if there’s anything that’s not functioning as you expected it to function, and let us know if it’s not. But yeah, there are auto-updates. You don’t have to go out and proactively do anything if you don’t want to, that’s just in case you do want to. That’s coming up March 26th. 

    [00:06:27] Josepha: The next thing is that I want to give everybody a general call-in for event contribution. So, WordPress events is where I entered the community. It is one of the most affirming and life-changing types of contribution I’ve ever done because you get to see a bunch of people succeed in their own goals because of something that you were able to tell them. It’s like teaching, but with people who elected to be there. So we have a lot of opportunities, for contribution by volunteering at events, either as volunteering at the event itself or to volunteer to organize it. We have small-scale, easy-to-do meetups, but we also have slightly larger WordCamps that can be done. If you have any hope for doing that or are just kind of interested. I’ll leave a link for you in the show notes. 

    [00:07:19] Josepha: And then the final thing on here is that we actually have a pretty substantial proposal out at the moment. It’s for non-editable footers on all event website pages. This might not sound interesting to you, but it actually is kind of interesting. So, it’s been proposed to add a non-editable footer to all of the event website pages moving forward. So that’s everything that would be displayed on a WordCamp or on any of the new formatted event sites that we have. This proposal intends to meet two goals. One, it fills any legal requirements a site or country might have about displaying the privacy policy and other items. And two, it brings visibility to the new events.WordPress.org website, where a community member can find more events in their area. The last day to respond to that proposal is March 20th, which I think is two days from now. I think it’s on Wednesday and this is airing on Monday. So, I’ll have a link to that in the show notes as well in case you have any thoughts about it.

    [00:08:15] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. And if you like what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you ended up with questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. 

    [00:08:43] (Music outro) 

  • WordPress 6.5 Release Candidate 2 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordpress-6-5-release-candidate-2/) March 12, 2024 Lauren Stein

    The second release candidate (RC2) for WordPress 6.5 is ready! 

    This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC2 on a test server and site.

    While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.5 is the best it can be.

    You can test WordPress 6.5 RC2 in four ways:

    PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester (https://wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/) plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
    Direct DownloadDownload the RC2 version (zip) (https://wordpress NULL.org/wordpress-6 NULL.5-RC2 NULL.zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
    Command LineUse the following WP-CLI (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cli/) command:
    wp core update --version=6.5-RC2
    WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 RC2 WordPress Playground instance (https://playground NULL.wordpress NULL.net/#%7B%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20%7B%20%22php%22:%20%228 NULL.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20%7D,%20%22features%22:%20%7B%20%22networking%22:%20true%20%7D,%20%22steps%22:%20[%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data NULL.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata NULL.wordpress NULL.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20%7D,%20%22options%22:%20%7B%20%22activate%22:%20false%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D%20]%20%7D) (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.

    The current target for the WordPress 6.5 release is March 26, 2024. That’s a mere two weeks away! Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/6-5/), and check the Make WordPress Core blog (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/) for 6.5-related posts (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/tag/6-5/) in the coming weeks for further details.

    What to expect in WordPress 6.5 RC2

    Thanks to the many contributors testing up to this point, this release includes approximately 20 bug fixes for the Editor and 30+ tickets for WordPress Core (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=03%2F05%2F2024 NULL. NULL.03%2F12%2F2024&resolution=fixed&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=summary&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id). For more technical information related to issues addressed since RC1, you can browse the following links: 

    • GitHub commits for 6.5 (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6 NULL.5?since=2024-03-05&until=2024-03-12) since March 5
    • Closed Trac tickets (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=03%2F05%2F2024 NULL. NULL.03%2F12%2F2024&resolution=fixed&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=summary&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id) since March 5

    Update on content overrides for synced patterns

    As synced patterns evolve and improve, every enhancement must continue to provide the best experience possible. With this in mind, WordPress 6.5 will not include the ability to override content in synced patterns (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/03/07/unblocking-wp6-5-font-library-and-synced-pattern-overrides/). This allows more time for feedback and testing to ensure it can really shine. Expect this feature to debut in the next major release!

    Contribute to this release

    WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

    Get involved in testing

    Testing for issues is critical to ensuring WordPress is performant and stable. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/28/help-test-wordpress-beta-3/) will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/15/help-test-wordpress-6-5-beta-1) for more details on getting set up.

    If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/) of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/newticket) if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/tickets/major).

    Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/) and join the #core-test channel (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/messages/core-test/) on Making WordPress Slack (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/).

    Search for vulnerabilities

    From now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.5 (scheduled for March 19), the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/security/2024/02/12/welcoming-2024-with-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page (https://hackerone NULL.com/wordpress) and in the security white paper (https://wordpress NULL.org/about/security/).

    Update your theme or plugin

    For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users. 

    Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.5 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file (https://developer NULL.wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/) to 6.5.

    If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/).

    Help translate WordPress

    Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages (https://translate NULL.wordpress NULL.org/projects/wp/dev/).

    Release the haiku

    RC2, a bridge,
    From development to launch,
    One more step forward.
    submitted by @huzaifaalmesbah (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/huzaifaalmesbah/)

    Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dansoschin/), @get_dave (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/get_dave/), and @audrasjb (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/audrasjb/).

  • Highlights from WordCamp Asia 2024 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/highlights-from-wordcamp-asia-2024/) March 9, 2024 Reyes Martínez

    Over 1,300 attendees gathered at the Taipei International Convention Center in Taiwan for WordCamp Asia 2024 (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/). This three-day event emerged as a vibrant celebration showcasing the collaboration, diversity, and innovation that drive the world’s most popular web platform.

    The Asian WordPress flagship event started with a dedicated Contributor Day, followed by two days of engaging talks, panels, hands-on workshops, and networking. Notable guests, including WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/matt/) and Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/chanthaboune/), joined the diverse lineup of speakers (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speakers/). Popular topics featured cutting-edge web technologies and trends, use cases, open source dynamics, and more. WordPress enthusiasts seized the opportunity to gain insights from international and local industry experts and to learn about the project’s future.

    Converting walled gardens into community gardens

    On March 8, Josepha Haden Chomphosy took the stage (https://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/live/UK7FnaEeTrU?si=0H6eEEijj4tDWm_t&t=30830) for an insightful journey comparing and contrasting the “walled” and “community” gardens in software ecosystems, drawing an analogy between closed and open source platforms. After exploring both concepts, she posed an important question to the audience.

    What would it take for someone to move from a walled garden to a community garden?

    Open source software, symbolized by community gardens, represents freedom from copyright restrictions and usage limitations. Unlike proprietary software (described as walled gardens), the core value lies in long-term empowerment, giving people control and ownership of their digital presence.

    Acknowledging the longstanding values held by WordPress and its open source community for two decades, Josepha focused on the importance of caring for foundations that make us strong, managing what distracts us, and nurturing growth by embracing new opportunities. She celebrated the strengths of the WordPress community and how its shared ethos furthers a thriving ecosystem.

    Slide from Josepha Haden Chomphosy's presentation showing colorful flowers on a blue background and the quote, "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow" by Audrey Hepburn.

    Quoting artist and activist Audrey Hepburn, Josepha expressed that, much like a community garden, the power of contributions—whether through time, knowledge, or product use— sustains and maintains shared spaces like WordPress.

    In the Q&A portion (https://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/live/UK7FnaEeTrU?si=pjg0nkwla-d7mP69&t=32274) of her presentation, Josepha addressed inquiries about community involvement and contributions. Highlighted resources included the WordPress job board (https://jobs NULL.wordpress NULL.net/) for opportunities within the ecosystem and the Data Liberation (https://wordpress NULL.org/data-liberation/) project, emphasizing its role in fostering a more open web and helping the transition out of proprietary platforms.

    Q&A with Matt Mullenweg

    WordCamp Asia concluded with a live audience Q&A session featuring WordPress Cofounder Matt Mullenweg. Attendees gained insights into the future of WordPress, including ongoing projects like Data Liberation (https://wordpress NULL.org/data-liberation/), community inclusion initiatives (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/handbook/wordcamp-organizer/first-steps/inclusive-and-welcoming-events/community-inclusion-initiatives/), artificial intelligence (AI), and more.

    The atmosphere was filled with excitement when Matt revealed that this year’s State of the Word will take place in Tokyo, Japan, on December 16, 2024.

    Additional questions from this session will be addressed in an upcoming post on the Make WordPress Project blog (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/project/).

    Stay connected

    WordPress events (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/) enable technologists, open source enthusiasts, and community members around the globe to meet, share ideas, and collaborate to drive WordPress and the open web forward.

    Don’t forget to mark your calendars for WordCamp Europe (https://europe NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/) (Torino, Italy), WordCamp US (https://us NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/) (Portland, Oregon, United States), and next year’s WordCamp Asia (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2025/) in Manila, Philippines!

    Thank you to the WordCamp Asia (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/) organizers, volunteers, and sponsors who made this event possible, and to @angelasjin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/angelasjin/), @dansoschin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dansoschin/), @eidolonnight (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/eidolonnight/), @bjmcsherry (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/bjmcsherry/) for collaborating on this post.

  • The Month in WordPress – February 2024 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/the-month-in-wordpress-february-2024/) March 6, 2024 Reyes Martínez

    February saw significant progress towards the upcoming WordPress 6.5 release and final preparations for WordCamp Asia. The results of the annual WordPress survey were released, and discussions began on the next steps for the Data Liberation project. Read on for the latest happenings in the WordPress space.

    Get ready for WordCamp Asia

    The stage is ready for the first WordPress flagship event of the year in Taipei, Taiwan. WordCamp Asia 2024 will kick off on March 7, promising three days of learning, networking, and inspiration.

    This year’s schedule (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/schedule/) features an extensive lineup of speakers, including guests Josepha Haden Chomphosy (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speaker/josepha-haden-chomphosy/), Ben Thompson (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speaker/ben-thompson/), Noel Tock (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speaker/noel-tock/), and JU-CHUN KO (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speaker/ju-chun-ko/). To conclude the summit, attendees can engage with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/speaker/matt-mullenweg/) in a Q&A session. Find out how to submit your questions (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordcamp-asia-2024-qa-with-matt-mullenweg/).

    Can’t make it to Taipei? Watch the event live stream on the WordPress YouTube channel (https://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/wordpress).

    https://wordpress.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/ (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/)

    Countdown to WordPress 6.5

    WordPress 6.5 is on track for its much-anticipated release on March 26. Following last month’s beta releases, the first release candidate (RC1) (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordpress-6-5-release-candidate-1/) is now available for testing—marking another milestone in the development cycle.

    This major release will add finesse and fine-tuning to how you control your site-building experience, with lots to explore specifically for developers. Get a detailed overview of highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-1/).

    Stay on top of the latest updates in WordPress development with February’s edition of What’s New for Developers? (https://developer NULL.wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/10/whats-new-for-developers-february-2024/)

    New in the Gutenberg plugin

    Two new versions of Gutenberg shipped in February:

    • Gutenberg 17.7 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/14/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-7-14th-february/) introduced multiple performance improvements, refinements to the link control UI, and shadow support for more blocks, among other notable highlights.
    • Gutenberg 17.8 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/28/whats-new-in-gutenberg-17-8-28-february/) focused on stability updates. New features included a grid layout variation for the Group block, bulk export of patterns, and the ability to browse and try alternative templates from the editor’s sidebar.
    Decorative blue background with text "Core Editor Improvement: Power in the Details." (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/10/core-editor-improvement-power-in-the-details/)

    Beyond major features, many small yet mighty updates are coming in WordPress 6.5 that will make a big difference in your WordPress experience. Read more » (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/10/core-editor-improvement-power-in-the-details/)

    Team updates

    • Results of the 2023 annual WordPress survey (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/2023-annual-survey-results-and-next-steps/) were announced last month.
    • An update on the Data Liberation project (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/19/data-liberation-next-steps/) informs the next steps of this initiative and how to contribute to current conversations.
    • The Community team shared key findings from the 2023 WordPress meetup survey (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/2024/02/09/2023-wordpress-meetup-survey-key-findings/).
    • Meet the new cohort (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/2024/02/16/contributor-mentorship-program-second-cohort-2024-q1/) of the Contributor Mentorship Program.
    • The Photos team posted recommendations for improving alternative texts (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/photos/2024/02/02/alt-text-for-wordpress-photos/) when submitting images to the Photo Directory.
    • Following discussions on the evolution of the Outreach Program, a new outreach group (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/27/connect-with-the-github-outreach-group-to-request-feedback-or-further-testing/) has been created on GitHub. This group will provide expertise and feedback to those seeking additional testing or perspectives on a new feature or solution.
    • Core team members introduced the WordPress Core Trac Sustainability Focus (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/22/introducing-the-wordpress-core-trac-sustainability-focus/), a part of the Sustainability team’s effort to enhance the sustainability of the WordPress codebase.
    • A new release of WP-CLI is now available (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cli/2024/02/08/wp-cli-v2-10-0-release-notes/).
    • Learn WordPress is regularly updated with new tutorials, online workshops, and more learning resources. Check out what’s new (https://learn NULL.wordpress NULL.org/learn-wordpress-newsletter-march-2024/).
    • The latest edition of People of WordPress features Sunita Rai (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/people-of-wordpress-sunita-rai/), a content marketer and volunteer translator from Nepal.
    https://wordpress.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/ (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2023/10/episode-64-patterns-in-wordpress/)

    Requests for feedback and testing

    • Your help testing WordPress 6.5 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordpress-6-5-release-candidate-1/) is key to ensuring everything in this release is the best it can be. New to testing? Read this post (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/15/help-test-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) for more details on getting set up.
    • The Training team is discussing how to bring accessibility-first approaches (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/training/2024/02/20/discussion-bringing-accessibility-first-approaches-into-content-development/) into their content creation and processes. Feedback is open until March 9.
    • Version 24.3 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/updates/2024/02/27/mobile-team-update-february-26th-2/) of the WordPress mobile app for iOS and Android is ready for testing.

    WordPress events

    • WordCamp Europe 2024 is looking for photographers (https://europe NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/call-for-photographers-is-now-open/).
    • The WordPress Kerala Photo Festival wrapped up with great success. The event received over 1,500 images (https://wordpress NULL.org/photos/t/wpkeralaphotos/) from 163 participants, contributing to the Photo Directory passing the 15,000 photo milestone. Winners were announced in this post (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/kerala/2024/photo-festival/winners-of-the-kerala-wordpress-photo-festival/).
    • Don’t miss these other WordPress events happening soon:
      • 🇨🇷 Women WordPress Day (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/sanjose/2024/women-wordpress-day/), Costa Rica, on March 8
      • 🇨🇭 Switzerland Community Day (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/switzerland/2024/community-day/) on March 23
      • 🇪🇸 WordCamp Torrelodones (https://torrelodones NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/), Spain, on March 23-24
    • Find out more local events or apply to organize one on the Events page (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/).

    Have a story we should include in the next issue of The Month in WordPress? Fill out this quick form (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/month-in-wordpress-submissions/) to let us know.

    Subscribe to WordPress News

    Join other subscribers and receive WordPress news directly in your inbox.

    Subscribe (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/?post_type=post&p=17030)

  • WordPress 6.5 Release Candidate 1 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordpress-6-5-release-candidate-1/) March 5, 2024 Lauren Stein

    The first release candidate (RC1) for WordPress 6.5 is ready for download and testing!

    This version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it’s recommended that you evaluate RC1 on a test server and site.

    Reaching this phase of the release cycle is an important milestone. While release candidates are considered ready for release, testing remains crucial to ensure that everything in WordPress 6.5 is the best it can be.

    You can test WordPress 6.5 RC1 in four ways:

    PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester (https://wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/) plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
    Direct DownloadDownload the RC1 version (zip) (https://wordpress NULL.org/wordpress-6 NULL.5-RC1 NULL.zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
    Command LineUse the following WP-CLI (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cli/) command:
    wp core update --version=6.5-RC1
    WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 RC1 WordPress Playground instance (https://playground NULL.wordpress NULL.net/#%7B%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20%7B%20%22php%22:%20%228 NULL.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20%7D,%20%22features%22:%20%7B%20%22networking%22:%20true%20%7D,%20%22steps%22:%20[%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data NULL.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata NULL.wordpress NULL.xml%22%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20%7D,%20%22options%22:%20%7B%20%22activate%22:%20false%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D,%20%7B%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20%7B%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20%7D,%20%22progress%22:%20%7B%20%22weight%22:%202%20%7D%20%7D%20]%20%7D) (available within 35 minutes after the release is ready) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup.

    The current target for the WordPress 6.5 release is March 26, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/6-5/), and check the Make WordPress Core blog (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/) for 6.5-related posts (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/tag/6-5/) in the coming weeks for further details.

    What’s in WordPress 6.5 RC1?

    Thanks to the many contributors testing up to this point, this release includes more than 20 bug fixes for the Editor and more than 40 tickets for WordPress Core (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F27%2F2024 NULL. NULL.03%2F05%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id).

    Get a recap of WordPress 6.5’s highlighted features in the Beta 1 announcement (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-1/). For more technical information related to issues addressed since Beta 3, you can browse the following links:

    • GitHub commits for 6.5 (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6 NULL.5?since=2024-02-27&until=2024-03-05) since February 27
    • Closed Trac tickets (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F27%2F2024 NULL. NULL.03%2F05%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id) since February 27

    Want to look deeper into the details and technical notes for this release? These recent posts cover some of the latest updates:

    • Introducing Plugin Dependencies in WordPress 6.5 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/03/05/introducing-plugin-dependencies-in-wordpress-6-5/)
    • Unification of the Site and Post Editors in 6.5 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/03/05/unification-of-the-site-and-post-editors-in-6-5/)
    • Updates to the HTML API in 6.5 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/03/04/updates-to-the-html-api-in-6-5/)
    • Interactivity API in 6.5 (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/03/04/interactivity-api-dev-note/)
    • I18N Improvements in 6.5 (Performant Translations) (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/27/i18n-improvements-6-5-performant-translations/)
    • WordPress 6.5 adds AVIF support (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/23/wordpress-6-5-adds-avif-support/)
    • Core Editor Improvement: Power in the Details (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/10/core-editor-improvement-power-in-the-details/)
    • Core Editor Improvement: Robust Revisions in the Site Editor (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/01/22/core-editor-improvement-robust-revisions-in-the-site-editor/)
    • All 6.5-related developer notes (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/tag/dev-notes-6-5/)

    How you can contribute

    WordPress is open source software made possible by a passionate community of people collaborating on and contributing to its development. The resources below outline various ways you can help the world’s most popular open source web platform, regardless of your technical expertise.

    Get involved in testing

    Testing for issues is critical to ensuring WordPress is performant and stable. It’s also a meaningful way for anyone to contribute. This detailed guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/28/help-test-wordpress-beta-3/) will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/15/help-test-wordpress-6-5-beta-1) for more details on getting set up.

    If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/) of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/newticket) if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/tickets/major).

    Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/) and join the #core-test channel (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/messages/core-test/) on Making WordPress Slack (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/).

    Search for vulnerabilities

    From now until the final release candidate of WordPress 6.5 (scheduled for March 19), the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/security/2024/02/12/welcoming-2024-with-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page (https://hackerone NULL.com/wordpress) and in the security white paper (https://wordpress NULL.org/about/security/).

    Update your theme or plugin

    For plugin and theme authors, your products play an integral role in extending the functionality and value of WordPress for all users. 

    Thanks for continuing to test your themes and plugins with the WordPress 6.5 beta releases. With RC1, you’ll want to conclude your testing and update the “Tested up to” version in your plugin’s readme file (https://developer NULL.wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-org/how-your-readme-txt-works/) to 6.5.

    If you find compatibility issues, please post detailed information to the support forum (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/).

    Help translate WordPress

    Do you speak a language other than English? ¿Español? Français? Русский? 日本? हिन्दी? বাংলা? You can help translate WordPress into more than 100 languages (https://translate NULL.wordpress NULL.org/projects/wp/dev/). This release milestone (RC1) also marks the hard string freeze (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/polyglots/handbook/glossary/#hard-freeze) point of the 6.5 release cycle.

    Release the haiku

    What’s this? RC1?
    Three weeks left until it’s done.
    Come and test. It’s fun!

    Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dansoschin/), @courane01 (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/courane01/), @hellosatya (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/hellosatya/), @huzaifaalmesbah (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/huzaifaalmesbah/)

  • WordCamp Asia 2024: Q&A with Matt Mullenweg (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/wordcamp-asia-2024-qa-with-matt-mullenweg/) March 4, 2024 Dan Soschin
    WordCamp Asia 2024

    WordCamp Asia 2024 is just a few days away—starting on March 7 in Taipei, Taiwan. This unique three-day summit will feature a distinguished lineup of speakers, numerous networking opportunities, and a closing Q&A experience with WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The live Q&A session will be streamed for WordPress enthusiasts worldwide, beginning at 3:30 p.m. Taipei Standard Time (7:30 a.m. UTC) on Saturday, March 9, 2024.

    Watch the event live stream on the WordPress YouTube channel (https://youtube NULL.com/wordpress) or visit the event website (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/) for more details.

    What: Q&A Session with Matt Mullenweg
    When: March 9, 2024 at 7:30 a.m. UTC (Start of live stream)
    Where: Taipei International Convention Center
    (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/location/)
    Streaming: Watch the live stream (https://youtube NULL.com/wordpress) on the WordPress YouTube channel.

    Have a question for Matt?

    If you want to participate, please submit your question via Slido from March 7 until about 6:00 a.m. UTC on Friday, March 8. Slido is now closed.

    Given the expected volume of submitted questions, only some will be answered live, while others will be covered in a follow-up post published after the event on make.wordpress.org/project (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/project).

    See you in-person and online on March 7!

    谢谢!


    Thank you to @rmartinezduque (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/rmartinezduque/), @eidolonnight (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/eidolonnight/), @cbringmann (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cbringmann/), and @bjmcsherry (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/bjmcsherry/) for reviewing this post.

  • WP Briefing: Episode 74: Kickstart (Or Level-Up) Your Contributor Journey (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/03/episode-74-kickstart-or-level-up-your-contributor-journey/) March 4, 2024 Brett McSherry

    Explore the impact you can make on WordPress without coding in this WordPress Briefing episode hosted by Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy. She’ll guide you through diverse non-coding contributions suitable for all skill levels, including content translation, photo submissions, event organization, and software testing. Listen and discover how you can enhance the WordPress community in ways that align with your interests and expertise.

    Credits

    Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/chanthaboune/)
    Editor: Dustin Hartzler (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dustinhartzler/)
    Logo: Javier Arce (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/javiarce/)
    Production: Brett McSherry (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/bjmcsherry/), Chloé Bringmann (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cbringmann/)
    Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

    Show Notes

    • WordCamp Asia 2024 (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/)
      • Contributor Day (https://asia NULL.wordcamp NULL.org/2024/contributor-day/)
    • WordPress Photo Directory (https://wordpress NULL.org/photos/)
    • Polyglots (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/polyglots/)
    • WordPress Support Forums (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forums/)
    • Upcoming WordPress Events (https://events NULL.wordpress NULL.org/)
    • Make WordPress Testing (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/)
    • Learn WordPress (https://learn NULL.wordpress NULL.org/)
    • Small List of Big Things
      • 2023 Annual Survey Results and Next Steps (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/2023-annual-survey-results-and-next-steps/) 
      • Gather Press Pilot Program (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/2024/01/22/proposal-pilot-program-to-test-gatherpress-on-the-wordpress-org-network-as-a-meetup-alternative/) 

    Transcripts

    [00:00:00] Josepha: 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’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. 

    [00:00:29] (Intro music) 

    [00:00:40] Josepha: At the end of this week, WordCamp Asia is happening. It’s one of our largest events dedicated to WordPress, and it will cover a wide range of topics. From advanced concepts like running thriving businesses to more beginner things like building your first theme, there is bound to be something for you at this event.

    For folks who have the opportunity to attend in person, you might also be going to your first-ever Contributor Day. Now, as much as I want there to be something for everyone there, I recognize that it’s a little more frenetic than your average WordPress event. It’s not any less welcoming than the event that has like a schedule and, tracks, and rooms.

    [00:01:19] Josepha: But in my experience of any group of open source contributors, they get really excited when they are tackling problems together. And that’s most of what happens at a Contributor Day. It can make it a little difficult to see how you can join in. But never fear; the crew at the WordPress Briefing has you covered. We’ve got a couple of ways you can contribute immediately, no code required, and a handful of good next steps when you’re feeling comfortable and ready to level up.

    For total beginners, so you’ve got a WordPress site, or you know, you’re about to launch one. And you’re here to learn and meet people and hopefully find someone who answers the questions you feel too shy to mention in public.

    So these two ways of contribution are for you. First, you can contribute photos. WordPress has a photo directory for openly licensed photos, which are included in Openverse searches. Users can submit photographs to be used by folks all over the world. There are some basic guidelines, such as no faces or identifying characteristics. It can’t be overly edited or processed, but even photos taken on a smartphone are accepted. Because we understand that the best camera is the one you have on you.

    [00:02:30] Josepha: You can also contribute translations. If you speak a language other than English, you can visit translate.WordPress.org and help translate not only the WordPress software but also plugins, themes, and other parts of the WordPress project into your native language. Since more than half of all WordPress installations are in non-English languages, adding or improving translations is really impactful. We are actually at WordCamp Asia trialing a new self-serve translation day process. So that’s a great place to have a double impact.

    [00:03:03] Josepha: So those are your two completely code-free ways that you can contribute, completely beginner friendly ways to contribute at Contributor Day coming up later this week. And then for your next steps, so say that you’ve had your site for a while, you are an absolute expert in the admin, you’ve had to answer a few tough questions for yourself, you’ve watched a lot of tutorials, and so now you’re thinking of ways you can share that knowledge.

    [00:03:29] Josepha: Here are a few ways that you can exercise your new knowledge and really solidify it in your brain.

    Firstly, you can contribute help. Supporting other WordPress users is a great way to give back to WordPress. This can involve answering questions, providing guidance, or even providing the right resources to users. You can check out the WordPress support forums for more information, and they actually have a dedicated support team as well that works toward making sure that WordPress users have answers to the questions they are asking. You can head over to WordPress.org/support/forums and just pick an appropriate area for you, something that you are currently an expert in, and start answering questions. Start contributing.

    [00:04:10] Josepha: Second thing you can do is you can contribute patterns. So WordPress has a dedicated Patterns directory, which stores a list of Block patterns. So custom designs that were created using blocks in Gutenberg that then can be used across any WordPress site, anyone’s WordPress site. You can submit those patterns, any pattern that you built, to the directory, and then they can be used by people all around the world. Basically, like anything with WordPress, if you put it in there, it can be used by anyone all around the world. 

    The third thing is that you can contribute events. This is one of my favorite ways to contribute. Organizing in person events to an extent has no code requirement to it, but also it does kind of require that you have a good understanding of your local community and have a willingness to get out there and build your network. 

    WordPress is where it is today thanks to its excellent community and all the lovely in-person events that happen all over the world. They bring our community together, and anyone can contribute by helping to organize just a small gathering or support an in-person event.

    [00:05:13] Josepha: The fourth way that you can level up your contributions is to contribute by breaking things. I know that sounds weird, but testing the software to see where it breaks is actually a really valuable contribution. It’s as easy as downloading the WordPress beta tester plugin and the test reports plugin to a WordPress installation, Preferably a testing one, not one that’s currently publicly in use. But you can test out the newest version of WordPress before the release and provide useful feedback to the development team. 

    And the fifth way that you can level up your contribution is to contribute learning. Not that you are learning as a contribution, but what one person can learn through a tutorial or documentation, another person has to learn through discussion and hands-on learning.

    This team, the folks over at learn.WordPress.org, they are the official team and official learning platform and resource for WordPress. They host video tutorials. Yes, but also host live online workshops, courses and even provide lesson plans on different topics related to WordPress. So if you are an educator or otherwise really like to help spread knowledge around, pass around the knowledge that has been hard-earned by you, this is an excellent opportunity.

    [00:06:28] Josepha: And of course, if you are brave and afraid of nothing, then you can just go to Contributor Day and move from table to table until something sounds interesting to you. You don’t have to have a plan. Your whole plan can absolutely be to wander until you are found.

    [00:06:45] (Music interlude) 

    [00:06:52] Josepha: That brings us now to our small list of big things. It’s actually a very small list today. I’ve got two things on it.

    [00:07:00] Josepha: The first is that a couple of weeks back, we published the results from the 2023 annual survey. So, each year, we collect some high-level data about trends and themes across this vast ecosystem of users and site builders, people who extend WordPress core, and contributors who build WordPress core to help inform decision-making and provide valuable feedback on the project status. I looked at the results from our last survey. We had a bit of an increase in the respondents, not as much as we would have liked, but still a little bit greater number than we had in the past couple of years. And I have a lot of questions myself about what we are doing compared to what we are being asked to do and so go take a look at the blog post that has some highlights from it. It’s got a couple of contextual pieces of information in there as well, and come with your questions to WordCamps around the world or ask them in community meetings as you find them. 

    [00:07:58] Josepha: And then the second thing is actually that we have kind of a pilot program going on. There’s a proposal out right now about GatherPress. It’s a group of community leaders that have built a tool, a community plugin, to help gather WordPress events a bit better and a bit more “open source-ely”. It’s open currently to anyone who is running a WordPress meetup group that is interested in learning more about how a WordPress-first and open source first community gathering tool might look.

    [00:08:32] Josepha: I’ll have a link to the proposal in the show notes that’ll give you more detailed information and give you an opportunity to figure out how you can join that pilot and help us figure out whether it will work or not ultimately for WordPress. 

    And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you liked what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser or fellow brand new WordCamper. But if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at wpbriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy.

    [00:09:13] Josepha: Thanks again for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks. 

  • WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-3/) February 27, 2024 Lauren Stein

    WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 is here and ready for testing!

    This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended you evaluate Beta 3 on a test server and site.

    You can test WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 in four ways:

    PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester (https://wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/) plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
    Direct DownloadDownload the Beta 3 version (zip) (https://wordpress NULL.org/wordpress-6 NULL.5-beta3 NULL.zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
    Command LineUse the following WP-CLI (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cli/) command:
    wp core update --version=6.5-beta3
    WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 Beta 3 WordPress Playground instance (https://playground NULL.wordpress NULL.net/#{%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20{%20%22php%22:%20%228 NULL.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20},%20%22features%22:%20{%20%22networking%22:%20true%20},%20%22steps%22:%20[%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data NULL.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata NULL.wordpress NULL.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20},%20%22options%22:%20{%20%22activate%22:%20false%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20}%20]%20}) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. 

    The current target date for the final release of WordPress 6.5 is March 26, 2024. That’s only four weeks away! Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/6-5/), and check the Make WordPress Core blog (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/) for 6.5-related posts (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/tag/6-5/) in the coming weeks for more information.

    Catch up on what’s new in WordPress 6.5: Read the Beta 1 announcement (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) for details and highlights.

    How to test this release

    Your help testing the WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 version is key to ensuring everything in the release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This detailed guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/28/help-test-wordpress-beta-3/) will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5. For those new to testing, follow this general testing guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/15/help-test-wordpress-6-5-beta-1) for more details on getting set up.

    If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/) of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/newticket) if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/tickets/major).

    Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/) and join the #core-test channel (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/messages/core-test/) on Making WordPress Slack (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/).

    Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta/RC

    Between Beta 1, released on February 13, and the final Release Candidate (RC) scheduled for March 19, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/security/2024/02/12/welcoming-2024-with-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page (https://hackerone NULL.com/wordpress) and in the security white paper (https://wordpress NULL.org/about/security/).

    Beta 3 updates and highlights

    WordPress 6.5 Beta 3 contains more than 45 updates to the Editor since the Beta 2 release, including more than 35 tickets for WordPress Core (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F21%2F2024 NULL. NULL.02%2F27%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id).

    Each beta cycle focuses on bug fixes; more are on the way with your help through testing. You can browse the technical details for all issues addressed since Beta 2 using these links:

    • GitHub commits for 6.5 (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6 NULL.5?since=2024-02-21&until=2024-02-27) since February 21
    • Closed Trac tickets (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F21%2F2024 NULL. NULL.02%2F27%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id) since February 21

    Double the haiku for Beta 3

    Find a Beta bug,
    it will help the team a lot,
    and improve WordPress!
    – submitted by @lada7042 (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/lada7042/)

    In code, dreams are bold,
    WordPress’s story unfolds,
    Beta journey’s told.
    – submitted by @huzaifaalmesbah (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/huzaifaalmesbah/)

    Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dansoschin/), @swissspidy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/swissspidy/), @adarshposimyth (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/adarshposimyth/), @davidbaumwald (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/davidbaumwald/)

  • WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-2/) February 20, 2024 Lauren Stein

    WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 is now ready for testing!

    This beta version of the WordPress software is under development. Please do not install, run, or test this version of WordPress on production or mission-critical websites. Instead, it is recommended you evaluate Beta 2 on a test server and site.

    You can test WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 in four ways:

    PluginInstall and activate the WordPress Beta Tester (https://wordpress NULL.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/) plugin on a WordPress install. (Select the “Bleeding edge” channel and “Beta/RC Only” stream).
    Direct DownloadDownload the Beta 2 version (zip) (https://wordpress NULL.org/wordpress-6 NULL.5-beta2 NULL.zip) and install it on a WordPress website.
    Command LineUse the following WP-CLI (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/cli/) command:
    wp core update --version=6.5-beta2
    WordPress PlaygroundUse the 6.5 Beta 2 WordPress Playground instance (https://playground NULL.wordpress NULL.net/#{%20%22preferredVersions%22:%20{%20%22php%22:%20%228 NULL.0%22,%20%22wp%22:%20%22beta%22%20},%20%22features%22:%20{%20%22networking%22:%20true%20},%20%22steps%22:%20[%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22login%22,%20%22username%22:%20%22admin%22,%20%22password%22:%20%22password%22%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/wpaccessibility/a11y-theme-unit-test/master/a11y-theme-unit-test-data NULL.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22importFile%22,%20%22file%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22url%22,%20%22url%22:%20%22https://raw NULL.githubusercontent NULL.com/WordPress/theme-test-data/master/themeunittestdata NULL.wordpress NULL.xml%22%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22query-monitor%22%20},%20%22options%22:%20{%20%22activate%22:%20false%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22create-block-theme%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22debug-bar%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22health-check%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22test-reports%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20},%20{%20%22step%22:%20%22installPlugin%22,%20%22pluginZipFile%22:%20{%20%22resource%22:%20%22wordpress NULL.org/plugins%22,%20%22slug%22:%20%22user-switching%22%20},%20%22progress%22:%20{%20%22weight%22:%202%20}%20}%20]%20}) to test the software directly in your browser without the need for a separate site or setup. 

    The current target date for the final release of WordPress 6.5 is March 26, 2024. Get an overview of the 6.5 release cycle (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/6-5/), and check the Make WordPress Core blog (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/) for 6.5-related posts (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/tag/6-5/) in the coming weeks for more information.

    Catch up on what’s new in WordPress 6.5: Read the Beta 1 announcement (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) for details and highlights.

    How to test this release

    Your help testing the WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 version is key to ensuring everything in the release is the best it can be. While testing the upgrade process is essential, trying out new features is equally important. This detailed guide (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/2024/02/15/help-test-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) will walk you through testing features in WordPress 6.5.

    If you encounter an issue, please report it to the Alpha/Beta area (https://wordpress NULL.org/support/forum/alphabeta/) of the support forums or directly to WordPress Trac (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/newticket) if you are comfortable writing a reproducible bug report. You can also check your issue against a list of known bugs (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/tickets/major).

    Curious about testing releases in general? Follow along with the testing initiatives in Make Core (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/test/) and join the #core-test channel (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/messages/core-test/) on Making WordPress Slack (https://wordpress NULL.slack NULL.com/).

    Vulnerability bounty doubles during Beta 2

    Between Beta 1, released on February 13, and the final Release Candidate (RC) scheduled for March 19, the monetary reward for reporting new, unreleased security vulnerabilities (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/security/2024/02/12/welcoming-2024-with-wordpress-6-5-beta-1/) is doubled. Please follow responsible disclosure practices as detailed in the project’s security practices and policies outlined on the HackerOne page (https://hackerone NULL.com/wordpress) and in the security white paper (https://wordpress NULL.org/about/security/).

    Beta 2 updates and highlights

    WordPress 6.5 Beta 2 contains more than 50 updates to the Editor since the Beta 1 release, including 40+ tickets for WordPress core (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F14%2F2024 NULL. NULL.02%2F19%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id).

    Each beta cycle focuses on bug fixes; more are on the way with your help through testing. You can browse the technical details for all issues addressed since Beta 1 using these links:

    • GitHub commits for 6.5 (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/commits/wp/6 NULL.5?since=2024-02-14&until=2024-02-20) since February 14
    • Closed Trac tickets (https://core NULL.trac NULL.wordpress NULL.org/query?status=closed&changetime=02%2F14%2F2024 NULL. NULL.02%2F20%2F2024&milestone=6 NULL.5&col=id&col=milestone&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&order=id) since February 14

    A Beta 2 haiku

    Help out with testing
    Contribute! Make an impact
    Let’s find all those bugs

    Thank you to the following contributors for collaborating on this post: @dansoschin (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dansoschin/), @huzaifaalmesbah (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/huzaifaalmesbah/), @rajinsharwar (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/rajinsharwar/), @swissspidy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/swissspidy/), @courane01 (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/courane01/).

  • WP Briefing: Episode 73: Inside the Interactivity API (https://wordpress NULL.org/news/2024/02/episode-73-inside-the-interactivity-api/) February 19, 2024 Brett McSherry

    In the latest WordPress Briefing, Josepha Haden Chomphosy discusses the Interactivity API, a new foundational tool that helps developers create memorable interactive front-end experiences. She is joined by special guests and sponsored contributors Ryan Welcher and Mario Santos, who share more about this impactful addition to the WordPress developer experience.

    Credits

    Host: Josepha Haden Chomphosy (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/chanthaboune/)
    Guest: Mario Santos (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/santosguillamot/)
    Guest: Ryan Welcher (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/welcher/)
    Editor: Dustin Hartzler (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/dustinhartzler/)
    Logo: Javier Arce (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/javiarce/)
    Production: Brett McSherry (https://profiles NULL.wordpress NULL.org/bjmcsherry/)
    Song: Fearless First by Kevin MacLeod

    Show Notes

    • Create block template for the Interactivity API (https://www NULL.npmjs NULL.com/package/ null@null wordpress/create-block-interactive-template)
    • GitHub tracking issue changes in the API (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/discussions/52906)
    • Interactivity API docs (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/tree/trunk/packages/interactivity/docs)
    • Interactivity API Movies demo (https://wpmovies NULL.dev/)
    • Interactivity API GitHub discussions (https://github NULL.com/WordPress/gutenberg/discussions/categories/interactivity-api)
    • Ryan Welcher Codes (https://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/c/ryanwelchercodes)
    • Small List of Big Things
      • Online monthly Docs Team Contributor Day (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/docs/2024/02/01/online-monthly-docs-team-contributor-day-february-27-2024/)
      • Share your feedback about the new WordPress Events Page! (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/community/2024/01/16/share-your-feedback-about-the-new-wordpress-events-page/) 
      • Improving block development documentation: 2023 recap and a look ahead (https://make NULL.wordpress NULL.org/core/2024/02/08/improving-block-development-documentation-2023-recap-and-a-look-ahead/)

    Transcripts

    [00:00:00] Josepha: 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’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Here we go. 

    [00:00:29] (Intro music) 

    [00:00:40] Josepha: I have with me today a couple of guests, Ryan Welcher and Mario Santos, who have joined me to talk about the Interactivity API. This is an API that we’ve been working on for quite a while, and it’s a fascinating thing. It’s really specifically user-facing in its functionality but makes a lot of work streamlined for everyday developers, whether you are building something for yourself, for your family, or for a client. This whole project probably is gonna really speak to you. 

    [00:01:10] Josepha: Hi, guys, and welcome to the show. First-time guests, both of you. Right?

    [00:01:15] Ryan: Yes. First time for me.

    [00:01:17] Mario: Thanks for inviting us.

    [00:01:18] Josepha: Yeah. Well, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, like your name, what you do with WordPress, how you contribute to the project, something like that?

    [00:01:27] Ryan: I can go first. My name is Ryan Welcher. I’m a developer advocate and sponsored by Automattic. Then, I contribute full-time to the WordPress project by creating documentation, doing live streams, creating videos, and just generally trying to be helpful in in the space to help engineers and extenders work with the various APIs in WordPress.

    [00:01:46] Josepha: I love the just generally trying to be helpful part. Mario, what about you?

    [00:01:52] Mario: He really is. He really does it.

    [00:01:54] Josepha: I know.

    [00:01:55] Mario: I’m Mario Santos. I’m also a sponsored contributor, and I’m more focused on the project management and developer. I consider myself a mix of both. Right now I’m working on projects that are focused on improving the developer experience especially. That can go from the Block API to the Interactivity API; that is the topic today.

    [00:02:16] Josepha: Very nice. Very nice. Just lots of helping that everyone’s trying to do. I think that’s a good thing.

    So, we’re talking about the Interactivity API today. And, Mario, I believe it was almost a year ago that you first put this proposal out into the WordPress project. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about just, like, where the idea of this came from? Like, I know it wasn’t originally called the Interactivity API, but, like, what was you said you do some a bit of product, a bit of development. Like, what was it about this idea that was so important to you?

    [00:02:48] Mario: Yeah. Sure. So, basically, well, the proposal came, like, one year ago, but it has been in the works, like, for many years, I would say. Just to give a bit more context, previously, before being a sponsored contributor, I was working at a startup called Frontity Framework, and we were building a React framework to enable rich user experiences on top of WordPress.

    [00:03:13] Mario: So basically, it was a framework for headless WordPress. And at some point, we became sponsored contributors, the idea was to bring those user experiences to those rich and cool websites that lead to WordPress. So, you don’t need an external framework to create them, and you can do that directly in WordPress. So that’s where the idea of the Interactivity API comes from. From there, we started exploring different possibilities and tailoring it more to WordPress to ensure it works with its APIs.

    And I think after many many months working on that, the Interactivity API is the result.

    [00:03:54] Josepha: I just wanted to note that you started that answer with, like, the proposal was about a year ago, but the work had been happening for a long time. I think that’s generally true, and it’s not something that we always really acknowledge. This happens with patents also. This is going to be a strange tangent, but this is how we do in in my brain. This is how my brain works. So frequently, you’ll see a brand new product, but the patent for it was, like, 30 years beforehand, like, way before you ever see anything. And I think that’s kinda how this works also with software development. Like, the idea, has been going for a long time.

    [00:04:27] Josepha: The problem was identified a long time ago. And by the time you see something that helps to solve the problem or bring a new set of features to you, like, you didn’t know, but it had been being worked on for, like, five years or something. And I think that’s such a fascinating thing. That’s always apparent to me, but I think it’s not really apparent for a lot of people in the, in I don’t know, who use software.

    I was gonna say in the space, quote, unquote, but that’s not even it. Like, it’s the people who are using software. We don’t know how long anything’s been under development. We just know that at some point, a magical thing appeared, and we get to use it. 

    [00:05:03] Josepha: So speaking of the problems that we have identified that we’re trying to solve with this. Like, was there an inherent problem that you all were trying to solve as you were coming up with this idea around the Interactivity API itself?

    [00:05:16] Mario: I would say that trying to summarize it, it covers many things, but the main problem was that creating those kinds of interactions in the client was kind of difficult. You had to manage many things many tools, and each developer could come up with different solutions, and maybe they don’t combine well together. So, the idea is to provide an extended way so developers don’t have to take care of many things. They just have to take care of the interactions they wanna create. And ensuring that it works well with the WordPress way, it works well with the block system, and any block created with this Interactivity API can communicate with each other. You can combine those blocks, and you are not gonna encounter any problem. So, I would say that the main issue we were trying to solve is that there wasn’t a standard solution. There were different approaches taken by different developers, and that could create some issues. So, until now, Gutenberg has been mainly focused on the editor side and how blocks are created. And this is a first attempt to to cover the part of the front end, the interactions that users may want to create in the front end.

    [00:06:31] Ryan: It solves a ton of problems. But, I mean, coming from someone like, I have a fair amount of agency experience. I’ve been, you know, you’re working on large projects. And every time someone solves a problem, they solve it slightly differently. And that’s problematic because you switch teams or, you know, someone else picks up the code base, and all of a sudden, now they have to learn your custom system that’s slightly different from the one that I built last week and the one that, you know, someone else built two weeks earlier. And this takes the guesswork out. It takes the sort of the plumbing out of the equation. One of the reasons I really loves working with WordPress when I started working with WordPress was that when I was building for clients, I didn’t have to worry about building the CMS. I didn’t have to worry about building a menu system or figuring out how to handle media.

    [00:07:10] Ryan: I just had to do the things that that client was paying me to do. Like, I just had to make their site look the way that they wanted it to. And with the Interactivity API, I think there’s a bit of that where I don’t have to worry about figuring out how am I gonna get all these pieces to talk to each other on the front end. It’s all there. I just have to connect the dots, and it makes it very, very simple.

    I’m building the site right now for a workshop that I’m gonna be giving a WordCamp Asia, which is a a shameless plug. Sorry.

    [00:07:33] Josepha: Coming up so fast, y’all. WordCamp Asia is, like, two weeks away.

    [00:07:37] Ryan: I’m so excited. I have so much work to do.

    But I’ve built an entire voting system on a website where people can pick what we’re going to be talking about in my workshop, and I built it in the Interactivity API, and it took me, you know, probably five hours. And that’s me trying to learn some things and mess around with it. And to do that without the Interactivity API would have probably been an entire React-based, you know, completely outside of WordPress. I would have loaded one thing on the page and had it build out my whole application, and now I’m doing it with blocks and I’m doing it with a block theme. So if I wanna move those blocks around. I can move the blocks around. I can change anything that I wanna change inside of WordPress the way I would normally, and all that in interactivity just still works. And that’s It’s awesome. I just I love it. I can’t like, the Interactivity API, not my website. 

    [00:08:26] Josepha: But also both. Like, it can be both. 

    [00:08:28] Mario: I wanted to say that I think it’s a great point. I like to think about it like having the best of both worlds. Right now, we have modern frameworks like React, Vue that are used to create these cool websites.

    And I think the Interactivity API plus WordPress brings everything together. Like, you can create those cool user experiences while keeping the full power of WordPress, its management system, the Block editor, and to be honest, I don’t think there’s anything like that out there. Like having the best of both both worlds because we are still working with blocks, and that’s amazing. 

    [00:09:04] Ryan: Given that it’s still, it’s not even been released yet. Like, it’s coming very soon. But.

    [00:09:08] Josepha: Yeah. This is all still in the Gutenberg plugin. So, like, if you don’t know what we’re talking about, get the Gutenberg plugin.

    [00:09:16] Ryan: But just how mature the API is now, considering it is still kind of not even fully released, it’s only gonna get better? I just think it’s awesome.

    So, kudos to Mario and your team for doing all this stuff.

    [00:09:28] Mario: Thank you. Kudos to everyone involved.

    [00:09:32] Josepha: So, I’ve a question that I think probably, Ryan, you can start with, but then also probably, Mario, you’re gonna have some opinions on also. In this conversation so far, we’ve done a lot of, like, when you want to have these interactions and also when you want to have these cool experiences. For folks who actually do not know what the Interactivity API is yet, and they don’t know what we’re talking about when we say these interactions like, what exactly are we talking about from a user perspective?

    Like, what types of things will users be able to see when they are experiencing the Interactivity API’s features and functionality.

    [00:10:07] Ryan: I think it’s a great question. From a user standpoint, it’ll just look like your regular website, I think. Depending on what you’re doing. So, like the interactions that we’re talking about is when you’re in the browser and you wanna click a button and expand something, for example, or you wanna click an image and have the lightbox pop-up, which is in core now, that’s driven by the Interactivity API, but these interactions are basically when a user wants to interact with something, what it does. That’s a really generic way of saying it. 

    [00:10:34] Josepha: Our current favorite example and, Ryan, it sounds like you also have another example. But our current favorite example is like a movie collection site, you know? And so, like, when we’re talking about what the Interactivity API is going to power, it’s things like, when you favorite a series of movies, and then you can, and it just updates that on the fly, and you’ll be able to in essentially real-time as instant as reasonably possible based on your computer and stuff.

    [00:11:03] Josepha: Like, then look at your list of things that you favorited or things like that. Like, for folks who don’t understand interactive site like, all of us know that that, like, if you get on a site, you have interacted with it. But when we’re talking about Interactivity API, we’re talking about types of direct actions users can take. Right? 

    [00:11:19] Mario: I would say yes.

    They are just only triggered by some actions. It could be scrolling, clicking, or, or whatever. But, it can go from a simple example like drop down or a popover to more complex things like the movies demo, where you can navigate and the page is not reloading, and that allows you to play a trailer. It starts in a pop-up, and you can keep navigating through different pages, and the trailer keeps playing without reloading. Another example could be instant search; like you start typing the search, and it directly updates the list of films, in this case, that are shown, those kinds of things that happen In the browser. 

    [00:12:00] Josepha: And Ryan said you, you said that you, like, built a whole survey system, A whole polling system. 

    [00:12:06] Ryan: Yeah, a voting system. So there’s a series of buttons, each one representing a certain topic, and people can vote, and it tallies the amount. So each, I’m calling them recipes, has amount of time associated with it, and then so you vote until you run out of time, at which point, like in its tracking it all, and it’s showing you how much time you voted, how much is left, and once you’ve run out of time it blurs like it disables all of the voting buttons so you can’t add more because you run out of time.

    [00:12:30] Ryan: So if you remove one, you can add again. It’s very, very powerful. And, like, before the Interactivity API, you would have to have, I would have built that whole thing in React, and it would have been one single application that just get loaded on a page. And I just think it’s amazing. And, like the, the ability to create what are called, like, single page applications or what have always sort of been called SPAs or single page applications where you’re not reloading the browser every single time you click on a link.

    You have to do some things to make that work, but that’s just available to you and in WordPress. That’s amazing. I just think that’s so neat. I mean, it’s already powering things like the Query Loop block has the ability to move pagination without reloading the page, which is, sounds like a sort of a like a okay, great, like sort of, you know, mundane thing but imagine you had two or three different query loops sitting on your homepage and you wanted to be able to paginate through each one and not refresh the page. That’s a fantastic user experience that now is just enabled and otherwise was not possible prior to the Interactivity API.

    [00:13:28] Josepha: I feel like the Query Loop block was, like, a three-year project four years ago. And I had forgotten about it, which is surprising because I was so concerned with it when we were working directly on it all the time. But yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly the kind of example. 

    So we’ve talked about kind of the user thing and people who are gonna build stuff for clients. But, like, if you’re a contributor and you want to figure out more about either how to use this or how to expand on what is already there.

    [00:14:01] Josepha: We already talked about how it’s in the Gutenberg plugin. It’s kind of experimental over there. But, like, do you all have like, good first bugs? Things that can be worked on in there? Or is there, like, an experiment zone where people can just be like, this is what I tried with the Interactivity API until it broke? How do people work with that?

    [00:14:20] Mario: I would like to clarify first, it’s right now, it’s private in, it’s a private API in WordPress core in 6.4, And it’s public in Gutenberg, but it’s gonna be a public API already in WordPress 6.5. So, yes. Anyone can start testing it.

    The best way to get involved is first sharing what interactions you want to see. I mean, everyone has different ideas, and we will love to know the interactions that people want to create using the Interactivity API, so that would be the first step. Then, test it, create your own blocks or site, and send feedback what do you like what you don’t like. Raise issues, and for that, we are mainly using GitHub. We created a new category in GitHub in the Gutenberg plugin discussions, and we try to to keep everything there.

    [00:15:13] Mario: So if you have any questions any feedback, you can share it there. You can also find more discussions about the road map, the change log, many things that are going on right now. And, yeah, I would say those are the ways of getting involved, and I can also expect, maybe Ryan can tell you more here, to start working more on tutorials or videos or whatever. And for me, personally, I would love to see the community working on that as well.

    [00:15:43] Ryan: Yeah. I can, yeah. I think that from a contributor standpoint, especially those who are trying to get into contributing, because, I mean, it’s not not complicated. Let’s put it that way, like the Interactivity API. And that’s not meaning to be a barrier to anyone, but a great place to start is documentation. A great place to start is going through those docs and making sure they’re up to date and, you know, saying, oh, well, that’s supposed to do this, so let me go try that. And if it works, great. If it doesn’t, you know, file a bug, update the documentation, that’s a great way to get started. It’s gonna familiarize yourself with the code base and what it’s supposed to do. And then, sort of, just through osmosis, you’ll start to pick up more about it. And for anyone starting to contribute to the WordPress project in general, I would say starting with documentation or unit testing is a really, really great way to kinda, dip your toe in the water and not feel too frustrated. And tutorials and demos and show us what you’re building. We wanna see it. I mean, send it to me, and I will show everyone that I know.

    [00:16:40] Ryan: I mean, we wanna see what what people are building with it and because, you know, just like WordPress, I always use this example, but, like, people used to hack WordPress until we got a hook added for that particular thing that they were adding. So, if we don’t know what people are building or wanting to build with it, we can’t make those things happen. So knowing what people are building, how they’re building, and what they can’t build, what they’re running into, what issues they’re running into is the best way to contribute. So, so people smarter than me can build it for you. 

    [00:17:08] Josepha: I love that call out, frankly.

    So there’s, you know, the theory of tech adoption. And for things like the Interactivity API where we’re still kind of in the early adopter phase like, Ryan, you’re an early adopter. You’re doing everything you think you want to be able to do until it breaks. And, like, I love, like, test it till it fails as a concept of how to get involved in something because, like, you’re just experimenting, and we encourage experimentation in open source and in open source software and certainly in WordPress. And so, like, it is an unusual thing to think of, like, the best way that I can give back to this project, that I can contribute to this project and make sure that it continues to succeed long term is by using it until the wheels fall off and then tell people what made the wheels fall off.

    Like, that is a change in thought, But you’re right. Like, it’s a very old school open source idea to just get in there and see where it breaks, and tell us. That’s it. That’s all we need. And I love it.

    [00:18:08] Josepha: But I just passed my 9-year anniversary being a sponsored contributor, and I was in WordPress for a little bit before it. And so, like, I’m officially the old guard of us, and so the fact that I’m, like, so excited about the fact that people are gonna come in and break Mario’s stuff. Mario, don’t be scared. It’s how it works. But also, like, I do find that very exciting.

    [00:18:31] Mario: I’m willing to see how people break things; that’s what we need. I totally agree with your reasoning.

    [00:18:38] Josepha: Exactly. So I do have kind of, just, like, a final question for y’all. If there were one thing that you wanted the people who are listening to the WordPress Briefing to know about the Interactivity API, like a hidden gem, a little secret trick. Like, what would it be?

    [00:18:57] Mario: For me, the most exciting part of the Interactivity API is the functionality the client-side navigation enables because there are many, many things there. And I’m sure that there are many things we haven’t thought about yet, and the community will come up with some ideas and that would be amazing.

    [00:19:17] Ryan: For me, the thing is, I love how integrated it is with WordPress, and I know a lot of thought has gone into that without getting too into the weeds. The reasons the decisions that were made were made was so all the hooks and filters and all that goodness that we’ve had for 20 years is still gonna work. And with the HTML API, the tag processor stuff that’s going on behind the scenes, it’s just so cool. It works so well with WordPress. It just works and that’s probably it for me.

    When I work with it, I’m not having to do any weird janky filtering or stuff that, like, you know, the things that I want to do are not hindered by the Interactivity API. The rather, I’m able to do more things because of it.

    [00:19:58] Mario: I prefer Ryan’s answer.

    [00:20:00] Mario: It’s something really important and it’s something we usually take for granted that it just works with WordPress APIs and the Block Editor, but if you think more about it, it’s amazing. Like, It’s what makes it really powerful, I I believe.

    [00:20:15] Josepha: For what it’s worth, I think that’s true for a lot of, like, the R&D type things that we’re working on in the project right now. Right? Across Our ecosystem, like WP Playground. It is mind-boggling how progressive that is as a concept, and we currently have, like, you know, 25 ideas about what we could do with it, and we’re currently working on, like, five because we’ve got two and a half developers on it or something.

    But, like, the expectation that it will just work is there for everybody who has, is not part of the R&D process, but for everyone else who’s, like, been watching its development over time, shocking. Shocking that it works at all. Not because it wasn’t supposed to work, but because, like, if someone had asked you five years ago if it was gonna be possible to run WordPress development environments locally and then also just export it and import it into whatever host you want. Like, without a host, without a server, we would all think that you were nuts. 

    [00:21:22] Josepha: Amazing what’s happening there and, like, some of the things that we’re seeing, people who are, like, researching with AI in the WordPress space doing? Equally shocking. All of these things. Like, had you said anything to me about it five years ago, I’d be like, well, that is a mystery. So, every once in a while, I do have wild ideas about things that I wish we could do with our software. And so yesterday, I went and looked at a prototype for something that someone built based on a wish that I had in 2019. In 2019, I was like, you can play Skyrim on an Amazon Dot using just your voice. So like, why can’t we build a website?

    [00:22:01] Josepha: And then in 2021, someone prototyped that for me. It was ridiculous. It was very bad. It was hilarious. But, also, like, it took 35 minutes to create a ‘Hello world’ page, which was ridiculous.

    And now, like, what we’re looking at, the research that I keep seeing from that AI space is people saying, like, I’m gonna put in a plain text prompt. I need a website as a yoga instructor who also makes custom hats. Right? And then, like, poof. You have this thing that kinda looks like a website with your basic functions and features using the blocks that we have created for WordPress. Like it’s fascinating how far it’s come. And that’s in 2021. It was literally impossible the last time that I was talking about it with anyone, equally literally impossible. Everyone’s like, plain language prompts for stuff, like that is just a pipe dream. Get away from us.

    And now I keep seeing, like, these demos of the research, and it’s not as far away as we all thought it was. For all these things, Playground, Interactivity API, The AI research is being done. Like, we’re just a walking R&D group over here in WordPress, and I love it. It’s fascinating. We’re just making the impossible possible every day, and I think that’s really cool.

    [00:23:16] Ryan: So cool.

    [00:23:18] Josepha: Sorry. I got really sidetracked. Do y’all have anything that you wanted to be sure to share about either the Interactivity API or anything that’s coming up? Something you wanna make that our listeners know? 

    [00:23:29] Mario: I would just like to emphasize that we love feedback. Please share your feedback. If you test it, yeah, if you think it’s bad feedback, share it with us as well.

    That’s especially the feedback we like. I don’t like this part. That’s great. We we want to know because the idea is that it serves all purposes for this kind of interactions. 

    That nothing new, but I would like to emphasize that part.

    [00:23:56] Josepha: You know what? There’s nothing new under the sun. It’s fine. You’re good. You should always tell people what you need.

    [00:24:01] Ryan: If you’re interested in getting started with the Interactivity API and just don’t have any idea where to begin, there’s actually a pack there. There’s a Create Block template. So the Create Block package allows you to to quickly scaffold blocks.

    And there’s a template that’s part of the Gutenberg repository. It’s been published on it and NPM. And it will scaffold a very simple block out for you and it’ll give you, it’ll show you all the plumbing and how all the pieces work together. So, I think that’s a fantastic place to get started. It’s a very simple block. It just basically shows and hides a message, but it’s all done via the Interactivity API, but it’s a really, really great sort of, like, like, ‘Hello world’ style. I’m gonna shamelessly self-promote myself at WordCamp Asia. I’ll be at WordCamp Asia this year doing a workshop where I will be doing some stuff with your Interactivity API. But, if you’re there and you wanna chat more about the Interactivity API, I am all ears, and I love talking about this stuff.

    [00:24:51] Josepha: Cool. Ryan, Mario thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a wonderful conversation.

    [00:24:58] Ryan: Thank you.

    [00:24:58] Mario: Thank you.

    [00:25:01] Josepha: So I hope that you all find that whole project as fascinating as I find it. The Interactivity API is, I know, something that we’ve kind of been talking about for a while. It showed up specifically in State of the Word, and it’s hard to understand how important, how vital that work is going to be until you really get your hands on it.

    So I recommend you get in there. You take a look at it. I think also Ryan has a few live streams that he does, and he’s planning on a couple for the Interactivity API coming up. And so just keep an eye out for all of that as we go. 

    [00:25:37] (Music interlude)

    [00:25:49] Josepha: Now that brings us to our small list of big things.

    Today, it’s a bunch of feedback and documentation. So, first things first. Did you know that the Documentation Team holds an online monthly Contributor Day on the fourth Tuesday of every month. It’s just an online docs day, and I love it. So, the next one that’s coming up is February 27th. We’re looking for folks to help. So show up, figure out how to get some docs done, and make the WordPress project easier to follow, one bit of documentation at a time. 

    [00:26:16] Josepha: The next thing that I have is a request for feedback. So, we announced in December that we have a new centralized WordPress events landing page on WordPress.org, and we wanted to give more visibility to all kinds of WordPress events across the globe. But as always, we really could use your feedback about what is useful for you, what you had hoped to see, what you didn’t see. So, leave your comments with any relevant feedback about how you would improve those pages and the text on it. If you’re missing anything relevant, if there are ideas that you have for what could be there, all ideas are welcome. 

    And then, the third thing that I have on our list today is another documentation thing. So, over the last year, a group of contributors have been working to improve the block development onboarding experience within the Block Editor handbook. That contains over 400 published pages, and the effort in 2023 to kind of overhaul that and make it easier was just the beginning. So, it’s a daunting task. It’s big. It’s complex, but improving documentation is one of the easiest ways to contribute to the WordPress project, especially If there are just quick fixes like typos or formatting. Feedback on the existing content, such as the new block tutorial, is invaluable. And so, if you have not taken a look at those yet, wander over to the show notes, click a link or two, take a look, get some feedback to us. 

    [00:27:41] Josepha: And that, my friends, is your small list of big things. Don’t forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app or subscribe directly on WordPress.org/news. You’ll get a friendly reminder whenever there’s a new episode. If you like what you heard today, share it with a fellow WordPresser. Or, if you had questions about what you heard, you can share those with me at WPBriefing@WordPress.org. I’m your host, Josepha Haden Chomphosy. Thanks for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.

    [00:28:09] (Music outro)

Wo gibts den besten Doener Kebap in Berlin?

Die Geschmaecker sind ja bekanntlich unterschiedlich, aber ich moechte ein paar gute Beispiele in unserer Heimatstadt geben:

1: Hasir Restaurants (http://www NULL.hasir NULL.de/index NULL.html)

Fuer alle, die es wuerzig und qualitativ sehr hochwertig moegen.

Hasir ist eine Restaurant-Kette mit sechs Restaurants in Berlin und ist bei unseren Tuerken besonders beliebt. Fuenf der sechs Lokale sind empfohlen:

  • Hasir Kreuzberg, Adalbertstr.10, 10999 Berlin
  • Hasir Ocakbasi, Adalbertstr.12, 10999 Berlin
  • Hasir Wilmersdorf, Nürnbergerstr.46, 10789 Berlin
  • Hasir Spandau, Breitestr.43, 13597 Berlin
  • Hasir Mitte, Oranienburger Str.4, 10178 Berlin

Die Preise sind ueberdurchschnittlich und ein Doener Kebap kostet in etwa 2,70 EUR. Einer der Spezialitaeten, die du probieren solltest, ist der Duerum Doener.

2. Balli Doener

Fuer alle, die sehr hungrig sind 🙂

Die Spezialitaet ist hier der sehr grosse Duerum Doener mit Pommes und du solltest unbedingt die Knoblauchsauce dazu waehlen. Der Preis liegt bei 3,00 EUR. Du solltest ein Bild machen, um es zu Hause zeigen zu koennen 😉

  • Balli Doener Tempelhof, Tempelhofer Damm 146, 12099 Berlin Tempelhof
  • Balli Doener Spandau, Moritzstraße 2, 13597 Berlin

3. Grill Bosporus

Fuer alle, die die klassische Variante wollen.

Dieser Imbiss war urspruenglich dafuer bekannt, dass hier sehr viele junge Leute nachts herkamen. Die Preise sind moderat und ein Doener kostet ca. 2,30 EUR.

  • Grill Bosporus, Wilmersdorfer Straße 105, 10629 Berlin

4. YE-MC Doener

Ein weiterer guter lokaler Imbiss in Spandau. EIn Doener Kebap kostet 2,60 EUR.

  • YE-MC Doener, Streitstraße 57, 13587 Berlin

Where do I get the best Doener Kebap in Berlin?

Tastes are different for people but just want to give some good examples here in our home town:

1: Hasir Restaurants (http://www NULL.hasir NULL.de/eng/index NULL.html)

For people looking for a spicy style and best quality.

Hasir is a restaurant chain with six restaurants in Berlin and it’s one of the famous restaurants of our Turkish people here. Five of them are recommended:

  • Hasir Kreuzberg, Adalbertstr.10, 10999 Berlin
  • Hasir Ocakbasi, Adalbertstr.12, 10999 Berlin
  • Hasir Wilmersdorf, Nürnbergerstr.46, 10789 Berlin
  • Hasir Spandau, Breitestr.43, 13597 Berlin
  • Hasir Mitte, Oranienburger Str.4, 10178 Berlin

The prices are over average and a Doener Kebap is about 2.70 EUR. One of the specialities you should try is the Duerum Doener.

2. Balli Doener

For very hungry people 🙂

The specility is the very large Duerum Doener with french fries in it and you should chose the garlic souce with it. The price is 3.00 EUR. You should take a picture to show it at home 😉

  • Balli Doener Tempelhof, Tempelhofer Damm 146, 12099 Berlin Tempelhof
  • Balli Doener Spandau, Moritzstraße 2, 13597 Berlin

3. Grill Bosporus

For people looking for the classic style. This one is originally known to be visited by many many young people at night. The prices are moderate, a Doener Kebap is about 2.30 EUR.

  • Grill Bosporus, Wilmersdorfer Straße 105, 10629 Berlin

4. YE-MC Doener

Another good local one in Spandau. An Doener Kebap costs 2.60 EUR.

  • YE-MC Doener, Streitstraße 57, 13587 Berlin

Renovierung unseres zweiten Bades

Im Zuge der passiven Schallschutzmaßnahmen an unserem Haus wurde u.a. die gesamte Innendämmung des Daches neu gedämmt. Dies führte nun zwangsläufig zu einer früheren Renovierung unseres zweiten Bades als geplant. Die Fliesen an Wand und Decke sowohl die zusätzliche Beplankung mit Rigipsplatten wurden von mir abgerissen und die Sanitärobjekte entfernt. Anschliessend wurde die Decke wie im gesamten Obergeschoss durch die beauftragte Baufirma abgerissen und das alte Dämmmaterial entfernt. So weit der Abriss, das Ergebnis ist auf dem ersten Bild zu sehen.

Es folgt der Wiederaufbau…

Nach dem Abriss wurde durch die Baufirma ein neues schall- und wärmegedämmtes Kunstofffenster eingebaut, die Decke neu isoliert und mit Rigips beplankt. Da eine Schallisolierung der Aussenwände nur in den Schlafräumen durchgefuehrt wurde, habe ich mich dazu entschlossen, hier im Bad analog zu den anderen Zimmern eine Vorsatzwand mit 60cm Dämmwolle, Dampfbremse und 2-facher Rigipsbeplankung aufzustellen. Vorher mussten noch die Rohrleitungen fuer die Badewanne und das Bidet in die Wand integriert werden. Somit ist nun das gesamte Obergeschoss mit der gleichen Dachdämmung, Fenstern und Aussenwänden versehen.

Man sieht nun schon die Anschlüsse für das Bidet und die Duschbadewanne. Wir haben uns dazu entschieden, die Abseitenwand zu verkürzen, damit die Badewanne näher an die Dachschräge und damit komlett rechts neben das Fenster passt. Somit ist die Aufstellung einer Duschwand moeglich, welche dann mit dem Fenster abschliesst. Es ist zugegebenermaßen ziemlich eng, aber wir wollten auch hier eine Duschmöglichkeit schaffen und eine andere Plazierung wäre noch unvorteilhafter. Die Fussbodenheizungsrohre wurden übrigens bereits beim Hausbau relativ wild unter der Originalbadewanne verlegt, das entstammt also nicht meiner künstlerischen Hand 😉 Das Loch in der Abseite soll spaeter einem Regal dienen, damit durch Ausschrauben des Regals jederzeit ein Zugang zu den dahinterliegenden Rohren moeglich ist. Ist zweckmäßig und schoener als eine Tür bzw. Klappe.

Weitergehen sollte es jetzt eigentlich mit dem Einbau der Badewanne. Beim Ueberholen des WC-Spülkastens gab es jedoch eine Ueberraschung. Der Absperrhahn im Spülkasten wurde undicht und musste nun ausgetauscht werden. Leider ist das Rohr, an dem dieser Absperrhahn befestigt ist, sehr dünn und zudem nicht richtig in der Wand befestigt. Hier musste ich mir jetzt professionelle Hilfe holen, damit das Rohr in der Wand keinen Schaden erlitt und die Wand wieder geöffnet werden musste.

Durch Erhitzen des Absperrhahns konnte dieser losgeloest und durch einen neuen ersetzt werden. Das war vom Fachmann innerhalb von 15 Minuten erledigt und ich war wieder 50 EUR ärmer 😉

Nun habe ich jedoch gleich einen Holzklotz eingeklebt, an dem das Rohr befestigt wurde. Die Innereien des Spülkastens wurden jetzt von mir erneuert, sodass der ganze Spülkasten nun wieder fast wie neu ist 🙂

Nach diesem ungeplannten Ausritt konnte es nun mit dem Einbau der Badewanne weitergehen. Die Badewanne wurde zuerst auf die Wannenfüße gestellt, am Zu- und Abwasser angeschlossen und getestet. Alles dicht 🙂

Also alle Maße aufgenommen und die Wanne wieder demontiert. Zuerst wurde nun die hintere Mauer unter der Dachschräge als Wannenrandabstützung hochgemauert und an der Aussenwand eine Holzlatte in der Waage montiert.

Die vordere Mauer wurde nun ca. 6 cm breiter als der Wannenrand hochgemauert, aber ca. 1-2 cm niedriger als der geplante Wannenrand. Somit konnte die Mauer nun eingeschalt werden und durch Gießestrich exakt in der Waage aufgefüllt werden.

Als Vorbereitung wurden nun noch die Wände im Badewannenbereich wasserfest versiegelt und auch schon die Decke mit Latexfarbe geweisst.

Die Badewanne ist auch schon mit Seitenstreifen versehen und wartet nur noch darauf in Silikon eingesetzt zu werden.

Das erste Befüllen der Badewanne bzw. das Ablassen des Wassers hat gezeigt, dass das Wasser nicht schnell genug abläuft. Die Ursache hierfür liegt in dem Bodenabfluss, wo der Abfluss der Badewanne integriert ist. Hier wird der Zufluss so stark im Durchmesser beschränkt, dass es sich zurückstaut. Auch mit der vorherigen Badewanne hatten wir diese Erfahrungen schon gemacht. Daher habe ich mich kurzerhand entschlossen, den Bodenabfluss stillzulegen und das Abflussrohr unter der Badewanne neu in die Abseite zu verlegen und von dort in das Hauptabwasserrohr zu leiten. Somit konnte ich gleich eine Reinigungsklappe integrieren, an die ich später jederzeit durch die Abseitenöffnung herankomme.

Dieses zusätzliche Abflussrohr hat den Raum unter der Badewanne allerdings noch weiter verengt, sodass es nun schwierig wird, nach dem Einbau der Badewanne, die Wannenfüße in der Höhe zu verstellen.

So, alles ist  gut gegangen, nach einigen Verrenkungen ist es nun auch gelungen, die Wannenfüße in der Höhe zu verstellen. Die Seitenwände wurden nun noch mit Rigips verkleidet und der vordere Wannenrand schon mit Silikon abgedichtet.

Somit ist nun alles fertig zum Fliesen des Bades 🙂

Nun gibt es endlich auch sichtbare Ergebnisse…

Es dauert bei mir zwar etwas länger als beim Profi, aber es geht voran. Pro Wand brauche ich ca. einen Tag. Die erste Wand war besonders zeitaufwendig wegen der vielen Anschlüsse für das WC, das Waschbecken, die Steckdosen und Schalter, sowie die Einrahmung des Spiegels.

Die zweite Wand ist komplett ohne Ausparungen, aber auf Grund der grossen Fläche hab ich auch hier einen Tag bebraucht.

Auf der Fensterseite ist mir nun ein kleiner Fehler unterlaufen. Als wir uns nach einer kleinen Kaffeepause das bereits Geschaffte anschauten, wurde ich berechtigterweise gefragt, warum denn die Borduere rechts neben dem Fenster nicht weiter verlaufe?? Oops…durch die Unterbrechung der Borduere durch das Fenster, hab ich doch schlichtweg vergessen, diese weiterzufuehren. Also die frisch gelegten Fliesen (ca. 2qm) wieder runter. Ein paar wenige konnten gerettet und wiederverwendet werden, aber die meisten mussten sowieso neu zugeschnitten werden.

Waschbeckenseite

Der Rest klappte dann Gott sei dank reibungslos und erstaunlich problemlos, auch beim anschliessenden Verfugen.

Bei den Bodenfliesen habe ich mich nun zum ersten Mal entschlossen, diagonal zu fliesen. Hier hab ich dann auch lieber etwas mehr Zeit in die Verlegeplanung investiert, sodass z.B. die Fliesen diagonal von der Badewannenecke aus verlaufen und an der Tuer mit voller Groesse anfangen.

Trotz der Fliesenhaerte lassen sich die Bodenfliesen doch relativ gut brechen und alles verlaeuft reibungslos. Eine Haelfte am ersten Tag und die andere Haelfte am naechsten Tag. Ich bin sehr zufrieden mit dem Resultat.

Nach abschliessendem Vefugen der Bodenfliesen und dem Versiegeln aller Randfugen mit Silikon geht es nun weiter mit dem Einkleben des Spiegels (Vorsicht: Nur speziellen Spiegelkleber verwenden, ansonsten kann der Spiegel blind werden!!), dem Anbringen der Objekte und der Armaturen, Lampen etc.

Bis auf wenige “Kleinigkeiten”, wie z.B. Duschtrennwand, Fensterbank, Handtuchhalter etc. ist es nun vollbracht: Das Bad ist jetzt mehr oder weniger fertig!!!

…Feierlaune kommt auf 🙂

Badewannenseite

Auch nach vielen Wochen freue ich mich jetzt jedes Mal, wenn ich in das Bad komme. Eigentlich gibt es nichts, was ich nachtraeglich anders machen wuerde, oder was nicht voll und ganz meinen Vorstellungen entspricht.

Ueber Geschmaeker laesst sich ja bekanntlich streiten, uns war jedoch ein zeitloses und helles Bad wichtig, und das haben wir glaube ich ganz gut hinbekommen.

Unser neuer Hauseingang

So sieht unser Hauseingang derzeit noch aus. Nachdem sowohl die Fenster durch weisse Kunstofffenster mit Waermeschutz ersetzt als auch der Giebel sowie die Dachueberstaende weiss gestrichen wurden, mag der mahagonifarbene Hauseingang nicht mehr so recht passen. Zudem muss auch die Haustuer noch gegen eine waermegeschuetzte Variante ausgetauscht werden. Daher entschlossen wir uns gleich zu einem kleinen Anbau incl. neuem Fenster und Haustuer sowie einer neuer Treppe. Die Entstehung und die Baufortschritte moechte ich nach und nach dokumentieren.

Der Start wird sich noch ein wenig verzoegern, da mein derzeitiges Projekt mit der Renovierung unseres Bades im Obergeschoss noch nicht abgeschlosen wurde.

Stay tuned…

Die Zukunft des Transrapids

Transrapid

Das Patent von Herman Kemper zur Magnetschwebebahn liegt nun schon mehr als 75 Jahre (1934) zurück, dennoch hat sich diese Technologie trotz überzeugender Vorteile gegenüber der herkömmlichen Rad-Schiene-Technik bis heute noch nicht am Markt durchsetzen können. Gründe hierfür sind vor allem politisches Versagen sowie wirtschaftliche Interessen der Rad-Schiene-Lobby.

Eine erste Anwendungsstrecke Hamburg-Berlin (http://de NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Magnetschnellbahn_Berlin%E2%80%93Hamburg) wurde bereits 1992 in den Bundesverkehrswegeplan aufgenommen und der Bau 1997 auch durch das Verkehrsministerium (Finanzminister Wissmann) beschlossen. Trotz dem Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder seinen Wählern 1998 die Realisierung dieser Anwendungsstrecke Hamburg-Berlin versprochen hatte und diese auch in den Koalitionsvertrag aufgenommen wurde, hat sich die rot-grüne Bundesregierung im Jahr 2000 schliesslich gegen den Bau der Strecke entschieden. Es waren bereits 18 der 20 Abschnitte des Planfeststellungsverfahren für Hamburg-Berlin fertig, doch das Planfeststellungsverfahren wurde nicht Ruhen gelassen, sondern wurde aufgehoben! Einer möglichen späteren Wiederaufnahme wurde somit jegliche Grundlage entzogen.

Wie kam es nun zu diesem Ausstieg?

Als vorgeschobene Begründung musste die Finanzierungslücke zwischen der ursprünglich geplanten und im Koalitionsvertrag festgeschriebenen 6,1 Mrd. DM (3,1 Mrd. Euro) und der nun geschätzten Kosten von 7,6 Mrd. DM (3,9 Mrd. Euro) herhalten. Generell wird der Transrapid in der Presse meist mit hohen Kosten in Verbindung gebracht. Zu Unrecht, denn bereits oberflächliche Recherchen machen deutlich, dass die Herstellungskosten einer Transrapid-Strecke keineswegs höher als die einer ICE-Neubaustrecke, die Wartungskosten der TR-Strecke jedoch erheblich geringer sind. Die einseitig negative Darstellung in der Presse beruht daher vermutlich auf anderen wirtschaftliche Interessen. Es geht um viel Geld, um sehr viel Geld. Die Rad-Schiene-Lobby hat grosses Interesse daran, solange als möglich an ihrer nun an physikalische Grenzen stossende Technologie zu verdienen. Durch die jahrzehntelange Anwendung bzw. Vermarktung existieren feste Geschäftsbeziehungen und Strukturen, die ein Eindringen einer Konkurrenztechnologie zu verhindern wissen. So wurde für den Transrapid auch erstmalig ein neues Finanzierungskonzept nach dem Public Private Partnership (http://de NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Public_Private_Partnership)-Modell ausgewählt, um privates Kapital zu mobilisieren. Ein fairer Wettbewerb zwischen Transrapid und Bahn wurde somit frühzeitig verhindert. Die hohe Beteiligung der Deutschen Bahn an der Finanzierung führte dann schliesslich auch zum Ausstieg der Bahn aus dem Projekt, zwei Monate nach dem Mehdorn das Amt des Vorstandsvorsitzenden der Deutschen Bahn übernommen hat. Mehdorn distanzierte sich so auch gleich vom gesamten Projekt Transrapid und nicht nur von der Strecke Hamburg-Berlin.

Zum Vergleich wurden im Jahre 1995 für die ICE-Strecke von Frankfurt nach Köln 7,75 Mrd. DM (3,9 Mrd. Euro) eingeplant. Nicht nur die Fertigstellung verschob sich um zwei Jahre auf August 2002, sondern auch die Gesamtkosten stiegen auf 6 Mrd. Euro an. Der Kostenanstieg hatte aber im Gegensatz keinerlei Auswirkungen auf das Projekt.

Dies macht deutlich, dass die gestiegenen Planungskosten für die Transrapidstrecke Hamburg – Berlin nicht der alleinige Grund für das Scheitern dieses Projektes gewesen sein können.