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December 01, 2018

WPTavern: Mullenweg Ramps Up Communication Ahead of WordPress 5.0 Release, RC2 Now Available

WordPress 5.0 RC2 was released today with 15 notable updates, including improvements to block preview styling, browser-specific bug fixes, and other changes. RC2 was released simultaneously with Gutenberg version 4.6.

The official release date for WordPress 5.0 has not yet been announced, because it depends on feedback from RC2 testing. Contributors’ uneasiness with not having an official release date seemed to reach a critical tipping point during this week’s WordPress dev chat, as many participants pressured Matt Mullenweg, who is leading the release, to give more information on when they can expect 5.0.

“It is very important that we have a release date to aim for,” ACF founder Elliot Condon said. “I’m finding the current ‘waiting game’ quite stressful, and I suspect a few other developers will share the same feeling.”

Tensions were high as contributors cited various reasons for wanting a date, including companies needing support staff on hand, upcoming holidays, documentation planning, and the importance of user trust.

“We’re determining the release date based on the open issues,” Mullenweg said. “Please consider it as coming as soon as possible, when everything is resolved.”

“I hope it’s clear we’re trying to get this out as soon as possible, but don’t yet have enough data to announce an official date. As mentioned last week we have done a number of December releases in the past, and may this time, but don’t have enough data to announce a new date yet.”

Mullenweg also urged dev chat attendees to keep in mind that any site administrators can install the Classic Editor plugin to keep the current editing experience, regardless of the 5.0 release date. He said the date will be announced via a P2 post, not during a dev chat.

“If you want to know what to plan on, please don’t hold anything back based on expected dates, please test or deploy the RCs, that’s what they’re for,” Mullenweg said.

In the meantime, Mullenweg is spending the weekend taking questions from the community during 24 office hours slots. He also published a lengthy post titled “WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ,” which reaffirms WordPress’ mission in the context of Gutenberg. It answers questions like “Why do we need Gutenberg at all?” and “Why blocks?”

“I knew we would be taking a big leap,” Mullenweg said. “But it’s a leap we need to take, and I think the end result is going to open up many new opportunities for everyone in the ecosystem, and for those being introduced to WordPress for the first time. It brings us closer to our mission of democratizing publishing for everyone.”

The stats Mullenweg cited about previously having 9 major WordPress releases in December (34% of all releases in the last decade) indicate that a December release may still be on the table. His post addresses the perceived urgency behind getting Gutenberg out the door and into the hands of users. In evaluating WordPress 5.0’s readiness, he said it’s important to differentiate between the code being ready and the community being ready.

“In the recent debate over Gutenberg readiness, I think it’s important to understand the difference between Gutenberg being ready code-wise (it is now), and whether the entire community is ready for Gutenberg,” Mullenweg said.

“It will take some time — we’ve had 15 years to polish and perfect core, after all — but the global WordPress community has some of the world’s most talented contributors and we can make it as good as we want to make it.”

The post also offers a preview of where Gutenberg is going in the next site customization phase and how it will change the way users build their sites.

“The Editor is just the start,” he said. “In upcoming phases blocks will become a fundamental part of entire site templates and designs. It’s currently a struggle to use the Customizer and figure out how to edit sections like menus, headers, and footers. With blocks, people will be able to edit and manipulate everything on their site without having to understand where WordPress hides everything behind the scenes.”

Mullenweg said he plans to talk more about the next phases following site customization during the State of the Word address at WordCamp US. If you have questions about Gutenberg and where it’s headed, the comments are open on his post.

by Sarah Gooding at December 01, 2018 03:15 AM under WordPress 5.0

WPTavern: Let Us Know If You’re Hosting a WordCamp US Watch Party

WordCamp US is next weekend and if you’re unable to attend, you can watch from home via the free livestream. However, some WordPress meetup groups host watch parties. These parties generally include food, beverages, and a large projection screen.

If you’re hosting one of these parties, please let us know about it in the comments. Tell us the location and what attendees can expect.

by Jeff Chandler at December 01, 2018 01:11 AM under wcus

November 30, 2018

Dev Blog: WordPress 5.0 RC2

The second release candidate for WordPress 5.0 is now available!

This is an important milestone, as we near the release of WordPress 5.0. A final release date will be announced soon, based on feedback from this release candidate. Things are appearing very stable and we hope to announce a date soon. This is a big release and needs your help—if you haven’t tried 5.0 yet, now is the time! 

To test WordPress 5.0, you can use the WordPress Beta Tester plugin or you can download the release candidate here (zip).

For details about what to expect in WordPress 5.0, please see the previous release candidate post.

Significant changes

  • We stopped rendering AdminNotices compatibility component, as this previous attempt at backward compatibility was bringing in numerous incompatible banners and notices from plugins.
  • An update to the parser to better deal with malformed HTML that could cause a loop. We’re only aware of this in the wild being triggered once in the over a million posts made with Gutenberg, but it caused a loop so we wanted to fix for RC2.

Cosmetic and minor changes in RC2

  • Accessibility: Simplify sidebar tabs aria-labels.
  • Make the Image Link URL field readonly.
  • Internationalization: Merge similar text strings that differed only in capitalization.
  • CSS: Improve block preview styling.
  • CSS: Fix visual issues with Button block text wrap.
  • Fix getSelectedBlockClientId selector.
  • Fix Classic block not showing galleries on a grid.
  • Fix an issue where the block toolbar would cause an image to jump downwards when the wide or full alignments were activated.
  • Move editor specific styles from style.scss to editor.scss in Cover block.
  • Fix modals in Microsoft Edge browser.
  • Fix Microsoft IE11 focus loss after TinyMCE init. Add IE check.
  • Fix Microsoft IE11 input when mounting TinyMCE.
  • Change @package names to WordPress.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! 

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.


RC bittersweet.
We welcome in Gutenberg,
Vale Gutenbeard.

by Gary Pendergast at November 30, 2018 11:16 PM under 5.0

WPTavern: Gutenberg Times to Host Live Q&A; with Gutenberg Leads on Friday, November 30

Birgit Pauli-Haack, curator of the Gutenberg Times website, is hosting a Q&A session with Gutenberg’s phase 1 design and development leads on Friday, November 30, at 2pm ET (19:00 UTC). Matias Ventura, Tammie Lister, and Joen Asmussen will join Pauli-Haack to discuss their journey “Creating Gutenberg” over the past two years.

If you have any pressing questions about Gutenberg’s architecture, design, or the future of the project, this event is a good opportunity to speak to members of the team who have been building it full-time. The Q&A is free to watch but attendees who want to participate with questions will need to register. There are 100 seats available. Pauli-Haack will also be live-streaming the session to the Gutenberg Times YouTube channel.

by Sarah Gooding at November 30, 2018 12:48 AM under gutenberg

November 29, 2018

Matt: WordPress 5.0: A Gutenberg FAQ

We are nearing the release date for WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg, one of the most important and exciting projects I’ve worked on in my 15 years with this community.

I knew we would be taking a big leap. But it’s a leap we need to take, and I think the end result is going to open up many new opportunities for everyone in the ecosystem, and for those being introduced to WordPress for the first time. It brings us closer to our mission of democratizing publishing for everyone.

I recently visited WordCamp Portland to talk about Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0, which will also include the new default theme Twenty Nineteen, which you’re seeing me test out on this very site. There were some great questions and testimonials about Gutenberg, so I’d urge you to watch the full video and read the WP Tavern recap. I’ve also visited meetups, responded to review threads, kept an eye on support, and I’m in the middle of office hours with the core community.

As we head toward the release date and WordCamp US, I’ve put many questions and answers into a Gutenberg FAQ below. For those who have other questions, I will be checking the comments here.

It’s an exciting time, and I’m thrilled to be working with y’all on this project.

Not the ship of Theseus

What is Gutenberg?

Gutenberg, for those who aren’t actively following along, is a brand new Editor for WordPress — contributors have been working on it since January 2017 and it’s one of the most significant changes to WordPress in years. It’s built on the idea of using “blocks” to write and design posts and pages.

This will serve as the foundation for future improvements to WordPress, including blocks as a way not just to design posts and pages, but also entire sites.

The overall goal is to simplify the first-time user experience of WordPress — for those who are writing, editing, publishing, and designing web pages. The editing experience is intended to give users a better visual representation of what their post or page will look like when they hit publish. As I wrote in my post last year, “Users will finally be able to build the sites they see in their imaginations.”

Matías Ventura, team lead for Gutenberg, wrote an excellent post about the vision for Gutenberg, saying, “It’s an attempt to improve how users interact with their content in a fundamentally visual way, while at the same time giving developers the tools to create more fulfilling experiences for the people they are helping.”

Why do we need Gutenberg at all?

For many of us already in the WordPress community, it can be easy to forget the learning curve that exists for people being introduced to WordPress for the first time. Customizing themes, adding shortcodes, editing widgets and menus — there’s an entire language that one must learn behind the scenes in order to make a site or a post look like you want it to look.

Over the past several years, JavaScript-based applications have created opportunities to simplify the user experience in consumer apps and software. Users’ expectations have changed, and the bar has been raised for simplicity. It is my deep belief that WordPress must evolve to improve and simplify its own user experience for first-time users.

Why blocks?

The idea with blocks was to create a new common language across WordPress, a new way to connect users to plugins, and replace a number of older content types — things like shortcodes and widgets — that one had to be well-versed in the idiosyncrasies of WordPress to understand.

The block paradigm is not a new one — in fact many great plugins have already shown the promise of blocks with page design in WordPress. Elementor, one of the pioneers in this space, has now introduced a new collection of Gutenberg blocks to showcase what’s possible:

Why change the Editor?

The Editor is where most of the action happens in WordPress’s daily use, and it was a place where we could polish and perfect the block experience in a contained environment.

Additionally, the classic Editor was built primarily for text — articles have become increasingly multimedia, with social media embeds, maps, contact forms, photo collages, videos, and GIFs. It was time for a design paradigm that allowed us to move past the messy patchwork of shortcodes and text.

The Editor is just the start. In upcoming phases blocks will become a fundamental part of entire site templates and designs. It’s currently a struggle to use the Customizer and figure out how to edit sections like menus, headers, and footers. With blocks, people will be able to edit and manipulate everything on their site without having to understand where WordPress hides everything behind the scenes.

What does Automattic get out of this?

There have been posts recently asking questions about Automattic’s involvement in Gutenberg compared to other contributors and companies. There is no secret conspiracy here — as project lead I was able to enlist the help of dozens of my colleagues to contribute to this project, and I knew that a project of this size would require it. Automattic aims to have 5% of its people dedicated to WordPress community projects, which at its current size would be about 42 people full-time. The company is a bit behind that now (~35 full-time), and the company is growing a lot next year, so look for 10-15 additional people working on core and community projects. 

In the end, Gutenberg is similar to many other open source projects — Automattic will benefit from it, but so will everyone else in the WordPress community (and even the Drupal community). It’s available for everyone under the GPL. If the goal was purely to benefit Automattic it would have been faster, easier, and created an advantage for Automattic to have Gutenberg just on WP.com. That wasn’t, and isn’t, the point.

Is Gutenberg ready?

Absolutely. Our original goal with Gutenberg was to get it on 100,000 sites to begin testing — it’s now already on more than 1 million sites, and it’s the fastest-growing plugin in WordPress history. There is a lot of user demand.

The goal was to both test Gutenberg on as many sites as possible before the 5.0 release, and also to encourage plugin developers to make sure their plugins and services will be ready. With everyone pitching in, we can make this the most anti-climactic release in WordPress history.  

In the recent debate over Gutenberg readiness, I think it’s important to understand the difference between Gutenberg being ready code-wise (it is now), and whether the entire community is ready for Gutenberg.

It will take some time — we’ve had 15 years to polish and perfect core, after all — but the global WordPress community has some of the world’s most talented contributors and we can make it as good as we want to make it.

There is also a new opportunity to dramatically expand the WordPress contributor community to include more designers and JavaScript engineers. With JavaScript apps there are also new opportunities for designing documentation and support right on the page, so that help arrives right where you need it.

Someone described Gutenberg to me as “WordPress in 3D.” I like the sound of that. Blocks are like layers you can zoom in and out of. The question now is: What are we going to build with this new dimension?

Do I have to switch to Gutenberg when WordPress 5.0 is released?

Not at all. When it’s released, you get to choose what happens. You can install the Classic Editor plugin today and when 5.0 is released, nothing will change. We’ve commited to supporting and updating Classic Editor until 2022. If you’d like to install Gutenberg early, you can do that now too. The Classic Editor plugin has been available for 13 months now, and Gutenberg has been available for 18 months. Both have been heavily promoted since August 2018, and more than 1.3 million .org sites have opted-in already to either experience, so nothing will change for them when they update to 5.0.

How can I make sure I’m ready?

Before updating to 5.0, try out the Gutenberg plugin with your site to ensure it works with your existing plugins, and also to get comfortable with the new experience. Developers across the entire ecosystem are working hard to update their plugins, but your mileage and plugins may vary. And you can always use the Classic Editor to address any gaps.

As with every new thing, things might feel strange and new for a bit, but I’m confident once you start using it you’ll get comfy quickly and you won’t want to go back.

The release candidate of 5.0 is stable and fine to develop against and test.

When will 5.0 be released?

We have had a stable RC1, which stands for first release candidate, and about to do our second one. There is only currently one known blocker and it’s cosmetic. The stability and open issues in the release candidates thus far makes me optimistic we can release soon, but as before the primary driver will be the stability and quality of the underlying software. We made the mistake prior of announcing dates when lots of code was still changing, and had to delay because of regressions and bugs. Now that things aren’t changing, we’re approaching a time we can commit to a date soon.

Is it terrible to do a release in December?

Some people think so, some don’t. There have been 9 major WordPress releases in previous Decembers. December releases actually comprise 34% of our major releases in the past decade.

Can I set it up so only certain users get to use Gutenberg?

Yes, and soon. We’re going to be doing another update to the Classic Editor before the 5.0 release to give it a bit more fine-grained user control — we’ve heard requests for options that allow certain users or certain roles and post types to have Gutenberg while others have Classic Editor.

What happens after 5.0?

We’ve been doing a release of Gutenberg every two weeks, and 5.0 isn’t going to stop that. We’ll do minor release to 5.0 (5.0.1, 5.0.2) fortnightly, with occasional breaks, so if there’s feedback that comes in, we can address it quickly. Many of the previous bugs in updates were from juggling between updates in the plugin and core, now that Gutenberg is in core it’s much easier and safer to incrementally update.

What about Gutenberg and accessibility?

We’ve had some important discussions about accessibility over the past few weeks and I am grateful for those who have helped raise these questions in the community.

Accessibility has been core to WordPress from the very beginning. It’s part of why we started – the adoption of web standards and accessibility.

But where I think we fell down was with project management — specifically, we had a team of volunteers that felt like they were disconnected from the rapid development that was happening with Gutenberg. We need to improve that. In the future I don’t know if it makes sense to have accessibility as a separate kind of process from the core development. It needs to be integrated at every single stage.

Still, we’ve accomplished a lot, as Matías has written about. There have been more than 200 closed issues related to accessibility since the very beginning.

We’re also taking the opportunity to fix some things that have had poor accessibility in WordPress from the beginning. CodeMirror, which is a code editor for templates, is not accessible, so we have some parts of WordPress that we really need to work on to make better.

Speaking of which, CodeMirror was seeking funding for their next version — Automattic has now sponsored that funding and in return it will be made available under the GPL, and that the next version of CodeMirror will be fully accessible.

Finally, Automattic will be funding an accessibility study of WordPress, Gutenberg, and an evaluation of best practices across the web, to ensure WordPress is fully accessible and setting new standards for the web overall.

After WordPress 5.0, is the Gutenberg name going to stick around?

Sometimes code names can take on a life of their own. I think Gutenberg is still what we’ll call this project — it’s called that on GitHub, and you’re also seeing it adopted by other CMSes beyond WordPress — but for those outside the community I can see it simply being known as “the new WordPress editor.”

With the adoption of React for Gutenberg, what do you see as the future for React and WordPress?

In 2015 I said “Learn JavaScript deeply” — then in 2016 we brought the REST API into Core. Gutenberg is the first major feature built entirely on the REST API, so if you are learning things today, learn JavaScript, and I can imagine a future wp-admin that’s 100% JavaScript talking to APIs. I’m excited to see that happen.

Now, switching to a pure JavaScript interface could break some backward compatibility, but a nice thing about Gutenberg is that it provides an avenue for all plugins to work through — it gives them a way to plug in to that. It can eliminate the need for what’s currently done in custom admin screens.  

The other beautiful thing is that because Gutenberg essentially allows for translation into many different formats — it can publish to your web page, it can publish your RSS feed, AMP, it can publish blocks that can be translated into email for newsletters — there’s so much in the structured nature of Gutenberg and the semantic HTML that it creates and the grammar that’s used to parse it, can enable for other applications.

It becomes a little bit like a lingua franca that even crosses CMSes. There’s now these new cross-CMS Gutenberg blocks that will be possible. It’s not just WordPress anymore — it might be a JavaScript block that was written for Drupal that you install on your WordPress site. How would that have ever happened before? That’s why we took two years off — it’s why we’ve had everyone in the world working on this thing. It’s because we want it to be #WorthIt.

And WordPress 5.0 is just the starting line. We want to get it to that place where it’s not just better than what we have today, but a world-class, web-defining experience. It’s what we want to create and what everyone deserves.

Was this post published with Gutenberg?

Of course. 😄 No bugs, but I do see lots of areas we can continue to improve and I’m excited to get to work on future iterations.

by Matt at November 29, 2018 11:56 PM under gutenberg

WPTavern: WPCampus Seeks to Raise $30K for Gutenberg Accessibility Audit

WPCampus is seeking funding to conduct an accessibility audit of WordPress’ Gutenberg editor. The non-profit organization is dedicated to helping web professionals, educators, and others who work with WordPress in higher education. Educational institutions often have stricter legal obligations that require software to be WCAG 2.0 level AA compliant and many European institutions set the bar even higher at WCAG 2.1.

WPCampus moved to spearhead an audit after Automattic decided to forego Matt MacPherson’s proposal for Gutenberg to undergo an accessibility audit. Results of the audit will help WPCampus determine any potential legal risk for institutions upgrading to WordPress 5.0 and will also identify specific challenges that Gutenberg introduces for assistive technology users and others with accessibility needs.

“A professional accessibility audit is a large expense for a small nonprofit like WPCampus,” WPCampus director Rachel Cherry said. “Accessibility is important to all of us in the WordPress community. We’re asking for your help to fund the audit and ensure this important research is completed.”

WPCampus is still evaluating proposals from vendors and will announce its selection soon, along with an updated timeline for completing the audit. The organization has set its funding goal at $30,000, an amount that falls in the mid-range of the proposals the selection committee has received. If the campaign raises more than the amount required, WPCampus plans to designate the funds for other accessibility-related efforts, such as future audits and live captioning at conferences.

Two days after launching the campaign, WPCampus has received $3,692 (12%) towards its funding goal. The organization plans to share the results of the audit and any supporting documents on its website.

The comments published on the donations page demonstrate how strongly supporters feel about getting an audit and using that information to make Gutenberg a tool that anyone can use. The topic of accessibility is close to the heart for many donating to the campaign.

“When I was navigating stores with three small children, stores which helped me with automatic doors, wide aisles, and shopping carts for a crowd often made the decision for me as to whether I could shop at all,” WordPress developer Robin Cornett said. “As we create content and build tools for the internet, we should be doing all we can to ensure the best online experience we can for everyone.”

WordPress co-founder Mike Little also donated to the campaign, with comments on how important accessibility is to fulfilling the project’s mission.

“As the platform that democratizes publishing, we can’t allow new features in WordPress to take that away from users with accessibility needs,” Little said.

“Accessibility matters to everyone — injured, encumbered, distracted, disabled, everyone,” WordPress consultant Adrian Roselli said. Accessibility in WordPress matters to my clients because some of their people require it in order to use the tool and therefore stay gainfully employed.”

The audit proposed months ago has evolved to become a community effort funded by passionate supporters working in various capacities throughout the WordPress ecosystem. If WPCampus is successful in funding its campaign, this particular approach has the benefit of making it a more cooperative effort with more people invested in the process than if it were funded by a single company. WPCampus aims to release the audit report to the community by January 17, 2019 but the dates will depend on the arrangement with the vendor.

by Sarah Gooding at November 29, 2018 10:03 PM under gutenberg

WPTavern: Drupal 8.7 to Introduce Layout Builder, Contributors Face Accessibility Challenges

WordPress 5.0 will soon replace the editor with the new Gutenberg editor as part of a multi-phase project to improve the experience of authoring rich content. Phase 2 will shift focus to tackle site customization, bringing more complex layout and page builder capabilities to Gutenberg.

As this phase kicks off soon, it’s valuable to see what other platforms are doing on this front. Drupal has traditionally appealed to a more technical audience, and probably wouldn’t count Squarespace, Wix, and Tumblr among their competitors, but the project is getting more friendly towards site builders and content editors. Drupal has brought improvements to its usability, media, and layout experiences over the past few years in support of users who have demanded a more modern, simplified admin UI. The project is currently testing a visual design tool for building layouts.

Two weeks ago, Drupal founder and project lead Dries Buytaert previewed the new Layout Builder, an experimental feature that is stabilizing and expected to land in Drupal 8.7 in May 2019. Layout Builder offers layouts for templated content, customizations to templated layouts, and custom pages. These uses are especially important when building sites with large amounts of content that occasionally require template overrides and one-off landing pages.

Buytaert described how Layout Builder approaches the creation of one-off dynamic pages, which he said is similar to the capabilities found in services such as Squarespace and projects like Gutenberg for WordPress and Drupal:

A content author can start with a blank page, design a layout, and start adding blocks. These blocks can contain videos, maps, text, a hero image, or custom-built widgets (e.g. a Drupal View showing a list of the ten most popular gift baskets). Blocks can expose configuration options to the content author. For instance, a hero block with an image and text may offer a setting to align the text left, right, or center. These settings can be configured directly from a sidebar.

Buytaert’s demo video shows the Layout Builder in action. Its capabilities are similar to many of WordPress’ third-party page builders, such as Elementor and Beaver Builder.

Layout Builder Poses Accessibility Challenges

Layout Builder is anchored on one of Drupal’s stronger features – the ability to create structured content, but it faces some of the same accessibility challenges that WordPress’ Gutenberg editor has encountered.

In his post introducing Layout Builder, Buytaert made some pointed remarks about Drupal’s commitment to accessibility:

Accessibility is one of Drupal’s core tenets, and building software that everyone can use is part of our core values and principles. A key part of bringing Layout Builder functionality to a “stable” state for production use will be ensuring that it passes our accessibility gate (Level AA conformance with WCAG and ATAG). This holds for both the authoring tool itself, as well as the markup that it generates. We take our commitment to accessibility seriously.

Some contributors are not as optimistic about Drupal being able to fulfill these bold claims in time to ship the feature in 8.7.0. Andrew Macpherson, one of the accessibility topic maintainers for Drupal 8 core, has proposed Layout Builder offer an alternative UI that users can access without the visual preview UI.

“Dries’ blog post about layout builder yesterday says we’re on track to mark this as stable for D8.7.0,” Macpherson said. “I’m not at all optimistic about that, because as yet there is no feasible plan for how it can be made accessible.

“A minimum viable product for Layout Builder accessibility would be at least one method which works, for each user task, for each input/output method. I don’t think we can say we have found a feasible approach. We’re in deeply experimental territory here – there isn’t a well-established, reliable pattern we can just copy to make the current layout builder accessible. Essentially, we’re making stuff up in a hurry, for a novel UI, with limited opportunity for design validation. There’s no guarantee that users are going to understand it, or find it easy to use. That’s why I’m not optimistic about it getting past the accessibility gate in time for D8.7.0.”

Macpherson said that WCAG strongly advises against providing alternate versions but allows for them in instances where the main version cannot be made accessible.

“I think we are effectively in this situation now, although we are still exploring ideas,” he said.

Macpherson also recommended they continue striving to make the drag-and-drop, visual-preview layout builder UI accessible at the same time. He referenced emerging principles of Inclusive Design for application developers, which recommend “offering choice,” giving users different ways of completing tasks, especially those that may be complex or non-standard.

“Eventually, I’d like to see BOTH layout builder UIs being accessible, and offer genuinely useful choices for everyone,” Macpherson said. “But let’s take the time to do it well, instead of hastily bolting on fixes for one type of interaction method at a time, in a rush to ship a single layout builder UI. ”

Macpherson’s proposal is still under consideration, but it provides an interesting perspective on similar challenges WordPress contributors are facing with Gutenberg. Modernizing UIs to make the site building experience more accessible for those who don’t know how to code has to be balanced with considerations for those who may not be able see very well or use a mouse. Drupal contributors are exploring providing an alternative accessible UI as a solution to empower more users to take advantage of the new Layout Builder.

by Sarah Gooding at November 29, 2018 04:31 AM under gutenberg

November 28, 2018

WPTavern: WPWeekly Episode 339 – Interview With Pippin Williamson, Founder of Sandhills Development, LLC

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Pippin Williamson, founder of Sandhills Development, LLC. Pippin describes what he’s learned going through the process of opening a brick and mortar business.

He also describes the emotional process of firing employees, making business decisions as a team, and how he wants to create a life-long company where employees stick around for decades.

Near the end of the episode, Pippin expresses his opinions on Gutenberg the product and Gutenberg the process. You might be surprised by what he has to say.

Stories Discussed:

2017 in review

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Wednesday, December 5th 3:00 P.M. Eastern

Subscribe to WordPress Weekly via Itunes

Subscribe to WordPress Weekly via RSS

Subscribe to WordPress Weekly via Stitcher Radio

Subscribe to WordPress Weekly via Google Play

Listen To Episode #339:

by Jeff Chandler at November 28, 2018 07:54 PM under sandhills

WPTavern: SyntaxHighlighter Evolved Plugin Adds Gutenberg Support

WordPress 5.0 will ship with a code block in the new editor but it doesn’t include syntax highlighting. The code is currently wrapped in pre tags. During the earlier days of Gutenberg’s development, the HTML block had syntax highlighting but the team was not satisfied with its implementation and decided to pull it until they could provide more consistent behavior across blocks.

For now, users will have to depend on a plugin to get syntax highlighting. SyntaxHighlighter Evolved is one of the first plugins of its kind to add Gutenberg support via its own block.

The plugin currently adds syntax highlighting to source code on the frontend only. Nevertheless, it’s a great use case for Gutenberg, as the plugin previously required you to remember how to structure the shortcode in a particular way in order to use it.

Ian Dunn contributed the Gutenberg support for SyntaxHighlighter Evolved. In the PR for this feature, Dunn said he wanted to give existing users a way to continue using the plugin after WordPress 5.0 is released:

The syntax highlighting only works on the front end, due to the nature of SyntaxHighlighter. Details are documented in the edit() function’s docblock.

Because of that, this isn’t the ideal syntax highlighting block[1], but this provides a way for existing users to continue using the plugin without having to migrate old posts to a different plugin.

Another limitation is that this PR only supports the language attribute of the shortcode, because I ran out of time/energy. This lays the groundwork, though, so the rest of them can easily be added in a future iteration.

SyntaxHighlighter Evolved is active on more than 40,000 installations and is also used on WordPress.com, so this update to the plugin should help those who rely on it to be able to use the new Gutenberg editor without having to switch back to the old editor when they need to add code to their content.

There is still some debate about the best way to provide syntax highlighting in Gutenberg. Another implementation called Code Syntax Block by Marcus Kazmierczak, extends Gutenberg’s existing code block to offer syntax highlighting, instead of creating a new block for it. It also uses PrismJS syntax highlighter.

Shiny Code is another approach that adds a new block for code and provides a preview inside the Gutenberg editor.

Shiny code

In the official plugin directory, the Enlighter plugin, which has 10,000 active installs, offers experimental support for Gutenberg that is being actively developed on GitHub. Kebo Code, a relatively new plugin with fewer than 10 installs, was created to offer syntax highlighting for Gutenberg and currently supports 121 languages and two themes. Users will have to switch to the frontend to see the code rendered with the theme selected.

SyntaxHighlighter Evolved does not yet provide a way for highlighting existing code blocks or transforming a core code block to use the plugin’s syntax highlighting. Converting all existing code blocks might take some time for those who have been using it extensively. Alex Mills, the plugin’s author, said he is considering all of these issues and welcomes patches on the GitHub repository for the plugin. Plugin authors may change their approaches over time, depending on where Gutenberg goes in the future, so users will want to evaluate available plugins periodically to see which ones suit their needs.

by Sarah Gooding at November 28, 2018 05:10 PM under syntax highlighter

November 27, 2018

WPTavern: WordCamp US 2018 Livestream Tickets Now Available

photo credit: Viv Lynch Westward(license)

The countdown has started for WordCamp US 2018 in Nashville. The event is just 10 days away. If you cannot attend, watching via the livestream is the next best option. Anyone can join the livestream for free, but viewers will need to sign up for a ticket on the event website.

This year’s schedule includes sessions in two tracks: Banjo and Guitar. Matt Mullenweg’s annual State of the Word address is scheduled for Saturday, December 8, at 4:00 p.m. CST. Livestream ticket holders can tune in to any of the sessions and may also want to participate in the conversations on Twitter using the #WCUS hashtag.

by Sarah Gooding at November 27, 2018 10:09 PM under wordcamp us

BuddyPress: BuddyPress 4.0.0 “Pequod”

BuddyPress 4.0.0 “Pequod” is now available!

A focus on data privacy and control

BuddyPress boasts a proud history of letting community members and managers control their data, independent of third-party, commercial entities. In this spirit, as well as the spirit of recent regulations like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Expanding on some of the tools introduced by WordPress in version 4.9.8, BuddyPress 4.0 introduces a suite of tools allowing users and site admins to manage member data and privacy.

Screenshot of

Giving your users greater control over their data

The new “Export Data” Settings panel lets users request an export of all BuddyPress data they’ve created. BuddyPress integrates seamlessly with the data export functionality introduced in WordPress 4.9.8, and BP data is included in exports that are initiated either from the Export Data panel or via WP’s Tools > Export Personal Data interface.

BuddyPress 4.0 also integrates with WordPress 4.9.8’s Privacy Policy tools. When you create or update your Privacy Policy, BP will suggest text that’s specifically tailored to the kinds of social data generated on a BuddyPress site. And will prompt registering users to agree to the Privacy Policy, if your theme supports it.

We’ve also done a complete review of BuddyPress’s cookie behavior, and dramatically reduced the number of cookies needed to browse a BP-powered site – especially for logged-out users. We’re confident that this change will help site owners comply with local privacy regulations.

Nouveau and other improvements

The BuddyPress team has been hard at work improving the Nouveau template pack introduced in BuddyPress 4.0. We’ve improved accessibility, extensibility, and responsiveness on mobile devices.

BuddyPress 4.0 also contains a number of internal improvements that improve compatibility with various version of PHP, fix formatting and content issues when sending emails, and address some backward-compatibility concerns.

Mille grazie

As usual, this BuddyPress release is only possible thanks to the contributions of the community. Special thanks to the following folks who contributed code and testing to the release: Alex Concha (xknown), Ankit K Gupta (ankit-k-gupta), Boone B Gorges (boonebgorges), Brajesh Singh (sbrajesh), Brian Cruikshank (brianbws), Christian Wach (needle), Dinesh Kesarwani (cyberwani), dipeshkakadiya, drywallbmb, dullowl, Eric (eric01), Garrett Hyder (garrett-eclipse), Harshal Limaye (harshall), Hugo (hnla), John James Jacoby (johnjamesjacoby), Marcella (marcella1981), Mathieu Viet (imath), mercime, MorgunovVit, n0barcode, paresh.radadiya (pareshradadiya), Paul Gibbs (DJPaul), Pooja N Muchandikar (pooja1210), r-a-y, Renato Alves (espellcaste), RT77, Ryan Williams (cyclic), Samuel Elh (elhardoum), shubh14, spdustin, suvikki, Stephen Edgar (netweb), thejimmy, vapvarun, Wbcom Designs (wbcomdesigns), Yahil Madakiya (yahil)

This version of BuddyPress is code-named “Pequod” after the famous Pequod’s Pizza in Chicago, where the crust really is caramelized, and the dish really is deep. Buon gusto!

Keep on truckin’

Questions or comments about the release? Visit the buddypress.org support forums, or open a ticket on our bugtracker.

by Boone Gorges at November 27, 2018 07:57 PM under 4.0.0

WPTavern: Jetpack 6.8 Adds Gutenberg Blocks for Payment Buttons, Forms, Maps, and Markdown

Jetpack 6.8 was released today, introducing the plugin’s first set of blocks for Gutenberg. The necessary infrastructure was added in version 6.6 and all existing features that touch the editor are in the process of being ported over to blocks. This release includes blocks for payment buttons, forms, maps, and markdown.

The Contact Form module is one of the plugin’s most popular features and one that users often enable on new websites. This block removes a major barrier to implementing a form on WordPress sites – new users will have no need to try to understand the concept of shortcodes in order to collect feedback on their sites. Creating a new form essentially works like adding blocks inside of blocks:

Form

The Simple Payments button block is slightly different in that it already has the form fields set up so the user can fill them out for whatever they are selling. This block is available for users on the Jetpack Premium or Professional plan.

The map block makes it easy for users to embed an interactive map within the content of posts or pages. After signing up for a free Mapbox Access Token, users can select a location directly inside the new editor and preview it live with different map theme options and a color-picker for the marker.

Map

Some of those who have tested Gutenberg may not be a fan of its current writing interface, but after you see some of these blocks in action for things like maps and payment buttons, it’s clear that this is a superior interface for these content types. Modernizing the interface for content that previously relied on shortcodes is where Gutenberg truly excels right now.

Development on the Gutenberg plugin has been so active that it makes sense that the Jetpack team waited until WordPress 5.0 RC to release any blocks. Jetpack users can take advantage of them now if they have Gutenberg installed, or wait until 5.0 is officially released. The Jetpack team is also working on a number of other blocks for existing features. You can follow the progress on upcoming blocks at Jetpack’s GitHub repository and log issues with blocks that have already been released.

Jetpack 6.8 also restores the Publicize module to the pre-publish sidebar, so users can continue automatically sharing posts after WordPress 5.0 is released. This version ensures compatibility with Jetpack’s widgets for those using the Twenty Nineteen theme. Check out the release post to see more blocks in action and the changelog for a full list of all the enhancements and bug fixes.

by Sarah Gooding at November 27, 2018 05:52 PM under jetpack

WPTavern: WordPress 5.0 RC 1 Released, Gutenberg Passes 1 Million Installations

WordPress 5.0 RC 1 was released over the weekend after a string of five betas that began in late October. According to the Gutenberg stats page, more than 1.1 million sites have the Gutenberg plugin installed and users have written more than 980,000 posts using the new editor. These numbers are conservative estimates, as the numbers only include WordPress.com sites and sites running Jetpack.

Most of the changes included in the RC were outlined in the Gutenberg 4.5 release post last week. An update published today shows 12 PRs waiting for review in the 4.6 milestone, 14 open issues in the 5.0.0 milestone, and more than 150 issues open in 5.0.1 and subsequent releases. Dev notes for 5.0 have been published and tagged on the make.wordpress.org/core blog.

WordPress 5.0’s official release date was set for November 27 but after further evaluation the date has been pushed back. Last week WordPress core core committers, contributors, and former release leads made strong, last-minute appeals to hold off RC and defer the release to January. Development is moving forward desipite the pushback. A new release date has not yet been announced. The current plan is to monitor feedback on the RC and the team will make a decision from there.

Mullenweg Responds to Critics on Twitter, Reiterates Vision for Gutenberg

Over the weekend, Matt Mullenweg responded to critics on Twitter who voiced concerns about his leadership and communication throughout WordPress 5.0’s development. One particular post titled “Let’s Take A Very Serious Look At Gutenberg,” written by WordPress developer Cameron Jones, sparked conversation. In response to Cliff Seal, who urged Mullenweg to “re-cast the vision of WordPress in a way that accounts for the apparent urgency of this effort,” Mullenweg responded:

Many people who try to start publishing with WordPress fail; those who don’t struggle with shortcodes, embeds, widgets; those who can toggle to code view to do basic tasks in the editor, and for clients set up elaborate meta-field and CPT based schemes to avoid catastrophe.

Gutenberg aims to solve these problems, improve the WP experience for all its users, and open up independent, open source, beautiful publishing on the web to a class of users that couldn’t publish with WordPress before.

It may seem rushed to people unused to this pace of development and improvement in the WordPress world. However this has been a pace sustained for almost two years now, and we still look slow compared to some modern software. Speed of iteration is enabled by the new tech stack.

It bothers me at a deep, moral level to hold back a user experience that will significantly upgrade the publishing ability and success of tens or hundreds of millions of users. It hasn’t been ready (for core) yet, so it’s not released. I hope it will be soon!

This may all look very quaint in retrospect, when we look back three or five years from now. It’s a tough transition but the foundation Gutenberg enables will be worth it.

Matt Medeiros, another vocal critic of Mullenweg’s leadership on WordPress 5.0, recorded a video, expounding on his concerns about transparency and the rushed pace. He summarized the frustrations that inspired him to make the video.

“While I agree WordPress needs innovation to reach new users that desperately require freedom over their content, especially within the context of today’s social networks, I don’t agree and am also discouraged by Matt not sharing the product vision with the community,” Medeiros said. “It’s polarizing to build software under the guise of openness with a mission to democratize publishing, but not give the same people volunteering to ‘Five for the Future’ a voice for the future.

“Lack of communication, not Gutenberg or the team developing it, has lead to the current divide and we’re left asking — why? WordPress has always had a branding problem and this continues to muddy the lines between open source project and WordPress the ‘product.'”

The 5.0 release is heading into the home stretch but Gutenberg has several phases ahead with many more years of development. Mullenweg’s responses on Twitter over the weekend indicate he is interested in keeping the lines of communication open throughout the process. He said he plans to dedicate more time to responding directly to feedback.

“One thing will try: I’m going to open up some listening office hours in the next week so people can talk directly,” Mullenweg said. “I want everyone to be and feel heard, as they have been since the beginning of this process in 2016.”

by Sarah Gooding at November 27, 2018 01:54 AM under WordPress 5.0

November 23, 2018

Dev Blog: WordPress 5.0 Release Candidate

The first release candidate for WordPress 5.0 is now available!

This is an important milestone, as we near the release of WordPress 5.0. The WordPress 5.0 release date has shifted from the 27th to give more time for the RC to be fully tested. A final release date will be announced soon, based on feedback on the RC. This is a big release and needs your help—if you haven’t tried 5.0 yet, now is the time! 

To test WordPress 5.0, you can use the WordPress Beta Tester plugin or you can download the release candidate here (zip).

What’s in WordPress 5.0?

Screenshot of the new block editor interface.The new block-based post editor.

WordPress 5.0 introduces the new block-based post editor. This is the first step toward an exciting new future with a streamlined editing experience across your site. You’ll have more flexibility with how content is displayed, whether you are building your first site, revamping your blog, or write code for a living.

The block editor is used on over a million sites, we think it’s ready to be used on all WordPress sites. We do understand that some sites might need some extra time, though. If that’s you, please install the Classic Editor plugin, you’ll continue to use the classic post editor when you upgrade to WordPress 5.0.

Twenty Nineteen is WordPress’ new default theme, it features custom styles for the blocks available by default in 5.0. Twenty Nineteen is designed to work for a wide variety of use cases. Whether you’re running a photo blog, launching a new business, or supporting a non-profit, Twenty Nineteen is flexible enough to fit your needs.

The block editor is a big change, but that’s not all. We’ve made some smaller changes as well,  including:

  • All of the previous default themes, from Twenty Ten through to Twenty Seventeen, have been updated to support the block editor.
  • You can improve the accessibility of the content you write, now that simple ARIA labels can be saved in posts and pages.
  • WordPress 5.0 officially supports the upcoming PHP 7.3 release: if you’re using an older version, we encourage you to upgrade PHP on your site.
  • Developers can now add translatable strings directly to your JavaScript code, using the new JavaScript language packs.

You can read more about the fixes and changes since Beta 5 in the last update post.

For more details about what’s new in version 5.0, check out the Beta 1Beta 2Beta 3, Beta 4 and Beta 5 blog posts.

Plugin and Theme Developers

Please test your plugins and themes against WordPress 5.0 and update the Tested up to version in the readme to 5.0. If you find compatibility problems, please be sure to post to the support forums so we can figure those out before the final release. An in-depth field guide to developer-focused changes is coming soon on the core development blog. In the meantime, you can review the developer notes for 5.0.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! 

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.

Ruedan los bloques
Contando vivos cuentos
Que se despiertan

by Matias Ventura at November 23, 2018 09:46 AM under 5.0

November 22, 2018

WPTavern: WordPress 5.0 RC Expected on U.S. Thanksgiving Holiday, despite Last-Minute Pushback from Contributors

photo credit: KaylaKandzorra i miss you grampa.(license)

WordPress core committers, core contributors, and former release leads made strong, last-minute appeals on Monday for the 5.0 release to be deferred to January. RC was expected Monday but those urging its delay cited the large number of open issues on the milestone and the fact that many confirmed bugs are being aggressively punted to followup releases.

“I do not see how we can seriously ship a release candidate today,” Joe McGill said. “In doing so, we are either saying we’re ok with shipping a major version of WordPress with this many known issues, or that the term ‘release candidate’ does not actually have meaning. I would suggest that we revise the schedule to push back RC for at least 4 weeks so we have a reasonable deadline and, in the mean time, continue releasing betas.”

Nearly every contributor involved in the discussion was enthusiastic about Gutenberg but urged release lead Matt Mullenweg to allow for four weeks of RC and code freeze to give the community to prepare.

Contributors said they don’t understand the rush to get 5.0. Several noted that Gutenberg seems to be measured by a different rod of success than previous releases where headline features were held to a different standard in regards to shipping known bugs.

“We’re fast approaching a million (Jetpack tracked) posts made through the editor, with the non-tracked number probably a multiple of that,” Mullenweg said in response to contributors’ concerns. “There’s been an explosion of plugins building on top of Gutenberg and some things like the work ACF and Block Lab have done that seem really transformational for WordPress. For those whom the editor is not a good fit they can opt in at any point, including post-5.0, to Classic and continue using WP exactly as they had before until at least 2022 and likely beyond.”

Mullenweg identified a few questions he sees as “good measures of success for Gutenberg:”

  • Are people, when given the choice, choosing to use it over the old editor?
  • Can they create things they weren’t able to create before?
  • Are new-to-WP users more successful (active, happy with what they create) than pre-Gutenberg?
  • Are interesting things being built on top of it?

Interesting plugins are being built on top of Gutenberg but they are breaking with every release of the plugin. Gutenberg 4.5 was released yesterday, matching the first 5.0 RC feature set. It includes a large number of changes and bug fixes that have gone relatively untested by the community at large. Most notably, 4.5 introduced a regression that caused a white screen of death when trying to load custom post types in the classic editor, forcing a 4.5.1 release earlier in the day. Every release introduces changes that cause plugins to break, requiring immediate updates from plugin developers.

Gutenberg technical lead Matias Ventura posted an update today, confirming that WordPress 5.0 will miss the planned November 27 release date but did not offer a secondary date.

“The date for 5.0 release is under consideration, given it’s not plausible for it to be the on 27th,” Ventura said.

WordPress 5.0 Will Ship “When It’s Ready,” Contributors are Focusing on Getting Release Candidate out ASAP

When the second set of November dates for release were missed, many assumed WordPress 5.0 would fall back to the secondary dates in January, but that has not yet been confirmed. The previous scope and schedule Gary Pendergast outlined said the November dates could slip by up to eight days if necessary and that if additional time was required, they would aim for the January dates:

Secondary RC 1: January 8, 2019

Secondary Release: January 22, 2019

During the regularly scheduled core developers’ chat today, the discussion regarding WordPress 5.0’s release date became heated, as contributors continued to push for a January release. Pendergast suggested that December might have a viable date, to which Yoast CEO Joost de Valk responded, “I’m going to raise hell if we do December.”

WordPress plugin developers and agencies are trying to plan for upcoming holidays and want to have staff available when the release lands. Many of those who attended the meeting were hoping to receive confirmation on the release being pushed back to January.

“Please also consider the plugin shops that are rearranging their priorities to have blocks ready for 5.0, only to have had to fix them several times in the last few weeks,” Kevin Hoffman said. “The success of 5.0 depends just as much on third-party support as it does core.”

“There’s agreement on that from all sides, that the amount of code churn and missed earlier deadlines means that the 27th is untenable,” Mullenweg said. “RC is still possible soon, but please don’t assume that implies a final release date until we see how that goes and pick one. I hope that it shows that we are willing to change decisions based on new information, it’s not about being ‘right’ or sticking to previous plans blindly.”

This statement indicates Mullenweg may be considering dates that were not included in the original schedule, as he later said,”If y’all can take the data without freaking out about what it means for the release date, there have been 8 major releases in December, it’s actually been 34% of our last 23 major releases.”

Several contributors agreed that getting an RC out ASAP would finally force a longer code freeze for Gutenberg’s UI, API, documentation, and features. This would give the community more time to prepare.

“As part of the development team for almost two years now, I’d love for us to draw the RC line soon for the sake of everyone’s fatigue,” Matias Ventura said. “And think it’s ready to be drawn. I am concerned with letting us do ‘one more little thing’ and pushing the stability line further down, in an almost endless process.”

Contributors are now wrapping up the last few tickets and the plan is to get the release candidate out tomorrow during the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Given WordPress’ global contributor base, releasing on the holiday shouldn’t be an issue. The team is also still investigating the possibility of bundling the Classic Editor plugin with updates for existing WordPress sites.

“Our focus right now is on a great RC,” Mullenweg said. Throughout Gutenberg’s development Mullenweg has said WordPress 5.0 would ship “when it’s ready.” No release date will be announced until the team has had time to evaluate the release candidate.

“It is true that the primary thing is whether it’s ready, and it’s not currently ready,” Mullenweg said.

In 1928, John A. Shedd published a little book called “Salt from My Attic.” It included a saying that U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper said was influential in her life: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

Shipping a major overhaul of WordPress’ editor has brought a fair share of uncertainty and frustration to contributors and the community that depends on the software. After mission-critical issues have been resolved, it seems to become a cycle of fixing and breaking things that could continue indefinitely. Although the holiday timing isn’t ideal, if Gutenberg stalls much longer it’s going to be burning daylight. At some point the ship just needs to push away from the port and see how it sails.

by Sarah Gooding at November 22, 2018 03:17 AM under WordPress 5.0

November 20, 2018

WPTavern: ExpressionEngine Goes Open Source after 16 Years

In a post titled “Open Source Has Won,” EllisLab founder Rick Ellis explained why ExpressionEngine is going open source after 16 years. The content management system is an evolution of the pMachine blogging software first released in early 2002. EllisLab previously required a license fee to use the full version of ExpressionEngine, which is built on object-oriented PHP and uses MySQL for storage.

“Although open source was a viable licensing model when we launched our first CMS back in 2002, it was not apparent then just how dominant open source would become on the web,” Ellis said. “It wasn’t until Eric Raymond wrote The Cathedral & The Bazaar that open source would even begin to enter the general public’s consciousness. Since then we’ve watched the open source market grow rapidly and continuously.

“Today, over 90% of the CMS market is open source. In fact, it’s nearly the de-facto license model for all-things web. Stunningly, the market is expected to triple in revenue within the next five to ten years, and it’s estimated that over 70% of businesses worldwide rely on open-source software. To say that the internet is open source would not be an exaggeration. It’s that dominant.”

Ellis said he had wanted to migrate to an open source license for a long time but had not yet found “the right strategic and financial partner to enable the full vision of what we hope to achieve.” The first part of EllisLab’s business plan is to build a successful services model and then branch out from there.

Prior to licensing ExpressionEngine under the Apache License, Version 2.0, EllisLab’s commercial license imposed severe restrictions on what users could do with the software. Users were not permitted to do any of the following:

  • Use the Core License (free) for any client or contract work.
  • Use the Software as the basis of a hosted blogging service, or to provide hosting services to others.
  • Reproduce, distribute, or transfer the Software, or portions thereof, to any third party.
  • Modify, tamper with, bypass, or in any way impede license registration routines in the Software.
  • Sell, rent, lease, assign, or sublet the Software or portions thereof, including sites in your multi-site license.
  • Grant rights to any other person.
  • Use the Software in violation of any U.S. or international law or regulation.

Additional stipulations encouraged users not to share code by keeping their repositories private, and to make sure they were paying for commercial licenses if they were being paid for their work.

There was simply no way ExpressionEngine could capture any significant amount of market share with this kind of restrictive licensing and its usage has steadily declined over the years. It is currently used by 0.3% of all the websites whose content management system w3techs can detect. By this or any other measure of market share, ExpressionEngine stands as a sobering monument to the importance of giving a project a license that empowers its community to continue adding wood to the fire.

“The community is mostly gone at this point and I don’t even think its related to them charging for the software but they just stopped responding people and helping them in their forums,” reddit user @netzvolk commented on the news.

“I have paid EE multiple times in the past but considered NOT paying anymore because third party developers are gone, the community members are gone, the tutorials and books are gone….EE 2 was the best version so far. Moving to yearly releases also caused more harm than good in terms of building a stable ecosystem around the product.”

ExpressionEngine’s new open source licensing is a major win for its remaining users. How much further down the road would the software be if the decision was made years ago? There’s no way to know, but moving forward users will have more input and influence over the future of the software.

“I suspect open sourcing EE is an approach to get that community and developers back,” @netzvolk said. “EllisLab can still make money with consulting, support and add-ons.

“But all those suffer if nobody is using the product anymore. This is more about expanding reach to stay afloat than anything else because some of their past bad decisions are what created alternatives like Craft. EllisLab turned an amazing product into a forgotten one in just a few years. I hope this means some change, and maybe, maybe one day the old developers and hard core EE community members come back.”

Users can only speculate on why EllisLab is making this move after 16 years of keeping its software locked down under restrictive licensing, but Ellis makes it clear in his post that the market decided long ago.

“Open source has won,” Ellis said. “It’s not even a contest anymore.”

by Sarah Gooding at November 20, 2018 09:21 PM under open source

WPTavern: Figma Partners with WordPress to Improve Design Collaboration

Figma, an online collaborative interface design tool, has donated an organizational membership to the WordPress project. The browser-based application helps designers and developers collaborate more efficiently and is used by organizations like Microsoft, Slack, and Uber. It provides design tools, prototyping, previews, and real-time feedback, all in the same place, and is often described as the “Google Docs for designing apps.”

Figma aims to match the way designers work today in collaborative roles, with features like shared component libraries, versioning, live device preview, and Sketch import. It was created to offer “one single source of truth for design files.”

“Where we may have used multiple tools in order to support all the parts of the design process, Figma incorporates many of the core features of other tools all in one product for a more efficient and powerful workflow,” Alexis Lloyd, Head of Design Innovation at Automattic, said in the announcement on the make.wordpress design blog. “I’m excited about the possibilities for how Figma can make the WordPress design process more collaborative, robust, and efficient.”

Figma launched in 2016 but has quickly gained popularity due to its seamless developer handoff exports and cross-platform compatibility. Many teams inside the WordPress community are already big fans of using Figma. 10up has been using the tool as part of the company’s design process. The SketchPress library that 10up created, a collection of WordPress admin interfaces, symbols, and icons, is in the process of being converted into a shared team library for Figma so that WordPress contributors can take advantage of it.

If you have held back on getting involved in designing for the WordPress project because of archaic collaboration tools, working with Figma may improve your contribution experience. Designers can get access to the WordPress.org Figma team by signing in with a WordPress.org Slack account using the invitation link. New users can upgrade their default “view” capabilities and get access to edit files by requesting permission in WordPress’ #design Slack channel.

by Sarah Gooding at November 20, 2018 02:53 AM under figma

November 19, 2018

WPTavern: New Block Lab Plugin Makes it Easy to Create Custom Gutenberg Blocks

Block Lab is a new tool that provides an admin interface and a templating system for creating custom Gutenberg blocks. Rob Stinson, Luke Carbis, and Rheinard Korf, all employees at XWP, kicked off the project in their own time with the goal of removing the relatively steep barrier to block creation. The plugin is now available on WordPress.org and Stinson said their target audience is WordPress developers ranging from junior to experienced.

The Block Lab admin screen lets users select an icon for the custom block, enter keywords, and choose from a variety of input fields.

Rendering the custom blocks in the editor and on the frontend requires simple PHP functions that most WordPress developers are probably already familiar with. Here’s an example for a testimonial block from the plugin’s documentation:

<img src="<?php block_field( 'profile-picture' ); ?>" alt="<?php block_field( 'author-name' ); ?>" />
<h3><?php block_field( 'author-name' ); ?></h3>
<p><?php block_field( 'testimonial' ); ?></p>

The plugin makes it possible to build custom blocks in a matter of minutes, as demonstrated in the video below.

Block Lab Puts Block Creation Inside the WordPress Admin

Block Lab differs from existing block creation tools in that it aims to provide a Gutenberg-first solution directly inside the WordPress admin. With the exception of the template creation, developers are not required to write any code when using it to create blocks.

“Ahmad’s create-gluten-block is an excellent solution, but is more focused on streamlining block creation from the ground floor,” Stinson said. “As I understand, it’s a development framework. Block Lab is about letting the developer kick off from the 10th floor and does this by offering a super simple WP Admin and traditional templating experience.”

Stinson said ACF’s solution was one of the inspirations for his team but that Block Lab tackles block creation from a different angle.

“ACF is amazing as well – easily one of our all time favorite plugins and one that has inspired us,” Stinson said. “Block Lab is a Gutenberg-first solution. Where ACF is a meta data first solution. They both arrive at similar destinations but get there by very different means, both technically and as far as UX goes.”

Developers and users who adopt Block Labs should be aware that if the plugin is deactivated, the custom blocks they created will also be deactivated. They are stored in the database and the templates are stored in the theme or child theme. Switching themes means users will lose the blocks as well.

“Adding templates to a stand-alone plugin is the most effective way around this,” Stinson said. “Either way though, the templating is simple enough that copying template folders/files from one theme to another is pretty easy. I did this exact thing yesterday in about 5 minutes.”

Data portability isn’t a guarantee for users right now, but Stinson said his team has some ideas about how they can reduce barriers even further to include an in-admin templating experience.

Block Lab’s creators have plans to offer commercial extensions eventually, but at this stage they are focusing on solving the problem for users in the free plugin.

“Once we better understand what folks are needing, we’ll find a way of gracefully offering premium stuff,” Stinson said.

There are still many unknowns about how the larger community of WordPress users will react to the upcoming 5.0 release, but Stinson is convinced that Gutenberg will have a positive impact on the plugin ecosystem and users’ experiences with extensions.

“Gutenberg is going to, ultimately, change things for the better in the plugin ecosystem,” he said. “There is no doubt it’s going to be bumpy for the first little while, but the net effect is that WordPress will have a better editing experience in general and one that gives plugin developers a stronger baseline for extending the editing experience. Even as we explore what we can do with Block Lab we’re discovering really cool things that we would never have thought of unless we just started using it. I think this will be the larger experience by most people in the WordPress community.”

by Sarah Gooding at November 19, 2018 09:41 PM under gutenberg

November 16, 2018

WPTavern: Gutenberg is Coming to WordPress’ Mobile Apps, Beta Version Expected February 2019

The team working on integrating Gutenberg into WordPress’ mobile apps is making progress, but users will not have access to the new editor in the apps until early 2019. Jorge Bernal, a mobile engineer at Automattic, posted an update yesterday, highlighting current capabilities:

Gutenberg Mobile [is] working inside the apps and the first post published with it, the writing flow has improved so it’s starting to feel more like an editor and less like a collection of isolated blocks, we have a working toolbar in place, you can now select images from your media library.

If you are using one of the mobile apps and you attempt to edit a post that was created with Gutenberg, you will see a warning like the one below:

This doesn’t mean users cannot edit content in the mobile apps, but there will be inconsistencies while Gutenberg support is still in progress.

I created some posts with Gutenberg and then went to edit them in the Android app. During my tests of switching back to the Gutenberg editor after saving some changes in the mobile app, I found that Gutenberg included the content but not the formatting options I had selected in the app. I received a warning about unexpected or invalid content.

The mobile apps team expects to ship an alpha release to testers at the end of 2018, with basic capabilities like adding a heading, paragraph, and images from the media library:

We will have an alpha release at the end of the year that will showcase the editing flow with some selected basic blocks. We will have a basic integration with the apps, enough to be able to experience Gutenberg (via secret opt-in or special builds), but won’t be showing this to users. Being able to use early versions of Gutenberg directly in the apps will make it easier to gather feedback and do user testing.

A beta with support for the most common types of content is tentatively planned for February 2019. The team is aiming to make writing a post using Gutenberg Mobile as pleasant as it currently is with Aztec.

“As Gutenberg rolls out to users on the web, we might see a good amount of users hitting problems trying to edit Gutenberg posts on Aztec,” Bernal said. “We have done (and keep doing) a lot of work to try to make that as good as possible, but there are limits to how compatible we can make the existing editor. We want to reduce the gap between Gutenberg launching and having a version in the apps, so we’re adjusting scope a bit to ship in February.”

It will be interesting to see how Gutenberg support is presented in the apps. I imagine it will be challenging to improve upon the mobile apps’ current editing experience, which is already fairly intuitive and streamlined.

Users can follow along with the process and give feedback on the Gutenberg Mobile GitHub repo.

by Sarah Gooding at November 16, 2018 11:52 PM under mobile apps

WPTavern: How WordPress Has Changed People’s Lives

It’s Friday and we could probably all use a little more positivity in our lives, especially on social media. Morten Rand-Hendriksen recently asked his followers on Twitter how WordPress has changed their lives. Here are a couple of the responses that stood out to me.

As a beginner web designer, who was struggling to find a job/work, WordPress opened the door to web development and enabled me to offer clients control over their websites. That was nearly 10 years ago and I’ve been building with WP ever since.

Keith Devon

I graduated in 2008 right into the thick of the recession. No jobs, nothing – the only way I could put food on the table and pay rent was to build WordPress sites for people. This led to my entire career in UX design, and my life would be very very different without WordPress.

Scott Sullivan

Here’s one you won’t expect. I was in an agency job I hated. I had an interview with Automattic and failed. Devastated, it forced me to look at what I really wanted. I now have my own consultancy.

Chris Taylor

I’d been working in the social field for more than 30 years. In 2015 I had to change and decided to work in the digital world. I casually met the Turin Meetup community and joined them. Then I started to contribute to the Polyglots team. Now, I’m one of the Italian GTE

Laurasacco

I’d been working for a hosting company and noticed how many of our users were enjoying it. Decided to go to WordCamp in 2008. The software was great, but the community was what really drew me in. I’ve been using WordPress in my career ever since then.

Ms. Velda

Made a WP website for a friend, then another, then someone who paid me… Today is 6 years and 120 clients later.

Sara Dunn

#WCSEA and specifically @adspedia reminded me that WordPress is about the inspiring people I meet at so many occasions. Beautiful minds & souls who inspired me to build a new and better life 2 years ago. It’s way more than software and individual ego.

Carole Olinger

I started by own consultancy doing WordPress for nonprofits straight out of college. Somehow, I’m still here and still loving it almost a decade later. Meetups and WordCamps (#wcsea!) were so crucial to my learning, developing as a speaker, and networking.

Mark Root-Wiley

I started working with #WordPress in 2012 after my business was sold out from under me by a ‘partner’. I ended up losing everything. Developing WordPress sites contributed to getting my Family out of debt, back on our feet. @Mor10 you’ve been an inspiration along the way…

Damian Saunders

There’s always a lot happening in the WordPress ecosystem and every once in awhile, it’s nice to step back to see how this software, which is used by millions of people across the world, is impacting lives.

I highly encourage you to read the thread in its entirety.  If you’d like to read similar, more in-depth content, check out HeroPress. HeroPress publishes inspirational essays from members of the community once a month.

by Jeff Chandler at November 16, 2018 10:25 PM under lives

WPTavern: WordPress 5.0 Beta 5 Adds Permalink Editing to the Document Sidebar

Permalink Panel
WordPress 5.0 Beta 5 is available for testing and includes all of the block editor changes that are in Gutenberg 4.4. One of the major changes in this release is the addition of a Permalink panel that is in the Document sidebar. The panel was added based on user feedback that the UI for editing the permalink is difficult to discover and buggy. This method of editing the permalink does not replace the existing method of clicking the title block. In beta 5, developers can now remove panels from the document sidebar. However, if you want to add panels to the sidebar, there is currently no way to do it. Handling images has been improved in beta 5 as images now take up the right amount of space in themes with wider editors. Hover styles for mobile devices are disabled and the i18n module was refactored to take advantage of performance improvements. If WordPress 5.0 is released before the end of the year, it will include PHP 7.3 compatibility fixes. If 5.0 is delayed until next year, these compatibility fixes will be released in a minor WordPress update before the end of this year. WordPress 5.0 RC 1 is scheduled to be released on Monday, November 19th, with 5.0 final scheduled to be released November 27th. If you think you’ve discovered a bug, please report it in the Alpha/Beta support forums.

by Jeff Chandler at November 16, 2018 08:51 PM under releases

WPTavern: WordPress Accessibility Team to Host Hackathon with Deque Systems at WordCamp US 2018

WordPress’ Accessibility team will be hosting a hackathon at Contributor Day on Sunday, December 9, at WordCamp US in Nashville. The team will be joined by lead developers from Deque Systems, a widely respected accessibility firm in the industry, with the goal of setting up automated accessibility testing for WordPress core.

The event has been in planning since JSconf EU 2018 in June when Jenny Wong met with Caitlin Cashin from Deque. They discussed how Deque could help WordPress with their accessibility expertise at WordCamp US. Rian Rietveld worked with Aaron Campbell, who is organizing the WCUS contributor day, to put the hackathon in motion.

Deque’s site is built on WordPress and the company specializes in helping teams get hooked up with automation tools. The company created aXe, an open source library and testing engine that can be customized to integrate with all modern browsers and testing frameworks. Deque open sourced aXe in 2015 and the team was invited to contribute the library to the W3C WAI Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group, when the group worked to develop a normative set of rules for evaluating WCAG 2.0 conformance.

Deque is volunteering their lead developers to help WordPress make improvements to its development workflow. The company has hosted similar hackathons in the past.

“By focusing primarily on projects with broad adoption, accessibility fixes have potential to trickle down to every website or web application including that library,” Deque Developer Advocate Marcy Sutton said after the 2017 aXe hackathon in San Diego. “Ultimately, this kind of work will have the most impact on the lives of people with disabilities, as it contributes to the creation of a more accessible workplace environment. A more accessible web also means a better user experience for everyone, part of the reason why digital accessibility is so important.”

In order for the hackathon at WordCamp US to be successful, Deque will need to connect to contributors who can collaborate on setting up automated testing.

“From the WordPress side we would like to invite core developers to join in and help find solutions to set this up,” Accessibility Team rep Jean-Baptiste Audras said. He and contributor Rachel Cherry will be representing the accessibility team during the hackathon and they need help from core committers who know their way around the automated testing system in WordPress core. Audras also said the team will need help from Gutenberg contributors.

“The tools can/will provide automated tests for the block editor since it’s based on testing the DOM (Document Object Model) of each admin screen generated by WordPress,” he said. “But we have to build it together with the people involved in Gutenberg to see how we can handle it the best way.”

Audras said the Gutenberg phase 2 release leads have already been in touch with the accessibility team and communication across teams is improving.

“If we find a technical solution, there should ideally not be technical problems to implement it,” Audras said. “As usual, it will be a question of priority and communication. I am confident that Gutenberg developers will be interested to add some automated checks to the Gutenberg stack.”

Audras said he doesn’t know when the automated tests for accessibility will be operational but he believes they will be very helpful in the future, especially in cases where new releases are being put out quickly. Anyone interested to contribute to the effort can get in touch on WordPress Slack’s #accessibility channel.

by Sarah Gooding at November 16, 2018 03:39 PM under gutenberg

BuddyPress: BuddyPress 4.0.0 Release Candidate 1

BP 4.0.0 Release Candidate 1 is now available. This package contains the code that we think we’ll ship as BuddyPress 4.0.0 later in November. If you build BuddyPress plugins or themes, you’re encouraged to give the RC a thorough look in a test environment.

Important changes in 4.0.0 include:

  • BuddyPress data exporters (for WP 4.9.6+), including a new ‘Export Data’ Settings subtab, where users can request an export from the front end
  • Integration into the WordPress privacy policy system (for WP 4.9.6+)
  • Improvements to Nouveau and other BP interfaces on mobile devices
  • Bug fixes for emails, Nouveau, BP’s nav tools
  • Improved compatibility with WP 4.9.x and 5.0

See the 4.0.0 milestone for more info.

Download the 4.0.0 release candidate from wordpress.org: https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/buddypress.4.0.0-RC1.zip. As always, remember that this is pre-release software, and we don’t recommend running it on a production site.

by Boone Gorges at November 16, 2018 03:05 AM under release candidate

Dev Blog: WordPress 5.0 Beta 5

WordPress 5.0 Beta 5 is now available!

This software is still in development, so we don’t recommend you run it on a production site. Consider setting up a test site to play with the new version.

There are two ways to test this WordPress 5.0 Beta: try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”), or you can download the beta here (zip).

Reminder: the WordPress 5.0 release date has changed. It is now scheduled for release on November 27, and we need your help to get there. Here are some of the big issues that we’ve fixed since Beta 4:

Block Editor

The block editor has been updated to match the Gutenberg 4.4 release, the major changes include:

Additionally, there have been some pesky bugs fixed:

A full list of changes can be found in the Gutenberg 4.4 release post.

PHP 7.3 Support

The final known PHP 7.3 compatibility issue has been fixed. You can brush up on what you need to know about PHP 7.3 and WordPress by checking out the developer note on the Make WordPress Core blog.

Twenty Nineteen

Work on making Twenty Nineteen ready for prime time continues on its GitHub repository. This update includes a host of tweaks and bug fixes, including:

  • Add .button class support.
  • Fix editor font-weights for headings.
  • Improve support for sticky toolbars in the editor.
  • Improve text-selection custom colors for better contrast and legibility.
  • Fix editor to prevent Gutenberg’s meta boxes area from overlapping the content.

How to Help

Do you speak a language other than English? Help us translate WordPress into more than 100 languages! 

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. We’d love to hear from you! If you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac, where you can also find a list of known bugs.


by Jonathan Desrosiers at November 16, 2018 01:09 AM under 5.0

WPTavern: Full Gutenberg Compatibility Coming Soon to Automattic’s Free Themes on WordPress.org, Including Storefront for WooCommerce

If your site is hosted on WordPress.com and you are trying out the new Gutenberg editor, there are currently 24 themes with full Gutenberg support available and more on the way. In response to questions about how to find Gutenberg themes on WordPress.com, Automattic’s Theme Team has given an update about the status of the .com themes, as well as the company’s free themes on WordPress.org.

There is currently no way to search for Gutenberg-ready themes on WordPress.com themes because there is no filter set up for this. However, the team said users should not any experience any issues with themes breaking with the new editor:

All existing themes should still work with Gutenberg. At worst styles in the editor might not exactly match styles on the site itself, and styling for individual blocks might cause conflicts if the theme treats that type of content in a specific way. But that is true of all WordPress themes, not just the ones on WordPress.com.

Users can activate any theme they want with Gutenberg. The new editor is not going to break any themes, but a theme does need to add support for users to take advantage of specific features like wide alignments and block color palettes. Gutenberg-ready themes also include editor styles to ensure a consistent editing experience between frontend and backend.

Automattic is also working to bring some of those updates from its current set of Gutenberg-ready themes to its free themes hosted on WordPress.org. The company has 109 themes in the directory, which have cumulatively been downloaded more than 17 million times. The majority of its more popular themes fall into the business category, such as Dara (10K active installs), Argent (10K), Edin (6K), and Karuna (5K). Several of these themes are already Gutenberg-ready with the code available on GitHub.

Storefront is by far Automattic’s most popular free theme on WordPress.org with 200,000+ installs and is well on its way towards being ready to support Gutenberg’s new features. Development towards this goal is happening on GitHub. Users can run beta versions of the Storefront theme ahead of time using the Storefront Beta Tester plugin.

by Sarah Gooding at November 16, 2018 12:27 AM under automattic

November 15, 2018

WPTavern: WPWeekly Episode 338 – Inflation, WordPress Release Dates, WP GDPR

In this episode, John James Jacoby and I discuss the news of the week. We talk about the delayed release of WordPress 5.0 and which day would be a suitable release date. We share our opinions on Matt’s answers from his Q&A appearance at WordCamp in Portland, Oregon. We also talk about the changes in WordPress core development, Automatticians in leadership roles, and last, but not least, WordCamp budgeting.

Stories Discussed:

WordPress 5.0 Release Date Update to November 27

Matt Mullenweg Addresses Controversies Surrounding Gutenberg at WordCamp Portland Q&A

WP GDPR Compliance Plugin Patches Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

Maximum Ticket Prices for WordCamps Will Increase to $25 per Day in 2019

WPWeekly Meta:

Next Episode: Wednesday, November 21st 3:00 P.M. Eastern

Subscribe to WordPress Weekly via Itunes

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Listen To Episode #338:

by Jeff Chandler at November 15, 2018 05:23 PM under wp gdpr

November 14, 2018

WPTavern: NextGEN Gallery Plugin to Add Gutenberg Support Ahead of WordPress 5.0

If you’re a NextGEN Gallery plugin user and have been wondering about Gutenberg compatibility, Imagely CEO Erick Danzer announced today that the plugin will ship a gallery block in a release planed for next week. The plugin is currently used on nearly a million WordPress sites (900,000+ active installs). NextGEN Gallery’s Gutenberg block has been in beta testing since May and the plugin will support users who update to use the new editor as well as those who stick with the Classic Editor plugin.

In a post titled “A Plea to Defer the Release of Gutenberg,” Danzer outlined his concerns with the timeline for WordPress 5.0. His thoughts echo many other prominent members of the development community who have written their own calls to delay the release. He cites feedback on WordPress.org and urges the Gutenberg team not to discount the validity of these reviews:

Some people have been dismissive of those reviews and questioned whether they are a legitimate reflection of user experiences with Gutenberg. The reviews often lack detail and can be quite harsh.

But that’s the experience of ALL plugin developers on the WordPress repository. Gutenberg is being reviewed in precisely the same way as every other plugin on the repository. If any other major plugin maintained a 2.3 star rating and refused to accept the feedback as legitimate, it would not be a major plugin for long.

Even without detail, reviews on the repository represent a fair reflection of overall user feelings about a plugin. In the case of Gutenberg, it is clear the plugin is not ‘wowing’ potential users.

Danzer also referenced a release the NextGEN Gallery team shipped in 2013 that included “major and breaking changes” that had been “tested aggressively but in limited ways.” This release broke an estimated 10 percent of the plugin’s installations as well as compatibility with many extensions. It has had a lasting impact on NextGEN’s reputation for the past five years. Danzer said he fears WordPress may be headed in the same direction, except at a much larger scale.

As a postscript to his plea, Danzer assured users reading his post that NextGEN Gallery will have support for Gutenberg in time for the WordPress 5.0 release:

Despite the concerns expressed in this post, I want to assure NextGEN Gallery users that we’ll be ready regardless of the final release decision for Gutenberg. We’ll be officially in the next week. We’ve tested and ensured that your existing galleries will work when you update. We’ve developed our block so that if you add galleries via Gutenberg, they will continue to work if you roll back or install the classic editor. And we’ll have all hands on deck to deal with any issues that arise when Gutenberg is released.

NextGEN Gallery’s Gutenberg support includes a block that launches a modal where users can select a gallery to insert. Unless it has significantly changed from the beta preview video published, the gallery block doesn’t seem to offer a preview of the gallery inside the Gutenberg editor once it has been selected and placed within the content. Users who want to test the beta version of Gutenberg support in the plugin can download the latest from the NextGEN Gallery beta page.

by Sarah Gooding at November 14, 2018 11:54 PM under nextgen gallery

WPTavern: Drupal Gutenberg Showcased at DrupalCamp Oslo 2018

Gutenberg appreciation is running high across the CMS pond in the Drupal world. DrupalCamp Oslo 2018, Norway’s biggest national camp to date, was held over the weekend. The event featured two sessions on Gutenberg – one for site builders and one for block developers. Frontkom, the team behind Drupal Gutenberg, took home two Splash Awards for “Best Module” and “Best Integration” for 2018.

The Cloud Blocks plugin for WordPress was released in beta two weeks ago to begin testing the Gutenberg Cloud API, which enables blocks to be shared across CMS’s. The Drupal version of this connector plugin was introduced at DrupalCamp Oslo. Frontkom’s Per André Rønsen and Thor Andre Gretland hosted a session called “Build your pages build with Drupal Gutenberg” where they gave attendees a look at Gutenberg Cloud for D8. It runs as submodule of Drupal Gutenberg.

Drupal pagebuilder gutenberg

Changes Coming to Gutenberg Cloud: All Blocks Will Undergo Code Review before Publishing

One of the speakers at the event was a member of the Drupal.org security team. Rønsen said after their session they had good participation during the Q&A time.

“There was some push back on Gutenberg Cloud for letting any developer add new blocks,” Rønsen said. “We explained that this is only during beta phase, and that we do code review of new blocks coming in. However, this led to the decision of switching to white listing instead. Starting next week, block authors will need to email us and ask for code review before we accept the blocks. This will go hand in hand with an upcoming browser on gutenbergcloud.org – meaning each block will get it’s own little landing page online. We think this will be useful for people to see how Gutenberg Cloud can be useful for their site.”

Overall, the Frontkom team saw a positive reception to Gutenberg Cloud at DrupalCamp Oslo and they are working to incorporate some of the valuable feedback they received.

“The interest was amazing,” Rønsen said. “This week, we’ve been in contact with two big dev teams who wants to help out getting the Drupal module a stable release.”

The session for site builders was not filmed but there is an unofficial video from the developer day where Frontkom’s Marco Fernandes and Frank Gjertsen gave a technical session on how to build custom blocks.

by Sarah Gooding at November 14, 2018 07:56 PM under Gutenberg Cloud

WPTavern: Maximum Ticket Prices for WordCamps Will Increase to $25 per Day in 2019

For the last seven years, the maximum amount of money WordCamp organizers could charge for ticket prices was $20 per day. In 2019, this will increase to $25 per day.

The new amount accounts for inflation and provides breathing room for organizers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, $20 in January of 2006 is equal to $25.51 in October of 2018.

Organizers don’t have to charge this amount and are encouraged to keep the ticket price as low as possible. The increase is also part of a delicate balancing act between not being a financial burden and getting 80% or more of attendees to show up.

“The ticket price does not reflect on the value of the event,” Andrea Middleton, Community organizer said.

“In an ideal world, all WordCamp tickets would be free just like WordPress is free but to avoid organizing a conference for 500 registrants and only having 50 people show up on the day of the event, we charge as little as we possibly can for tickets, but just enough that people will show up for the event if they’re sleepy that morning or got a last-minute invitation to a pool party or something.”

When the proposal to increase the maximum ticket price was published in September, many commenters approved of the increase with some suggesting an even higher amount to account for inflation for the next few years. Ian Dunn questioned whether or not budget shortfalls were due to organizing teams spending money on extra things.

“Beyond that, though, I’m curious why camps are having more trouble today than they were 5 or even 10 years ago?” Dunn said.

“Is it harder to get sponsorships? It seems like the opposite is true, especially given how much the global sponsorship program covers.

“Based on experiences in my local community, I suspect that the primary reason for budget shortfalls is that the organizing team is choosing to do extra things, beyond what’s necessary to meet the goals of a WordCamp. For example, holding after-parties at trendy venues, expensive speaker gifts, professional A/V (which I’ve advocated for in the past, but not at the cost of higher ticket prices), etc.”

It is interesting to ponder how much money WordCamps could save globally by eliminating the materialistic aspects of the event such as t-shirts, speaker gifts, lanyards, badges, signs, etc.

At there core, WordCamps are about gathering the local community together in a physical location to share knowledge. Not every WordPress event needs to mimic WordCamp US or WordCamp Europe, two of the largest events in the world.

Although the WordPress Community team tracks data such as how much each WordCamp charges for ticket prices, the information is not readily available. This is because of the large volume of data that would need to be calculated and displayed. It would be interesting to see an info-graphic of this data where you can compare the average ticket price for WordCamps per country.

Hugh Lashbrooke, a WordPress Community team contributor who has access to the data says that, “globally the majority of camps have lower prices.”

WordCamp organizers are highly encouraged to keep track of attendance as the data is used to help make better informed decisions. The team will review the no-show rates at WordCamps at the end of 2019 to determine if the price increase had any effect. If not, the team may increase the price again for 2020.

by Jeff Chandler at November 14, 2018 07:25 PM under wordcamps

WPTavern: Google Developers Demo AMP Stories Integration with Gutenberg at Chrome Dev Summit

Alberto Medina and Weston Ruter gave a presentation on Progressive Content Management Systems yesterday at Chrome Dev Summit 2018 in San Francisco. Medina is a developer advocate at Google and Ruter recently transitioned into a new role as a Developer Programs Engineer after eight years at XWP.

Medina began the session with a quick overview of the increasingly complex CMS space, which is growing, according to figures he cited from w3techs: 54% of sites are built with some kind of CMS (11% YoY growth). Many CMS’s face common challenges when it comes to integrating modern web technologies into their platforms, such as large code bases, legacy code, and technical debt.

In addressing the challenges that WordPress faces, Google is looking to make an impact on a large swath of the web. Medina outlined the two-part approach Google is using with the WordPress ecosystem. This includes AMP integration via the AMP plugin for WordPress. It’s currently at version 1.0 RC2 and the stable version is scheduled for release at the end of this month.

The second part of the approach is integration of modern web capabilities and APIs in core, so that things like service workers and background sync are supported natively in a way that the entire ecosystem can take advantage of them. Google has invested resources to get these features added to core.

Ruter demonstrated a single page application built in WordPress using a standard theme as the basis and the AMP plugin as a foundation. Medina said the team plans to continue expanding this work integrating AMP content into WordPress, specifically in the context of Gutenberg. He gave a quick demo of how they are working to help content creators easily take advantage of features like AMP stories via a Gutenberg integration.

Medina said AMP stories are formed by components and work well with Gutenberg, since everything in the new editor corresponds to a block.

“We want powerful components like these to become available across all CMS’s,” Medina said. “The CMS space is moving steadily along the progressive web road.”

Check out the video below to learn more about Google’s experience integrating modern web capabilities and progressive technologies into the WordPress platform and ecosystem.

by Sarah Gooding at November 14, 2018 12:27 AM under pwa

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